Slashdot Mirror
Space Is Not a Void (slate.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: When President Kennedy announced the Apollo Program, he famously argued that we should go to the moon because it is hard. Solving the technical challenges of space travel is a kind of civilizational achievement on its own, like resolving an interplanetary Rubik's Cube. The argument worked, perhaps all too well. As soon as we landed on the moon, humanity's expansion into the cosmos slowed and then stopped (not counting robots). If you were to draw a graph charting the farthest distance a human being has ever been from the surface of Earth, the peak was in 1970 with Apollo 13. With the successful moon landings, we solved all of the fundamental challenges involved in launching humans into orbit and bringing them back safely. The people watching those early feats of exploration imagined we would soon be sending astronauts to Mars and beyond, but something has held us back. Not know-how, or even money, but a certain lack of imagination. Getting to space isn't the hard part -- the hard part is figuring out why we're there. Sure, we can celebrate the human spirit and the first person to do this or that, but that kind of achievement never moves beyond the symbolic. It doesn't build industries, establish settlements and scientific research stations, or scale up solutions from expensive one-offs to mass production. Furthermore, as five decades of failing to go farther than our own moon have demonstrated, that kind of symbolism can't even sustain itself, much less energize new activity.
Or is it that it's very expensive and extremely dangerous?
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
the hard part is figuring out why we're there.
Good grief, why is that even a hard question? The answer is because it's not well explored, we as a civilization have always explored, and in the end have always ended up benefitting by doing so.
Untold riches await the explorer - either of the mind, or literal material riches.
The hard question is not figuring out why we are there, it's figuring out what the hell the delay is!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The argument worked, perhaps all too well. As soon as we landed on the moon, humanity's expansion into the cosmos slowed and then stopped (not counting robots)
Why do our achievements with sending robots not count? We're still producing remarkable feats of science and engineering, aren't we? What's so important with sending flesh and blood?
Yes, other-world colonization is a very real goal, but it's not the only one. Scientific exploration is more efficient ( ie: get more done for less ) when you don't have to worry about maintaining a fragile human being as well.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I agree with the sentiment that we can't talk seriously about colonizing other worlds until we learn how to sustainably inhabit our own, but we need to develop the technology to move humans en masse alongside the capability to not ruin whatever place we land on. Not ruining planets is something we should be practicing on earth immediately, but as TFA points out, many people fail to recognize the economic benefits. Some day this world will be come uninhabitable (asteroid? zombies?) and it would be nice for the sake of our species to be able to move at least some of us to a new place and stay alive there. Why not work on this technology and prepare now? I think our descendants would thank us if they didn't have to attempt the long term survival of the human race in a hastily improvised tin can.
One of my favorite stories is Aesop's tale of the boar and the fox:
One day as he moved through the forest the fox came upon his friend the wild boar who was engaged vigorously sharpening his tusks against a large stone.
"My friend," started the fox, "Why do you exert yourself so, seeing there is no hunter about and no other danger from which to defend yourself on this day in the forest?"
To which the boar frankly replied, "The day will come when I have need of sharp tusks. I shall have no time to sharpen them then."
Not imagination. The moon program brought us solid state, microprocessors and miniaturization the went orders of magnitude better than anything previously produced, velcro, microwave ovens, fuel cells, ground reading radar, methods of inter-body navigation, Tang, Space docking procedures, standardized hatches on spacecraft, better alloys for building air and space craft, Meals Ready to Eat, air scrubbers, and more than anything else, confirmation of the math and physics involved. The space program generated all sorts of industries. In n1961, the technology for putting a person on the moon and returning them safely to the earth didn't exist. by 1969 it did. That took leadership. I haven't seen that kind of leadership since Kennedy. Lots of private contractors got very wealthy off the space program. However, NASA doesn't have the kind of lobbying money available to it that Goldman-Sachs has. What NASA does isn't sexy.
The only reason that the U.S.A. went to the moon is because the reactionary/conservative votes in Congress and their constituency tolerated it. The reason: they were afraid that the USSR would get there first and establish military dominance from space.
Even so, if JFK had not been assassinated I have read that many historians agree that most of the NASA programs and particularly Apollo would have been de-funded. It was only through sentimental appeal to preserving the JFK legacy that they managed to preserve the 1-2% of the federal budget used for that purpose.
Today, the political dynamic is far different. As long as the right-wing has control of government it will never fund NASA space exploration again. The most you can get is big sub-contracts for private enterprise like SpaceX. But you will have to notice that Elon Musk is no longer hanging out with Trump. What do you think that is?
To the GOP, government scientists are the enemy, as are scientists employed by anyone that they do not have direct control over.
The issue is not motivation or imagination. It is the very peculiar politics of the U.S for the past several decades.
It doesn't build industries, establish settlements and scientific research stations, or scale up solutions from expensive one-offs to mass production.
NASA paid back at least 5:1 every investment ever made in it. Sure not so much today, but we wouldn't have the computer era without the space race, or memory foam mattresses or velcro or insulin pumps or LCD displays or photovoltaic cells.
Even if going to space is completely pointless (Beyond the information we get from doing basic research) it has encouraged the building of many industries. And even if it was just the information we gathered, it has helped endless amount of lives go from superstition based beliefs to actual scientific inquiry.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The reason why USA planned a moon travel was not because "it's hard", it was because Russia sent a man to the space first. After the competition is over, all stopped. Maybe China sending man to the space/moon/Mars will make USA react again. Need or competition is the fuel for mankind.
When President Kennedy announced the Apollo Program, he famously argued that we should go to the moon because it is hard.
This is very close to the pick-up line JFK used on Marilyn Monroe.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .