That’s a fair question by itself, Hobie. Let’s face it-- the Space Shuttle is a ancient (designed circa 1970, for Chrissakes), creaky system in dire need of replacement. And the sooner we get NASA out of the exploration business the better.
As for the larger question of space exploration and how present-day technologies fit in, I would point out that Columbus didn’t cross the Atlantic in log canoes. And just like Columbus (and his predecessors), we’re going to have to experiment with crappy stuff before we finally hit upon the techniques to build vessels suitable for our purposes. (Case in point being Bussard ramjets to get us to Alpha Centauri-- the theory was worked out in detail decades ago, but we have absolutely no good ideas as to how to build one now, and probably won’t for a century to come.)
I think that the truth is somewhere in the middle. As others have pointed out, satellites are very important. However, it needs to be decided whether we’re talking about manned spaceflight or all spaceflight. I don’t know if all satellites could be launched in unmanned rockets or not. We couldn’t have fixed the Hubble Telescope without them, though. Also, I believe that the shuttle has a larger payload capability.
Some of NASA’s experiments seem trivial, but perhaps we don’t know why they’re important. However, I’m leaning toward busywork on some of them. Maybe we could scale back manned spaceflight and use it just for the most important stuff.
I wouldn’t rule out distant space travel. People thought it was impossible to fly until the Wright brothers did it. Even then, some didn’t believe it. They thought the same thing about the sound barrier. Maybe they’re wrong about this too.
To be fair to Cecil, he may just be taking a short-term perspective: further exploration of space probably won’t do a lot for us. Now. He just can’t peer into the future with a long enough lens. This seems to be a common trait with many of us Americans. We tend to look for immediate results. It’s very difficult for many people to visualize the effects of current actions two years into the future, much less two hundred. How about two thousand?
As other posters have pointed out, we look back on success of the Wright brothers with the benefit of 100 years hindsight, and on Columbus with 500 years. Humans have been pushing the tennological envelope at an ever increasing rate for the past 10,000 years. From THAT perspective, I just can’t see how we can eventually NOT expand to the limits of our known environment (ie., space).
Unless of course, we destroy ourselves first, as allowed by the Drake equation…
Have there been any significant changes to the shuttle? If there have and I am not aware of them, please give me a cite that I can read and learn. Can the shuttle now do significantly more than it used to? Where is this next step that you are talking about?
Don’t we want to succeed? Aren’t we trying to do more than just not fail? What is our ultimate goal and what is being done to achieve that?
The problem, Reds, is that you, like Cecil, are being very short-sighted. How long has it taken us to really reap the benefits of the early American explorers, 400 years. Sure, there was some exploitation going on there, but a lot of people lost a lot of money and a lot of lives to get us to the most prosperous nation today. Back in the 1500’s did they have any clue how it would turn out 500 years later. Absolutely not. You can go back through history and look at various predictions that the politicians, philosophers, and scientists made and you will note that they are all staggeringly bad. Humans are terrible at guessing the future. And, we’ve only been in space for a few decades. Give it a little while.
Sure, the space program reaps few benefits right now, but what about in 100 years? 200? 1000? Can you really tell me that you are so much smarter than every human who has ever lived that you can predict the future.
Well, I can: if we quit pushing into space then in 100, 200, or 1000 years we still won’t be there. We’re not going to get there without trying, that’s for sure.
Trying to make any useful predictions about the future usefulness of space exploration is utterly ridiculous. As always, there is still so much we don’t know. And there is still so much that we don’t even know what we don’t know. There have been many times in our history that people have basically said, “Well, we know it all now, might as well quit.” Were they ever right?
I think there are two separate issues here, regarding exploration: 1) Is manned space exploration and colonization a real possibility for the future? 2) Does the current Shuttle program have anything to do with it?
The essential technology used today for space exploration is really the same as it’s always been. And it is totally inadequate for practical interstellar travel, and extremely clunky even for travel within our solar system. There’s no clear progession that would lead us now to believe that we could someday travel to the stars. What possibly can be gained in knowledge by having more shuttles orbiting Earth?
A much more apt Columbus analogy would be that he was given the go-ahead by Queen Isabella, but spent the next twenty years circling the Canary Islands. In Columbus’s day, global exploration was conceivable using only existing technology. But practical space travel would need technology that is currently only a fantasy. Columbus’s only big breakthrough was to point his ships west. If there is a breakthrough to be made, it will happen in a physics lab, not in a shuttle floating around the Earth.
And there are valid reasons why many think that a Star Trek-like future is not possible. There are very real limits to how fast something can travel. It’s not going to cut it simply to say that someday we’ll have technology to do the job. That kind of technology isn’t tinkered up in a garage like the Wright brothers did. It must have its beginning in pure scientific theory, and the numbers so far don’t look good.
Many of the arguments in favor of manned space exploration sound more like motivational speeches given to kids at Space Camp than a realistic, scientific approach to the problem. The “because it’s there” attitude is understandable, but can’t all of that money be spent on the things that really threaten our existence? Many people believe that a giant asteroid headed for us should be the least of our worries. Look into the problems that overpopulation is bringing (famine, disease, war) and it’s only gettting more crowded.
I disagree that I’m being short-sighted. And I never suggested we end space exploration. Quite the opposite.
I believe we would reap far greater scientific benefit, WHILE exploring many more areas more quickly, if the money we currently spend on manned space flight were instead spent on a large number of unmanned probes.
**Oblivion[\b] Thanks for the links. As I said earlier, I am at work so it will be a while before I can read through all. You were not rude at all, that’s what discussion is about and I may have missed something although you haven’t convinced me yet.
**DLandWrrfan[\b]
[quote]
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.[\quote]
Not to be flip but as someone once said, “a billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money”
Again, there is no way you can know that. There are so many so-called scientific “truths” that were once believed to be hard and fast laws that have since been overturned. How can you possibly believe that after all of the evidence that all the times we thought we knew it all we really didn’t, that we finally do know it all?
And you contradict your own argument. If we stop funding space exploration, then any new space travel technology will pretty much have to be “tinkered up in a garage”, won’t it? If you want to have good scientific research on the subject, it’s most likely going to have to come from government or government funded sources. That’s exactly what I’m saying, that we shouldn’t be trying to cobble something up in a garage. That we should be spending real money and doing real research on it.
I don’t think the money going to NASA is inhibiting people getting food, shelter or protection.
I think that those problems are a matter of bad governments, bad management of resources, bad information, and just plain bad people.
I think that if we fixed those things, without changing a thing in where the money is going, is a much better answer than taking the money from NASA and throwing it into the systems that exist now.
If we fixed those problems, I think we would have even more “extra” money to spend on space and still have more food, shelter and protection.
Bottom line: Space exploration spending is not the problem, and stopping the spending is not the solution.
I was a little disappointed by Cecil’s answer. While his unapproachable intellect can, and does, span the range of human reactions, it seems a shame that – while being accurate with facts – he expressed cheap cynicism instead of a seizing a chance to lift us as readers away from petty mundane things and into contemplation of life’s purpose.
After all, why do we do anything? Of course, we have to eat and sleep, and are driven to indulge in physical sensations, but surely, our lives must have more than this. To help others, to make a better place, and indeed to learn and explore new things – isn’t that why we bother to get out of bed in the morning?
And who better than Cecil to make that point? Maybe, that is what the Enlightened Master was doing by saying it’s ‘cool’, and if so, then I have only shown my own shortcomings in failing to appreciate it.
Yes. As new technology became available, NASA crammed it into the shuttle. Or did you think that they were still using the same 20-year-old computer systems when you can go to Best Buy and buy rig that’s five hundred times more powerful for less than a grand?
This is what people are referring to when they mention the skeptics being short-sighted. To go back to the Columbus analogy again… how long did it take man to design boats big enough to carry him to the New World? A couple years? A couple decades, maybe?
Nah. A couple THOUSAND years.
And I don’t know about you, but I fully expect man to be around a couple thousand years from now. The steps we take NOW determine how well-equipped man will be in the future. If we decide to just sit on our thumbs… well… people will still just be sitting on their thumbs by the turn of the next century. Think of all that can be done, in a single century.
We don’t know what’s possible, orthicon. Nor have we ever. Nor will we ever. We just keep banging on.
Let’s all take a look at history. There have always been people who said, “it’s impossible 'cause it’s hard.” And people who’ve said, “it’s impossible 'cause it’s just impossible.”
And yet we make progress. I suspect it doesn’t matter what we chatter about today. Stuff will get done anyway.
Yes, the Space Shuttle is an obsolete compromise that should be replaced soonest, but Cecil was slamming ANY kind of manned space flight.
Orthicon, your quote: “…but can’t all of that money be spent on the things that really threaten our existence? … Look into the problems that overpopulation is bringing … and it’s only gettting more crowded.” strikes me as almost amusing. This is the greatest reason why we need a manned space program. The asteroid thing is just an example of how vulnerable we still choose to be. A friggin rock can wipe us out, and we don’t even care.
Sorry, that’s what I get for doing too many things at once. I did not mean updating the technology that was on the shuttle originally. Of course they did that as it came along. But the shuttle still does essentially what is has done for the past almost 25 years. It just does it better. I was talking about the essential shuttle.
I apologize if anyone felt insulted. I have the greatest respect for the brave and talented individuals that have been sacrificed to the manned space programs of all nations. It’s just that I question whether the sacrifice has really been “worthwhile.”
The Columbus/Wright Bros. arguments don’t hold water. Columbus didn’t take three wooden ships and some trinkets to the Moon. The Wright Bros. Flyer didn’t go to Mars. All they did was take available technology and use it in new and different, though reasonable, ways.
The real analogy would be Columbus and his men setting out for the Indies on logs or the Wright Bros. gluing feathers together to make wings or trying to create a doughnut-shaped black hole we could fly the shuttle through to see if we wound up on the far side of the Universe conveniently near a planet that would sustain us.
Here’s my new bargain:
Find a place in the Universe other than Earth capapble of sustaining human, animal and plant life.
Demonstrate a technology that might conceivably take us there.
Then, and only then, would I:
Grant that the sacrifice just might have been worth it.