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Can the US Still Lead In Space Despite Shuttle's End?
Hugh Pickens writes "NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden says that the future is bright and promises that one day humans will land on Mars. 'American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half-century because we've laid the foundation for success,' the nation's space chief said in a speech at the National Press Club. 'When I hear people say that the final shuttle flight marks the end of U.S. human space flight, you all must be living on another planet. We are not ending human space flight. We are recommitting ourselves to it.' Bolden says within a year private companies can take over the process of sending cargo shipments into orbit and by 2015 industry can take over astronaut transport, freeing NASA to focus on the long-term goals of reaching beyond Earth's shadow. 'Do we want to keep repeating ourselves or do we want to look at the big horizon?' says Bolden. 'My generation touched the moon today, NASA, and the nation, wants to touch an asteroid, and eventually send a human to Mars.' A group of former astronauts and other critics have blasted the agency and the Obama administration for ending the 30-year-old shuttle program, once the cornerstone of NASA. 'NASA's human spaceflight program is in substantial disarray with no clear-cut mission in the offing. We will have no rockets to carry humans to low-Earth orbit and beyond for an indeterminate number of years,' write Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan. 'After a half-century of remarkable progress, a coherent plan for maintaining America's leadership in space exploration is no longer apparent.'"
I do believe that the majority of americans, myself included, support space travel and exploration. If you don't like your tax money funding that, move to another nation that doesn't do research (as that's what you seem to be against). Good luck. Also, you'll have to check all your nasa created technology at the gate.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
"Why does 'our nation' have to put a gun to my head and force me to fund the intellectual curiosity of others?"
You pay already more than the complete NASA budget just for the fuel to run the AC in the tents in Afghanistan.
Oh, look, it's the chiro-troll again. (Other readers should look at his posting history to understand -- and dismiss -- the point he makes.)
SpaceX's Dragon Capsule is going to be on display until July 10th at the Kennedy Space Center Air Force air/space museum, right down the street from the last shuttle launch (disclaimer: I'm going to see the last shuttle launch, and to see the Dragon capsule that has been to space and back). This is no accident.
The shuttle has been NASA's workhorse for the last 30 years, but its time for it to make way for the next generation of orbital launch vehicles. Goodbye Shuttle, and thanks for all the hard work.
"Besides, what does NASA do for me anyway?"
Don't ask what NASA can do for you, but what you can do for NASA.
But to seriously answer your question: the aqueduct, sanitation, irragation, education, medicine, roads and peace.
'American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half-century because we
- aha, keep dreaming.
The US bond crisis is coming, followed immediately by the currency crisis. I bet there will be more pressing needs, like more weapons to start resource wars against multiple countries much before the US will once again be able to go far into space in its new ships, never mind having humans on board there....
You can't handle the truth.
Space exploration may be a technological feat, but it is also a wonder of human intellect. By abandoning the shuttle, that human intellect is being dumped on the streets with nothing but promises for the future. Promises to the nation, though there will be very few promised to the people who will be pursuing other careers.
Even if things did start up again: within a year, most of those people would need to refresh their training. Within a decade, you would be training most of the workforce from scratch. Within 50 years, even most of the documentation would be lost or incomprehensible.
Don't believe me, just look at Apollo.
If you're a Canuck and don't believe me, look at the Avro Arrow.
Nations loose technical capabilities because those capabilities depend upon the people behind them.
_ Chinese are planning multiple mir like station, yes at first they will suck but with big budgets, they could have their sputnik moment ....
_ if aerobreathing engines like the one planned on the skylon are operational, they too could be a game changer. yes it is unmanned but drastically decreases costs
_ jaxa is planning a robotic base on the moon... and japanese definitely know their robots
_ if multiple changes mid programs don't cause nasa to redevelop the wheel, it will fall behind
maybe it can stay ahead... and I really hope it will get a big boost but I don't see that happening, especially with cost saving measures in budget... nasa is definitely not a priority
What I would love is all space faring countries to combine efforts and launch some big ass missions and really get the space race going... but because of pride never gonna happen :(
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
The US seems to lean more and more into creationism and don't want interest in science and where the wold and Universe really is going.
Probably because they are afraid that science will say "There is no God".
As for the whole space program - a lot of it has been created for military reasons, and when the competition with the USSR ended then there's no longer a need for the "My Dick is bigger than Your" competition, which is sad. A lot of the science done has been done by tagging along.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
SpaceX has already sent an unmanned Dragon capsule into orbit around the Earth. They have a contract with NASA for cargo flights to the ISS, and are developing the manned version of the Dragon with an integrated abort system (see this video for a demonstration).
American spaceflight is NOT coming to an end. It's just not going to be a NASA monopoly any more.
How is the coming hiatus any different that that between the end of Saturn V & the first Shuttle or for that matter the multi-year launch stoppage after Columbia? Why MUST it be a NASA developped rocket? Is it because parts NASA have turned into the aerospace work assurance administration?
I'm a manned space exploration fan but I have come to the conclusion that it would be better off for Manned space explorattion were Nasa to get out of the development of it's own launchers & buy from SpaceX or whoever else develops a reliable launcher without falling into the trap of growing a self justifying administration.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
There's a reason "alt-med" is despised by medical community. It's the simple fact that any "alternative medicine" that's been proven to work is called...medicine.
The US is changing its HUMAN space exploration program, but the space exploration program is returning far more knowledge than it ever has. We've sent robots to almost every planet. We've been to Mars many many times. That may not be as inspirational as landing on the moon, but it's produced a hell of a lot more knowledge than did putting people on the moon.
AccountKiller
we have more probes on mars then any other nation.
And look at mars rover that lasted for YEARS longer then planned.
>I'm not anti-science
One thing is for damn sure...
You're a loonie and a quack. Anyone who purports to cure cancer, colic, asthma, etc, with spinal manipulation is a fraud. And chelation therapy does not cure autism, no matter how many chemicals you pump through a kid. It just doesn't fucking work, you fraud. It's child abuse and defrauding the parents. And to suggest that it works either says you are a cynical liar, or you're "friggin retahdid" as we say here in the Northeast.
I don't know what psychoactive drugs you're taking, but increase or decrease the dosage, because whatever it is you're taking, it's incorrect.
--
BMO
*Real* space exploration these days is performed by robots. Humans have the wrong senses, the wrong body form, and needs that are very difficult to satisfy in space. But we're very good at building and directing robots, and getting better very fast.
The shuttle? Absolute garbage engineering. Sold as the cheapest way to get to space, it wound up the most expensive of all time. It was supposed to be as safe and easy to operate as an airliner, but it proved extremely dangerous. It proved the capability of the USA only in the sense that no other entity could possibly have thrown enough resources at it to make it work at all. NASA has finally come to its collective senses and decided to quit "throwing good money after bad", a decision that's about 35 years too late.
Human beings will have a future in space when the resources and infrastructure to support them can be gathered, constructed, and maintained by robots. But we have proven beyond any reasonable argument that using human beings as "space laborers" is hyper-expensive and counterproductive.
Riiiiiiiiiggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtt,the Chinese are way ahead. After all, they have rovers on Mars, orbiters at Mercury & Saturn, a probe heading to Pluto. and two probes entering interstellar space.
Oh wait, whups,sorry about that
The Shuttle and ISS are black holes in NASA's budget sucking all the money away from almost every other project. Everything at NASA has been secondary to maintaining the Shuttle and ISS.
The best thing that could happen is that shutting down the Shuttle program will free up budget money to develop better, cheaper, faster manned and unmanned space programs.
The worst thing that could happen is that NASA decides to create another white elephant space program simply to keep the massive army of NASA employees and contractors who worked on the Shuttle program employed.
we can drop a bomb anywhere on the planet now, it's called an ICBM.
"Besides, what does NASA do for me anyway?"
Wow, I know they say there are no stupid questions but there sure seem to be a lot of inquisitive idiots.
You want to know what NASA and the space race has done for you....Look down at your keyboard, its attached to a computer.
Microprocessors were derived from the space race. As well as the satellite communications that you may use to connect with other idiots.
Not enough for you...heres some more things that were by-products of the space race and the space age.
Kidney dialysis machines
Computer-Aided Tomography (CAT) scan
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Freeze-dried food
Cordless power tools & appliances
Disposable diapers
Rotary blood pump
Fiber optics
Satellite dish
Bar codes
Ear thermometer
Fire-resistant fabrics
Smoke detector
Thermal gloves and boots
New techniques for machining and casting exotic metals like magnesium and titanium.
Carbon fiber epoxy, and all kinds of composite materials
CNC machining.
Microwave communications.
Huge improvements in photovoltaics (solar cells to generate electricty).
Solid state memory
Satellite photography
velcro.
And about 1,400 documented NASA inventions that have benefited U.S. industry.
Oh yeah did I mention TANG!!!!
I called you an idiot several times above. I may be wrong. You may just be an ungrateful, unimaginative Luddite. But I'm betting your both an an ungrateful, unimaginative Luddite and an idiot.
If you dont like it, you can always turn off your computer since NASA and the space race never did anything for you any damn way.
i could care less if the US is seen as the "leader" in space exploration.
Why do you hate America?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I give it 25 years before someone else takes the lead.
I suppose it depends which lead you mean. There are several.
Sure, the USA is about to give up it's manned flight capabilities - though whether the scuttle represented a lead in that field is open to question. However, it still has a lot of capabilities in military launches (the military space budget is at least the size of NASA's - that's not going to be cut) and civil satellite operations.
You probably can't assign the non-governmental space business as "american" as it's, well, non-governmental so doesn't really carry a national identity.
Personally I doubt that there's going to be much manned activity past LEO for at least 100 years, as there's no real need for it. There might be some "gestures" by the chinese, but there's no need for a permanent manned base, or manned expeditions - unless it's for reasons of prestige and few people are willing to pay for that any more.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
To be fair to the other guy, he didn't say he supported the war[s] either.
Personally, I'd rather we allocated considerably more to NASA and perhaps more importantly, gave them a clear and consistent mission. It seems like our political machine changes its mind every few years about what NASA should be working on.
Build out Constellation and put us back on the moon. Why are we stuck using the shuttle for short jogs, decades later?
No, nevermind, that's getting expensive... use commercial options for manned flight, scrap that program and focus on research.
Hey, we should have a manned flight program, how else are we going to get to mars?
I can't help but wonder if the folks over there get a little peeved about starting and stopping programs on fleeting political whims. But maybe I've got it wrong and it just looks that way to the casual observer.
There's anti-science out there, but there's also budget constraints. For example, we have important work to do blowing up people in the middle east and we can't afford to use drones to blow up innocents and advance science. So science has to go.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Space is what I would describe of itself 'indirect research', in that the technology that you and I benefit from was a result of something done in space research, even if that wasn't the initial intent.
If that's the only argument you can come up with for funding NASA then you're screwed, because you could have done those things far more cheaply by, you know, funding research into them and forgetting the whole space thing.
Oh for Pete's sake. Obama did NOT cancel the Shuttle program, George W Bush did! Obama canceled Constellation, the rocket program to followup on the Shuttle, but he did so because it was overbudget and behind schedule. I have a long-ish article about this in the New York Post today. NASA has some serious problems right now, mostly due to lack of a strong vision and the ridiculous turf wars between the White House and Congress. Most of these problems aren't hard to solve in theory, but in practice, with the rabid partisonship going on right now? Hmph.
*** Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer http://www.badastronomy.com
There is a nice PBS program called "The Astrospies". It reveals that a major purpose of the manned space program was to operate space stations to take pictures of enemy nations, much like the U-2 spy plane. By the late sixties, unmanned spy satellites were comparable to manned spy satellites. The manned space program then received major cuts. The use of manned spy satellites was classified in the US of course for a long time, and I bet major parts are still classified.
In the early 90s, Congress was ready to kill the fledgling space station, but thanks to lobbying and spreading out of pork, it lived. The Clinton administration tried to use it as an international relations ploy. $100 billion later, not much science has been done. What science will ever be done on the ISS?
The American public still doesn't know the original purpose of putting people into outer space, but the ISS and Shuttle consume more than half of NASA's budget. Would the average American notice if they disappeared? Does the average American even care about space science? The 40 meter European optical telescope is expected to cost $1.5 billion. How big of a telescope could $100 billion buy?
If the purpose of the manned space program is colonization, why didn't NASA build something like Biosphere 2 for experimentation? Why isn't NASA using Biosphere 2 more aggressively? How much will it cost to build buildings for growing food in outer space? People on Earth have a hard time affording housing. What makes you think they will be able to afford the much more expensive Mars and Lunar counterpart?
This list seems at best dubious in many aspects.
MRI, for example, was an outgrowth of magnetic resonance studies on chemicals that had been going on for a long time, which was invented in england in the university of Nottingham.
I'd like to know how NASA influenced velcro - which was patented in 1948 in switzerland.
Thermal gloves and boots - what? I think you'll find the Eskimo (inuit) got there first.
The incas did freeze drying naturally hundreds of years ago, and freeze dried coffee was available around WWII.
Disposable diapers have a long history, and were around well before the 60s.
Kidney dialysis was done in WWII.
These are just some examples that jumped out at me as unlikely.
NASA has done a great job, they got us all to this point.
Now, NASA's strategy and role needs to change, their funding must change, it's way overdue, they know it, we know it.
To their great credit, they are doing it, they are adapting and embracing the change; it's hard for them, an era is ending.
Space is big, the opportunities are literally infinite, but science budgets are always way too small, efficiency matters.
So we cut the well known tech and commercially viable elements loose from the taxpayers dollar.
Let whatever NASA morphs into, fund and guide the basic research and science, spend more on that, less on vehicles.
That's the stuff NASA does well, the right stuff, basic research, initial exploration, the stuff that shareholders and businessmen looking at next quarters results typically do poorly.
NASA exploration vehicles and science packages can buy rides on whatever commercial launchers they need, at the going rate.
We buy planes and ships, trains and trucks from commercial vendors, shipyards, and aviation companies, so whats different?
Clear out the cold war, legacy buck rogers, pointy spaceship with fins thinking, and move onto real space-drives, profitable commercialization and real sustainable colonization.
As for the shuttle.... well I am as jingoistic as the next fella, I admire their bravery just getting into the thing (i think i would be terrified, but i'd also go...)
However... continually launching the mass of 7 people crammed into a vehicle that has twice failed, killing the entire crew...
Empirically, it seems obvious that the efficient way to do successful science in space is, small fast vehicles, robotics and AI's; humans should only boldly go... when their is a proven and compelling reason to do so, and little expectation of them making it back alive if anything fails.
Spirit and Opportunity did more, for far less, for far longer... than any human crew could likely have done.
That's the kind of research I want my tax-money to fund. Efficient hard science.
So lets figure out how to mine and move asteroids, survive indefinitely in deep space, harvest the oort cloud, build CHON Food factories, go where the resources are available, easy pickings...
If we want to get off this unguided mud-ball, we must adapt to new strategies as necessary, however hard they may be.
http://youtu.be/zxsJeND_D-k
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
The science is not going to say "There is no God" because that would be an untestable hypothesis. It could prove, however, that there is no major difference between various deities. That is, they could use statistics to show that believing in Jesus Christ over Mohammed or Buddha or Gandalf does not produce a detectable intrinsic benefit to a believer. A very long-term study could be conducted to show the same for entire nations. The end result will be much worse than any disproof of the existence of God: religions will be exposed as harmless superstitions at best, or deliberate scams at worst. And it is the biggest players who are also the biggest hustlers, so obviously they will not go quietly.
IMHO, there just got to be a better, more effective way to define ethics and morals than reading them out of a 2000 year old collection of letters written by a guy named Paul, or may be Saul. I will sound crazy, but we could reconsider norms which seem to produce effects opposite to the ones intended. We could start with that, I mean.
A specific part of a religious ritual may confer a benefit, but it's never the fairy tale part. It's usually something very simple, like "don't use toxic drugs". Mormons may be healthier than most Americans, but they can't blame Jesus for that. They are reaping the benefit of valid scientific reasoning: don't eat poison, and you will live longer.
May be what we need is an open-source approach to religion. A collection of moral, ritualistic, and scientific knowledge designed specifically to improve the life of every individual and of the humanity as a whole. Of course, what constitutes an improvement differs among people, so this amalgamated religion will contain a lot of contradictory material. But it will also contain a body of scientific evidence showing correlation (if any) between specific moral precepts and the observed results. Over time, a remarkable consensus may be achieved on what is "good". And I do believe that morals directly affect the way the society operates, so I do expect to see a lot of very interesting, and sometimes very surprising correlation.
No human has ever lived in space for a single stretch equal to the length of mission to Mars.
There, that one sentence encapsulated just ONE of the many reasons for the ISS. Don't mistake your churlish lack of imagination for a disproof of a concept.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
CAN the United States "lead" in space exploration? Certainly... but that's the wrong question, not the one to be asking. The useful question is: does the United States WANT to lead in space exploration? It doesn't matter what some bureaucrat or politician proclaims; what do the office clerks and farm hands and factory workers and service industry people think? Do THEY want to colonize Mars or the Moon or even L-5? Do THEY anticipate the benefits or necessity of doing so?
Further, there's that whole sickening competition thing again. How about we evolve the confidence to fully cooperate in exploring space, rather than once again setting the ultimate goals as dominance and some form of monopoly?
I wonder... what was it about the fictional Borg that so terrified people? Was it really the whole assimilation thing, or was it perhaps their ability to operate in perfect unison and harmony like a colony of ants? We could learn something useful from both.
Because NASA is the only group who has gotten it right so far. I don't see an ESA shuttle, or a JAXA shuttle...I don't see their own independent space stations.
Interesting point of view. So the Soviet/Russian space achievements are just written off or are they also a part of NASA ;) . Just a reminder it was just 50 years ago the Yuri Gagarin completed his first orbit. (April 1961)
Cheat the moderation system - here's where countertrolling explains what he's doing while he trolls others (to his fellow trolltalk.com friends) to downmod them via his registered account, logout, & ac stalk, harass, and troll them:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2245866&cid=36491652
Here's where countertrolling's "troll mechanics" for downmodding others is explained in detail by someone that got sick of it happening:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2271908&cid=36579618
As far as bogus up moderations, the trolltalk.com bunch (tomhudson, countertrolling, & others) collectively "team up" to upmod one another, in teams, as favors to one another.
(Talk about low, and bogus!)
---
In fact, here's what countertrolling says about it, why he does it, and to all of us here:
"What the skiddies here don't understand is that I don't give a shit about dumbass 'karma' on the internet.. I'm here for the jollies with nothing to lose or fight for.. watching them destroy their world.. They can go absolutely nuts as far as I'm concerned.. It's nothing but pure entertainment (and data points) for me and mine... Tragicomedy is probably the best word I can think of to describe it" - by countertrolling (1585477) on Thursday June 30, @10:26AM (#36622502) Journal
QUOTED VERBATIM FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2281808&cid=36622502
Sounds like a sick individual to me.
(Don't get lured into their journals either. That's their main goal along with getting these data points that way. Just ignore them and they will be powerless before you know it (no mod points)).
For the simple reason, human presence defines empires and civilization and freedom and tyranny.
You can't flee disaster whether it be man made or nature made with robots.
The single driving goal should be manned colonization of space, and building the science and technology to make it happen.
If you really are a proponent of man made global warming, you wouldn't be wasting time like Al Gore and his billionaire pals proclaiming we have to pay taxes to him and his pals or Man Made global warming will doom the planet.
You also wouldn't be meeting in secret places like Bill Gates does to discuss how we can kill off 2/3rd's of the "useless eaters" because it is just too hard to put 6 billion people under your thumb to rule them.
If anyone is serious about what are future is, what we are and actually believe in the future of humanity in a compassionate way, we would have given 27 trillion dollars to start a new era or Golden Age of space exploration to tap the limitless materials and energy which space holds.
Instead, we decided to give it to a bunch of bankers.
Humanity is running out of chances and missed opportunities. Time and time again throughout history, we have had civilizations rise to our level and beyond and we have squandered the chance to remove the tyranny and injustice which plague our world. Instead, a handful of people end up torching the entire surface of the globe into lifeless soot, or just end up burning libraries because the fire looks "glorious" as entire human lifetimes are wasted in pursuit of knowledge.
Only to end up getting burned and having to be "rediscovered" all over again.....well....in between centuries or eons dark ages at least.
I doubt the Universe or God or whatever you believe in is going to let this nonsense go on indefinitely. The next Dark Age may find us in a bit of a disadvantage when we sit around the fire in the grass hut village and the elders talk about a time when men flew in the skies and walked like Gods on the moon.
Or when Men hurled "thunderbolts charged with the energy of the universe" and obliterated whole countries in a single hour.
And what will children say when they look at the sky at night and point out to the elders the new star?
Will they know that the new star up in the sky that night they notice spells DOOM for the human species as a rock 23km in diameter heads for Asia and wipes out anything larger than a mouse on the surface.
Too bad too. Because we have had many attempts to get off and stay off this planet and they have all been squandered by a few very foolish people who always tend to get in the way.
-Hackus
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
US folks need to get off their obsession to be leaders or trying to dominate other's - openly or hidden.
It's not perceived well by members of other nations - openly or hidden.
There is absolutely no accomplishment performed by being born in a certain location or with a certain ancestry and anyone taking this as something s/he can take credit for is just fooling themselves.
Your Q: "How would you feel if Russia, China or the European Union were the first to land on Mars"
If it's a useful undertaking (if it can be done at all) and not only a show-off carrot of politicians to mollify people and distract from needed issues, I could congratulate them.
Things are not going too great lately - globally - and putting a new carrot up front may motivate the donkey to move on and not rebel.
That is, they could use statistics to show that believing in Jesus Christ over Mohammed or Buddha or Gandalf does not produce a detectable intrinsic benefit to a believer. A very long-term study could be conducted to show the same for entire nations. The end result will be much worse than any disproof of the existence of God: religions will be exposed as harmless superstitions at best, or deliberate scams at worst.
I see two problems with this assertion:
1. It assumes that the study would demonstrate that there is no difference. Define "intrinsic benefit" by specific standards, and certain faiths will probably do better than others. For example, if I followed Jewish dietary restrictions, I'd probably live longer.
2. Most "believers" expect that they will be persecuted for their faith. They go into it knowing full well that they may be worse-off this side of heaven. How would the study change this?
Good luck on starting your religion!
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Space is what I would describe of itself 'indirect research', in that the technology that you and I benefit from was a result of something done in space research, even if that wasn't the initial intent.
If that's the only argument you can come up with for funding NASA then you're screwed, because you could have done those things far more cheaply by, you know, funding research into them and forgetting the whole space thing.
Such research would never have happened because the design problems that resulted in the development of those concepts would never have been encountered. That is the whole point to space exploration, where completely new challenges will happen that have never been experienced before. Somebody who is in that environment or having to work with that environment will then be forced by necessity to deal with those situations. Only afterward can somebody say "oh, what if I did the same thing over here too!" That is where the real benefits of pushing frontiers can make a huge difference.
As to if the money spent by NASA over the past 30 years has been wisely spent, that is a whole separate discussion. I certainly can suggest that the payback from NASA diminished over the course of the past several decades where it certainly as big of a payoff as compared to the Apollo program in terms of how beneficial it has been. I'm really not convinced that the current programs, particularly the SLS, is going to be of any benefit to the country especially as they are doing a retread program to "boldly go where hundreds have gone before" and do so on gilded spacecraft on top of that.
The political application in the modern era may be relatively new
True, and that's when it became a problem for the rest of us.
The post that started this discussion claimed it was creationism that is holding back technology advancements and that is just not true.
I'd like to agree with you but I have deeper misgivings. Science isn't a collection of knowledge and facts, it's a process for acquiring and understanding them -- the only one that works. Those who would bring religion into science classrooms can have only one goal -- to teach kids that reality isn't all that interesting and important, and that objective truth plays second fiddle to spirituality.
And it's working. It's 2011, and 59% of U.S. physicians believe in an afterlife (or at least they did in 2005 when the survey was conducted). A similar percentage favor 'intelligent design' over Darwinian models of evolution.
Are those figures in line with what you'd have guessed? You may disagree but IMHO those surveys are a big deal, even though they involve medical doctors rather than technologists and engineers. They tell me that respect for science as the only valid process for learning about our Universe, our world, and our bodies is in decline. There's no way you would have gotten results like these in the Sputnik era, or even in the 1930s.
The more science does for people -- and the less religion does for them -- the more they seem to cling to the latter. That's not entirely the fault of public education but it damned sure should be a big concern for it.
Astronaut John Blaha was available for a group lunch last week at KSC and I attended. When asked about the end of the Space Shuttle program, his disgust and frustration was clearly communicated in his response. He blamed politicians Washington. When asked about life in a post-STS world, he said: "We need another Kennedy to get us (humankind) further. It doesn't have to be a U.S. figure, just any Kennedy-like person somewhere who can get the ball rolling."
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Prior to the launch of Sputnik the US was still absorbed in licking its wounds from WW2 and Korea -- space exploration was the dream of a few. Then the Russians launched Sputnik and I came back from summer break to find that the wood shop had been transformed into a science lab. From then on it was just good old competition. I remember JFKs speach with particular fondness -- 'not because it was easy but because it was hard'. Our lives have been transformed by the things we have learned -- and yet our will to succeed has flagged. The US (and to a more limited extent Canada) prospered because of the challenge of new frontiers where one was constantly challenged and not continually fenced in by vested interests that made sure that 'the right people' made money and not just anybody. I doubt we could do the Manhatten project again or any other big project. We struggle to keep the water running and the bridges standing and argue vigorously in favor of the profits of the few. The largest frontier lies over our heads and is vast beyond comprehension. And it will be populated by some of us -- who understand the strategic value of owning the high ground. But as for the US and its leadership...we are legends in our own minds.
That's not freeze drying as the rest of the world knows it.