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Remembering NASA Disasters With an Eye Toward the Future
mattnyc99 writes "This next week marks the anniversary of three sad days in NASA's history: three astronauts died in a capsule fire testing for Apollo 1 exactly 42 years ago today, then the Challenger went down 23 years ago tomorrow, followed by the Columbia disaster six years ago this Super Bowl Sunday. Amidst all this sadness, though, too many average Americans take our space program for granted. Amidst reconsiderations of NASA priorities from the Obama camp as the Shuttle nears retirement, then, the brilliant writer Chris Jones offers a great first-hand account in the new issue of Esquire — an impassioned argument against the impending end of our manned space program. In which camp do you fall: mourner or rocketeer?"
... is a bad month to be an astronaut.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Ok, so we've lost a few people in space exploration. You know what, that's what happens, that's what they signed up for, and... that's healthy. What's not healty is how oversensitive the Public seems to be to these losses. Yes, the shuttle is aging, yes we need a new syste, but we shouldn't abandon manned space flight. Without manned space flight, how will we ever escape the Earth? And sooner or later, the Earth is going to want to be rid of us. Or the sun will, and Earth won't have much choice in the matter.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Coincidently I've been watchin' the "When We Left Earth" DVD's recently. One of the astronauts that discussed the Columbia accident said that they know the risk and do it anyway.
How many more people have died in the Iraq conflict than the entire history of the space program? It's pretty twisted that the majority have done comparatively little to end that, but are ready to grab their pitch forks and torches when it comes to the space program.
No sig for you!!
Those little Mars rovers seem to be going strong. Lets put our money where it seems to be providing the best ROI.
Have gnu, will travel.
Get my drift folks? Astronauts do not become Astronauts because they want a safe job. If I were capable, I'd risk my life to be in Space.
This. I work in space science, think manned spaceflight is a wonderful thing, and look forward to it becoming increasingly a commercially available thing... but it's an extremely expensive way to accomplish most tasks, especially when it comes to accomplishing anything in the way of science.
I also work around environmental policy, and strongly feel we'd be better off working on surviving on this planet, instead of ruining it, then going off looking for others to ruin. Put a few of those "best and brightest" brains to work on finding ways to meet the Millennium Development Goals, wouldja?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Pardon my cynicism, but what the hell does the super bowl have to do with anything?
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
Shed not a single tear for one who has lived the Dream.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The problem isn't that space exploration is dangerous - everyone knows that. The problem is that space exploration requires a lot of money for no return other than glory and prestige.
The only good quote from that Esquire article:
Space demands sack. In a country that couldn't figure out how to mortgage a suburban family home, Mars suddenly seemed a long way off.
There's no cold war driving the shuttle program anymore, so it's over. And after the moon landing, and robotic probes sent to other planets, we all realized something - space is really fucking huge. It tales a long time to get anywhere, and costs a huge amount of money to send even a tiny amount of stuff out of this atmosphere. People hear about crazy plans to send people to Mars and ask "Why bother?" I tend to agree with them.
On the other hand, the space station project is something that makes sense. It's a baby step, it's something that (ideally) allows all interested countries with space agencies and some cash to participate and could someday evolve into a shipyard where exploration probes - and even manned craft - could be built and launched without having to burn a lot of rocket fuel escaping earth's gravity. Yeah, I've probably been watching too much Star Trek. But if the public could be made to understand the value of this program maybe interest would revive in space again.
The age of Asimovian idealism is over. It's the Pragmatic Age. If people can see the value of investing in space, they'll do it. But no one is buying dreams anymore.
This planet, any planet, has finite resources. No matter what we do, no matter how many alternatives we go through or how well we conserve, sooner or later we'll exhaust them. It's merely a question of how long it'll take to do so. Which means in the long term there are exactly two paths: get off this single planet, or perish. Personally I don't like option #2, and I'd like to get option #1 underway while we have the luxuries of time and resources, not wait until it's a crash program under a short deadline with limited resources.
From a practical standpoint, two things. First, opening new frontiers has never been unprofitable. It's expensive opening them up, but every one we've opened up has yielded an ROI any businessman would give up several major organs for. It's rarely immediately obvious what the rewards will be, looking back at history no major exploration ever turned up what they were looking for, but consistently the rewards are more than high enough to justify the cost. I doubt space will be different, and the spoils will go to he who's there first with the most. Second, high ground. Any military man will tell you that he who controls the high ground controls the battlefield. In ancient days the high ground was a hill so your archers could shoot down at the enemy. Today it's the airspace over the battlefield, so your aircraft can bomb the enemy without being distracted by enemy fighters. Orbit's a pretty serious high ground. Want an example? Take a look at Meteor Crater in Arizona. That was a chunk of rock coming in ballistic. Now, imagine that crater overlaid on Los Angeles, or Chicago, or Washington DC. Or all of them. Rocks are plentiful, getting them onto the right path is fairly straightforward and cheap. And shooting back up the gravity well is hideously expensive.
"ultimately we will have to be sending people up there anyway. There is no way around it. "
Except, you know, not doing it and learning more because we did it a smarter way.
Here's an idea: what if we built a machine that was as dextrous as a human, and put the controls of that machine in the hands of an intelligent, decisive, and bold human... on Earth.
And hey, while we're at it, we could design the machine to, just for example, move about the surface of mars for months on end with no need of air, food or a return journey.
Human space exploration is wonderful. Some very smart people are doing a bang-up job exploring Mars right now. "Robotic" space exploration is a misnomer; it should be called "Smart and efficient human space exploration".
...unmanned missions of exploration. Space probes and planetary probes.
They cost way less than manned missions, and return way more scientific information.