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Audacious Visions For Future Spaceflight
New submitter nagalman writes "There is a very powerful video out that takes the audio of words from Neil deGrasse Tyson, receiver of the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, and meshes it with powerful images of the history and successful outcomes of NASA. Through Penny4NASA, Dr. Tyson is pressing for the budget of NASA to be doubled from 0.5% to 1% of the federal budget in order to spur vision, interest, dreams, public excitement, and innovation into science and engineering. With Kansas stating that 'evolution could not rule out a supernatural or theistic source, that evolution itself was not fact but only a theory and one in crisis, and that Intelligent Design must be considered a viable alternative to evolution,' and North Carolina's legislature circulating a bill telling people to ignore climate science, maybe it's time we start listening to experts who have a proven record of success, rather than ideology that has only been 'proven' in the mind of elected politicians."
The most effective critics are the ex-fundamental Christians. Michael Shermer for one. They got there because of exposure to folks, the data (or lack there of) and their ideas and thoughts.
And every so often, a light bulb goes off in one of them. Sure there are plenty who doggedly stick to their beliefs regardless of the data, but there are plenty who don't.
Part of the reason there are so many folks who still believe in these things were there is no evidence or let alone the existence conclusive evidence (like evolution) is because it is culturally acceptable for one to say that their beliefs trump data ("I just KNOW in my heart that God placed us here!"). I'm not saying at all that we should point fingers and call them "idiots", "morons" or some other derogatory name, but maybe make it as acceptable as an adult who still believe in Santa Claus or worships Zeus. And the way to do that, is to continually make science, thinking, reason, logic and so on a mainstream value - and that takes exposure, promotion and folks like Tyson to make it "cool".
When I start seeing kids wanting to be astronauts again - instead of ball players and hip-hop stars - then I'll be happy
...on this topic, it is WELL worth your time. I was fortunate to see Neil deGrasse Tyson speak in person recently at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It's well worth a little over an hour of your time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJzHHkmJ-8
> The two theories diverge when it comes to the ultimate source of life which Natural Selection says evolved spontaneously as a single cell life form from which all other life evolved
Actually evolution and natural selection do not attempt to explain the origin of life. If that's something you're interested in, try looking up abiogenesis.
> and ID suggesting that our DNA may have come from elsewhere.
So it doesn't make any attempt to explain the origin of life and just moves the problem to some undefined 'elsewhere'?
> It seems to me that expanding the exploration of space is key to discoving where we come from and the answer may be something which would be considered very unscientific at this point in time.
Please give us your motivations for this belief.
> or prove there is none
Impossible to prove. Even if we could visit every location in the universe to see if aliens live there, they may have gone extinct without leaving any trace.
> and that under the right conditions life can evolve spontaneously in a previously sterile environment it would be short sighted to deny that life may have originated elsewhere.
1) We know the universe has a finite age of give or take 14 billion years.
2) We also know that no DNA from 'before' the big bang could have made it into this universe for the simple reason that early conditions were incompatible with the existence of molecules.
3) We know life exists now.
It seems to me that based on 1, 2, and 3 we have to conclude that life *must* have formed in a previously sterile environment *somewhere* at *some* point during the last 14 billion years. Attempting to explain the origin of life by introducing an (intelligent) agent only moves the problem to the origin of that agent.
Being an astrophysicist (and not american), I'm entirely pro-science, and would support spending more on NASA vs say on war. But for some reason, the video by Tyson make the case that spending on science (and particularly big PR projects like flying to Mars) is the solution to all problems. I don't think it is. I think spending a good chunk of GDP on science is very productive way to incurage innovation etc., but it is not a panacea. Furthermore, I'm a bit skeptical about projects like flying to Mars, which are good PR, probably very good for engineering and technology, but not that exciting from scientific prospective.
Seriously, how do people come up with this garbage?
Have you ever heard the man speak passionately about science and astronomy? Who the hell is he 'entertaining', besides perhaps people who are interested in science and astronomy? The man is smart enough to get a doctorate in astrophysics from Columbia and be the head of the damn Hayden Planetarium. He does more to educate the public about matters of science than most actual science teachers. Yet for some reason you feel the need to put him down.
And with 'He's an entertainer.' no less. That's rich. Honestly, if that's what it takes to be heard in this country I say let him entertain. That does nothing to diminish his qualifications, intelligence, or ability to convey knowledge. Except perhaps to someone who can't see past the size of his or her own fragile ego.
My guess is you're either trolling or a complete moron.
Probably both.
NASA is not at the moment a space organisation.
They are a welfare organisation for aerospace.
For example - taking the budget for the Space Launch System up till the first couple of flights, and purchasing commercial launch from SpaceX gets you 85000 tons or so launched. (Assuming that reusability does not kick in)
Everything done in space by NASA is driven by launch costs.
The size of spacecraft has to be reduced, and they have to be more carefully engineered and built, which dramatically raises costs.
NASAs previous attempt to lower launch costs (X33) picked a major aerospace companies bid.
This company proposed, with NASAs encouragement to use three seperate fundamentally untried technologies on the one vehicle.
(Linear aerospike, conformal tanks, and metallic TPS).
SpaceX (for example) is building on their successful rocket launches so far, with the aim of reusing their rockets several-many times.
At the moment, space launch costs several thousand dollars a kilo.
The soon-to-be-launched http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasshopper_(rocket)#Grasshopper is a test stage, to test propulsive landing for the first stage - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF81yjVbJE is a video outlining this.
The absolute starting point for any space program has to be getting things into space. ...) means you have a welfare reason, not a space reason.
Doing this expensively, for political reasons (SLS,
A sane space agency should have very limited mission definitions.
'Fly safely to ISS, dock using this adaptor'.
Previously they've made a practice of making proposals that effectively pick from one of several large aerospace corporations.
By requiring technologies they've developed, for no good reason, rather than simple functional requirements.
A fundamental change in space could occur if SpaceX (or one of the other new entrants) gets reusability up and running.
The fuel cost for a launch is well under $10/kg.
Even if you 'only' get to $100/kg, from the current $5000/kg or so, that enables a dramatically different space program.
It becomes feasible to put a lot more people up, and have them debug stuff on orbit.
It becomes comparatively cheap to have massive redundancy in systems, based on comparatively inexpensive and massive designs.
You don't end up spending 220 million to design an air-conditioner.
You launch 5 candidate systems built by bidders for $10M, and see which one works.
If only we could get quality people of this caliber to choose from. It would put an air of confidence around the future of the US instead of the corporate-sponsored Reality TV show it's turned into.
Go Neil!
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The big problem with this proposal is simply that NASA as it currently exists is a colossal waste of money. One would not want to put in 1% of the federal budget only to have NASA squander it on developing a vastly overpriced, heavy lift rocket (SLS and Ares V, for example). The money has to go into something useful or it's just another money sinkhole like so much of defense spending was.
With Kansas stating that 'evolution could not rule out a supernatural or theistic source, that evolution itself was not fact but only a theory and one in crisis, and that Intelligent Design must be considered a viable alternative to evolution,' and North Carolina's legislature circulating a bill telling people to ignore climate science, maybe it's time we start listening to experts who have a proven record of success, rather than ideology that has only been 'proven' in the mind of elected politicians."
First, Kansas no longer says that. From Wikipedia:
The Kansas Board of Education voted 6â"4 August 9, 2005 to include greater criticism of evolution in its school science standards, but it decided to send the standards to an outside academic for review before taking a final vote. The standards received final approval on November 8, 2005. The new standards were approved by 6 to 4, reflecting the makeup of religious conservatives on the board.[75] In July 2006 the Board of Standards issued a "rationale statement" which claimed that the current science curriculum standards do not include intelligent design.[76] Members of the scientific community critical of the standards contended that the board's statement was misleading in that they contained a "significant editorializing that supports the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design networkâ(TM)s campaign position that Intelligent Design is not included in the standards", the standards did "say that students should learn about ID, and that ID content ought to be in the standards", and that the standards presented the controversy over intelligent design as a scientific one, denying the mainstream scientific view.
[...]
On August 1, 2006, 4 of the 6 conservative Republicans who approved the Critical Analysis of Evolution classroom standards lost their seats in a primary election. The moderate Republican and liberal Democrats gaining seats, largely supported by Governor Kathleen Sebelius, vowed to overturn the 2005 school science standards and adopt those recommended by a State Board Science Hearing Committee that were rejected by the previous board.
[...]
On February 13, 2007, the Board voted 6 to 4 to reject the amended science standards enacted in 2005. The definition of science was once again returned to "the search for natural explanations for what is observed in the universe."
It must have been an unpleasant year and a half, but Kansas voters did fix the problem as quickly as they could.
It's also worth noting that the North Carolina bill forces only a particular planning agency (for NC ocean shores) to ignore certain climate predictions (and may have been in response to possible abuse of such climate predictions by the planning agency in question).
It's far more limited in scope than claimed in the summary above and while short-sighted may have been proposed in response to valid concerns about what the planning agency was going to do.
Tyson... He's an entertainer. It's like getting John Travolta's opinion.
One's a scientist, the other is a scientologist. People who can't see the difference is what the summary is warning about.
I'm reminded of that Shakespeare quote "I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space...". We're so primitive as a culture and know so little about the universe that all we can really do is choose a belief that fits comfortably within our realm of knowledge, or accept the fact that we don't know and that any logical theory is as valid as another in the absence of evidence.
We don't know what amount of time is required for life to spontaneously form in a given set of conditions. If we found it to be one day, in ideal conditions then yes, it's very likely it spontaneously formed here, daily. If it required several billion years for it to spontaneously form and take hold then I would say it's more likely it evolved elsewhere and that the primary form of creation is transmition.
We don't know how much other life is out there. If our Milky Way galaxy was found to be primary sterile?
There are many questions, and that's why Neil deGrasse Tyson is arguing for a bigger space program. We'd like answers.
NASA started being friendly toward private launch services only when it was apparent it could no longer play the same good-ole-boy game that had for so long presented an anti-competitive barrier to the entry of true freedom to pursue industrially reasonable launch services.
To now listen to "experts" that are designated as such by NASA telling us to pump huge amounts of money into NASA so it can turn SpaceX and others into yet another good-ole-boy network is the moral equivalent of pumping huge amounts of money into creation science.
Seastead this.
NASA, just make a kickstarter project. "Mars base. $4 trillion goal."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
NASA needs to make the transition from an executing agency to a support agency, more like NSF and less like the post office.
It's still appropriate to have NASA labs and NASA projects, but the next big advances are going to come through private partnerships and creative investments. NASA's budget is more than 5 times DARPAs budget, for example, but DARPA grabs much more of the public eye these days. The key difference is that program managers (people who control the money) serve 3 year terms in DARPA. There's no time for empire building or lawyering up, which are BIG problems at NASA.