No, what I’m saying is that vastly expanding resources allocated to the manned program so we can build entire communities in space is what would be necessary for “It might save humanity!” to be true. I am not saying that this would be a good idea, certainly not until we’ve made enough technological advances on the ground to make the heavy lifting required economical. Even then, it might be more effective to just build the world’s most ludicrously prepared bomb shelters.
Sam, not too long ago you had detailed and thoughtful criticism of the whole Cash for Clunkers program. That one-time program cost a couple billion dollars, and let’s get real: the main effect was probably a short-term boost to the feelings of people in the market for cars last year.
I’m sorry, but to turn around and explain that the several billion dollars (having trouble nailing this figure down – it appears to be more than $5 billion a year, every year) we spend to support manned space flight is absolutely needed because it appeals to our imaginations is a very weak argument indeed.
My mind is somewhat open to whether we should continue manned space flight, but I am not quite understanding what the return to the taxpayer is. I do understand what the value of better energy technologies can be. New energy sources could revolutionize the lives of everyone in the United States within the next few decades; going to Mars in the same space of time will certainly create a few new heroes, and I’m not sure that there is much benefit beyond that.
Not to mention the fact that we haven’t bought a B-2 in almost 15 years makes the comparison not very good. How many DC-9s could we forgo building in order to fund NASA?
Stranger on a train:
No need to quote what you said, but you actually make a very good point of how our robotics are getting better over time as well as cost.
However there are a few addition factors to consider. Part of why the manned programs cost so much more is safety. Losing a couple hundred million dollar robot is a disappointment, but few other than the scientists themselves get worked up about it. Losing a few astronauts is considered a national tragedy. Which means that a manned program is far more likely to succeed, or at least not fail spectacularly, just because it will be engineered to a much higher standard than robotic missions are. At minimum, someone will doublecheck the metric to imperial conversions.
So we can shoot out 300 robots with the same money as a manned mission, but half of those will fail (of 38 unmanned missions to mars, 19 have failed. Granted, the success rate has been steadily improving over time). So a proper comparison isn’t is one manned mission capable of getting as much or more scientific research as 300 unmanned missions. It’s if one mission is capable of producing as much info as a hundred and fifty robots. A much lower bar to meet, and one that may actually be possible to surpass. I wasn’t exaggerating about how one astronaut could do in a couple days what took the rovers years to do. It took six years to travel 20 km and drill into a rock. It’d take a human a few hours.
Incidentally, the longer mission time of robots is irrelevant. They need to longer time because they gather information so much slower. What matters is the total information gained. In fact, a decent argument could be made that gaining scientific info faster is another argument for manned missions.
Then there is information that robots just can not gather. We already know the effects of low earth orbits on humans. We have little clue about what the effects further away from earths protection is like. The same with structures on other planets, So learning what it takes to travel to other planets and live on them for a few months is quite valuable information in and of itself. You mention this, and dismiss it, yet it is information that no robot, no matter how well designed, could ever discover.
There’s also intangible benefits. It’s not scientific, but people get excited by manned exploration going to new places. For the general publics point of view, Spirit and Opportunity made a few pretty pictures to slap on a calender, but walking on the moon fascinated people worldwide. Even people that aren’t interested in space know Neil Armstrong’s name and what he did. This motivates young people, I’ve read many interviews with current scientists in the space program who were motivated by Apollo. It provides a real chance for multiple nations to work together towards a common goal. If nothing else, it provides willingness in the public to fund those 300 MERs or 65 MSLs you were talking about. We can’t put a scientific or financial value on any of this, but they are real benefits and factors to be considered.
Now I’m not saying that manned space travel is clearly superior to robotic exploration, but there are some advantages to it. It’s certainly not a case where manned exploration is totally worthless as some, although not you, have indicated.
I nearly commented on this on my prior post, but decided not to. Now that you brought it up, the value of researching low gravity on humans is not significant if you don’t care about humans going up into space.
It’s like arguing to a pacifist that we need better weapons for our military so more of our troops can come back home alive. A pacifist might say that better weapons aren’t needed if we don’t send our troops to war. That NASA can build self-licking ice cream cones (study human effects for space flight in order to have more space flight, generating the need for more testing of human effects for space flight) isn’t really a strong argument for defending NASA’s budget, either.
Indeed - if one spends a brief bit of time on Google Scholar, one can find several papers where the potential for satellite imagery to assist in both prevention and treatment of malaria. See for example here: Bionomics of Anopheline species and malaria transmission dynamics along an altitudinal transect in Western Cameroon | BMC Infectious Diseases | Full Text
While that specific application may not be the best, there are about 200 other peer-reviewed papers about using satellite technology to help combat malaria and other infectious diseases.
And even sven, WTF? I expect those sorts of crude sexual ad hominems from certain trolls in the anti-gun crowd in here, not from you.
Whereas manned space missions never fail?
No chance. The manned mission must choose a single landing place - robotic missions can be distributed all over the planet. Astronauts will be on the surface for something like a month or two, during which they must spend time on many things besides exploration - the robots stay much longer, and work much longer hours.
But with the robot, you can analyse data at your leisure, then do further exploration based on the findings - doesn’t work nearly as well with time-limited humans.
Carefully measuring the conditions on a planet and their variations over a long period of time could be extremely valuable (not to say essential) in preparing for a successful human stay under those conditions.
It would be utter nonsense to say that manned space missions are worthless. The argument is that in terms of cost and benefits, they are inferior to robotic exploration (and the gap appears to be widening).
I hate to harp on this, but when you guys are always looking at things for the government to cut, why are you always focused on NASA and the military?
Look at the department of Education. It didn’t even exist before 1978. It now has a budget of 64 billion dollars per year - more than three times NASA’s entire budget, and THIRTY times the budget of U.S. manned spaceflight. In fact, its budget increase in the Bush years was more than the entire budget of NASA.
And yet, in the time that it has existed, school test scores have declined. The huge ramp up in funds it received in the 2000’s had no measurable effect on educational outcome. It absorbed 75 billion dollars from the stimulus program, and the result was a one-year bump in teacher pay followed by layoffs. It’s educational grants may have merely contributed to cost inflation in education and contributed to a higher education bubble.
You’d think if you need 2.5 billion dollars, you could find it somewhere within that giant white elephant.
I don’t defend NASA as an absolute - I’d rather see a private space program. But if you’re looking for government programs to cut, I can think of about fifty I’d go after before I’d touch NASA’s budget.
What about womanned space exploration?
Thats not really true, or at least misleading. The DOEd was elevated to a cabinet post in '78, but it and most of the programs under it existed (and presumably spent money) prior to '78 and the dept itself was the Office of Education which existed in one form or another since the Civil War.
It’s true that it existed as part of another larger Department (HEW, I think). But it’s not true that most of the programs under it existed. The Dept of Education’s first budget was 14 billion dollars. Now it’s 64 billion.
In 2000, the DOE had a budget of 38 billion dollars. The increase in its budget in the last ten years amounts to almost 30 billion dollars per year - almost twice NASA’s entire budget. Does it look to you like the Dept of Education’s budget increase in the last ten years has provided more value to the country than all of NASA’s budget, plus another full NASA budget? Or really any value AT ALL? If it has, I’m having a hard time seeing it. Certainly it’s not reflected in any measure of the nation’s academic performance.
I mean that they didn’t create a bunch of new programs in '78 and call them the Dept of Education, not that other programs haven’t been added since then.
Adjusted for inflation, thats actually kinda impressive. 14 billion in '78 is like 50 billion now. Considering the increase in the student population, the money per-capita spent now must be much lower. Or was the 14 billion already adjusted for inflation?
Posaune Pat—what makes you think it would actually go to energy research?
Instead of tax breaks for the mega-rich?
The only conceivable advantage manned space exploration has over robotic exploration is this intangible thing - that it is supposed to inspire us because it is ‘cool’ for someone to go somewhere out of the ordinary. Otherwise, as others have pointed out, the rapidly improving field of robotics is superior for space and planetary exploration. I concede that the Spirit rover takes a long time to drive around – but who doesn’t expect the next generation of Mar’s rovers to get around a little easier/quicker and to do more things.
Lets generalize and simplify the math. What should our tax dollars go towards – say manned Mars exploration costs $100 dollars, a Mars robot cost $1 and a next generation Hubble or other type of telescope costs $5. We have $10/year to spend. Should we do nothing for 10 years and then blow the shot on a single manned Mars trip. Or should we launch a combination of increasingly powerful telescopes and planetary rovers every year – with more great science learned every year.
Someone mentioned unthread that Mars rovers give us a new picture for the calendar but are uninspiring otherwise. Well, other than snapshots what is a manned Mars mission going to give me? I doubt NASA will send everyone a personalized Mar’s rock. At the end of the day, what do I really care if anyone goes to Mars – unless it is me. Similarly, it is ‘cool’ to go to Tahiti, but unless I’m going, why would I care? As for inspiration for kids – well do your homework so you can make enough money to pay for a private flight into space. That will be much more achievable and realistic than hoping you’re one of the chosen 4-6 astronauts who would actually go to Mars.
These conversations always have the sentence construction of “Why do we spend so much money on xxxxxx, why don’t we spend those billions on yyyyyyy instead?”. No one ever suggests that we just don’t spend more money that we don’t have. I support NASA as a realist who knows that any alternate use of those funds would be more objectionable.
NASA is something that has measurably improved my life and is a positive public good. Come back when we realize that a valid option is not spending that money at all.
Those were in constant dollars. As I said, the budget for the DOE was 38 billion in 2000. You can see it here. Have a look at the budget between 2001 and 2004. George W. Bush increased the budget for the Dept. of Education from 39.9 billion in 2001 to billion to 67.2 billion in three years!
A lot of this money has gone straight down a rathole of special programs like First Readers, Head Start, No Child Left Behind, various community ‘partnerships’, “Safe and Drug Free Schools”, and other initiatives that have had zero impact on educational outcomes. Studies have shown that head start kids lose any advantage they may have had by second or third grade. ‘Midnight Basketball’ was a colossal waste of money. Chicago schools got a huge federal grant for experimental education programs, all of which were an utter failure.
I’m pretty sure those are nominal dollars. Does it say otherwise somewhere? Usually if they adjust for inflation they say what year they use as the baseline. In otherwords, I don’t think the education budget has actually increased much since 1978 in real terms…
I’m sure not every federal education program has been successful. But three programs that make up the large bulk of DOEd spending are 1)federal grants for post-secondary education, 2) Funds for Special needs kids and 3) ESEA grants for poor schools. All are pretty popular and I doubt there’s much support for nixing them
(and as an aside midnight basketball was a) a crime pervention program, not an educational program and b) cost ~40 million, not exactly a collosall amount, even if we accept it was a waste of money).
Good point 
My thought experiment (I wouldn’t expect the NASA’s manned budget to go directly to ANY one thing; it would most likely be swallowed up) really boils down to: if we are going to spend any money on a program designed to have a permanent, manned presence in space, what technological advancements should we focus on, and in what order?
Figuring out how to keep people alive in a near vacuum in a metal cylinder, accomplished only through regular resupply of water, air, and freeze dried chicken kiev? Check. Haven’t we proven that already?
Keeping people in space for years, decades, or centuries completely independent of Earth? This scenario applies to any exploration goals beyond Mars, and will require developing technology that would have obvious “side” benefits for everyone on Earth. If the goal is being able to keep people alive in space without Earth’s magnetic field, atmosphere, or energy sources indefinitely, then let’s focus first on those technological hurdles that would also have obvious terrestrial benefits. That’s why I mentioned energy development. It could also have asked “Cancel manned space exploration, use budget for agricultural research instead”?
How?