A lot of these messages, including mine above, have focused on how to go to space. That’s a distraction from why to go to space.
After all, automation and remote manipulation is moving ahead by leaps and bounds. It’s not too much of a stretch to think we could be mining the moon and the asteroids with robots within the next 25 years. Maybe a whole lot quicker.
On earth, putting a man in the loop in a mostly-robot environment is often much, much cheaper than figuring out how to get the current robots or a new one to handle the hard parts of a process. In space, putting a man on-site causes the cost to skyrocket (pun sort of intended.) Therefore, it’s very much worth the extra effort and expense of designing the human out of the loop.
So, in the end, it really comes down to: We just gotta. And that’s okay. Personally, I think that’s a valid reason. I’m starry-eyed. I want to go.
But, should the government be the primary developer and operator of the technology needed to take people to space? Even some very anti-big-spending advocates seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking that we must rely on the government to pull this sort of thing off. I’m not so sure that’s true, anymore. We needed a government mandate for the Apollo race. But I don’t think it’s working well for reliable access to space and space station operations.
Tangent: Spinning the ship is not as simple as it sounds. Studies in the past have shown that greater than one rpm results in fairly severe disorientation. In order to get 1 G at one rpm the structure needs to be one mile across. (That’s why O’Neill’s colonies were the size they were.) That can of course be mitigated by not requiring an entire 1 G. And by building an asymetric structure with the living quarters on the end of a cable attached to most of the mass of the ship at the other end of the cable. But then you’d have to reel it in to maneuver, etc. Plus, the structures in the ship have to be stronger, and thus more massive, than if they’re designed for use in 0 G, which increases fuel needs. That change becomes a non-trivial very quickly.
While I agree in principle, Cecil did (in the thread if not the column) make the distinction between manned spaceflight and unmanned spaceflight. Of course, there is some overlap in what constitutes each.
The profitability is arguable. Until and unless we can get lauch costs down significantly (the magic number I always here is $100 per pound), it is more expensive to try to get there than it is mine mine on Earth. However, the profitability goes up if you consider costs of cleaning up afterwards and environmental impacts. If launch costs came down and off-Earth processing could be feasible, it would reduce the pollution aspects, and that might be a motivating factor.
Chronos said:
Others have already pointed out the constraints on spinning your vehicle, leading to very large size vehicles. Large size means more fuel, higher moments of inertia, etc.
Another point to consider, Mars has lower gravity than Earth. Any trip to Mars will not be a few days, like the lunar missions, but will last months (if not a year). That means long term low gravity effects on the astronauts, whether they spend any time in microgravity or not. We still need to understand how to combat the effects. Sure, hiking around on the Mars surface will be a slower degradation than floating in weightlessness on the trip, but there will still be effects that need to be understood and dealt with. Or you risk returning your astronauts too weak and with too brittle bones to come home.
How well established are the effects of low (but not zero) gravity on biology? There’s been plenty of research on the effects of free-fall, but so far as I know, the longest any living thing has ever been in reduced gravity was the few days the Appolo astronauts spent on the Moon. How much gravity is needed? It can’t be a linear scale, or two gs would be twice as good as one g. It might even be the case that Martian or Lunar gravity is healthier than Earth’s. At the very least, there would be some minimum acceleration at which the damage would be at an acceptable level.
Which also means that you might not have to spin your ship up to a full g, which could significantly reduce the size requirements.
There’s been some research on this, but I don’t recall what it is, nor do I have the time to do a search at NASA’s site, but I remember hearing something about it, where they figured out that it wouldn’t take much (less than the Moon’s gravity) to prevent bone problems, muscle loss, however seemed to still be a bit of a problem, IIRC.
I think the “because it’s cool” explanation has been glossed over too quickly. When you really think about it, most of what we do is done for “coolness”.
If we were coldly practical, we’d think only about the same things a shark does. Our technology would never have gotten beyond sharp rocks and fire. We would have no curiosity, and no art, music, literature, or entertainment of any kind. There would be no romance, no friendship, no philosophy, no fads and fashions, no religion, and history would be limited to useful food-finding tips.
We are NOT coldly practical beings. In light of this, I suggest that we go into space for the same reason we do the things listed above: it amuses us! It helps relieve the boredom by giving us something to think about other than the tedious business of putting food in our mouths.
Only on the day that a majority of humanity stops doing everything impractical (buying CD’s, watching TV, reading Straight Dope, playing, praying, wishing, having non-reproductive sex, fighting over anything other than food, etc etc etc) will anyone have standing to dismiss space exploration because “it doesn’t get us anything”.
I don’t think spaceflight will be easy, not for a long while. Looking at the energies and costs involved seems to show that the breakeven point is probably several decades, if not centuries ahead.
However ther sun is still out there, emitting a trillion times the amount of energy that we use onEarth each day, and Mercury and the Near earth Objects are in an ideal position to establish a high tech civilisation…
given that extra hundred years, humans will be perhaps living longer thanks to medical advances, technology might incorporate nanoscale manipulation of matter, and computers (if not actually conscious) will be capable of processing data on a scale we can barely imagine.
It is even possible that some people alive today will survive long enough to benefit from neural-uploading tech or life extension, allowing them to take the long view necessary for colonisation within and outside the solar system, building space elevators on Earth and Mars. so on and so on.
It is wrong to imagine that we will get rapid economical benefits from space colonisation, and wrong to imagine that society will stand still while the necessary slow preparations are made.
Today’s society has much in common with the world of 1900, for instance, but it is also very, very different.
By 2100, by which time spaceflight should be a major part of the economy, society will be changed to an even greater extent, in ways we can only speculate on. But some people alive today will be there to see it.
Vlad Dracul, I think you miss a detail. The argument of many is not so much that the coolness factor is not enough for humans to be going into space, but that it is not enough for the government to be paying for it. If people want to further space flight, as opposed to making symphonies or playing football, then they should do so as a private endeavor, not with tax dollars.
Chronos, I agree that more research is needed, and that one g may not be required for a maintenance level. Realize that for a Mars mission, there will be an extended period of low gravity. Thus my point, more research is needed. Low gravity research cannot really be researched on Earth, ergo microgravity research on ISS.
Irishman, I agree wholeheartedly that I, not the government, should be deciding what to do with my money! Where do I show up for the revolution?
Some people DO think space is a total waste of effort. I was just calling attention to the fact that space is no more pointless than the vast majority of other things we (and our government) expend our time and resources on, and should not be singled out for special condemnation.
The US budget is none of my business, of course, just thought I’d find this out while waiting for my bus…
Let’s see, NASA’s slice of the US budget, divided by… I’ll have to use the entire population, since I don’t know how large a part of the population are taxpayers and my WAGs are as W as As get, and I also don’t know your tax system well enough. If you assume that taxpayers pay for non-taxpayers (like, kids and CEOs =) and everyone pays the same share…
15 cents a day? =)
I’d happily send you a quarter if you want me to, but unfortunately I don’t have much US currency.
