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Future of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Looks Bleak
coondoggie writes "Things don't look good for NASA when the report outlining its future begins: 'The US human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. [NASA] is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources. Space operations are among the most complex and unforgiving pursuits ever undertaken by humans. It really is rocket science. Space operations become all the more difficult when means do not match aspirations.' Today the Augustine Commission handed to the White House the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee summary report, after months of expert review and testimony. Many observers expected a bleak report, but ultimately the future of US manned space flight will hinge on how the report's conclusions are interpreted. Keep in mind too that NASA has spent almost $8 billion of a planned $40 billion to develop systems for a return to the Moon."
This "Send Robots Instead" nonsense is just that -- Nonsense.
Thanks for clearing that up for us.
Mankind's Manifest Destiny may have nothing but an unmarked grave in your hearts, but for millions, perhaps billions, the reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
I hate to break it you but:
So while you might hope for and preach a revival, the vast majority of our race NEVER subscribed to it and is quite justified in letting it lie in it's grave.
building infrastructure like decent roads and water supplies in sub-Saharan Africa (and enabling basic economic development and human welfare)
And why should sub-Saharan Africa be improved with AMERICAN tax dollars? I'm pretty sure they have the capability to make their own asphalt. But if we subsidize it all for them, maybe even their own SPACESHIP!! WHOA!!!
Most Americans (native or not) didn't have decent roads or sparkly filtered treated water for quite a while yet we are far from extinct. We even had successful trade going on back then. Doctors, though less enlightened than today, were still around. Let those people stand on their own two feet. Let nature run its course, they'll either figure it out or they won't.
Personally, and I think most Americans stand with me on this, I value space travel a HELL of a lot more than I value some little third world nation's "progress". F**k 'em.
or replacing high-pressure sodium streetlamps with LEDs (decreasing inner-city suicide risks, saving power, reducing emissions associated with that power)
Oh please.... gimme a break. Since when is it the government OR the people's job to pay for expensive special lighting to reduce unproven "suicide risk". It's not the government's job to protect people from themselves. It's not your job either. Or mine. The emissions are really not all that awful.
LED's are not exactly non-toxic when disposed of either. They are also very expensive which would eat any short term energy savings and possibly long-term depending on how expensive an LED array of that magnitude would be.
Wanna reduce harmful emissions by quite a bit? The solution was found over 50 years ago. Nuclear. Not solar, not wind, not pixie farts. Nuclear. Producing enough solar cells to match a nuke plant would probably cast MUCH more nasty waste into the environment than the nuke plant does in its operational lifetime.
or filtering the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or any of millions of other priorities.
That's a worthy cause but one I put below manned spaceflight. We need much further progress before things become cheap in this regard. If it's put off, it will never happen.
I would hazard a guess that garbage patch already has more tax dollars associated with it than the school systems in my state.
If near-to-intermediate-term space travel development for the next few centuries really had a shadow of a chance of insuring us against the catastrophe of extinction as a species, then things would be different,
Uhhhh.... it does. There's an awful lot of unwatched space out there and observatories losing funding by the minute.
and that would be a premium I'd be willing to support, but I don't think it makes sense today. If attempting to develop space travel were actually bringing about significant development of new technologies useful elsewhere - in excess of those which would occur were the money spent elsewhere, that could defray the costs, but NASA's track record, especially in recent years, is not all that spectacular, as has been noted in TFA. So why not pull the plug? Emotional reasons, mostly, I imagine...
We can't discover much if we aren't there to experiment now can we? I'm not saying NASA has a good rep. Pulling the plug is not the answer, gutting the bureaucracy, rebuilding and letting the scientists do their job is the answer. Eliminating Cost+ contracts is another part of the equation. Make Boeing and friends compete for business just like the new kids on the block.