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Give Space a Chance, Says Phil Plait

Posted by timothy on from the to-not-bless-is-not-to-negate dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes "A lot of pundits, scientists, and people who should know better are decrying the demise of NASA, saying that the President's budget cutting the Constellation program and the Ares rockets will sound the death knell of manned space exploration. This simply is not true. The budget will call for a new rocket design, and a lot of money will go toward private space companies, who may be able to launch people into orbit years ahead of Ares being ready anyway."

12 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, orbit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Weee! They'll be able to launch people into orbit years ahead of Ares! Because putting people into orbit is exactly why Ares was being built, since NASA can't do that with their current rockets.

    The private industry is decades away from what NASA can do today. It's at least a century away from what NASA could do 40 years ago. They're never going to get us into mars, because there's simply no profit in it. Government funding is the only way space exploration can go forward.

    1. Re:Yeah, orbit! by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They're never going to get us into mars, because there's simply no profit in it.

      Oh really? Because to me, Phobos and Deimos (Mars' moons) are little more than a few trillion tons of metal, ceramics, volatiles and a few million tons of precious metals sitting in a nice stable orbit over Mars. Just perfect to supply the Earth with some rare metals, the moon and LEO with volatiles and any space tourism around Mars. The view is fantastic and I'd bet there's people who would pay pretty big bucks to take a vacation to Martian orbit or even visit the surface. You woyuld have to have a profound lack of imagination to not see any "profit" in going to Mars and in space exploration in general. Resources, tourism, research etc. plenty of profit to be made, it's just a matter of building up the necessary technology and infrastructure.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    2. Re:Yeah, orbit! by icebike · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously?
      I just can't see mining a trillion tons of anything to carry it back to earth being a good idea. And mining a moon seems fraught with peril, an generally a bad idea. For Christ sake if exhaling can destroy earth's environment, how could de-orbiting a trillion tons do the planet any good?

      The only way to gain the riches of mars is to live there. You can't bring it home.

       

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      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    3. Re:Yeah, orbit! by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The supply of space metals shipped to Earth can not lower the price of precious metals on Earth lower than what it costs to ship them no matter how abundant they are in space. Hence why even though there are quadrillions of tons of salt on Earth, the price isn't near zero due to the cost of transport and extraction.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    4. Re:Yeah, orbit! by Idiomatick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've thought for a long time that the US gov should pitch 100mil or so to the lunar X-prize, maybe 500mil to a martian prize. The prize system has shown that this method is highly efficient. Why not use it?

  2. Bravo. by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I follow Phil via twitter, he's pretty spot on about space and space exploration. He even goes into the false dichotemy of funding social spending programs first then NASA in one of his posts. NASA research lead to cheaper, more viable foodstuffs for the poor in the past, I don't see why it's breakthroughs couldn't assist us in our search for solutions to problems here on Earth.

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    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    1. Re:Bravo. by EzInKy · · Score: 5, Insightful


      Poverty is a social problem, not a technological one.

      Social problem: Famine
      Technological Solution: Irrigation
      Result: Civilization (Just ask Sid)

      Solving social problems with technology is what separates men from animals.

      --
      Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  3. Wishful thinking is bad science too by syousef · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What you need is for people to realise the benefits that come with space exploration so that they demand, through their votes, that it be included in the budget. What you don't need to do is give up on NASA in favour of private companies that can only ever be expected to be SELF serving. Capitalism as a tool is a good thing, but as a religion it is as stupid as any other religion.

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    1. Re:Wishful thinking is bad science too by Rei · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It amazes me how many people think that what we're dealing with is a choice between outsourcing to industry vs. having the government do it. That's not the case. It's a choice between outsourcing to "small" (relatively) companies vs. outsourcing to huge corporate giants (Lockheed, Boeing, etc), which they currently do. The former should give much better pricing and innovation, at the downside of greater risk.

      --
      Noone ever goes walrus!
  4. Losing Constellation is a set back by physburn · · Score: 4, Informative
    Years of work have gone in Ares I,5 and the capsules. Yes is was just a bigger Apollo with more modern components, but if its cancelled and NASA have to restart then those years and dollars are gone, any moon or mars mission is setback at least 5 years. But as Phil said, these are just rumours, we don't yet know what will happen to NASA.

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    Space Craft Feed @ Feed Distiller

    1. Re:Losing Constellation is a set back by osu-neko · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Years of work have gone in Ares I,5 and the capsules. ... but if its cancelled and NASA have to restart then those years and dollars are gone

      You are suffering from the "sunk costs" fallacy. Those years and dollars are gone, not "if its cancelled", they're gone, period. The question is, what is the best way to proceed from where we are today. If the Ares program is not a good investment, then we shouldn't throw any more money at this. This is equally true whether we've spent nothing or spent a trillion dollars...

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      "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
  5. We know. by tjstork · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think international competition is more likely to drive space exploration than all of us holding hands and doing it together.

    Those of us who are in the right wing and have no problem shoveling money into NASA see this coming from a mile away. Keeping the USA in the forefront in space is more important than the development of the lateen sail was to the arabs or the silk worm was to the Chinese. It's absolutely, strategically, important.

    In fact, I would say that you could the cut the US military budget in half, spend the balance on developing heavy lift boosters, exploring asteroids, getting serious about the whole thing, and get way more out of your taxpayer dollar in terms of geopolitical power than 6 aircraft carriers and 1000 fighters.

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    This is my sig.