Answering DougJ below, yeah, I already wrote a couple of posts about how the manned Mars program is worse than pointless. It also starved other programs that NASA has picked up over the years with real human value like monitoring global warming. I know guys doing fantastic work with real human value who lost their funding four years ago because Bush’s Moon/Mars glory projects soaked it all up.
Look, there isn’t any Soviet Union threatening to put its boots on Mars first. The Chinese have a crash program to, uh, accomplish what we did in 1969. Frightening! Other than that everyone else’s space program is sensibly focused on robot exploration, satellite monitoring and keeping that affordable-but-still-expensive orbiting vanity habitat going.
DBrown
In my minor, irrelevant opinion, a human base on the Moon is both better and far worse a goal than Mars. First, it is close – only three days each way and well, really no other great advantages from a safety point of view than that.
The fuel cost is very similar and not really an issue (once pass the Earth’s gravity well which would account for most fuel for either type of trip.)
The deep radiation threat is similar (the Moon’s surface threat is worse than Mars as would be the danger from a solar storm on the Moon’s surface (issues of no atmosphere at all and being closer to the Sun.))
Unlike Mars, there is no real scientific reason to be on the Moon except to gain a little more proof about the Earth/Moon formation issue. Mars, at least. might have life but that would require more probes to prove that this is truly likely.
Until then, the Moon/Mars issue is really moot and neither makes economic sense.
However, to choose between them is easy – Mars. The cost is similar to a Moon base but while Mars requires really long duration trips (to and back), at least the scientific return makes far more sense.
GusThePrimate
I’m as much of a lefty as anyone, but human space exploration is, from my prespective, the single most positive accomplishment of the species in at least the last 500 years. The Apollo landings remain the single most positive achievement of my country in my lifetime.
Arguing today that machines are sufficient or that there is no “human value” (whatever that might be) in such exploration is directly analagous to medieval regimes refusing to put people in ships of exploration because they couldn’t see how that would benefit their little duchy. Carried to an extreme, such reasoning would have us all congregated somewhere on an African savanahh because everyone was too timid and complacent to leave.
An inward looking society inevitably becomes stale and fixated on finding truth in dogma, not through science. Among others, Western cultures spent centuries locked into such a morass. The best way to do science and expllit resources, in space and elsewhere, is with people.
The left does itself a disservice by identifying human space exploration with Bush. We need to vigorously lead, and not package ourselves as simply worrisome homebodies out to nag the world to nirvana.
NonyNony
@GusThePrimate:
If the duchies had the capability to send cheaper unmanned probes out to explore until they found something worth sending people out to examine it further then your analogy might hold water, but it doesn’t. No one is talking about ending ALL space exploration, but there’s a damn good case to be made that we haven’t completely exploited everything we can do with unmanned probes and until we have there’s no point in sending manned missions anywhere outside of Earth’s orbit other than bragging rights.
I’m all for manned missions to Mars or Venus – if there’s some good reason to send a manned mission there beyond dick size measurement contests. No one has been able to articulate to me why sending a single manned mission to Mars is better than the over 500 unmanned probes we could send with the same amount of money. Until we hit the point where we’ve run out of serious questions that can be answered by sending probes to take measurements, there’s no reason to send a manned mission and a whole helluva lot of reasons to not send them.
Tim H.
I suspect that this is one of those issues that will resolve itself. Shortly the U.S. will not be able to afford everything it now spends money on, and when the crunch comes everything military will have priority. Probably the only space program left in ten years will be the relatively cheap missions.
dmsilev
@DBrown:
There’s another good scientific reason for sending large amounts of stuff to the moon: Farside is the closest spot that is fully shielded from all the RF crap that we collectively spew out. It’s a great place to put radio telescopes.
That’s a major construction project, since radio telescopes typically have dish sizes measured in tens or hundreds of meters. So, it’s not something that will be feasible for us to do for a good long while. Probably not until semi-autonomous robots get good enough that we can use them to build infrastructure in hostile environments.
-dms
Dennis-SGMM
The nations that engaged in the Golden Age of Exploration were motivated by greed. They were after gold, spices, silk, and overseas possessions. They started dispatching ships on exploratory voyages as as soon as shipbuilding technology enabled them to do so with a reasonable expectation that they ships would be able to make it there and back again. Life was cheap in those days so if someone didn’t make it back it was easy enough to send out another ship. Even if they somehow had exploratory robots back then I’d bet that the answer would be “Why send an expensive robot when there are so many sailors to be had cheaply?”
DBrown
@dmsilev: Putting a dish on the Moon has the advantages you mention; however, the cost would be staggering and make a Mars mission look cheap. Hence, I ignored that aspect as well as a host of other minor advantages for a ‘far side’ moon base. If alien life exists underground on Mars that would be the discovery of a millennium and would offer vast improvements in understanding now life on Earth got started and might even give us an insight to the chemistry of life in general. Yet the chance of life being on Mars is small and a possible site would have to be discovered first.
All I am saying is that since the cost of a Moon base (note the base issue here) and a Mars manned mission are about the same, why not go to Mars (BUT ONLY IF a highly probable site for life is located on that planet.) Otherwise, either mission is not worth the cost.
The Grand Panjandrum
While we have reaped much technological benefit from the manned space flight program, and the moon voyages, one wonders what advantages we might now have in the field of energy production had we refocused our science programs toward energy independence in the same way we focused in trying to get to the moon. The cause was noble but that doesn’t make it the best long term value for the money invested. But what’s done is done.
Politics is politics is politics and that will never change. Sadly when the opposition is basically a bunch of 17th century flat-earthers the debate is almost literally poisoned from the outset. They love manned missions for the feel good moments and have little use for the science obtained on these missions. Continuing manned space flight is important but we have to find a more cost effective way of doing it. I think the new efforts by Richard Branson and others to bring the private sector into this arena are the way of the future and should be encouraged, but I see little value in making it the primary focus of government investment of tax dollars.
Trabb's Boy
I think there is a real value to this apart from whatever scientific information could be gleaned. It would be really fucking exciting! Our society treats scientific research as boring, scientists as social rejects, and is more and more treating scientific consensus as a matter of mere opinion. A really big scientific venture which could capture the imagination of kids and non-scientists could reduce or reverse this anti-science tendency.
Not to say it’s worth it, but it’s not just a personal dick pump for the people involved.
inkadu
The only reason to send people to other planets is to start a colony. Until we can do that, we should send the trusty robutts.
And once we have twelve colonies, we exterminate all the robots before they rebel.
Kirk Spencer
I’ve been space-struck for most of my life. I’m too old and more important decrepit to go even if I got the money (in my dreams) unless we build an elevator or hook. I view the idea of a manned mission to mars with mixed feelings. The sum of both sides of the mix are already mentioned.
It costs. It’s an exorbitant cost and the economic and scientific return is (probably) somewhere between miniscule and zero.
That word “probably” is one of the kickers. Robotics can watch for what we tell them to watch for. It’s a variation of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). There are a lot of discoveries that have happened because somebody said, “Huh, that’s peculiar.”
There is also a morale issue. I am firmly in the camp that we need to start getting out of the cradle if we’re going to survive long-term. And as long as we’re only sending robots we’re pretty much going to be unwilling to move out – there will be very little enthusiasm for getting out there.
That said, I strongly suspect that what we need is something that will make money. Once someone – anyone – finds a way to make money by going out there for extended periods of time, everyone else will follow. And that’s probably not going to happen off a manned scientific expedition – barring, “Huh, that’s odd.”
NonyNony
@inkadu:
I don’t think that’s necessarily true either – there may be some good reasons for manned scientific outposts on Mars or even the moon in the future. It’s just that those reasons don’t exist yet – we’ve only scratched the surface of what we’re capable of exploring via robot probes, and I’d hate to see money that could go to a massive number of missions doing good science blown on a single vanity mission because manned missions are more exciting than probe missions.
EDIT: A follow up to this:
@Kirk Spencer:
Exactly. If you want to see manned missions get lots and lots of funding and support, the best thing you could do is support robot probe missions out to the asteroid belt looking for rare and exotic elements that we have limited supply of here on Earth. The thing that pushed exploration in the Age of Exploration were gold and things that could get the backers of the exploration more gold (exotic spices, fibers, etc.) Find the modern day equivalent of that out in space and you’ll have manned missions out there in less than a decade.
Jon H
@dmsilev: “That’s a major construction project, since radio telescopes typically have dish sizes measured in tens or hundreds of meters.”
Maybe they could figure out a way to dust an appropriately-shaped crater with a very thin layer of reflective material. Then they’d just have to hang a receiver over the middle.
A bit like Areceibo, but without having to worry about rainfall.
Also, in lieu of using one big dish they could use multiple small ones, as in the VLA.
anonevent
If there is one thing this country needs to get out of, it’s the “only do something because it might be a threat to national security” mode. Because we cannot plan anything long term, we have to wait until its a crisis – see global warming or the banking system – and then we operate in panic mode, working furiously until the immediate symptom is solved, and then we sit back and assume everything is fine until the next crisis. We never solve problems, and we never look ahead.
Tim F.
If we spend our resources shooting an air bubble at Mars, that will steal funding away from solving problems that we already have. You can’t justify de-prioritizing Earth monitoring just on the off chance that spending half of the nation’s GDP on what appears to be a vanity project might produce something valuable.
CJ
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I’m sure it has occurred to a few of you that we are trapped on earth with a bunch of troglodytes that consider any kind of alternative energy to be stupid and not worth the cost. The only way we can be certain of future investment in alternative energy is by wedding those projects to the militaristic bent that Tim laments(?) above. You do that by sending astronauts to places outside our atmosphere and by pointing out to the trogs that we cannot let the generic non-American (I think the Chinese are the inheritors of the Russian bogey, no?) to take the lead in anything. If you’d like to see continued investment in energy independence, make it a “military” project. You can kind of appreciate how a microwave array for beaming energy to earth might be a dual use facility.
Also, space is one of the few “visionary” projects we have left to us. Architecture has succumbed to square feet, art is more about pissing people off than inspiration, thrift is a communist idea, and good government is somehow bad for us. I can appreciate that lowering expectations makes it easier for us proles to reach the pinnacle of human achievement, but I don’t need a participant medal. I’d like us to take on some stuff that is hard.
CJ
inkadu
@NonyNony: I like your idea of space mining, but I think ultimately it would be cheaper to recycle or to synthesize elements that bring them back from space.
That darn gravity well just makes everything so difficult.
And we’ll get there, as long as we keep thinking about space, and working one exploring it. Better robots will be powerful assistants in any manned exploration, as will any advances in energy technology and biological research, etc… It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of if we survive long enough to get to when.
But I’m not optimistic about our chances to survive anywhere but earth. From reading Jared Diamonds books, civilization has always depended on a substrata of ecological productivity. Colonies will need some kind of technology that right now would seem like magic in order to be truly self-supporting; and I’m not sure what kind of capacity they would have to grow.
And I’m not sure about y’all who are NOT inspired by the space probes. I think everyone was really excited by the rover missions and the pictures they sent back; for the “intangible” bang of generating public interest for the buck, space probes are still the better choice.
low-tech cyclist
In thinking about a human base on the moon, the thought crossed my mind, “how about a permanent robotic base on the moon?” It could be a glorified shed with solar cells to recharge the robots’ batteries, and a dish for sending data back to Earth and receiving new instructions and programs for the robots.
But that raised the question, “is there any one spot on the Moon that it would make sense to focus so much attention on?” Because if not, even a robotic base would make no sense; you’d want to just send probes to individual places that merited study.
And if a robotic base on the moon makes no sense, then a human base on the moon makes even less sense, except to show (at great expense) that we can do it.
And we know we can; it’s just a question of how much money it’ll take. And that’s hardly the scientific question we urgently need answered.
inkadu
@low-tech cyclist: Moonba!
BlizzardOfOz
TimF,
Have you considered that your narrow, elitist conception of science (“buddies of mine validating my pet political objectives”) contributes to public aversion to scientific programs? Space exploration is inspiring, and something everyone can share in. It also expands the market for trained scientists and engineers. It also promises to expand our understanding in ways that can’t be achieved elsewhere.
But of course “we can’t afford it”, so you’d rather leave the big projects to more visionary countries like China. When was the last time your climate change buddies discovered something fundamental rather than a collection of facts bolstering their pre-existing climate change narrative? If there’s something that can move science forward, we (as a country) can’t afford NOT to do it.
inkadu
Interesting question: Does anybody particularly care if it is the United States or China that explores Mars? Because once we’re off this planet, all I really care about is the human species. Heck, not even so much the human species as sentient beings. We could send hyper-intelligent squid to explore space for all I care.
Barry Soetoro
If all space exploration/colonization/masturbation were the responsibility of the military, cost wouldn’t be a factor at all. DoD spending isn’t real spending.
Solution to this “debate”: make all space exploration/colonization/masturbation a branch of the military. They can have their own chief of staff, space admiral chief of space operations (SACSO), nice uniforms with digital space camouflage, intelligence and criminal investigative arm.
No more talk about funding, purpose, etc. To criticize the US Space Command is to hate your country.
Slocum
First of all, as far as I know, we are not even in spitting range of solving all the problems with sending sacks of water and meat into space (vacuum, radiation, micrometeorites that really pack a punch, etc.) that must be solved perfectly and reliably if a long-term mission to Mars or the Moon is to be viable. This includes psychological issues (don’t cite the Age of Exploration–Columbus did not set sail for an environment with no air, no indigenous crops, and no or little water, in which the smallest technical and human failure can easily mean death). In fact, there are probably problems we have not anticipated at all.
Second, unmanned probes and supply vessels will probably be integral to any attempt to build an outpost–so we might as well get them perfect. And they will have to be perfect.
Finally, regarding the inspirational effects of manned exploration, I’d like to know if there is any concrete evidence that the Apollo program, the Space Shuttle, or the International Space Station have driven American kids into the science labs, made them take math seriously, and stopped them from making fun of nerds and treating scientists as “social rejects” (@Trabb’s Boy above)? I’m guessing not so much, and certainly not enough to justify the cost, since most Americans have been perfectly content to let their school standards in science and math to slide. Rather than a Mars mission, let’s just take 50 billion dollars and give out 5 million each, lump sum, to the first 10,000 kids who can pass very a stringent battery exams in mathematics, the hard sciences, and the social sciences.
MBunge
Until people figure out a better way to get into space than sticking things in a tin can and setting a bomb off under it, manned space travel will always be problematic.
The compelling reason FOR manned space travel is…if not now, when? Look at how much of a frickin’ chore it would be to simply do again what we already did 40 years ago. Now try to imagine what it’ll be like after 40 more years of all-robot space exploration.
Mike
tc125231
Sorry. I don’t buy into this. We spend as much as the next 25-30 countries on “defense” –which, of course, it isn’t. Spending as much as the next 4-5 countries should be sufficient for anything except making business easy for multinationals.
It should be noted that multinationals pay an average of 2-3% US tax on income earned outside the US –by never bringing it back to the US.
Conversely, there is some reason to think that sustainable human life off earth would be a good idea. Nothing very bright is getting done about mass extinction and climate change. Of the two, the mass extinction rate is the scarier.
Shrink the defense budget, increase the space budget, and help pay for health care.
Have a nice day.
Drive By Wisdom
Perhaps The One could appoint another Czar to study this issue. Or we could just send his 31 other Czars to the space station for a few years. Imagine what they could accomplish.
Max Peck
@GusThePrimate:
As Andrew Chailkin says in his book A Man On The Moon (which was the basis for the HBO mini series From The Earth To The Moon) ‘why is the most futuristic thing we’ve ever done as a people so far in our past’
Deborah
I am a complete science geek, and even I think the manned mission to Mars is pointless. I couldn’t get excited when Bush announced it, because I figured it would never happen–he didn’t have the vision and leadership to pull it off–while it would starve other programs. Then it would be easy to unplug all of NASA, if it was mostly one big boondoggle program rather than lots of smaller useful programs.
Robots can do just about anything we need done right now. And they send back info to earth, so almost all of the “hey that’s odd” happens anyhow. Contra the astronauts = glory expectations, Hubble and the Mars rovers and the Europa probe really captured the public’s hearts and imagination. Focus on understanding our planet (e.g. monitoring climate change) and its place in the solar system (e.g. robot expeditions to the asteroid belt and the moons) and let the human settlement follow when there’s a reason. The ideas listed above are good. Sending people out with the goal of being able to say “we did it” didn’t lead to any permanent moon-based stuff.
Fax Paladin
My strong suspicion has always been that the Bush administration’s main vision in the Vision for Space Exploration was to pin NASA’s future to a single large program requiring just enough money to starve out the pesky global-warming researchers, but not enough money to actually do anything — serene in the knowledge that the program would almost certainly be killed in Congress before any serious work could be done (see also: superconducting super collider). Behind that was the not-quite-as-strong suspicion that the true aim was to leave manned spaceflight the exclusive domain of the military…
To me, the overriding argument for manned spaceflight is that all our eggs are in one fragile basket. The long-term survival of humanity requires that we rectify that situation. We need colonies elsewhere, and eventually I’d like to be able to evacuate the planet, if need be — and not just a chosen few in a handful of spaceships. Achieving that capability may be a century or a millennium away, but we won’t get there if we don’t start taking the baby steps now.
That means, in the short term, both robotic and manned exploration of our neighbors. I believe it’s worth the expense. One of the Mars rover drivers is posting his journal from five years ago, and he points out that their robot takes a whole day — or more — to do work that a human geologist could do in mere minutes. The human can also glance to the side and see something that the robot would have missed because it only looks where we tell it to…
Dennis-SGMM
@MBunge:
I’m still not that strong on manned space. I was an aerospace machinist until the late Eighties. That was when machinery and tooling began to be sold off by the pound to companies overseas because they’d do the work more cheaply. The wages for those machining jobs that didn’t go overseas fell by 1/3 to 1/2 because for a while there were just a lot more machinists than there were jobs for them. Some of us went into other things, others retired, taking our years of knowledge and experience with us. The equipment to manufacture the parts is orders of magnitude better than it was in those days to be sure but, the materials and the tolerances are often right on the bleeding edge of what’s doable and you don’t get people capable of doing that kind of work from a year of trade-tech school.
Cris
I’m really quite fond of human space exploration. I agree that from a research point of view it’s largely useless, but a lot of useless things are worth doing for their own sake.
But I think we’re finally getting to a point where the private sector can fill the gap. Let the Richard Bransons of the world take care of the vanity missions while NASA sends robot probes to Titan.
The gap between the retirement of STS (2010) and the earliest launch of Constellation (2014) strikes me as a window of opportunity for the commercial space flight sector.
Trevor B
It should be noted that the true reason for sending humans to Mars is that one manned mars mission could accomplish more research than thousands of robot missions combined. You have to remember that solar energy on mars is less than 1/4 that we see on earth, so solar powered robots are always energy starved. Second the delay is about 30 seconds to send communications one way from mars to earth, controlling robots from earth is nearly impossible. Third, there are life searching experiments, that are infeasable for robots to do at the moment. While all of these problems could be solved with technological innovations, I am pushing for a manned mars mission.
Max Peck
If we ramp up the space program will the ‘quants’ leave Wall Street and go back to NASA?
Far from impossible. Tricky, a pain in the ass, tedious, but not even close to impossible. Did you see the Nat Geo special on the Mars Rovers? They moved the rovers in and out of craters, rested them on the sides of hills to keep a charge, freed them when they got stuck in sand dunes, and operated one for months with a bad wheel. They exceeded their mission by far and did things they weren’t designed to do. Controlling them was not the issue.
Not me. After reading about Apollo and how no mission went by without something unexpected happening I’m ok with robots for the time being. Never mind all the lives and families ruined along the way. And not just astronaut families.
Caladan
Actually it’s very important that we return to the Moon. With peak Oil just around the corner, we need to find a new source of high density energy.
One solution in Nuclear fission, building large numbers of nuclear power plant with all the detrimental radioactive waste the goes along with it.
Another solution is nuclear fusion. The problem with nuclear fusion is that we currently know of only one way to do it sustainably, fusing deuterium (Hydrogen with a neutron attached) and Helium3.
We have lots of deuterium on the earth and almost no Helium3. The Earth magnetic field prevents Helium3 from reaching the surface. The moon is swimming in Helium3 collected over the last 3 Billion years form the Solar wind.
We need to establish a viable path to the moon and permanent bases there in order to mine Helium3.
The MARS trip is a waste of resource, but i still think is should be pursued.
Ben
I’ve never understood the argument that going to Mars can prevent us from going extinct. A self-sustaining Mars colony is a very far-fetched idea, and Earth on its worst day- after an asteroid impact, nuclear war, etc.- would probably still be more hospitable to human life than a place with barely any oxygen (and a thin atmosphere in general), not a lot of water and little to no native life.
I’m not terribly opposed to the idea of sending people to Mars, if we can pay for it. Commenters pointing out that we spend money on far worse things are correct- but we could probably be spending it in better ways, too.
Warren Terra
Could we please stop humoring the fanboys who talk about “manned space exploration”? We’ve done this experiment for half a century, and the results are unanimous: if it’s “exploration” you want, send robots. And anyone saying that a human can do more faster just somehow hasn’t noticed that for the cost it takes to maybe have a human spend a week on Mars we can have a whole army of robots each of which spends years on Mars, with iterative improvements in the robots and wielding a much larger collection of instruments.
Now if instead of talking about “exploration” we want to talk about “settlement” then I am wildly sympathetic to the goal, but we aren’t remotely ready to attempt it. The way to achieve human settlement in space, on the moon, and on Mars is first to figure out how we can even build such a settlement and make it work, by trying here on Earth where it’s easier, say in the deserts or on the tundra, and we’re nowhere close. Then maybe we can work on how to get such a settlement or its components into orbit affordably. Spending another douple if trillion so a few jet jockeys can exercise their onanistic fantasies while accomplishing nothing of scientific merit nor furthering settlement is not the way, however “inspiring” it is.
Brett
That’s why you need a well-funded manned space program – so that you can do the experiments and testing necessary to work out the kinks involved in long-term survival off-Earth. Things like hydroponic agriculture, manufacturing, etc.
As for why it can save us from extinction, it’s pretty obvious. If some crap happens on earth, whether natural – big asteroid strike, Deccan Traps eruption, rapid global warming – or man-made – biological warfare, particularly – then we have an off-site location that won’t potentially collapse back into the Stone Age.
Cyrus
A matter of survival, really? Sure, in the very long term, yes, earth will probably never support a trillion humans at a time; if the human race grows to that number we’ll be doing most of the growing in deep space or on other planets, probably several different ones. But in the medium-to-long term – the next century, say – and barring any unpredictable quantum leaps in technology, it’s not worth the trouble.
There’s nothing we can do in deep space or on another planet that we can’t do a hundred times easier on Antarctica, or maybe under the ocean. A human can survive in Antarctica for minutes or maybe even hours wearing a business suit if their clothing specialized to that environment is damaged; in deep space, seconds. Gravity is the same there as we’re used to. Radiation is more severe (gj, hole in the ozone), but nowhere near like what it can be without an atmosphere. Solar radiation is only available half the time, but in some places geothermal energy is available, unlike in space. And maybe most importantly, you can get resupplied by using Bronze Age technology like boats.
Living in outer space or on another planet, again making an exception for massive unpredictable changes in scientific understanding of course, won’t make any sense until Antarctica is too crowded. (And Antarctica won’t be too crowded until Montana, Siberia, Australia and Canada are.)
slippytoad
I dunno about that, but the technological achievements of the Moon Mission were amazing and led almost directly to the improvements in just for one example computing power that drove the IT revolution that we are all living in today.
Here’s a way to think about this that isn’t completely stupid:
Putting a man on Mars is more than just dick-measuring. It’s expanding the breadth of the human experience and increasing our courage, as a species, to do things that are currently not doable. And frankly the future of humankind is in space. If we are to sustain ourselves we have to start looking at taking resources from somewhere besides the non-renewable areas of Earth.
I’d like to see Obama give a speech in which he issues a Kennedy-esque challenge: put a man on Mars by the end of the next decade, and do so for less than 100 billion dollars, and to make it possible to establish a permanent presence there.
The research and development required to achieve that goal would involve changing the paradigm of getting into LEO from a gigantic disposable rocket to something that is actually reusable, and assembling an interplanetary spacecraft with resources that aren’t charging us $60 for the bolts that hold the goddamn chairs to the floor (as I learned one day was done on the Space Shuttle). And making it possible to repeat that process so that we have a program that has continuity.
There are millions of reasons to go to Mars. Establishing a permanent presence there would put the U.S. back at the forefront of Western Civ and put humanity ahead several decades all at once.
Our only objection is cowardice and sloth.
Jason Bylinowski
Sorry Tim and Doug, but I just can’t see the light on this one. I think some people instinctively NEED to see the space program expand, and some people just don’t. All I know for sure is that I see a false dichotomy when we hear that the lack of funding is hurting “real world” climate programs – the fault lies with the priorities of the administration, and look who has been setting the priorities for the last long while. I also hear a lot of argument about “fixing the earth first”, THEN worrying about space exploration. Well will somebody please tell me WHEN IS THE EARTH GOING TO BE FIXED ENOUGH FOR THIS TO HAPPEN? I’d like to know so I can plan the party.
Ben
@Brett:
Really, global warming? It’s going to be easier to survive in Mars’ temperatures (it gets pretty damn cold there) than on a warmer Earth? Don’t get me wrong, global warming has the potential to cause a huge amount of damage, but temperature is not the kind of problem you solve by fleeing your present location in the solar system.
It is, of course, conceivable for some disaster to wipe out Earth’s civilization, but for people to survive on Mars after that happens – well, Warren Terra is right, we’re so preposterously far from that point that we’d be better of working on it on Earth. It’d be less glamorous, but a lot more efficient.
Andy K
@GusThePrimate:
There’s a big difference between those early humans who started wandering in search of food like any other animal, while the Portugese and Spaniards were driven to explore in search of profits. The former was a function of natural selection, the latter was a function of the artifice of human culture. I’ll begin to believe that we need to send humans to Mars and beyond when I see raccoons building rockets rather than scouring through trash cans.
Dennis-SGMM
@slippytoad:
You or I would probably go to a vendor and buy a Grade 8 Titanium bolt that would do the job for less than ten bucks. Speaking from experience I can tell you that NASA required the $60 version to be made from the finest bar stock, which had to be accompanied by a sheaf of certifications from the mill. It then had to be machined into close tolerance bolts by real machinists. It was inspected at least ten times with many of the dimensions having to be manually recorded, as well as further certifications both for handling and process. While you’re doing the work you’re subject to visits by flying squads of NASA inspectors who can and will shut you down if they see something they don’t like. When you turn the bolts over to NASA, all of the paperwork is reviewed and the bolts are again dimensionally inspected. At the end of all this, you have a perfect bolt that will not fail in its assigned purpose. You’ve also spent $50 more than you would have for a bolt that probably would have been just as good.
slippytoad
@Andy K
Ugh, you’ve reduced the nobility of the human spirit to a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.
Martin
Correct.
Innovation is directly driven by crisis – either local crisis in the marketplace (Apple/Microsoft or GM/Toyota kinds of stuff) or global crisis, natural or artificial. The moon race was the perfect artificial global crisis – an aggressive deadline was set with a perceived risk behind it (beating the USSR in space). But the entire effort turbocharged innovation as we were forced to solve new problems, even though the true cost of failure was zero.
Global warming should be our new crisis. Even if it’s not a long-term threat, acting as though it is would have the same effect on the national economy and would position the US, just as after the space race, to provide technology to the rest of the world for decades to come. It’s such a no-brainer that I want to rip my hair out when I see the GOP fighting it.
Andy K
@slippytoad:
We’re animals, plain and simple. Our problem is that we think we’re better than other animals. We’re not. Smarter? Maybe…if you discount the fact that we’re responsible for the caustic pollution on the planet. What’s so noble about that?
Let me back up a bit. I’m not a critic of humans, but of the dominant human culture that informs us that we’re better, more deserving than every other form of life on Earth. It’s that type of thinking that’s going to- unintentionally- kill off our species.
Martin
Two other points to Dennis’:
1) Moreso in military than NASA, but true there somewhat as well, there is a massive tracking system for everything that is produced. If a bolt in a F-117 shears off when it shouldn’t, the military needs to find every other bolt that was produced in that lot – and they can. They don’t want to go crawling around every tank, plane, ship, looking at lot numbers. That adds some cost.
2) The quoted costs are all bullshit. NASA uses a particularly odious billing approach as mandated by Congress (so does much of the Pentagon). Basically the costs of a contract get spread out over the duration of the contract, but the costs still get attached to specific line items. So, if you need a gear assembly and 4 titanium seat bolts from a contractor, and it took them 4 months to build the gear assembly, it’s perfectly valid for NASA to split the contract cost for the gear assembly and the bolts evenly, paying $200,000 for each, at a cost of $50K per bolt.
Did the bolt cost that much? No. But the cost of the gear assembly and the bolts did. Does NASA care that the bolt line item is 10,000x higher than it should be and that the line item for the gear assembly is 1/2 of what it should be? No. It knows that a gear assembly and 4 bolts costs $400,000 and that’s all it cares about.
Congress then goes out and nutpicks the coffee makers and toilet seats and ignores the discounts given on the other part of the bill and declares fraud. Now, it’s a fairly retarded way to do billing because there’s no significant benefit to doing it this way other than to ensure that there is a steady flow of funds to the contractors, but that’s important too. When you spend 5 years building a nuclear carrier, you probably can’t wait until the keys are handed over to get paid. This addresses that issue.
A la lanterne les aristos!
Once the Chinese land on the Moon the arguments for Mars will suddenly be very popular again.
Anne
@DBrown and @Cyrus: It’s not so much the lack of atmosphere that causes problems when a solar storm hits, it’s the lack of magnetosphere–the stripping away of the atmosphere is just a side effect. The real underlying issue (no pun intended) is that Mars no longer has an active internal dynamo and therefore can’t generate the kind of global field that protects against solar storms. There are some shallow dipoles producing small-scale surface fields, but nothing like what you need when the sun belches out a CME.
But magnetospheres aside, if we’re going to go exploring, let’s do it with robots. Spend some of the savings on building extra special super good robots (and making sure that people get their units straight), and save some worthwhile science efforts that would get the axe if we spent billions or trillions on sending humans to Mars. The ISS has been enough of a black hole for funding, we don’t need another one.
john b
yes. not that we should close up nasa or anything. that would be particularly bad for me. but i would be happy to apply my skills to the climate change problem.
inkadu
I’m also thinking part of the problem we are having in this discussion is the way money is allocated.
Maybe it’s time to split the environmental monitoring off from NASA. I’ve always considered NASA’s job to look out, not in, and the only reason earth monitoring is done from NASA is because that’s a highly specialized skill set…
Of course, if earth monitoring was a separate budget, those satellites would go dark everytime Republicans were in power.
Tommy
That was the plan – redirect attention away from Earth and don’t provide any additional funding so NASA has to starve Earth Science to pay for the mandate to go to Moon/Mars. At the same time, keep saying we need more research to draw any conclusions about climate change.
Caladan
Hahaha,
I brought this subject up earlier, and now rawstory has an article on the same topic:
http://rawstory.com/08/afp/2009/07/16/moon-potential-goldmine-of-natural-resources/
Fax Paladin
Settlements will require moving hundreds of people across interplanetary or interstellar space, and knowledge of how to build sustainable habitats once they get to their destination. Knowing how to do that starts with getting three or five people to the moon, or Mars, or the asteroids, and it starts now. We won’t be able to even think seriously about settlements until we have that experience under our belts. Baby steps.
Redshirt
Other than the Helium 3 argument, I see no reason to send humans back to the moon. We’re not going to learn much by this that we don’t already know. It won’t provide much of a base for anything else.
This leads to what is probably the truth of the matter: Barring some confluence of politics (like what happened after WW2 between the USA and USSR), exploration for exploration’s sake does not make much practical sense. Like most other “discoveries”, profit is the real motivator. And mining probably is the most reliable money maker in space — a smallish asteroid might be worth billions of dollars.
Tourism would be the other motivator. And Defense. Those are the legs of the tripod, and only when the money is well and truly flowing will mankind fully and finally make the big step up.
Fax Paladin
@Redshirt:
I think this is correct, and that’s why my hope for the future of manned spaceflight is now almost entirely with companies like SpaceX, rather than with NASA.
** Atanarjuat **
To my fellow explorers and dreamers:
We’ll always have Luddites and the instinctively timid among us. No argument can convince them that continued human exploration of space is worthwhile, and if the current administration were to shut down NASA tomorrow morning, the naysayers would praise the decision and relish in how all that previously “wasted” money could be used for more important issues, right here on good old Terra Firma.
Of course, somebody better keep those satellites working somehow. Can’t do without cellphone service and satellite TV. Priorities, you know.
By the way, comment #49 wins the thread.
-A
Redshirt
@Fax Paladin
Agreed. I was very excited to see the involvement of Richard Branson. He seems to have a keen eye for these types of investments, and I’m hopeful that if he thinks it’s worth putting money into, then it’s simply a matter of time before others do as well.
Warren Terra
Nope. It starts with the “knowledge of how to build sustainable habitats once they get to their destination”. Even your own comment intrinsically admits this, although it oddly then skips straight past it. After all, we already know how to get three people to the moon, or how to get lots of stuff in orbit, even if not very efficiently. Show me a sustainable sealed habitat working here on the Earth, where it’s easy and relatively cheap to build and to futz with, one that can work for years (ideally indefinitely) using just water, rock dust, and energy (sunlight would be ideal, but I’ll settle for a reactor), and then we’ll talk about figuring out how to replicate it in orbit, on the moon, or on Mars.
Anne
@inkadu: maybe they should form a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…
Arachnae
Sustainable livable space-stations would certainly be a good way to start, and could theoretically start with the international space station. Why they don’t build a RING you can rotate for a sense of ‘down’ beats the hell out of me, however.
Here’s an interesting article about the Apollo program:
Read the whole thing. We’re doing nothing today as exciting as the stuff we were experimenting with in the sixties. (And I’m not talking about the recreational pharmaceuticals.)
Redshirt
Apart from costs, have we simply become much more chicken in the last forty years? They certainly took safety precautions during the Apollo program, but they also, clearly, accepted a ton of risks — to the lives of the astronauts.
I feel as if today, if there’s any kind of risk at all, we back away. Human life is precious, no doubt, but some things are worth the risk. I bet if you asked an astronaut if he/she would accept a 20% chance of death on a Mars mission, they’d take it. Ask the NASA Administrator, and it’s “no way”.
Is it fear of lawsuits? Fear of failure? Why have we become so… cowardly?
Cyrus
@Redshirt:
Because the astronaut is thinking about becoming famous* while the administrator is thinking about the mission actually succeeding, and whether there will be a mission after that one. Neither of those focuses is necessarily bad, it takes all sorts, but it’s really stupid to assume the astronaut’s view is the one that matters the most.
Also, it’s ironic to see someone calling himself “Redshirt” make this argument.
* “Becoming famous” makes it sound selfish, but many formulations with different connotations would be equally accurate.
Cyrus
Argh. I forgot that an asterisk at the start of a paragraph makes the paragraph bold instead of appearing as an asterisk. Stupid comment section. Well, read the bolded paragraph there as a footnote to “becoming famous.”
john b
in order to make one where the occupants wouldn’t get queasy it would have to be pretty big. (i think that’s the reason anyway. it’s been a long time since i’ve read anything about this topic)
of course using a long tether attached to two smallish crafts that are rotating about a point (plus the orbit trajectory) would work.
Warren Terra
In addition to the size issue (which could be partially addressed by having a section of arc and a counterweight, rather than a ring, but size remains a major factor), there’s the question of how necessary thrust will be applied and how craft will dock – will they match rotation? will there be a non-rotating hub, and if so what does that does to the size, and how does it connect?
john b
there’s a professor in my dept. who has done a lot of research on tethered spacecraft. and while i haven’t asked him about his research in a few years, most of what he was doing was simply using a long tether to attach two crafts and then when docking/landing was necessary, you pull that tether back and connect (or mostly connect) the two crafts.
as far as thrust goes, he was mainly dealing with long missions going from one place to another. so in the thrust stages of the mission the two craft were connected in some way. then using fancy math, you can reel out the tether and then fire off an engine perpindicular to the tether and you start rotating. the tricky math comes in when you need to make course corrections, etc. but this isn’t beyond simple dynamics calculations.
jerry 101
I think there’s a lot of value to sending man to Mars.
Just the science and engineering that would go into such a feat could result in unimaginable benefits down the line.
Who’s to say what could be developed from the research that would go into building ships and space suits and whatever else goes into such a thing?
Or building a moon base – we’ll clearly need to develop a slew of new technology to get things to the moon and then exploit the moon’s own resources for construction.
Yeah, there are a lot of things here we could be spending the money on, but this is a real opportunity for developing a lot of new things. Maybe even mastering new energy sources that could help eliminate the global warming problem.
Of course, the danger with Mars is whether or not there really is life hidden somewhere now, there will almost undoubtedly be life when we leave. A probe flying through space would kill anything that goes into space with it due to the vacuum and the cold. But a nice cozy space capsule? With a couple of warm bodies? Perhaps some fecal matter or food crumbs? Bacterial paradise.
While most would die on Mars, there’s a very good chance that a few would survive in that harsh climate and start evolving into something better suited for Mars.
Maybe it’s unlikely, but we certainly have a very long track record of bringing along unexpected stowaways on exploratory trips that caused a lot of problems down the line (rats, roaches, etc) for their new environment.
And who knows what discoveries await us upon arrival? There are things that we can’t do with a robot that we can do with a person.
Sure, there’s no need to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile before the Russians do anymore, but there are other reasons for spaceflight.
Anne Laurie
Blasphemer! To some of us, Wile E. Coyote represents the nobility of the human spirit. Perenially scheming, crushed over & over by the pitiless anvil of reality, at yet forever planning and pursuing a goal that seems hopeless and sometimes pointless.