Cancel manned space exploration, use budget for energy development instead?

Great Debates
1

The interstellar probe thread got me thinking. It seems clear that, at minimum, we are decades or centuries away from technology that would allow us to probe other stars. And the only feasible way to do it with actual people would be to break the cosmic speed limit and travel faster than light. If that’s even possible, it would require huge amounts of energy manipulating spacetime itself (warp drive, wormholes, etc.).

So why not just scrap our current manned program in favor of general energy development, since a new fantastical energy source would be the minimum prerequisite of sending people anywhere interesting in space? And even if we never discover a way to fold space, we’d still have the benefits from energy research here on Earth.

2

I don’t believe interstellar probes would be built on Earth with Earthly resources regardless–that stuff will be gathered (if at all) out in the system somewhere. Running the planet here is pretty much a separate operation; savings from scuttling space operations won’t make a very big droplet’s difference for prospects here, but continuing a program with bold goals adds a little more purpose to life on Earth.

3

First, there’s lots to be gained by manned exploration right here in our own solar system. Establishing colonies on Mars, for instance.

Second, you don’t need to invent warp drive to travel to nearby stars. The Alpha Centauris are just four lightyears away. It would take a huge amount of fuel to accelerate enough to get there in a reasonable amount of time, but no new physics need be invented.

4

What, exactly, is to be gained by establishing colonies on Mars? If would be easier, safer, and more comfortable establishing colonies at the bottom of the ocean or at the poles, and no one is seriously considering spending billions of dollars to do that. Sure, you could do some interesting Mars geology research, but why - when we have robots doing a fantastic job already?

“Just” four light years, and we have no reason to believe the Centauris system is worth visiting in person. I think we would need something beyond traditional propulsion to go anywhere interesting.

5

I don’t think we should “scuttle” all space operations, just our current manned program. Keep the robots, probes, and especially the space telescopes. Those provide tons of inspiration.

There’s just nowhere for us meatbags to go in our solar system that justify the costs.

6

Or multigenerational voyages. Or hibernation.

7

The concept of multigenerational interstellar ships puzzle me. If we could solve the problems of providing it’s inhabitants limitless food, water, energy, and shelter in the most hostile environment imaginable, with no hope for rescue, what on earth would we need to leave Earth for? We’d be set for at least the next several billion years until the sun goes all red gianty. And even then, we could just set up in orbit around the dying husk. At least it would provide some light!

8

I think this topic is more suited to a Great Debate, as I don’t see a concise factual answer available. Moved from General Questions.

samclem Moderator, GQ

9

The 2011 DoE budget already sets out

Human space flight typically lands around 2.5 Billion a year. So you’re proposing a doubling of the potential money for DoE use in new energy sources. And that doesn’t even account for the 700 million the National Science Foundation gets for energy projects.

Why not go raid 10 billion from the 550 Billion DoD budget?

10

Change ‘or’ to ‘and’.

I think some entertaining sci-fi has deluded us into thinking that travel beyond the solar system is feasible, or at least thinkable, within dozens to scores of years. A realistic view says it may well be hundreds of years off, and depend on things not within current physics.

Nearer home, manned exploration of our own solar system has to contend with rapid advances in robotics (the pace of which shows no sign of slowing) that increasingly reduce manned missions to shockingly expensive stunts.

11

That would double the energy development budget? Great! And I think a case can be made for taking an additional 10 billion from defense. Energy security and all.

It’s seemed clear for years that current manned exploration goals are a huge boondoggle. The reasoning:

  1. There’s no habitable destinations in our solar systems.

  2. It’s impossible given our current understanding of physics to travel outside our solar system.

  3. We don’t know if it will ever be possible to travel as fast or faster than light, but it’s easy to conjecture that if it is, it’ll require an almost magical energy source.

  4. We already face a global energy problem, so we might as well focus on that first, since we’d need it anyway to work on the warp drive or wormhole creation or whatever.

12

In theory it makes sense to scrap most manned exploration.

In practise the argument is non-manned exploration would decrease as well. Gaining funding is a political exercise rather than an entirely rational one.

Otara

13

Space exploration makes sense not solely because of all the tangential technologies it develops. Quite simply I think, and I admit this is a harebrained theory, it keeps civilizations from tearing each other apart. Every nation has some instinct for conquest. Exploring space channels some of that into a productive quest. That and it is really cool and worth doing to increase the level of wonder and knowledge about the universe we live in.

The small steps we take now are our gifts to our ancestors hundreds of years from now who might have the technology to build colonies or travel to other stars.

14

To boldly go where no man has gone before, of course. More particular reasons can only be found on the other side of the voyage.

I don’t know how we could tell what a “realistic” view would be. Some present technologies were unimaginable within the lifetimes of old people still living today; it seems reasonable to suppose that–barring the collapse of advanced technological civilization–children now living will in turn see technologies unimaginable, or at least entirely unpredictable, to us today.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter how long the projected timetable is. From the present perspective, it’s the questing, not the grail, that makes the difference.

15

A lot of the technology we use today was initiated in the space program. Their are lots of reasons to push man to stretch his limits. Soon space exploration will be done by India and China. The new industries and scientific finds belong to those who dare. It helps the whole society.
I know we will stop. the wealthy want the money in their pockets and they always win.

16

'Cause we need to win the fight against the War On Terror…except if we win the fight, we won’t need to fund it anymore, so we’ll have to invent a new enemy…

Okay, getting back to the question of the o.p.: it will require both novel energy sources (nuclear fusion, or something even more energetic) and novel propulsion systems (with a specific impulse exceeding 100,000 second) to even consider sending people to another star system. (Even selecting one nearby doesn’t really improve that. If you can generate enough impulse to go 4.3 ly in a reasonable time, you can probably go 10 or 20 ly in a reasonable time as well. If it is going to take you several hundred years to go 4.3 ly, then you’re pretty much in the realm of the highly improbable, anyway.) Should we wait unless such technologies are at least in sight before we start pouring effort into a manned program?

On one hand, the argument is obviously yes; not only does it save us from wasting time and money at futile efforts fumbling around in Low Earth Orbit or swimming through problematic Lunar dust, but is likely that technology that allows humans to withstand the hazardous conditions of interplanetary and interstellar space will have advanced as well. We may be able to modify ourselves to endure microgravity, radiation, and vacuum without the use of restrictive pressure suits and leak-prone metal shells. On the other hand, every clumsy step we make in space is at least giving us the experience we need to learn how to occupy extraterrestrial environments.

The reality is that the current level of human activity in space, which is mostly limited to stiffly waving home while attached by a tether, isn’t advancing much of anything. Nor is human activity really increasing the level of scientific knowledge, either absolutely or (especially) in terms of value for the money expended. A conservative estimate of the cost of a manned mission is that 95% of the cost is in keeping the crew alive versus a comparable robotic effort. It is hard to even envision a crewed mission to Mars having achieved the same objectives as the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, for as many handicaps as the Rovers have in terms of mobility and capability, they’ve been able to keep functioning long past any plausible manned effort. (While it is common to compare the functionality of the Rovers versus a human being in a shirtsleeve environment, the truth is that a person in a pressure suit is both barely more mobile than the Rovers and of course has to routinely stop, unsuit, eat, sleep, and shit. Whereas the Rovers can function as long as their batteries hold out, and then recharge in situ, and return to work until they wear out, a person needs regular care and has to be returned to Earth at enormous expense with no virtually no scientific benefit.)

While there is essentially no justification for a manned program on a scientific basis above and beyond supporting further manned efforts, it is a valid point that manned missions garner more public interest and prestige. On that basis, manned programs might be valuable in and of themselves (especially compared to other avenues of national pride, such as suppressing representative democracies, threatening to incinerate millions of innocent people, and brutally repressing ethnic minorities on the basis of a poorly thought out and self-contractory socioeconomic paradigm that welcomes people to enjoy the benefits of centralized planning such as bread shortages and Trebants) but only, of course, if they’re actually performing something that holds the public interest. Banging around in a bunch of oversized beer cans in Low Earth Orbit for fifteen years, producing less in terms of noteworthy research than a third tier engineering school at a cost that rivals the gross national product of a small European nation does not exactly qualify.

Funding new energy research is justifiable in and of itself, both for national security (in making us independent of outside influence) and because of other advances it may bring, quite aside from space exploration. It’s not really an ‘or’ proposition, frankly; the question is, at the state of technology, is there any scientific or prestige advantage to manned exploration. The answer to the first argument is clearly ‘no’; to the second, is a weak ‘maybe’.

Stranger

17

What technology (aside from satellite telecommunications and meteorology) is that?

Stranger

18

That’s right. The “current level,” if static, is always insufficient. The point is to keep pushing, clumsy step by clumsy step if necessary. Every decade, at least, should see a new step. Always outward bound.

19

I assume that he’s talking about things that were created with the purpose of advancing our progress into space, rather than things that were advanced by our progress into space.

20

I’m not exactly clear on how going to actually feasible locations could ever be uninteresting enough to just skip completely. I find it difficult to believe that there would not be significant discoveries/research enabled by exploring anywhere, whether those discoveries come in the realm of astronomy, transport, propulsion, power and resource management, the effects of prolonged exposure on earthly things (animal, vegetable, mineral) in space, etc.