Some of the Apollo astronauts are upset about the Obama Administration’s decision to cancel the Moon missions. Here’s Jim Lovell’s overheated take:
Personally I think it will have catastrophic consequences in our ability to explore space and the spin-offs we get from space technology[.]
And here’s Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon:
I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership… to seek knowledge. Curiosity’s the essence of human existence.
In the last decade, we’ve been the only country to successfully land a robotic probe on Mars. We landed three, and two rovers that were supposed to last 90 days are still working after six years.
We have two major space telescopes in orbit (Hubble and Chandra), and we’ve contributed most of the instrumentation to the another big orbiting observatory (Herschel). We’ll soon launch a space telescope that has a mirror so big (8 times the light-gathering capacity of Hubble’s) that it will unfold in space.
If that’s a catastrophe, put me down for season tickets to this apocalypse.
To his credit, Neil Armstrong was at the same conference as Cernan and Lovell and, as usual, kept his mouth shut.
Arclite
I agree. Unmanned missions offer much more bang for the buck. Machines can do so much and offer so much. We got to see Titan a couple of years back. I’d much rather the money be spent on probes to Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and other planets than sending men to the moon.
Back in the day, we went to the moon because machines simply couldn’t do the things they can today. Also, we wanted to show up the Soviets. Both of those things have changed, so it makes sense for our strategy to change, too.
DougJ
But some day the Chinese are going to be up there, laughing down at all of us.
earlofscruggs
The POINT is, we need to bring back the “golden age” by endlessly recreating the highlights of the 60s space program.
rob!
Can’t Tom Hanks just pay for everything? He’s a space guy and he’s loaded!
arguingwithsignposts
Just watched a doc (PBS) about the astronauts fixing the Hubble a few years back. Of course, we need some type of manned spaceflight for those types of situations. They should have already had a replacement shuttle.
joes527
Basic research is great stuff, and the Government DOES have a place making sure that it happens.
That said, the moon is a dead rock. I’d _love_ to live there, but that is just the science fiction fan in me talking.
We should be investing in basic research around energy now. Put together an apollo type program focused on energy efficiency and sustainable energy production. (We will have cost efficient renewable energy this decade … not because it is easy, but because it is hard…)
We would get the same side benefits as a trip to the dead rock *and* the primary goal of the program would directly benefit the country.
aimai
I’d like to see these guys offering to TOUR FUCKING TEXAS and lecture the US on its moral duty to advance science and inquiry. We get a whole lot more bang for our buck blasting the Texas text book committee into outer space and revamping that curriculum to bring it up to the 21st century than we will get continuing to waste money on space exploration for its own sake. For christ’s sake–fight the battles we need to fight right here on earth.
aimai
freelancer
Buzz Aldrin could not be reached as he was at Dance Practice.
We’ll be okay. I’d just assume confirm suspected exobiogenesis on Europa or Mars in my lifetime than build Clavius Base on the Moon’s south pole.
rob!
I fucking hate that Republicans get to spend money like its going out of style, driving us deeper and deeper into debt, promising bullshit like the “We’re going to Mars! Yee-hah!” crap Bush was pushing. Then a Democrat comes in, actually tries to get our fiscal house in order, and of course he’s now the bad guy.
Common Sense
@aimai:
Just try being in favor of privatizing manned space flights in Texas. It’s crazy how many free market defenders are in love with a massive and slow moving federal machine, and how many people are terrified of a little competition.
@rob!:
Well, it’s all about priorities. Sending people into space needlessly is much more rewarding than ensuring the health and well being of our citizens. How else are we going to get Tang?
Linda Featheringill
I understand the disappointment on the part of the astronauts.
I personally feel that it is the manifest destiny [there’s an old phrase] of the human race to explore/occupy space. If there is not life out there, there SHOULD BE. Let us go out and spread life around.
HOWEVER, this destiny might not manifest itself during our lifetime. And if we are not ready yet, then we are not ready yet. Maybe we do need to do stuff with machines for a while longer.
gbear
But further development of manned space travel is neccessary so that we can continue to mindlessly consume the resources of Earth and then have NASA relocate us to a fresh new planet when this one is used up.
mistermix
@freelancer: I think Buzz was busy punching moon landing conspiracy theorists in the face.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/20/buzz-aldrin-punches-moon_n_241664.html
gnomedad
Completely agree. I was a total Apollo fanboy as a kid. I glommed onto Arthur C. Clarke’s analogy (no disrespect intended, the Cosmic Overmind rest his soul) about how expensive aviation would be if we threw away the aircraft after each trip. So of course the reusable shuttle would bring down the cost of space travel and in a generation or so we would be vacationing in orbit, if not on the moon.
It turns out that we still don’t have the technology to economically make craft that can repeatedly endure the stress of being launched to orbit. Damn Earth’s gravity well! And even though humans are still a lot smarted than robots, the cost and weight of the technology needed to keep them alive just ain’t worth it. And they insist on being brought back alive from wherever we send them!
As I said, I’m a fanboy for human space flight, but I’ve thrown in the towel. Your summary of the achievements of our robot friends is excellent. Let good old free enterprisers show the value of human spaceflight if they can.
Ron Beasley
It has been suggested that a trip to Mars should be a one way trip because after months of weightlessness and bombardment by solar and cosmic radiation the astronauts will not live long enough when they return to make a round trip worthwhile. We may be able to solve these problems in the future and we should be doing the pure research to do that but do it in orbit around the earth.
bago
Probe Launched.
Probe Away.
Launching Probe.
Walker
@arguingwithsignposts:
This.
I am also a huge fan of unmanned missions for anything outside of orbit. However, we rely on satellites too much to go without
repairmenastronauts in space.Walker
@bago:
I will have you know that my wife actually likes that part of the game.
Joe1347
The country was certainly in good enough financial shape when Bush took office to kick off an ambitious and very expensive “manned” Moon and Mars exploration initiative. Think 100’s of Billions minimum – and lot’s of jobs created here in the USA. Probably in the hundreds of thousands of jobs created start and in the millions of jobs later from the spin off technologies. Talk about an impressive legacy that Bush COULD HAVE LEFT instead of the mess he left instead.
Mike E
It seemed when I was 8 years old there were astronauts walking on the moon every 4 mos or so. I’ll admit I’m a bit crestfallen from the lack of lunar activity since then–we even drank Tang!
Then there’s my buddy the riverkeeper openly hoping for total rocket FAIL so that the money gets diverted away from NASA into water resources here on our planet. The space program’s yearly budget would fund something like 1,000 years of NOAA research and exploration of our oceans. I’m a NASA fan (and we need all the science we can get), but creating more episodes of Planet Earth might be a better way to go.
Derek
I *WANT* us to go to the moon and Mars. I really do. But it’s hard to argue with the bang for the buck argument re: robotic exploration. The important work is the science. Spinoff tech still happens with unmanned missions. Streaming video was invented by NASA so we could still see what the Galileo probe was sending back.
But “let’s solve our problems here first” is not something I can agree with. An analogy: I teach music. The money for my program probably should be going to more core subjects, but nobody is talking about cutting it, even in this economy, because ITS IMPORTANT. Same goes for manned space exploration.
On the other hand, I totally understand getting more for your limited space dollar. As badass as it will be when humankind walks on Mars in 2022 (and it will be China), I think that the most profound discovery will be life under the Europan ice that an American probe will discover in 2026.
Still, I hate that we “progressives” and “liberals” are the ones saying we can’t go. I do think exploration is its own reward. I hate that now, because Space Exploration is a “republican issue,” we are the ones advocating staying in the cave. I’m very uncomfortable being against progress.
They say yes, we say no. We say stop, and they say go go go.
What’s wrong with that picture?
Brett
Out of many Mars missions that failed, whether in descent, transit, or wherever.
It’s interesting that you should mention Hubble, since Hubble had a major fuck-up early on that had to be corrected by astronauts in space. If that happened now, we’d have to try and hitch a ride up with the Russians to it.
Not me. I want my Dyna-Soar, multiple space stations, and manned Mars missions in the 1980s back.
The effects of long-term, off-world life on people is one of those things we could and should be researching . . . but in order to do so, we actually have to have a significant off-world presence.
By the way, that’s one of the reasons why I’m in favor of the “go back to the Moon” mission. It’s a good trial run for colonization farther out, not least because if something goes wrong, the Moon is only three days from Earth with the technology we already have (or had, since we can’t just re-build Saturn V’s anymore). It’ll tell us how low gravity (as opposed to micro-gravity) touches on some of the issues that come up with long-term off-world habitation (like the whole weakening-of-the-bones and muscle issue).
Instead, we keep piddling around with that damn space station. It’s become an excuse to not have an advancing manned space program.
KRK
I’m such a sap that this xkcd gives me a pang every time I see it.
Tom Betz
Actually, Buzz Aldrin congratulated the Obama Admin on the decision the day it was announced.
(Yes, that’s really him.)
Rosali
There’s an IMAX 3D film on the Hubble coming out soon. I saw the trailer yesterday when I went to see Alice in Wonderland. It looked amazing.
Add: Here’s the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvlbAItBdK4&feature=player_embedded#
Nylund
My parents met working on Apollo 11 together and my father was instrumental in the Viking Project (Mission to Mars) in the 1970’s as well as working on Space Settlement projects. My dad expressed a bit of sadness as manned exploration tugs at his heart strings, but the realist in him has always said something along the lines of:
“We’ve already been there. It is just a big rock. Why should we waste so much time, money, effort, and brain power just to have a bit of nostalgia about something we already did nearly half a century ago? Unmanned probes to new places can tell us more, and do it much quicker, and for a fraction of the cost.”
Then, of course, there would be the diatribe about all the “idiots in Houston” who just want more tax dollars funding their poorly run projects and lining their pockets.
JBerardi
@Arclite
More bang for the buck? How about more bang, period? You don’t have to worry about bringing them back, and they don’t need air or water or food. That means you can send more science stuff (for lack of a better term) instead of schlepping a life-support system across the damned solar system, and once they arrive, robots can stay and work forever. What can a human do on Mars? Wax poetic about how cool it is to be standing there and then get back into their trillion-dollar martian escape module and hope like hell they actually make it back? Yeah, I’ll take the cheap disposable robot that roams the surface collecting data for all eternity, thanks.
Brett
It’s cheaper, but much less adept at dealing with problems when something goes wrong. You can send a $1 billion probe on a six-year journey, and then lose the entire investment because the damn camera accidentally broke off or won’t deploy, and there’s no one present who could do even simple tasks to repair it.
It’s like the “Hubble” repair issue all over again – without a manned space program, we basically would have just lost Hubble and had to wait and spend to launch a replacement.
Me neither. For one thing, why stop at space exploration? Why are you spending money on clean energy that could go towards feeding malnourished children? Why are you investing money in basic research that could go towards food stamps? It’s basically saying that we should give up on investments in the future (very important investments at that) in order to appease some situation today.
Not to mention that NASA’s funding is a piddling amount, and you can’t just throw money at many of the problems people cite when making this argument.
As for progressives, I agree that it’s a pity. Progressives and Democrats were once the party that took pride in major technological and engineering achievements – look at the New Deal and many of its projects.
Bill E Pilgrim
OT:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife launches “tea party” group.
I guess this would be the “decorum” part?
El Cid
Wait — they’re wanting Obama to shove his HUGE MOON PACKAGE down America’s throat?
Emma
Well, I guess for once I’m out of synch with most BJs — I think manned space exploration is the equivalent of explorers setting out on ships to figure out for themselves what was on the other side of the world. I’m not running down the unmaned experience; we have learned a great deal from it and should continue to do so. But human beings were meant to go and find out for themselves.
And by the way, who is going to fix all those wonderful new telescopes if they break? Do we keep sending new things up while old stuff just rains down whenever it can’t sustain orbit anymore?
Comrade PhysioProf
Astronauts’ opinions about whether manned space missions are worthwhile are as worthless as it gets. It’d be like asking me whether NIH should stop funding physiology research.
arguingwithsignposts
@El Cid: Win.
If only there was another HUGE money-sucking portion of the federal budget that could somehow be trimmed to fund all these worthwhile endeavors, maybe buying fewer things that blow shit up.
Redshirt
I am 100% for manned exploration of space, but I fail to see any way it makes sense right now, other than continued shuttle service, which is really just glorified satellite delivery and repair service.
I like what Rutan and Branson are doing, and fully support that model – low orbit tourism. Than there’s a company called Bigelow who has a nifty idea of inflatable hotels where 10 or so people could stay a few days. These ideas will catch on far, far faster than some mega manned mission to Mars. And really, what is the point in going back to the moon now? Yeah, there’s water, and that’s a big deal. But to what end? Colonization is not happening.
So, alas, all my Apollo astronaut dreams are gone, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the two rovers on Mars, and the probe around Saturn continues to impress. So why not flood the solar system with relatively cheap bots? Well within our tech and finances, and would generate epic mountains of data and discovery.
Until there is a breakthrough in the tech needed to escape our gravity well, human space flight is increasingly nothing more than a vanity project.
Nellcote
Aren’t these old astronauts just shills/romantic lobbyists for NASA jobs in Texas and Florida? My understanding is that the Administration is very interested in supporting privitized manned space flight not that they’re down on manned space flight per se.
arguingwithsignposts
@Emma:
Well, we’ve been doing it all along.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I’m all for putting men in space, but it is stupid to argue that what we have been doing has been anything but beneficial. Do I think that there are some things that only humans can do? Of course, but one of the things a human couldn’t do is stay on Mars for six years for the cost of keeping an antenna running on earth.
JBerardi
@Emma
Ah, the good ‘ol days:
Yeah, exploration was so much more romantic when half the people involved died and the rest got scurvy.
I have issues with Baltimore
Not sure what else I can add to this discussion other than:
1.) This is a great site to read if you want to know where budgetting is leading our space program. Even though we’re not sending astronauts to the moon, we’re not abandoning it at all. Hell, the discovery of water on the moon did more to make it vital to study than actually putting someone on the surface.
2.) Robotic space exploration is difficult enough to do because of the overwhelming human error involved in just *building* probes and orbiters. My advisor has worked on every major mission since the Voyagers and is a lead investigator with Cassini and the New Horizons to Pluto, and our conversations *always* take a turn towards how such-and-such a project failed/almost failed. Just making sure everybody is working in the same units of measure is difficult enough.
3.) And yet, American expertise is unmatched in space exploration. We’ve been doing this longer and *better* than anybody. The Russians could ball back in the day. The Europeans are a joke: the constraints on awarding manufacturing contracts to member nations does more to drag the ESA down than their own incompetence with programming probes (I’m thinking of Huygens here). The rest of the world? They’re trying to get to where we were 60 years ago.
So let the chinese go to the moon. Like Derek said, for us Americans, “been there, done that.” We’ll be busy discovering life in other parts of the solar system (or even outside our solar system!) when they’re earning their junior moon geologist badge.
Brian J
Damn that Rahm Emmanuel! With him running the show, we’re going to be taken over by aliens…or something.
de stijl
https://balloon-juice.com/2010/03/14/catastrophizing/#comment-1624400
So the solution is to up the price tag to a multi-trillion dollar investment to make sure there are some repairmen aboard?
Emma
Arguingwithsignposts: True, but if we keep putting shit up sooner or later it’s going to be too much. Like having a parking lot overhead but the Hummer can come crashing down on someone’s head.
The problem is that the other project that is essential to keep the unmanned stuff going, namely the shuttle, has been on the back burner for a while. We need a newer edition of that sucker, and it just ain’t happening.
And letting the Chinese climb up there, the Earth is at the bottom of a gravity well. If they get pissed at us, all they need to do is throw rocks down…
arguingwithsignposts
@Emma:
You might want to read what I wrote above at #5 (arguingwithsignposts) re: the space shuttle before lighting into me.
Tim I
I loved the Apollo program, but been there, done that.
Lovell’s a big Kirk supporter in the Illinois Senate race, so who cares about him anyway.
Jamie
this is what happens when you spend all of your mon\ney on useless weapon systems and pointless wars. You can’t do all of the fun stuff.
Davis X. Machina
The Portuguese, when they were working their way around Africa in the 15th and early 16th c. used to put a slave ashore first, if it looked dangerous.
‘Unmanned’ exploration has a long history.
mcc
I have serious questions about whether that moon / mars push was ever serious in the first place. I never saw the evidence that we has serious plans or had committed the funding to carry those plans through. Moon bases would have been nice but I would have preferred we had kept the funding with all those astrophysics probes that got cancelled or transferred to the ESA en masse about the time Bush transferred most of NASAs funding to manned programs.
I am however getting very frustrated that each new president seems to come in, cancel the shuttle replacement program the last president was working on, then launch a new shuttle replacement program that will take 12 years (just long enough for the next president to cancel it). We don’t seem to be able to decide as a nation what the hell we want our space program to be about.
Mike in NC
It’s interesting that the teabaggers are against taxes and virtually all federal government spending, but want to increase it in two areas: National Defense and NASA projects
That way they get to wave their foam fingers and shout, “America! Fuck Yeah!”
Emerald
@KRK:
Brian J
@Mike in NC:
Defense spending isn’t actual government spending, you know. Neither is spending on things that resemble defense spending actually defense spending.
Just thought I’d clear that up for you.
DBrown
The amount of fail on this tread is amazing – the Hubble repair was beyond fail; for far less cost, a far better Hubble could have been put into orbit; even at NASA’s bullshit cost bases this is true.
Manned missions are pointless for most space work (their may be exceptions) – putting a trained monkey with a thermocouple up his ass into space may make many people cream in their pants but the cost for so little return and so much risk is pointless.
Lets see, a camera fails and a billion dollar probe is lost but if a person is there, somehow, we are guaranteed success no matter the failure mode; what crap. First, most camera’s cannot be repaired in space because the failure modes are generally electrical within black boxes that techs on Earth with complete labs take hours or days to figure out and repair- but of course, this will occur on any real mission -trained monkey will just say – oh, they forgot to connect the cable … . yeah, right; hey, they could just hit it with a hammer! That will do.
And lets not forget who broke the camera on Apollo 12?
Deep space radiation – I have studied this problem and solved it for a Mars mission but currently, no NASA approach can address this killer problem.
The Earth’s gravity well – there is a way – magnetic rail acceleration to achieve initial velocity until the small booster takes over and achieves orbit. I’m sure for a few 100’s of billion this simple (really) system could be created but what’s the point? Why do humans need to be in low Earth orbit (besides the view)? To prove that human bones and muscles degrade without gravity? – what a discovery! Wait, we need to live on the Moon so we can find water so that we can live on an airless, radiation exposed rock with no real resources (please, don’t make the stupid claim that there are vast, pure minerals there; there are NONE. All are oxides just like on Earth and are a pain to process here much less 300 K miles away. Don’t even try the beyond stupid about tritium – until someone can pay for the R&D for fusion why would me even need it?
The fail continues but why bother? Like any right-wing nutcase, if facts interfere with your agenda, ignore them.
BR
Sadly it’s pretty likely that no further manned space exploration will happen this century, just due to the economics of it. Over the next few years and few decades we’re in for a slow grinding to a halt of the worldwide economy due to energy issues.
Maybe after we find alternatives we’ll be able to get a space program back on its feet, but I don’t think it’ll happen for decades at least.
jimBOB
Humans are spectacularly maladapted for existence in space. Just the lack of gravity starts our skeletons dissolving, to say nothing of our vulnerability to radiation and extreme temperatures. We need to bring along large stores of corrosive (to machinery) stuff like water and oxygen, and we use a constant stream of these resources whether we are being productive or not. Once we get to a place, we can barely stay for anything more than a quick visit. Plus we more than double the cost of any exploratory mission by requiring a return trip.
In most cases the human ability to do repairs will cost far more than simply sending a redundant mission.
I doubt humans are ever going to be a significant factor in deep space exploration. Instead we’ll be sending ever smarter robots, or perhaps bio-engineered explorers designed to live in space.
For earth orbit, we could make it relatively cheap and easy if we can figure out how to build a space elevator.
Peter J
They are behind schedule, shouldn’t they land on Europa this year?
—-
I think both Lovell and Cernan should be pissed at the fact that Bush never actually gave NASA any extra money for the space missions. But then, Lovell is a Kirk supporter (as in Mark Steven, not James Tiberius) and Cernan likes John Culberson, co-sponsor of H.R. 1503.
JGabriel
I think we should proceed with funding for manned spaceflight – yes, even going so far as a trip to Mars – with the provision that it should be expensive enough, at least, to prevent the next GOP president from starting another war.
.
gnomedad
@Brett:
It probably made sense to repair the Hubble given that we had the Shuttle. But we probably could have sent up half a dozen Hubbles with what we were spending on the Shuttle. Occasional zombies is part of the overhead you factor in for robotic exploration. It’s the total cost that matters.
LanceThruster
Met Lovell at a booksigning at my university. He was a bit testy (poor turnout) and thought my question was not very bright. (Q: Was the Apollo 13 mission the closest you’ve come to dying in your career? A: Yes, of course it was.) The guy was a military pilot fer chrissakes. Even Chuck Yeager stated his test pilot missions put him in more danger than his combat flying. He could have had mishaps of the type that almost cooked John McCain’s goose on several occasions.
When I asked Lovell to sign a two-page spread of the Apollo 13 astronauts in front of a giant moon globe in my Time-Life book on the space program, he first asked, “You buying my book?” (Had the presigned copy under my arm)
I am sympathetic to the desire to keep human beings as part of the mission overall, but some missions are far more cost-effective when done robotically. I also remember at the JPL “Planetfest” around when Voyager made its flyby of Saturn, an engineer who argued even the shuttle wasn’t a good investment for the missions launched as expendable boosters would have been cheaper and more reliable. Even with the argument for shuttle R & D, it should not have been considered as fully operational.
SiubhanDuinne
@arguingwithsignposts (if you’re still around): O/T but any chance of a smidge of Smudge?
Thanks in advance.
arguingwithsignposts
@SiubhanDuinne:
Delivered. It’s a little blurry, since every time I point the cell phone at her, she decides to come sniff it.
LanceThruster
One other thing that should be pointed out, a major reason for the Apollo program (unstated) was the perfecting of large ICBM boosters for our nuclear payloads. Tang and Velcro wasn’t the only “spinoff” technology.
PeakVT
@JGabriel: Since when has the principle of paying for something stopped Republicans from spending?
On the original topic: we’re in an era of limited budgets. For now, NASA should focus on what it does better than anyone else, which is robotics.
tripletee
@LanceThruster:
I met Lovell too, on a speaking tour shortly after the release of Apollo 13. I sort of waylaid him as he was coming out of the bathroom and got him to sign a copy of his book. He couldn’t have been nicer about it.
I’m sad to see so much hostility towards manned spaceflight among my fellow hippies; robot probes are invaluable and should remain the primary focus of our exploratory efforts, but they will never stir people’s souls the way the moon landings did. And, frankly, if we’re going to throw away billions of dollars on pointless exercises in American dick-waving, I’d much prefer it was for a mission to Mars instead of another war against brown people with funny names.
SiubhanDuinne
@arguingwithsignposts:
Blurry-schmlurry, it’s *Smudge*! I love her, and I donnt care who knows it.
DBrown
@tripletee: Why not well paid teachers and great schools for all – especially inner city black kids and other poor areas? Why not energy research that isn’t oil, fission or coal based? Hell, why not just rebuild f’ing R&D to advance our country but manned space? Any of the other ‘wasteful’ spending make America stronger and better. Manned space just puts monkies into orbit to jerk off – dumb.
SteveinSC
I’d like to cap off this little discussion concerning what weight we ought to give the opinions of Lovell, Cernan, etc. In NASA the saying was “we love our astrounauts, but sometimes we have to protect them from themselves.”
Egypt Steve
I was nine years old when Apollo 11 touched down, and I sure love the idea of manned space flight. But it’s just a fact that in the current budgetary environment, this is an obvious cut.
And: I think there’s not going to be any manned space exploration to speak of until it becomes financially profitable anyway. Let’s keep in mind that the “Age of Exploration” was not about a disinterested quest for knowledge. Sure, it was great to discover chocolate, the California condor and Waikiki beach. But what kept it going was the gold and slaves. In the long run, we’re not going to go anywhere that it doesn’t pay to go to. Once we stumble on a place that does, hedge funds will back space flight and the Cortezes will be taking off hourly to go cash in. And then, as ugly as it will probably be, in 500 years, we can talk about how it all a boon for human knowledge.
Brett
The solution is to have the ability to send the repairmen there, at least up until the point where you can actually have the robots repairing themselves. You can do a lot more with a manned expedition along with unmanned probes than with just the latter.
I blame that on Presidents using the space program as a way to score political points, launch their own vanity projects, and just generally show how they’re making “investments in the future/promoting good green American jobs” or whatever the hell the terminology will be in ten years.
Did you feel a slight breeze as my point went sailing right over your fucking head? I never said that “somehow, we are guaranteed success” – I just said that actually having the manned space capability to do that repairs ensures that we don’t lose billion-dollar space probes (and far more valuable, the time lost in preparing and sending those expeditions) to simple bullshit problems.
That’s one of those things that you’d learn more about if we actually bothered to have the manned space presence off-world.
Because it creates a better chance of human civilization surviving the next asteroid impact, or if some joker launches a genetically modified, airborne disease that kills off 90% of the human population in the middle of the next century.
Because obviously all these problems have really been suffering from is the lack of $20 billion a year. I’ll have to go ask my local fusion plant owner about that.
Hiram Taine
@Jamie: @Jamie:
To wingnuts the weapons systems and wars *are* the fun stuff.
DBrown
@Brett: You are rather out there with that type of thinking – manned space will protect us from asteroid’s wiping us out? Why not spend enough money to locate such asteroids first rather than that under funded program that is being operated now?
But the cost to put a viable human population that can live on its own forever into deep space is what you give as an example? Please, that is so beyond our abilities that you need a reality check.
As for deep space radiation please try and learn a subject before you show your lack of understanding on the subject. The problem is not needing more study. We know all there is to know about this problem – the issue is weight for a given level of shielding for protection times of around three years (realistic Mars mission) and current designs fail or just ignore the problem. A virus? Please, the avian flu may do that now but again, you are talking hundred or more years, what good is wasting money on NASA’a manned program going to do the next twenty years?
When you think losing a billion dollar probe could be avoided by a human in space, you are being foolish. First, any such mission would be many more billions if you include humans. Like the Hubble showed only too clearly, it would be far cheaper to just replace the damn thing rather than fix it (ignoring the danger of losing seven humans.)
Before you make issues with my missing your points (and I was just being funny about your silly point) try addressing the Hubble issue; fact, a replacement would not only have cost less but we would have gotten a far better, more useful telescope. Get real. Monkeys in space is foolish.
Batocchio
This is the same debate they had in the 60s. Fix health care and social systems first this time. It doesn’t have to be either/or, but let’s see more funding for education, pure research, the arts, etc. Let’s actually do that, and stop funding corporate welfare and endless wars. I don’t have a problem with the astronauts pleading, but let’s remember that Krauthammer and the gang are shilling space exploration and endless wars as critical neocon penis welfare. The scientists are fine, but some folks are pushing space funding as another way to Starve the Beast. Divert cluster bomb money to space rockets? Sure.
Viva BrisVegas
Manned space flight is a boondoggle, pure and simple. The original justification for it was as a semi-military PR project for the Cold War.
One of the things that is forgotten about the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs is that they were incredibly dangerous. Risks were taken that could no longer be taken today. I think that if you talked to the support staff from that time they would tell you that NASA was incredibly lucky to get away with only an Apollo 1 and an Apollo13.
It does not make sense to send vulnerable bags of water (us) to Mars, the Moon or anywhere else for that matter. We do not currently have the technology and I don’t know if we ever will. If the solar system is to be explored it will be by radiation hardened robots fueled by solar power and/or radioactive isotops. If we do things right these probes will be getting brighter and brighter until they can finally explore the Solar System on their own. Maybe then they will be nice to us and let us know what they find.
And don’t get me started on space colonies. If people really wanted to live on Mars or the Moon, they could get the same effect by digging a 20 foot hole on Baffin Island and moving into that. In fact, compared to Mars, Baffin Island is like Tahiti on one of its nicer days.
I say this as a long time SF fan, manned flight is the single biggest impediment to the exploration of the Solar System.
JGabriel
@PeakVT:
How would we know? We keep balancing the budget for them so they can blow it all to hell again.
Let’s spend a shit-ton of money on manned space exploration and let the Republicans deal with the deficits and the debt. While we’re at it, let’s tax the wazoo out of the rich and give twice as much to the poor and middle class – free health care, college educations, second homes, and ponies for everyone! – the GOPers will accuse us of it anyway, so we may as well just do it and have the joy of it.
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kuvasz
Robert Browning
The sooner humanity gets off this planet and into space the greater the likeihood of its survival.
JL
Cernan said “I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership… to seek knowledge. Curiosity’s the essence of human existence.”
I agree. But that doesn’t have to be in space exploration.
In fact, we absolutely do have do be leaders in energy technology and knowledge. Infinitely more important than moon landings right now.
Randall Shane
Most of the above comments seem to be a mix of “Oooh, Obama’s killing manned exploration, YAY!” and “OMG, Obama’s killing manned exploration, we’re doomed!”
Myself, I think manned exploration, along with robotic craft, is important, but I wonder — how many commenters here actually know something about the NASA budget plans the Administration recently announced? Looking at the comments, not very many at all.
The Administration’s plan isn’t killing manned exploration, it’s killing most of the Constellation program (two big rockets and a new capsule), and suggesting an alternative — private enterprise contractors to LEO, research new tech and advanced rocket systems, build LEO infrastructure to support a long-term exploration program. LEO assembly and refueling allows larger missions with fewer failure points. (Imagine the robotic probes we could send out if the the whole thing didn’t have to fit inside one rocket, and it could be givin some additional fuel as well…and the same thing holds for manned missions.) NASA and government money seems to work best when pushing the envelope instead of recreating the past.
Transportation to low earth orbit isn’t exploration anymore. Maybe private enterprise can do it cheaper. Worth a try.
The old plans (Constellation, etc.) weren’t going to even get us back to the Moon anytime soon, let alone Mars — the 2020 Moon landing date has been shaky for quite a while, cost overruns piling up, and promised capabilities (lift weight, etc.) were being dropped.
The plan, derived from the Augustine commission’s report, is a much better bet for the long term, relying on infrastructure improvements and R&D advances, rather than reliance on repeating the sucess of the 60’s.
Yeah, I DESPERATELY want to see men and women on Mars before I die. I just see no reason to think that Constellation et al. was going to do it in the next 30 years. A new approach was needed. Now, if only Obama can be that bold about pushing for HCR…
REN
” I for one do not intend to sleep by the light of a communist moon.” Attributed to Lyndon Johnson. The original motivation for the manned space program. Scientific discovery really had very little to do with it, except to the scientists, who were perfectly satisfied with their political masters delusions and paranoia as long as their pet project got the funds.
When America’s technical superiority was firmly reestablished the remaining, already scheduled, Apollo program was quickly cancelled. Trying to get most politicians to address the future beyond the next election is an exercise in futility.
BruinKid
Like it or not, almost the entire world stopped and watched when we landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
And if and when we send humans to Mars, the entire world will be watching at that moment too.
Matt McIrvin
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched and repaired by astronauts because it was made to be launched and repaired by astronauts as political justification for the Shuttle program. For a fraction of the cost of the Shuttle, we could have just made more Hubbles and launched modified spares if the first one had a problem.
As for Constellation, it was never politically or budgetarily realistic. The government under Bush didn’t fund it at sufficient levels for a serious Moon/Mars program. Apollo got done because it had a Cold War motivation as, essentially, a psychological warfare program against the USSR. That motivation doesn’t exist today.
The current budget was obviously inspired by the Augustine Commission report, which pretty much laid all this out in black and white. I don’t know whether the commission’s proposal to shift to privately developed crewed launchers will pay off. Personally, I’m a big proponent of robotic exploration. But even when it comes to human spaceflight, I was more excited by the more novel proposals in there–crewed flights to near-Earth asteroids, flights to Sun-Earth L2 where spacecraft like the Webb telescope could be serviced, exploration of the moons of Mars–than I was by Bush’s Apollo redux.
Fax Paladin
@Randall Shane: What you beat me to saying. The fact that we’re trying to do everything with kludged-together ’60s and ’70s tech is precisely the problem. Constellation was quite simply the wrong way to go — designed by politicians rather than engineers, as a jobs program (keeping the same well-lobbyist-endowed contractors whose management is no longer distinguishable from NASA’s, with presences in key congressional districts and states *cough*Richard Shelby*cough*) rather than the best way to get to space. The same mindset that drove a faulty shuttle design was driving Constellation (the Ares launchers in particular).
Apollo was a short-term success and a long-term failure — a one-objective program that didn’t leave us with much to build on. The current Obama plan would build something broader and more versatile — more modest in the short term but much more useful in the long term.
@mcc: I’d go further: I think the Bush plan was intended to kill NASA with kindness. Specifically, I think it met its primary objective, which was to force NASA to starve those pesky Earth sciences programs that were telling us just what we’ve been doing to our planet, data which might make it harder for Bush’s buddies to do things on the cheap and dirty.
@Common Sense: There’s at least one part of Texas that’s just fine with private spaceflight. I live just down the road from McGregor, Texas, where SpaceX is a major employer (the engine test facilities are there).
To all: Robots do a lot of great things, but on one paramount really-long-term goal they just will not suffice: The ultimate survival of humanity depends on our ability to get our eggs into more than one basket. If we’re going to get there we have to start with the baby steps now.
LanceThruster
@kuvasz:
I think there’s a danger of humans thinking that having a back-up world to escape to means that they can neglect the “pale blue dot” (as Sagan said) we actually live on.
Maybe our destiny is in the stars, but only if we display proper stewardship of this world.