It isn’t one of his better works, for sure.
He must’ve been paid according to the number of words.
The airbag to which CarnivorousPlant refers will likely not prove to be an insurmountable obstacle.
Be that as it may, I think the first three posters nailed it. The proposal is the publicity stunt, not the program.
I find this assumption interesting. I would make the case that if we don’t start working on the engineering and scientific problems that need to be solved to get people into space, these energy sources and medical technology you talk about will never be developed. Because they won’t need to be.
By deciding on a goal like building a permanent station on the moon, or getting people to Mars, there is a push for these technologies to be developed. That’s how Apollo worked, and look what they managed to accomplish in a decade.
Unmanned space missions have indeed produced some spectacular information in basic physics and theoretical science. But it’s hardly accurate to say that the manned program has produced “little to show for it.” NASA’s various space programs have produced hundreds of spin-off technologies that have improved myriad aspects of life.
Take a look:
Spacelink - Technology Transfer Fact Sheets
NASAsolutions: Benefits of the Space Program
Spinoffs and Technology Transfer–Examples
The list of spin-off technologies is huge. The space shuttle program spin-offs include the artificial heart, automotive insulation, medical balance evaluation systems, gas leak detectors, improved blood analysis devices, land mine removal devices, LEDs used in chemotherapy, prosthesis materials, vehical tracking systems, and more. There are others from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, as well as Skylab.
How about if a human were flying Beagle?
I used to be a Library Assistant. Michener always was paid by thye word.
I would suggest Flight by Chris Kraft to show how NASA should be run.
People sometimes forget that going into space is an end unto itself. When talking about the ‘goods’ we get from manned spaceflight, you might consider the (enormous) intangibles. For instance:
The kids who become space nuts and grow up to become scientists and engineers. It’s seed capital for your intellectual assets.
The sense of pride, dignity and accomplishment it brings to people all over the world. Being a race that has walked on the moon feels different from being a race that hasn’t. Our optimism, sense of what can be accomplished, and even our work ethic is improved by doing large, bold things. And it’s not just that it will enable us to build more things or work better and harder, it’s an end unto itself. It feels good to succeed in space, and that has value.
These things can be accomplished with unmanned probes to some degree, but there’s a limit. At some point, it’s just being technically capable to send robots. But human beings actually setting foot on another world and living there is ultimately what it’s all about. It is orders of magnitude more important psychologically than robotic missions are. Hands up, all of you who chat with friends about the Ranger missions to the moon? Apollo is what we will remember.
I was around when the first Apollo missions were taking place, and let me tell you, people felt different. We’d be doing something together - working, hanging out, whatever, and someone would say, “Hot damn, we’re walking on the freaking MOON!” and people would be grinning and laughing about it. It was a great thing, and just the gift of being able to say we could do that was worth the cost.
Space flight doesn’t have to be expensive.
There are a ton of benefits of going into space (and taking humans along with you). Robots are nice and cheap, but to take full advantage of what space has to offer, you’re going to need humans up there. I’m not even talking about “what if” technologies and things that we’ll discover once we’re there, I’m talking about known benefits.
Perfect ballbearings are one item. They have a lower friction coefficient, and a longer life than bearings made on Earth. This means that cars, for example, would have less friction in the engines, wheels, and other components, so they’d get better fuel economy. They’d also last longer.
Castings made in microgravity environments have a more uniform density than those made on Earth. They also require less material than Earth made ones.
Items manufactured in space will also be free from “sag.” Since there’s no gravity pulling the part down as it’s being machined, it can be machined to closer tolerances. This translates into a higher quality product that lasts longer.
As for the “what if” benefits of manufacturing in space, you can check out here. For more of the practical side see here.
That’s true enough. We’ll be able to buy the technology from the Chinese.
Uh, sure they will. Energy and medical advances are very much a here and now deal, with the caveat that they would actually be dierctly useful to the lives of most people, rather than the already heavily subsized lives of a handful of lucky bastards.
And if we just spent the money researchings these things DIRECTLY, we’d be even BETTER off. What’s your point?
Name an industry here on Earth that would ever have utilized an ion engine.
Can you name any “energy and medical advances” from the past 50 years which were not developed specifically for space flight, but has made (or would make) space flight significantly cheaper?
Technology doesn’t appear out of nowhere. There will be some basic reasearch from other fields which can be applied to space flight (e.g. microprocessors) but mostly, if you want space flight to become cheaper you’ve got to keep building and refining your spacecraft. Or wait for others to do it and buy the technology.
Besides, new technology doesn’t always make things cheaper. Automobiles today are not much cheaper than the Model T was. And I’d bet a Nimitz class aircraft carrier is just as expensive as the HMS Victory in terms of percentage of GDP.
Let’s not be hasty. If we’re too sucessful, we’ll start to take the base on the moon for granted, then we’ll start to store our nuclear waste there, then there’d be an accidental explosion and zoom! We’ve lost our moon to deep space.
Then we’d look a bit of a fool would’nt we?
I heard no mention of moon, Mars missions in the president’s state of the union speech last night. That makes me think that Bush is not entirely serious about this vision for America’s future in space.