I think the main problem with Cecil’s column is not his attitude, his facts, or his intent. The main problem is that he has stepped on the toes of some True Believers. I understand the arguments; I used to make them myself. But given the reality of the situation, I’m really not sure that space exploration is really the great thing I once thought it was. Mind you, I’ll never forgive life for not letting me go into space (hell, I thought there’d be tourist trips to the moon by now when I was a kid!), but as far as the colonization and scientific knowledge arguments, I think we’re fooling ourselves just a bit…
I’d just like to check in and express my dismay at Cecil’s recent column. Up until this point, I was quite confident in Cecil’s judgement and objectiveness. However, this recent slam of manned space travel just killed the dream for me. It almost seems as if Cecil had been “gotten to” by some subversive, anti-space government entity. (the egg council)
Cecil, if you have any interest in keeping at least this one fan, please come to your own defense and respond in this thread to the very valid points expressed above. Your breakdown of the issue into a short-list of 4 points is utterly simplistic. I pose to you: If space travel/exploration is so highly unprofitable and pointless, why has our government (the very same government that is hesitant to spend money on anything) been paying billions of dollars for it? Cecil, are we to believe that NASA has been pulling the wool over our collective eyes for several decades? Perhaps your skeptic, Bob Park, was the first and only person to think of this? I doubt the Senate would be approving things based on “coolness”? How do you explain it’s existance for all these years? Coolness? Please.
CECIL, CAN YOU HEAR ME?
I have to say that this column was definitely a huge win for ignorance. Sorry to see that Cecil is actively helping the back-slide.
Mooster, I think you may be right.
For all those using heavier than air flight as an analogy, the applications were pretty rapidly apparent. The Wright Brothers flew in December 1903, within 20 years at the most, manned flight was being used for mail as well as other tangible applications. I’m at work right now so I don’t have much time for research.
It’s been what, 35 years since Yuri Gegarian and what obvious application of manned space flight is there that you can point out to the average taxpayer?
Those who want an envelope to push, let’s explore the sea a little more. It’s just as dangerous and a lot closer.
I was shocked when I read this column. Quite possibly the most uninformed, close-minded, simply ridiculous answer EVER by Cecil.
How shortsighted can you get? The 747 does not have canvas wings and a frame made of wood, either, but that doesn’t mean that it does not owe it’s existence to the Flyer from Kitty Hawk. The Wright Brothers never imagined a super liner that could carry over 300 people. Shame on us if we abandon programs like the Shuttle and it’s successors because we can’t imagine what they might grow into.
I also think that the discussion of “next-generation” energy sources and propulsion systems was ill-concieved, but I will freely admit that delves a bit more into what is currently science fiction, and I will leave that for another time, and another post.
From the column: “Talk of hyperdrives and such is just Hollywood fantasy.”
You’re in good company, Cecil:
“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement”
– Lord Kelvin
“Space travel is bunk”
– Sir Harold Spencer Jones, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik
“There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the Unided States.”
– T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, 1961
“The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]…presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author’s insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished.”
– Sir Richard van der Riet Wooley, 1936
“That Professor Goddard with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react–to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”
– New York Times, 1920
Ironically, one of your own staff quoted this last one a couple of years ago:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mrockets.html
I guess you weren’t paying attention, huh?
I think we should separate (for sake of clarity) those who are against all manned space flight, and those that agree that, in retrospect, the space shuttle wasn’t all that great of an idea. Put me in the latter camp, even though it was better than nothing at all, and I would still go up in the shuttle if offered. What we should be concentrating on is getting beyond the technologically limited space shuttle (it can’t even get beyond a low-level earth orbit) and resume sending up manned rockets.
Fantastic post, Fuzzy!
I would far prefer the U.S. have a military presence in orbit, ready to use Goold Old Gravity as a strategic weapon, before any other country has one, as another must (inevitably) arrive at the same conclusion. This necessity is all very regrettable, and equally unavoidable.
FuzzyWuzzy was a bear
FuzzyWuzzy called it fair.
It would seem a least one reason to find a way of this “3rd rock” is to eventually have some place to build a new gene pool. After all the one we have now, the shallow end is over flowing.
Unfortunately, our ability to travel the great voids is more or less on par to the folks in the “B.C.” comic strip using a log to take a trip across a body of water to an island or the chiseled text on the tablet that was sent off or received at the shore line.
So I figure that even if the experiments that are getting conducted are totally worthless (and I don’t see how they could be since SOMETHING is learned), it gives people something to do.
Fuzzy:
Again, with the exception of the quote by Lord Kelvin, all of those deal with the attempt to do things that had never been done. The shuttle has flown. Its been done. The original question that Cecil is answering is should it be done again?
When did we go to Mars?
When did we go to Alpha Centauria?
When did we go to the end of the known Universe?
When did we visit our possible neighbors?
When did we explore ALL of God’s creation?
Please fill me in on the details because I would like to know the answers. Anyone else?
Opening the door to the great beyond is not doing all that can be done in the great beyond.
Give us a break.
Oblivion:
Valid point on exploration but
When are we planning to go to Mars?
When are we planning to go to Alpha Centauri?
etc.
If those are our plans, why are we risking valuable lives sending up the space shuttle which cannot go beyond low earth orbit?
My knowledge of this is ancient, so please correct me as you see fit.
One of the reasons that Columbus was reject by the various nation-states in the 15th century was the claim that he could reach the Orient faster by sailing west. He even had the “maps” prove the point. The high officials who heard this thought Columbus had been hitting the crack pipe. The diameter of the earth was pretty much known at that time, and that Chris was vastly underestimated the actual distance of going west to the Orient.
Eventually, Columbus convinced the King & Queen of Spain to finance the trip. I don’t recall how Chris manage to change there minds, given that they, too, knew the distances were suspect.
But the reasons for pre-Carribean cruise was for the money, power, and prestige if it was successful.
The US civilian space program is more or less a dinosaur of the moon program; which in turn was a result of our rivalry with the Soviets. It should have gone extinct in the 70’s. Because right now, it doesn’t provide us money (or power for that matter; expendable launch vehicals are cheaper and have more lift capability). On the other hand, the prestige factor for us is pretty good. No ruthless slaughter of natives, expropriation of land, etc. The “conquest of space” is a far more benign activity, then the “conquest of paradise.” I still support it because it’s about the only bigger-than-life activity that has universal appeal around the world. I’ve worked with a lot of international people, and whenever the subject has comes up, no one (at least on the surface) has indicated to me that they would turn down a chance to become an astronaut/cosmonaut/chinanaut. Sometimes you support something because it doesn’t have any practical benifits (e.g., art, novels), but it still is gratifying to watch.
As an aside, I would like nominate Columbus as a good reason for why geographical illiteracy is a good thing for Americans.
See, that Cecil?
You got a whole big bunch of lurkers and newbies to show up just because they didn’t like what you said.
I agree with them.
I’m going to reiterate a few points and contradict a few others, but please bear with me.
Colonization: I agree with Cecil on this one. It’s a crock. Interstellar travel doesn’t seem to be likely, so that’s out. And Cecil’s right about the inhospitable nature of the other planets in our solar system. The only way people are ever going to live off of earth in the long term is if they have a damned good reason, but that brings me to point number two:
Resources: There’s a crapload of stuff out there. One of the biggest examples that comes off the top of my head is heavy refractory metals. Iridium, for instance, is incredibly rare on Earth, but appears to be plentiful in the asteroid belt.* As of now, we’re making do with crap like tungsten. Also, while alloys like tungsten-titanum are theoretically possible, we can’t make it in the gravity well, because the tungsten settles to the bottom of the melt.
The “Coolness” Factor: You trivialized things with that characterization. Part of being human is reaching for things we can’t grasp. I thought better of you, Cecil.
I have more quibbles, but re-reading that article made me tired.
We will have to go sometime. We may as well start now.
*[sub]I said “appears,” because I don’t have a good study to cite, so I can’t speak authoratively.[/sub]
Abso-FREAKING-lutely Jam! Sign me up now. I would leave everybody and everything I know for a chance to go into space. I’d row, if I thought it would help, but going up in a 20 year old bucket of bolts will be fine, too. Of course, if enough people could learn to look a little beyond themselves and spend a few bucks, we wouldn’t have to send people up in craft that are older than your average car.
We are not risking lives.
The people who go up on those flights are volunteering to risk their lives. And the actual list of people willing to do this is long, but the potential list of people willing to do this is endless. It is their choice not yours or mine to risk their lives. Your proposition is false for your argument.
The Shuttle and all previous technologies are our first attempts to reach and explore space. If we could build the Enterprise right now we would. We can’t, so we build what we can, with what we have, and then set higher goals for the next round. To reach the Americas, thousands and thousands of years of Naval technology first had to be developed. The same applies here; except we are already 100% sure there is a place to go when the technology is ready.
We cannot run before we walk. We can not walk before we crawl. We can not crawl before we sit up. We can not sit up before we are born. We build upon what we learn, and if we don’t we fail. And failing is not what we want to do.
We all might agree that the Shuttle is way past its technological time, but to reach, or even think of reaching further goals, we need to use the Shuttle until it is no longer useful.
That time may have come as well. But it is a joke to think that since the Shuttle may be finished that it is time to scrap space travel. Ain’t gonna happen.
Look at the cost/benefit.
The cost is enormous. The orbiters are multi-billion-dollar pieces of equipment that cost $500 million to launch, and the 10,000 people involved in each launch earn paychecks, and there’s a huge infrastructure to maintain, and on and on.
The benefits, as Cecil points out, have been miniscule. Very little useful science, no documented spinoffs, “experiments” like seeing how ants react to microgravity. Why?
The shuttle program’s stated purpose was to take commercial and military payloads into orbit and to conduct science. Well, the science is proving to be barely useful, the military switched back to rocket launches after the Challenger, and commercial customers get cheaper launches from rockets.
Conclusion: The shuttle serves very little purpose beyond the “cool” factor. For the money we spend on it, we could conduct vastly greater research and exploration with unmanned probes.
“but who says that it needs to be subsidized by my tax dollars?”
Do you think you’d have that money back, if the government didn’t spend it on space travel?
Do you think your life would be improved if that money were spent elsewhere?
It’s a tiny amount, in terms of government expenditure. It could either infinitesimally increase our military might, or infinitesimally improve a bunch of federal programs, or increase government headcount. But instead it’s an investment in the future of the species.
I’d rather have another planet to visit or live on than a few shiny, new monuments to past wars. I’d rather have a system of detecting and diverting planet killing asteroids than an extra few planes and tanks. Of course, those things won’t come to our generation, but try to think long term, instead of as a greedy “what’s in it for me” type, who wouldn’t benefit from killing the space program anyway.
Space will be conquered and colonized. It may not be by America, though. We’re a little too interested in money.