I haven’t read The Hammer Of God, but if it indeed was written only five years before the movie Deep Impact then it sounds as if it was Clarke who was doing the ripping off. The Niven & Pournelle novel Lucifer’s Hammer, all about a comet strike which is several times referred to in the book as “the Hammer of God”, was published more than 25 years ago, in the '70s.
I have been thinking this over reading the posts and after my initaial emotional response I have to conceed some of Cecil’s arguments make sense. There is no set goal of Nasa and hasn’t seemed to be in years.
Actual Manned flights in the last decde or so have no really improved our knowledge as much as some would like to tout. Colonization seems a very distant dream that as of now seems too far away and current manned flights do not make that time line change in any way.
That all being said there are still two things that cross my mind. The first is the inspiration for continued exploration in the space sciences and increase of funds based on what are precieved to be tangible results (Men walking on the moon, living on a space station, being the oldest astronaut in space etc). I have a great awe of the unmanned program, especially Voyager I and II, the Viiking space craft and the Mariner series of craft we sent out.
But as humans we want to have a more tactile sense of being there. As our friend the Bad Astronomer puts so well the Astronaut’s names are remembered while the probes, whoes infromation and missions were important to that step are all but forgoten. We need to feel we’ve been there some how.
And secondly I bring up the “Genesis Rock” as an example of why we need to do the research ourself. We could have sent probes to the moon to collect samples and return them back cheaply but those probes would not, as our Astronauts did, spot the one rock that would reveal more than a tonne of samples.
A Probe is great for collecting the data we send it to find, a human being is capable of seeing something unexpected and recognizing its significence. We are able to change our “programming” when required and have the imagination to change the missions.
We need to find a better use for this quality and maybe regear our exploration. We stumble around now but we must continue because “it is cool” at present and will keep funding going until there is a more practical use of the manned program. And so long as otyhers are willing to take the risk I say go for it.
let me put a slightly different spin on the electrons in your
brains, if I may…
Consider the Apollo 11 landing for another second. People
remember Neil Armstrong stepping off of the LM footpad
and onto the lunar soil as momentous. It is certainly the
most significant event in space exploration and arguably
in the modern era. I remember the landing too.
What makes the “One small step” more significant than the
Eagle’s touchdown? Were not the Lunar Module and the
astronaut’s spacesuits each self contained and life sustaining?
Why don’t we consider the suits “spacecraft”? I can tell you
why: because they have a human shape. And our psyche is
tuned to recognize and empathize with that friendly shape.
I remember the first time I saw a high quality print of this
famous photo of Buzz Aldrin standing near the flag on the
lunar surface. It was in a museum and what jumped out at
me was that Aldrin’s face was visible. Suddenly it wasn’t
some kind of white cyclops facing off to the left, it was a
man inside a vessel. And that man was looking my way.
Robots and science and remote control and rock samples are
all well and good. “Research” is a rationalization; an excuse.
A way to make it all seem like a capitalistic investment. Stop
being so much like a bunch of Ferengi. (“Where’s the profit!?”)
Some of us are able to go into space with machines. I can.
I can sincerely say “We have been to Mars” because the
intrepid little Sojourner has trundled around on its red soil.
If absolutely nothing of value was learned --impossible!–
it would still have been a thrilling and worthwhile venture.
Notice how I ascribed human qualities to the rover with the
words “intrepid” and “trundled”. I assert that the popularity
and memorability of our space ventures is directly proportional
to how easy it is to anthropomorphize the hardware.
Nothing is better than a human in a spacesuit in that regard.
NASA’s purpose should be to get humans off this planet. To
make outer space a place to live. Not to camp, like we do now
in groups small enough to count on your fingers, but as real
residents. A place to work, play, sleep, and die of old age.
All other goals, probes, tests, and investigations are just to
pave the way. We need no mundane justifications, we have
expanded all the way around this planet.
The only way left is up.
- jam
If that’s the case, they’re going about it the wrong way. I don’t see the current manned space program accomplishing anything that progresses us to getting settlements off this planet. If I were in charge of getting humans off the planet, my first project would be to make something like a Biosphere practical. As Bob Park said, “Far larger and more elaborate than anything that could be transported to Mars, Biosphere-2 could not sustain eight humans. Columbia [University] is pulling out, but Biosphere-2 could still be useful. Anyone who proposes a space colony could be sent there to live for two years.” If you can’t make a Biosphere work, then there’s no use wasting all that effort on rockets.
I read an pretty scathing engineering break down on Biosphere-2, which pointed out that the design had numerous flaws, that if the developers (remember, it was an oil baron who came up with the whole thing) had been more interested in science than publicity would never have been allowed to make it into the design. Biosphere-2, as great as the idea behind it was, simply was an ornamental piece of crap.
I didn’t say settlements and I didn’t mean colonization.
Not necessarily anyway. I meant people leaving the Earth’s
surface and returning (or not) as they so desire. We do it
without technology to a height of a couple meters. (What’s
the barefoot high-jump record these days?) To a dozen
meters or so with bamboo-tech and daily to over ten
kilometers with aviation.
We don’t need to leap-frog low earth orbit. It is a worthy
destination in itself. I wouldn’t call three people a colony,
a settlement or even a good camping expedition, but it’s a
start. Get the population numbers at the ISS up into the
double digits and then we can talk like we’re serious.
When you can buy a Mr. Coffee at the local home center
that touts “operable in zero to 2.5 Gs” on its box, we will
have moved it the right direction.
I cheer for the people at XCOR and JP Aerospace. And for
NASA too. Despite a few naysayers (and Cecil?) I believe
civilization wants to spread beyond the atmosphere. The
pressure to go is high and still rising. You can’t travel by
remote control.
Am I the only person who is glad the Shuttle flights and
rocket launches don’t make the news unless there is an
accident? How exciting is it when a 747 departs Newark
uneventfully? This is good and proper.
Send out probes and robots as soon and as far as we can.
And when they find something interesting or subtle, send
a person to follow up.
I want to go. Failing that, I want somebody to go.
- jam
I think many posts on this column are from people watching too much Star Trek and Space Odyssey. If we are unable to solve the immediate probelms facing our civilization (overpopulation, disease, food shortages, safe water, the tendancy to slaughter one another, etc.) space travel and exploration will truly become a monumental boondoggle.
I am not saying that we should not go there, someday. We should just get our priorities in order. Fanciful drivel about "reaching for the stars’ serves no immediate purpose other than to divert our attendtion from less sexy, earthbound problems that are tougher to solve. There are many bright minds focused on the space folly - perhaps it is time to redirect the efforts until we have the luxury to pursue space exploration.
Also, I want to point out that Columbus and Queen Isabella did not bear the burden alone of developing sea travel. That was done over several thousand years a the cost of thousands of human lives. Columbus just hapened to be using the most modern technology of the day and got lucky with a strong tail wind. And, while the Wright brothers did prove human flight was possible, they alone did not bear the cost of developing a 747.
It all coms down to cost, resources, time, and priority. What problems do we want to solve first?
I hope I’m not repeating someone else’s points, I didn’t read the whole thread.
Methinks our space folklore picked up where gods, angels, and flying chariots left off. As soon mankind developed technology that could enter outer space, we wanted to send men as well as machine out there. In short order, we did.
The folklore mythology, in the form of science fiction took flights of fancy from Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, to Star Wars and Star Trek. Scientists kept us ever mindful of the unfathomable mathematics of outer space, and how, under Einstein’s theory, matter could never approach the speed of light. Nonetheless, our dreams of space colonies and interstellar travel persisted as the dominant theme of science fiction.
In reality, it looks like outer space is even more incompatible with biological life than even conservative scientists once believed. NASA said little of the constant nausea of weightlessness. There is also evidence of physiological deterioration in the absence of gravity. For example, bones begin to decalcify. Even if we developed a spacecraft that could supply us for a manned mission to Jupiter’s moons, who’s to say our astronauts would not be blobs of jelly nuked by cosmic rays?
Cecil’s right, though. Manned space flight is cool. Our missions have been an inspiring achievment for mankind. However, after the Columbia disaster (an appropriate word, for it means “ill-starred”) I’m on the side of those who say we should put the manned program to bed. We could accomplish much more and cheaper via robotics. Anyway, that’s my two cents.
On it’s face, this might not be such a good argument, since it must be far cheaper to build a new satellite and booster, and replace the malfunctioning one, than to send up a crewed repair mission–with some obvious exceptions like the Hubble telescope. If we believe in the value of science, then we must maintain a manned orbital spaceflight program for that reason alone.
I’m totally pro-space-exploration, and consider the lack of progress since the 1960’s to be a major disappointment. At the same time, I feel that we are the victims of a cruel cosmological joke. We want to explore the universe and roam the stars. We fantasize in TV shows and movies about interstellar exploration and trade, and try to tell ourselves it’s just like the earthly Age of Exploration, only bigger. This yearning to explore seems to be part of our very nature. But…the laws of this universe seem to be stacked against our ever doing so. Distance and the impossibility of exceeding the speed of light seem to be the chains that hold us earthbound. AFAIK interstellar hyperdrive is still in the realm of fantasy.
Wait a minute, that’s it! Space Romance! That’s our incentive for manned spaceflight!
How many people wouldn’t like the idea of “joining the 200-mile-high club” and doing the horizontal lambada in zero gravity?
I wrote a Pit thread about that, shortly before 9/11. Don’t have time to search for it now.
People are forgetting that we humans, like to be able to use our senses when we’re investigating things. Robots can’t really do that. One of the most amazing things to me is that according to the Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon, it smells like spent gunpowder. Wonder what Mars smells like?
Quoth harrmill:
Except that space travel can help with all of those, and in fact already has contributed to at least some of them. Overpopulation, space can’t help, yet, but eventually, it may become practical to have extraterrestrial colonies. The medical equipment developed for the manned space program has helped a lot versus disease in general. Food shortages usually stem from political problems (about which more, in a moment), and space technology (admittedly unmanned) has taught us a lot about what causes droughts and how to predict them, which is the first step towards alleiviating them. And manned space travel above all certainly helps solve our tendancy to slaughter each other. While I won’t claim that the Apollo-Soyez mission was the only thing which kept the U. S. and U. S. S. R off of each others’ throats, or even the primary thing, it certainly helped. Likewise the International Space Station, and the joint missions to Mir, and the personnel training with each other. Not to mention the importance of “busy-work” for scientists who would otherwise go into weapons research (and not necessarily for the good guys, either).
I cannot totally disagree with Chronos. Sure, the space program has yielded a few items to benefit humanity, however, can someone show me how the space program has really contributed to solving earthbound problems? Name a few medical developments that are helping the fight against some of the nasty diseases we are facing today such as the West Nile Virus, AIDS, Cancer? As for predicting droughts, and events like El Nino, most data comes from terrestrial collection. My point is the resources and brain power being expended to overcome gravity for this fanciful world we have created in space is a waste when we are facing some pretty tough problems at home.
While the ISS looks good on paper for relations with Russia, communism in the former USSR was already waning, and we were becoming frinds anyway. You don’t really beleive the ISS had anything to do with that, do you? Check your Klingon-English/English-Klingon dictionary for the term “Flat Broke” to describe the Russian space program, and they needed the US coat-tails to keep them going. Their major contribution has been finding people foolish enough to spend long times up there as human experiments themselves. Otherwise these Russian “scientists” would be making Mc-Borscht.
As for keeping people in orbit for exploration; let’s face it, while doing experiments on ant colonies in space seems trival, it all leads to the pessimistic goal of being able to aim some weapons at our enemies from space. Recall that Alfred Nobel invented Dynamite explosive for something much different that what human nature ended up using it for. Every modern invention that had peaceful goals has ended up in the military arsenal: ships, airplanes, satellites, tractors (tanks), explosives, pesticides and other chemicals, etc. Are we naive enough not to believe that orbiting missile launch platforms are at least part of the ballgame here?
As for space colonies, I respectfully disagree. This is the only home any of us alive today will ever know. We need to keep it healthy, as well as ourselves, if we expect our species to survive long enough to develop technology that would allow such a thing. Fix important problems now, space travel later.
harrmill, let’s see, humans have been around for roughly 100,000 years in some form or another. In all that time, we’ve yet to find the solution to all our problems. Sure, we’ve found cures and treatments for a good number of diseases, managed to alievate some problems, but for everyone we find a solution to, a worse problem crops up. (We wipe out smallpox, and AIDS comes along, for example.) The mere $15 billion or so that NASA gets yearly, wouldn’t make a dent in those problems if it was diverted to other things. We’ve spent far more money, time, and effort on things other than space travel, and haven’t seen an end to war or disease or homelessness or hundreds of other worthy endeavours that mankind tries to solve.
kingpengvin said:
It may appear this way, with no stated goal with declared schedule, like with Apollo. However, there is something of a plan.
Step 1: reliable access to space. This was the Shuttle. Arguments abound over how successful this has been, but it’s done reasonably well given other political constraints.
Step 2: space station. This is in works. It has taken far longer than intended or anticipated. Numerous reasons abound, but not the least of which are political decisions, i.e. mandated redesigns, incorporate the Russians. However, it is now in works.
Step 3: conduct research for extended space missions. This includes life support equipment development, and medical studies on the long term effects of space on humans. You can’t build a space colony, or even a mission to Mars, without dealing with these two problems. The length of travel makes even a Mars mission difficult to rely solely on direct supply from Earth. Food supplies, for instance, have a habit of going bad, and even if not, fresh fruit and vegetables are pretty necessary. Similarly, carrying enough water and oxygen for such a trip becomes a logistics nightmare if using the Apollo methods (bag all waste). Long term plans need to find ways to recycle waste products to extend their useful life and cut down on supplies. Extended weightlessness has health effects, causing muscle loss and bone density loss. This would affect a Mars crew by putting them on the red planet too weak to actually do anything, and risking their lives upon return to Earth. So studies need to be conducted into how to fight the losses and counteract them. Or develop gravity analogs (i.e. centripetal force). These are part of the plan for ISS.
Step 4: aim for human mission to explore Mars. Return to the moon for extended stays. Hunt down asteroids for study and potential gathering for resources. Whatever ideas come along.
You can’t just jump into step 4, without dealing with the above steps. Now because of the delays in building ISS and the realities of how Shuttle turned out, some would say we’re really back to step 1, needing to work on reliable access to space. NASA’s hope is to continue with step 2 while improving step 1. But that takes things like money, and political will.
CurtC said:
It’s not nearly as publicized and Biosphere 2, but Johnson Space Center is currently engaged in life science research for developing extended systems. These include closed chamber tests for extended periods using totally closed systems. They already have a system for recycling urine to fresh water (though it is not being used on ISS). Under development includes plant growth chambers to produce oxgen, recycle carbon dioxide, and produce some amounts of food. These programs are not nearly on the scope of Biosphere 2, recreating the complete biological system to function independently. Something like that is certainly needed for space colonies. But the development projects are piecemeal works. First you develop a system that does some recycling. Then you work on it. The systems currently in works could be implemented for a human Mars exploratory mission. There are already facilities being built for a two year closed system test. NASA is working on this, you just don’t hear about it.
harrmill
The problems you cite are far more political in nature than technological. Well, disease isn’t political, but providing health care affordably to deal with the diseases we do know how to treat, for instance, is highly a political issue. Dealing with spreading advanced western health care to poor countries in Africa is a hugely polical issue. Food shortages are the politics of getting the food from where it can be grown (U.S. plains states) to where it’s needed (Somalia). The tendency to slaughter one another seems to be a part of human nature, not going to be defeated by technology but by dedicated efforts to understand each other and let each other be.
Technological spinoffs don’t fall straight from the space program into a comfortable commercial niche. There is give and take between the developments created for space exploration and how they are then implemented into use. However, the ideas and applications developed for space are fed into the industrial and educational research fields for evaluation and basis for further work.
Or making rockets for China, or helping Saddam get the bomb, or supporting North Korea.
So what, are you a Luddite? Look, your complaint against technology is really a complaint against politics. It’s politics that determines that the use of inventions needs to be for war, not peace. Eliminating the human space program won’t have any effect on eliminating the needs for military applications.
I have to agree with Cecil that we need a better reason to continue our manned space flight program. I think that the solution lies along the lines of the previously mentioned space elevator or some other form of economical heavy lifter, perhaps a reusable Saturn V-like drone that glides back to Earth for recovery. Whether or not the elevator approach itself is valid, it has all the right elements:
This gives us a new 21st century approach towards conquering space, more efficiently and more cheaply, and perhaps with fewer environmental concerns (other than having it crashing to the planet as Kim Stanley Robinson illustrated with that catastrophe in his book Red Mars. This could well be the showstopper for the elevator idea). Once you have the reasonably priced, efficient, quick turnaround lift, then, you have a starting point for building a serious space station. I’m talking about a HUGE structure with an economical lift that serves as the umbilical cord for it. Let’s face it: robots ain’t gonna build the thing.
It provides some short-term gains. Just making the material used for the elevator cabling for example, could be the first major spin-off. There won’t be anything else like it, and considering how much of it we would need; already we’d be on our way towards mass production of the stuff. In a decade or so we could have lifted enough mass and people to begin industrial production of items best manufactured in microgravity. Such a space presence with launching facilities would enable the building, placement, and potential to maintain large satellites unlike what we have now, and doing so more cost-effectively. Now you can do scientific experiments on a large scale. Now you can build large numbers space-going vessels for mining and exploration that could not be launched from earth economically. In time you could have the critical mass needed for a potential autonomous permanent biosphere that would require a large-scale structure to support it; there are plenty of spin-offs from simply understanding the ecological ramifications of a biosphere that would have practical uses on Earth. Even tourism for the wealthy could become common and a moneymaker.
Because of the high cost such a project, the best long-term approach is to encourage all nations to participate as heavily as they can, to be shareholders or partners. We are doing this to some extent with the ISS, but let’s take it a step further. If we can provide a platform for investment (pun intended) on orbit, producing usable goods and science that could be accessible to all nations that choose to invest, perhaps such a project would provide a strong incentive for all involved to play nice here on Earth via our common investment. I really think the greatest chance for world peace is for all nations to become economically interdependent to where harming another is shooting yourself in the foot. Such a massive investment could be a start in that direction. It would be kind of ironic though if going off planet was what it took to do so.
I have to say cecil was an idiot when he did this column.
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He used the strictest and stupidest concept of “creating Technology” If it was not owned by NASA and made by scientists paid for by NASA, then it was not a NASA spin off. By his method, GPS, something that would be IMPOSSIBLE to sue without the many advances NASA made in the sixties, is not a NASA product. Sure. We could build the radio transmitters without NASA but Cecil seems totally unwilling to admit that the huge GPS business would be nowhere without NASA rockets to put those satelites up.
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He seems to think that negative research results are worthless
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He ignores teh real fact that we are making progress in technology.
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He uses the strictest definitons of “current technology” to say we still can’t do anything. That is bullcrap. We KNOW how to build an Orion startshpi that can get to Alpha Centauri in less then ten years. Yet Cecil tries to pretend we can’t do this. Yes would be expensive to do, and yes it would be politically unfeasible (Tell people you want to build a spaceship that uses small nuclear bombs as fuel and they get really angry) But we DO have the technology to do it TODAY.
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He fails to understand the IMMENSE value of the minerals etc. in our solar system. We can and will be minig the asteroid belt in the next 200 years. It is way to profitable not to do it.
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He has no vision of the future and no idea of long term research. Some things take a long time. That does not mean we should wait till we know how to do it quicker. That means we should start studing it NOW and hope we learn enough so that when we can do the hard stuff we understand the basics well.
I’ve heard many people say that microgravity research is necessary to make a manned trip to Mars reasonable, but that’s a faulty argument. There’s no reason to send astronauts to Mars in microgravity, even with current technology. All you need to do is spin the ship, and you’ve got pseudogravity which is good enough for any bodily purpose. We could build a spinning space station, too, for that matter, except that that would defeat the purpose of the station. The reason we have the station is that we want a microgravity environment. That’s not the case for a vessel which is going somewhere.
There is also a coriolis effect in addition to the centrifugal force that provides artificial gravity. For instance, if you throw a ball upward towards the axis, it will move sideways rather then drop back into your hand. At speeds great enough for earthlike gravity, if you turn your head the wrong way, you might lose your balance, or your lunch.
It seems at least in the case of a station, you need a pretty large structure, half a mile diameter would be good, in order to get something akin to get earthlike gravity at a slower spin. Or build a couple smaller stations connected by a cable or a tube and spin them.
On the other hand, as you move closer to the axis of the station from its outermost walls (or the middle of the tube) the effect diminishes to a point where you will still have your microgravity.
Regarding a spacecraft, if you had some advanced fuel for accelerating to the equivalent of 1g that would work without spin, but that would require moving at speeds nearly suitable for interstellar travel, most likely a long way off.
No person has ever contracted the West Nile Virus, AIDS, or Cancer while he or she was in space! See how well the space program works? 