WaPo has a real hard-on for manned space travel this week. First Buzz Aldrin, now Krauthammer:
But look up from your BlackBerry one night. That is the moon. On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints — untouched, unchanged, abandoned. For the first time in history, the moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke. A vigorous young president once summoned us to this new frontier, calling the voyage “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.” And so we did it. We came. We saw. Then we retreated.
This reminded me a lot of a piece in the Onion I read on five-blade razors:
Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of shaving in this country. The Gillette Mach3 was the razor to own. Then the other guy came out with a three-blade razor. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Mach3Turbo. That’s three blades and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I’m telling you what happened—the bastards went to four blades. Now we’re standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three blades and a strip. Moisture or no, suddenly we’re the chumps. Well, fuck it. We’re going to five blades.
The ironic beauty here, of course, is that Gillette proved all the nay-sayers wrong when it came out with the Fusion razor. So who am I to say that spending billions of dollars to return to a place we’ve already been is a bad idea?
I remember reading once that neocons like space travel because it’s symbol of national greatness. But I think it’s that they’re still looking for a place in the solar system where we’ll be greeted as liberators.
Mr. Tactful
I wanna explore Uranus.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mr. Tactful:
eeeew!
We need the moon. And a Manhattan Project to harness the power of Green Cheese/
Calming Influence
Mars, bitches!
Calming Influence
And why won’t “comments” allow multiple exclamation points? How else can I express my degree of excitement??????
Catsy
Whereas you appear to have one for shitting on it. Bored now.
Comrade Kevin
@Catsy: You could always, you know, read something else.
Jason Bylinowski
The really cool thing I remember about that Onion piece is that it was published something like six months before Gillette actually announced the five-bladed razor. As good as that little “op-ed” was at the time, it was even better when I first spotted the Fusion at my CVS. Is there a commercial version of Poe’s Law?, because that’s what it was like. But that’s just the Onion (and life) for you, I guess. Yesterday’s absurdity is today’s best seller. Anyway, thanks for reminding me of that.
LD50
Nah, they just like it because it’s a way of diverting trillions of dollars away from social programs.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
they’re still looking for a place in the solar system where we’ll be greeted as Liberace
TenguPhule
On the bright side, this is means we are one step closer to being able to Fire Dick Cheney into the sun.
Jason Bylinowski
p.s. Why is it suddenly right-leaning to advocate for one of the coolest of all human endeavors? I’m not saying you felt that way, John, but I’ve noticed it cropping up this week all over the net on the left side of the tracks, not just from Tim and DougJ. I really don’t get it, although if it’s an aversion based on politcal reality I’m certainly willing to wait a few years before it becomes more politically feasible. I mean, I still have dreams of being an astronaut, and I’m 32. It’s one of the coolest of all things, and it’s something we haven’t even scratched the surface of. To my mind, if the neo-cons are all about it, I say good! ‘Bout time we agreed on something, even if their reasoning is pure shit.
SGEW
Don’t y’all get it?
They’re looking for an escape route.
Global warming, endless war, water shortages, class resentment . . .
Fuck it! We’ll live on mars! So long, suckers!
Mr. Tactful
I think maybe republicans want to go to the moon again so the space towels and space doilies can have a Halliburton embriodered logo.
And maybe the next lunar rover can be a Hummer H1 with F-22 engines.
BombIranForChrist
Man, why all this hatin’ on space? Landing on the moon was awesome, and I do think we are a smaller, pettier nation for putting bean counting ahead of fuck all adventurism.
J.J.E.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that research priorities shouldn’t include a budget hogging Mars project, especially because it will crowd out a lot of other research. But this argument shouldn’t be viable indefinitely. At some point, I think we should at least make an effort at exploring the feasibility of colonizing places other than Earth. And whenever we decide to pursue a research agenda, we (humanity that is) are always doing so before the problems of poverty and eduction and healthcare have been “solved”. Does this mean we should end all research funding until we solved all of those problems?
chrismealy
The Mekons! I love it.
Comrade Kevin
@BombIranForChrist: Have you forgotten our adventurism in Iraq?
Robertdsc-iphone
I wonder if Chucky K would be so gung ho if he had to pay higher taxes for any new exploration.
rachel
@Robertdsc-iphone: My guess? As long as the higher taxes don’t actually go to helping people who need it, he’s fine with them.
Calouste
@Jason Bylinowski:
The Onion will never beat this one, from January 17, 2001:
Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’
Jason Bylinowski
@Calouste:
Yeah, that’s a pretty terrific example of just the sort of thing I was talking about. I think the word is prescient.
mogden
I’d rather spend a trillion sending men to Mars than keeping Goldman Sachs in caviar and champagne. At least we’d learn something and reward scientists and engineers rather than bankers and schmucks.
Andy K
@Calming Influence:
1111111!11111one
Batocchio
I think Krauthammer, Kristol and the gang have just decided that there’s absolutely no bad policy they won’t endorse. Cross another off the list…
freelancer
As I showed last night, (links if I could but WTF with BJ/WP malware conundrum), I’m in favor of a joint endeavor of robotic and manned spaceflight. We won’t be on Mars by the time I expire, but I hope for the very least, that we are on the moon.
That being said, “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.
In fact, it’s cold as hell.
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did…”
I’m a Rock-et Man.
Freelancer +6, burning out his fuse out here…alone.
Oh, yeah, that’s the stuff
Andy K
@BombIranForChrist:
Putting the first man on the moon was like building the first car to go 100 mph. Putting a man on Mars would be like building the first car that goes 101 mph: It isn’t like we couldn’t do it if we wanted to, so what if we did?
What would be cool- breaking the sound barrier cool- is to send a probe to a planet that would support human life, and to have it get the message back to us that it had arrived. But we haven’t even found one of those planets- and we’re getting more capable of doing that using Earth-based telescopes- and if we did, we don’t have the technology to send messages over such far-flung distances.
Sleeper
uh. That’s because it’s the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and all?
Did I miss something? What’s with the weird “down with the space program” stuff lately? When did enthusiasm for space exploration get retconned into being just another neocon imperialist adventure? Landing on the Moon was one of the greatest achievements in human history, but some of the comments here make it sound like it was no big deal and we shouldn’t have done it at all.
Joe Max
I seem to remember a SNL mock commercial for a THREE blade razor, back when a two-blade razor was considered overkill.
Wikipedia: “Triple Trac Razor – a razor with three blades because the consumer is gullible enough to believe what he sees on TV commercials. This commercial parody aired in 1975 (on SNL’s premiere episode) shortly after the first two-bladed men’s razor was advertised; three-blade razors would become a reality on the consumer market in the late 1990’s.”
One of those, it’s not comedy, it’s prophecy kind of things…
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@Jason Bylinowski:
It’s not the idea, it’s the context. In the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the great depression, after Bush has raided the treasury pursuing a poorly thought-out war, in a situation where people are hurting and bankruptcy is a crappy diagnosis away–rightwingers are advocating a return to space. When there’s an impending federal budget crisis, which rightwingers can’t shut up about and claim that it has absolute priority over any other useful domestic policy, they want to start a decade long multibillion dollar program to do Apollo version 1.1
Americans used to laugh at the Russians pursuing a space program when their government apparently couldn’t feed/outfit all its citizens. This is very much the same situation.
Chris
Has anyone done an authoritative analysis of the return on investment from the space program? I’d have to think there is a pretty strong return, but I’m curious if it has been, on balance, profitable for the nation.
a different Andy K
Maybe he actually realises he’s a salesman for the defense/aerospace industry? I always assumed he genuinely did just want to vaporize lots of brown people, but if he’s willing to change tack when that line runs into trouble perhaps he’s more self-aware. Hmm, has he been demanding more F-22s to defend us from the Chicom hordes?
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@Chris: I think the tough thing there is opportunity cost. I don’t doubt that the space program was profitable, but how would it be compared to other similarly technologically ambitious things, like a “manhattan program for renewable energy” or what have you. While the space program might give you a lot of useful ancillary spinoffs, the end result doesn’t really contribute that much to economic growth, at least in the medium term.
Warren Terra
Chris, the ground-based work to put men in space and on the moon taught us lots of things, but at absurd expense, and any similarly ambitious priject could have done the same or better. The actual manned spaceflight got us essentially nothing, other than some genuinely fascinating moon rocks (a couple of decades before robots could do the same) and inspiring a lot of people here and around the world. I’d be more impressed with a trillion-dollar advertising project for the idea of Science if we were spending more to promote it here on earth; and advertising is all that manned spaceflight is.
Arachnae
“p.s. Why is it suddenly right-leaning to advocate for one of the coolest of all human endeavors?”
What he said.
It’s kind of annoying to find oneself suddenly lumped with the neocons because Luddites on the liberal side want to squat in their own pee and not make a move until AFTER we’ve constructed an earthly utopia, that is to say, never.
Clue: pro-space is not a left-right issue.
valdemar
Depends what you want to develop space tech for. Mine the lunar surface for Helium 3? Nuclear fusion is the ultimate low-carbon power source and no soggy liberal leftist like me would oppose it. Colonise the Moon and turn it into a kind of space Florida, because low gravity makes life much easier for rich old farts? Not so sure.
MikeJ
It’s not luddism to suggest that thee might be a better use for limited resources. I’m all for manned space flight. I’m also in favour of everybody having an Aston-Martin. I’d rather get universal health care than universal sports cars though. That’s not utopianism, that’s prioritizing.
freelancer
Indeed, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Ph.D. Director: Hayden Planetarium, Museum of Natural History, NY, NY.
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/watch/speeches/goddardmemorial
The Speech Above was given in 2005. Watch it, root for Obama, a year after you’d heard his name. Right? Does one singular leader make sense in this context? The scientists that focus on looking out, on focusing on where humanity’s future is destined to inhabit, they see the necessity of keeping current, primitive discovery still aimed outward, toward the stars, toward galactic origin.
I’m sure to elaborate in a separate comment, but here is something I can say, though it pains me: Apollo, and its 40th anniversary doesn’t belong to Dems or republicans. They didn’t even travel, for all posterity, for this country. As the plaque they left states, “They came in peace for all mankind”.
In the late sixties, early 70s, Apollo, the benefits of the program, and the science oriented education that it had coalesced upon, were not a moonbat-wingnut issue.
This is not to excuse wingnuts of today, as they are seemingly fully engaged in science-denial: geology, biology, climatology, paleontology, PHYSICS, but there is definitely a poison involved in the politicization of facts.
More on this later, I’m done for the night.
theo
I was just thinking, what I need right now is a lecture on the glory of space colonization from the country’s most misanthropic pundit.
Let’s raise funds to send Krauthammer up on the Vomit Comet so he can reexperience the joys of mobility in zero G. Then, hopefully, he’ll shut up about space.
harlana pepper
ZOMGOIGSZ! On the Ed Show last nite, the term “taxing the rich” was used more than once, including by Sen. Rockefeller! I was honestly agog. It’s out now. I would say bring on the mad repube harpies of death but they never really stop these days.
Ian
An obsession with symbols of national pride at the expense of the actual strength and health of the country is very neocon.
“They’re looking for an escape route.” Well, how are they going to build a permanent home out there? Putting someone on the moon may not be as hard as it used to be, but finding a way for Loonies to pay for their own water and oxygen is much harder (TANSTAAFL). Even here on Earth, only about 1000 people live in Antarctica, none of them permanent residents, even though they get free oxygen and cheap shipping.
Take a close look at McMurdo Station before you say you’d like to live on the moon. It ain’t a pretty place. If they want to live there, well, better them than me. (wait, they want me to pay for it?)
harlana pepper
@Ian: They’re full of shit, as always, and not based in reality. Here we are in the grips of a depression and they want to “fly to the moon.” I am just as sentimental about the moon shots as anybody, but this ain’t the time. That said, I wouldn’t mind sending somebody like Bill Kristol to another planet. But, like wars, they want someone else to do it for them so they can feel all tingly without leaving the comfort of their nice homes.
Dennis-SGMM
“we retreated.” We missed out on decades of pointless, high-buck, dick-wagging as well as the chance to shovel more bucks at Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, et al. Anyone else remember Bushco’s plans to weaponize space?
From 2006:
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
“But I think it’s that they’re still looking for a place in the solar system where we’ll be greeted as liberators.”
Just like in “Species 2,” when we liberated the dormant aliens from Mars. Or, “Ghosts of Mars,” when the Martians threw flowers at Jason Statham, Natasha Henstridge, and Ice Cube. (On Mars, saw-blades are kind of analogous to flowers…)
JGabriel
freelancer:
I agree: it’s time for us to make diplomatic overtures to our robotic frenemies, the Cylons. Someone must make the first move, and if not us, when?
.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Let’s send some ants up to Mars, and see how well they do.
Those little bastards can survive almost anything, anywhere. I bet they can figure out a way to hack it up there.
Slocum
Not wanting to go to the Moon is not Luddite.
Thinking that colonization (domed cities on Mars, or whatever [actually, it would probably be underground/buried Habitrails–thanks Thin Atmosphere and No Magnetosphere!]) is a pipe dream is just facing facts. If you are worried about the environment of Earth, do something about Earth. Permanent bases on Mars are not possible, probably won’t be possible either economically or technologically for decades. Colonizing Mars (or the Moon)? I can’t forsee when it would happen. Or imagine, in real terms, why it would make sense to try.
Okay, one reason, maybe: “saving the species.” But if the Earth becomes some overheated, unliveable trash heap, then we aren’t going to be moving folk from Earth to their spanking new Domed City. We are going to “save the species” quite literally: send as many as we can (i.e., very few) and let them build a population the old fashioned way. The rest of us back on Earth won’t care because we will be too busy mobilizing for war to seize sources of fresh water.
Anyway, Charlie Stross says it quite well.
Dennis-SGMM
OT: Google Chrome is no longer identifying BJ as a potential malware dispenser.
dr. luba
@Jason Bylinowski: Having grown up in the sixties, I remember there being a certain contingent who complained about the space race–their contention being that the money could have been better spent here on earth, helping the poor and saving the environment.
I think that the past performance of our government pretty much proves that the money, had it not been spent in space, would probably have gone to military contractors or back to the rich (via tax cuts or other means….)
I loved the space race–Gemini, Apollo, the first walk on the moon, and even the near-disaster that was Apollo 13. It fueled my love of science. I was sure that, by now, we’d be vacationing on the moon. Sadly, no.
Someone with fairly impeccable lefty cred, Billy Bragg, agrees with me; he wrote “The Space Race is Over”:
When I was young I told my mum
I’m going to walk on the Moon someday
Armstrong and Aldrin spoke to me
From Houston and Cape Kennedy
And I watched the Eagle landing
On a night when the Moon was full
And as it tugged at the tides, I knew deep inside
I too could feel its pull
I lay in my bed and dreamed I walked
On the Sea of Tranquillity
I knew that someday soon we’d all sail to the moon
On the high tide of technology
But the dreams have all been taken
And the window seats taken too
And 2001 has almost come and gone
What am I supposed to do?
Now that the space race is over
It’s been and it’s gone and I’ll never get to the moon
Because the space race is over
And I can’t help but feel we’ve all grown up too soon
Now my dreams have all been shattered
And my wings are tattered too
And I can still fly but not half as high
As once I wanted to
My son and I stand beneath the great night sky
And gaze up in wonder
I tell him the tale of Apollo And he says
Why did they ever go?
It may look like some empty gesture
To go all that way just to come back
But don’t offer me a place out in cyberspace
Cos where in the hell’s that at?
Now that the space race is over
It’s been and it’s gone and I’ll never get out of my room
Because the space race is over
And I can’t help but feel we’re all just going nowhere
** Atanarjuat **
@Arachnae:
FTW!
By the way, I like the pessimistic hyperbole of the Luddites here. Manned space exploration is just so much “dick-wagging” and planetary colonization is a “pipe dream.”
It’s a good thing that the Intertubes weren’t around in the 1960s, otherwise the Earth First concern trolls here and their egalitarian brethren would have nattered the Apollo space program to death.
I agree with Arachnae: pro-space is absolutely not a left-right issue.
-A
Dennis-SGMM
We won’t be safe until we have a fleet of ships that can circle Uranus and wipe out the Klingons.
A Mom Anon
Couldn’t we use all that science here on Earth? I love space travel and all the enthusiasm for science it brings,but we honestly have more pressing matters here. Ask Krauthammer how he feels about science education in public schools,betcha he’s not nearly as excited about that as he is the actual space program. Where he thinks scientists of the future will come from I have no idea.
For some stupid reason,people don’t get that while space is vast and infinite,Earth is not. We have a pretty set amount of resources and we’re not managing them all that well at the moment. Why not devote some of those NASA resources to energy,purification of water supplies,sustainable farming,you know,stuff we NEED to survive. Looking beyond Earth for a place to inhabit is insane at the moment.
I don’t want some perfect utopia and then we go to Mars. I’m saying the money is needed here today,right now,Mars can wait.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I remember reading once that neocons like space travel because it’s symbol of national greatness.
Distract-o-vision AKA “We got nuthin’.” But hey, if they want to get the funds together and head out there, that’s fine by me. (Note: I think the idea of puttering around the galaxy is as awesome as the next guy. I admit footage of the moon landing still gives me chills. But right now? Are you fucking kidding me?)
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss: Or Keith Richards.
Doug H.
And somewhere, John F. Kennedy sheds a single tear.
mistermix
Those of you throwing around the term “Luddite” need to study up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
It isn’t “Luddite” to advocate one high-tech method of exploring space over another — it’s “Luddite” to advocate the use of humans where machines can do the same job. In the last 40 years, robotic and computerized technology have matured to the point where we can learn far more about outer space from robots for the same buck as we can using manned space travel. We need manned space flight about as much as we need elevator operators.
J.
Fusion = greatest razor EVEH. Though the Wilkinson Sword folks may have the best razor commercial ever. ; )
gex
FWIW – no security warning when navigating to Balloon-Juice this morning. At least so far…
Ken J.
My view: space exploration is something that Big Government does. Once Big Government became a popular punching bag, the days of manned space exploration were numbered.
I bitterly remember some science fiction fans in 1980 telling me that we had to back Reagan because he would be good for the space program. Instead, Reagan destroyed all sense of fiscal reality and set America on the financial path which has led to where I see little alternative to zeroing out manned space activity in the next few years.
I wish the Chinese spacefarers well.
steve s
Let’s spend a bunch of money on Faberge eggs, too. Those poor kids don’t really need healthcare.
Space wolverines!
Morbo
And then there’s this among the most dugg.
DougJ
Because it’s impractical and expensive.
JD Rhoades
@Joe Max:
I seem to remember a SNL mock commercial for a THREE blade razor, back when a two-blade razor was considered overkill.
“The Track Three–because you’ll believe anything.”
And they were right!
DougJ
Yes.
And to people who think I’m making this a left-right issue, I’m not. But there is a neocon fixation with expensive ways of saying “we’re number one”.
Redshirt
Hypothetically, if we had 1 trillion dollars to spend on one space project, that money should be spent not going to the Moon or Mars, but rather, in building a space elevator. Since, until we can greatly reduce the costs of leaving the gravity well, space will always be an exotic and expensive adventure.
With a space elevator, on the other hand, everything opens up, including quite quickly large space stations and manufacturing facilities. Then, the solar system is ours for the exploring.
JD Rhoades
@DougJ:
Because it’s impractical and expensive.
So was Columbus’ voyage. So is pretty much every voyage of exploration. Doesn’t mean it won’t pay off in the long run.
someguy
Actually, neocons like the idea of space travel because having exhausted all possibilities of condescending to, invading, repressing and excluding brown, black and yellow people here on Earth, they are now looking to work their special brand of philosophy on green people who, we believe, need some assistance in becoming a free democratic life form. Plus it would be another potential ally that could sell super-advanced arms to Israel to help them keep the Palestinians down and the Iranians agitated. So really there’s no downside, and Doug Feith is getting right on it I hear.
someguy
@ KenJ
My view: space exploration is something that Big Government does. Once Big Government became a popular punching bag, the days of manned space exploration were numbered.
Um, yeah, because if you criticize the government it won’t work properly and will never get anything done.
Kirk Spencer
On the other thread I said it would take the realization ‘there’s gold in them thar hills’ to get long-term space development. Let me add a handful of things.
First and foremost, the only real hard part is that first step. It costs more energy to get from earth to geosync than from geosync to Jupiter. Yes, we’d have to solve for long-term small-capacity endurance in low and zero gee environments. That last part is key – I invite you to examine the deployment cycle of Ohio class submarines over the past couple of decades. Water is not space and there are significant hurdles, but they’re within our grasp.
Second, there is gold in them thar hills. At the lowest level there is energy. I realize this will cause much disagreement, but space-based solar collectors beaming energy (via microwave, for one example, though there are better) to the planet are more energy-productive than equivalent surface mounted solar collectors. There are problems and risks. There are also problems and risks with coal, petroleum, nuclear, wind, and surface solar energy. (I keep expecting China to do this, putting their receivers in the eastern part of the Taklamakan desert. It would probably be cheaper energy than the great dams they’re trying to build.)
I said ‘at the lowest level’. Setting aside for the moment the cost of taking the first step, there are significant advantages to mining asteroids – either on site, or by diverting the orbit toward the moon and extracting once it’s in orbit there. (Why the moon? To minimize the chance of a misplaced digit sending a planetkiller into downtown Denver, to name an example.)
There are several items that can be manufactured in low/zero g which are expensive to make in a gravity well. The cost of getting the plant and people up there would be more than recovered in the product provided the raw material can come from places that don’t also have as expensive a first step – asteroids, possibly the moon. Examples?
– crystals
– long-chain carbon molecules (among other things, carbon nanotubes)
– Ball Bearings (don’t laugh until you check the effort and cost in making a perfectly sphere while working against both atmospheric and gravitational effects.)
The big problem really isn’t the lack of gold. It’s the startup cost. I’m going to take a moment to ask folk to seriously examine the ‘age of exploration’, particularly when it required crossing oceans. Exploration came, generally, in two packages.
First was the very small private exploration team. Second, and more frequently the lead to further development, was the government sponsored exploration. Some followed the trail of earlier private exploration, but a significant quantity broke new ground.
There’s gold out there. It’s just getting through the first step that’s going to be the problem.
Kirk Spencer
@Redshirt: Amen.
Legalize
It is very cold in space.
MBunge
“robotic and computerized technology have matured to the point where we can learn far more about outer space from robots for the same buck as we can using manned space travel.”
The point of exploration isn’t just to learn. It’s to go.
Mike
Surly Duff
Man, why all this hatin’ on space? Landing on the moon was awesome, and I do think we are a smaller, pettier nation for putting bean counting ahead of fuck all adventurism.
The novelty of moonwalks never wears off! Even after spending hundreds of billions of dollars to put another man on the moon so we can stick another flag in that hunk of rock. We haven’t done that in a while. Because once the U.S. lands on the moon the yet again, the entire population will throw parades, break out into country-wide singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, and praise American ingenuity for completing a task we already accomplished more than 40 years earlier.
rumpole
Call me a cynic, but if NASA’s spending $$ on mars, where’s the cash to monitor climate change?
Nob Akimoto
I think all this piling on is a little weird given that the historical context for bringing space exploration up is likely the whole “40th anniversary of Apollo 11” thing coming up in a couple days…
Also, on the “priorities” thing…isn’t that the argument we (or at least I) most routinely bash when it comes to things like torture prosecution excuses? “We have more important political priorities so we shouldn’t risk losing healthcare reform over things that happened five years ago” type stuff?
Bob
@Andy K:
“Putting the first man on the moon was like building the first car to go 100 mph. Putting a man on Mars would be like building the first car that goes 101 mph: It isn’t like we couldn’t do it if we wanted to, so what if we did?”
I disagree. Sending people to Mars is many times more difficult. Take a three day, one way trip and turn it into a one year trip.
I would say its a 300 to 400 mph effort.
Catsy
@Comrade Kevin: Or, as an alternative that will no doubt shock you, I could write a comment when I disagree with something another person writes.
It never stops being amusing when morons without a shred of self-awareness take it upon themselves to play the “if you don’t like what they wrote just go read something else” card, apparently incapable of taking their own advice.
If would be slightly less whiny if you just settled for saying “STFU” or posting lolcats.
Fax Paladin
There will always be more pressing matters to attend to — right up until our survival depends on our experience in space travel, at which point it will be TOO FUCKING LATE.
@valdemar: How about both? The space Florida’s likely to help pay for some of the other stuff…
Catsy
@DougJ: The problem is that you, and a number of others who agree with your priorities, have turned it unnecessarily into a zero sum issue, injecting tribalism into the debate. It’s not enough for you to argue (convincingly or not) that we can’t afford a robust space program while we have all these other problems. It’s not enough to argue the pros and cons of various endeavors on the merits. You people have turned the space program, and enthusiasm for it, into an object of mockery, putting it in the same rhetorical space as “drill, baby, drill” and other right-wing nonsense that’s completely ungrounded in science or reality.
The last straw was your snide, idiotic aside in this post about how golly gawrsh, that right-wing rag sure is devoting a lot of column inches to the space program this week. Hey, genius:that’s because this week is the 40th anniversary of the fucking moon landing. Now, if you want to make the argument that humans are unnecessarily obsessed with multiples of five and ten, and invest a lot of arbitrary significance in anniversaries numbered thusly, knock yourself out. If you want to use the anniversary of one of the greatest human scientific achievements in history as an opportunity to argue the wastefulness of the space program, feel free to embarrass yourself.
But being so willfully ignorant of the historical significance of this week as to question why a newspaper is running positive stories about the moon landing is flat-out pants-on-head retarded.
bloodstar
I think most of you are missing the point. I don’t expect innovation from companies. That’s not their purpose, Their purpose is to make a profit. Spending billions of dollars to develop new ways of doing things won’t happen. Why? Because it’s not profitable to do so. (Exception to the rule: Drug Companies)
Most of the efforts to do something spectacular, expensive and seemingly a ‘waste’ are that because without that initial effort, there is no way to create the ancillary products that develop from ambitious projects.
Right now there are a whole host of propulsion systems being tested and designed with the aim of finding a system that can combine the duration of Ion thrust with a power level orders of magnitude higher. While it wouldn’t match the potential usefulness of an Orion Drive, it’d still reduce the travel time from Earth to Mars by a significant margin (look up VASIMR). A lot of this technology is right on the cusp of being developed, and the idea that we can build stuff that reduces travel time would reduce the size of the solar system into something that becomes feasible. 9 months travel time would be awful, 2 months would become something that would seem endurable and much more feasible to ask of astronauts.
Zandar
Just admit you want moon lasers, Chuck.
bloodstar
you’d have to be careful though, Low Lunar Orbits are notoriously unstable due to the changes in density from one portion of the moon to another: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/06nov_loworbit.htm
Mikey
The need to explore is part of humankind’s nature. It transcends mere political squabbling.
But space travel is tremendously expensive, and the national budget is already projected for trillion-plus deficits. We won’t be able to afford it. There’s a solution to this: allow private entities to claim property interests on the Moon. Allow private exploration of the Moon. Permit private entities to build and launch Moon missions. We’ve already permitted private space travel (see: Ansari X-Prize), why not go to the Moon? Mars? Beyond?
I know, there are treaty obligations. But (in my opinion) they do not prohibit private Moon travel. No nation can claim any part of the Moon as sovereign territory, but a private entity could build a base there and explore. We could use international maritime law as a template.
Maybe this would just be too impractical, but it’s something to think about.
gex
@Mikey: This would have the added benefit of getting the surplus savings of the wealthy out of mortgage bubble schemes.
Andy K
@JD Rhoades:
No, Columbus’ voyage, like Diaz’s earlier in the century, were very practical: They were looking to bypass the very expensive middle man that was the Ottoman Empire/Venetian/Genoese monopoly that controlled trade with east Asia. Diaz’s exploration paid off as intended, Columbus’ paid off more, though not in the intended manner.
LanceThruster
@J.:
I agree entirely. I grew up using the Norelco triple-header exclusively because any sort of safety razor, up to and including triple blades, always nicked me up pretty badly. The Norelco shave took longer, often had missed spots, and usually gave me razor burns on the neck but it still beat getting sliced up from a blade.
Got a Gillete Fusion for free from the intertubes and left it sitting in a drawer for almost a year. When I finally tried it out, I could not believe it. I did my first blade shave ever without a single nick. Even when I pressed harder the next time I got a little nick but it was not deep at all (unlike before when it would be days before they stopped bothering me).
Now it’s the Norelco’s gathering dust in a drawer and I bought an extra Fusion handle for the office. The blades themselves last pretty long too before going dull. Thinking of buying one of those blade sharpeners for extended life (anyone ever use those before?)
I remember seeing the gag add showing blades strapped to a ceiling fan as the next step in shaving technology but all kidding aside, the Fusion kicks ass. I’ll definitely keep an open mind if they switch to 5 blades.
LanceThruster
And robotic landers are definitely more cost effective….
Chris
In support of the theory, “WaPo has a real hard-on for manned space travel this week,” you could also cite Sarah Palin’s simple-minded shitheaded defense of doing nothing about climate change, because she and her friends are going to fuck up the planet so badly there’ll be no way to survive here.
dj spellchecka
it could be that the neo-cons love the space program because they view it in the context of the cold war….i’m old enough to remember how sputnik freaked out america, and how we won “the race to the moon”….
tcolberg
NASA is only $18 Billion per year. Do you seriously believe that this tiny fraction of the Federal budget is what’s keeping us from solving these problems here on Earth? Also of note, in order to do manned spaceflight, NASA devotes plenty of their own resources to doing R&D on energy efficiency and generation, water purification, and farming. The resources put into NASA don’t just sublimate into space, a lot of it gets put to work right here.
As for the argument that it’s much cheap to do robotic missions, you’re right. But why can’t we have both? If there’s a criticism to be made, it’s that Bush pushed manned exploration at the expense of robots. We should be doing both types of exploration as each improves the science in different ways.
@LanceThruster: Learn to use a double-edge razor.