Let another generation dream (space exploration)

Great Debates
1

We have a few conversations bouncing around here about funding space exploration. Tied up in this is a lot of talk about America losing its vision, forgetting how to dream, etc.

This is what I have to say- we have not forgotten how to dream. We just have different ones. They are not better or worse, but they are ours.

The space generation grew up in an America that knew both prosperity and fear. There was a very real need for America to maintain its hegemony, and all of this was played out in the space race. This was a time when there was a belief that science could do anything if it put its mind to it. Accordingly, people dreamed big about going into space. And they didn’t worry so much about more mundane things. Antibiotics were still a wonder drug. Medicine was evolving rapidly. The belief was that disease was just a few years from being a thing of the past. So they had bigger fish to fry- like getting to the moon.

And as the generation raised in this environment grew up and came into power, they did their best to make it a reality.

But their time is over. A new generation is waiting in the wings.

I came of age in the 1990s. It was a time of prosperity, security, and hope. America had no enemies. Indeed, the world had no enemies. For the first time in human history, we could envision a peaceful, cooperative world. Globalization was just starting to become a force and the internet slowly trickled into our world, opening our world to both new knowledge and new people. At the same time, we began to feel the impact of environmental degradation- I grew up with acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer. But even this came with hope. I remember my copy of “100 simple things you can do to save the earth.” I believed that my actions could make a difference. In the meantime, we also learned a lot more about problems that science can’t solve. AIDS was a scary rumor in our youth, and has spread like wildfire, exacting a horrific human toll with no sign of stopping. We know that science isn’t going to fix everything. In order to be healthy, peaceful and sustainable, we feel that we are going to have to make some real commitments and take action.

And now we are starting to make the rules, to implement our vision of the future.

We dream of environmental sustainability, when America- and indeed prosperity itself- no longer looks like this. Although the acid rain and ozone layer hole of our youth proved to be a washup, even our memories are long enough to notice how weather has changed in our short lifetimes. Something is wrong, and we are not convinced that science is going to come up with a magic solution. We are willing to look at lifestyle changes, even uncomfortable ones, to get back to sustainability. In the meantime, we will devote a huge amount of our scientific capacity to solving these problems.

We dream of world peace. September 11th shocked us, but not as much as it shocked people older than us. I think we were more shocked by everything that followed. We think more globally, and we are disturbed by what seems to be a clear link between poverty and war. We don’t want to contribute to that. We want America to be a peaceful country in a peaceful world, without any need for superpowers. This means that we are not gnashing our teeth at “America’s decline.” We don’t remember when America needed to fight to be on top- we came of age as the Soviet Union broke up, and the dream then of a truly global system. I think we recognize that a result of peace and globalization is that America will fade into the background a bit- which we are not convinced is that bad of a place to be.

Meanwhile, we look upon the world with growing concern about inequality. We came to age during Live Aid for Africa. We sang “We are the World” as kids, and now we are making those promises a reality. We came up with the Millennium Development Goals. And we believe it is attainable. When we were kids, people used “Asia” in the same breathe as “Africa” when talking about the sick and starving. Now Asia has blossomed into a vibrant, prosperous continent. Latin America has gone from a backwater to a powerhouse. We don’t see why the same change couldn’t come to Africa. Indeed, it is already there. Africa’s economy is growing rapidly. Health, education, gender equality and prosperity is higher than it has ever been. We are not so arrogant as to believe we can beat all poverty everywhere. But we believe we can create a more prosperous world all around.

In short, America still dreams. We dream of a prosperous, safe, sustainable world. We dream of beating poverty. We dream of putting the science we already have to use- there are tons of diseases we could eradicate with just a tiny bit of political will. Indeed, most infectious disease now is an effect of poverty, not of biology.

The space generation had their chance. They got us right on the edge of nuclear war a few times, and while they did a lot of good, they also did a lot of bad. It’s our turn now.

2

:confused: Are you arguing for space exploration or against it?

3

I enjoyed reading that; it was an eloquent summary of how many of today’s youth feel.

But I disagree with your unspoken premise (if I understand it correctly), that in order to achieve our other dreams, we must move on from the outmoded dream of space exploration. IMO, space exploration isn’t holding us back from any of those things. Economics and human greed are.

NASA’s budget is less than 1% of US federal spending. Not even one freaking percent. The National Science Foundation estimates that federal spending on academic research is something like 55 billion dollars, or still shy of 2% of the budget.

ALL of science could use a boost: space, environment, medical, all of it. The discussion shouldn’t be how to divide that 2% among all the research that has to happen, but how to get it a bigger slice of the pie and perhaps how to make the pie bigger overall. And for that you have to tackle things like social security, defense spending, medicare, and tax rates.

An argument could be made that space research is offering less return on investment for our most immediate social and environmental problems, but the value of forward-looking technological investment is rarely obvious in the near term. Advances in satellite technology have given us tools like GPS and weather sats, both critical in environmental assessments around the world. Nuclear, despite its flaws, remains one of the best available compromises for a cleaner energy future. Space research often trickles down to the “real world”… it might take a decade or two, but it’s certainly not worthless to the general population.

But, again, if we are to accomplish any those other dreams, space exploration shouldn’t even be the central topic. Maybe it’s helping a bit, maybe it’s slowing down other research a bit, or maybe it’s a wash… but there are other forces that have a MUCH, MUCH greater impact. “Space vs science” is a political tool meant to distract people from the real issue, “science vs just about everything else”.

4

Personally? I’m against it. To me, it looks like fan fiction with in dollars. It’s the dream of kids who grew up on a diet of space opera, made real. Which is cool, but is only really interesting to a certain portion of the population (which happens to be in power) and is a lot of money for something that is basically “really neat.” I do get kind fo on edge when the whole “but we gotta beat the Soviets…I mean, uh China” rhetoric comes up. The Cold War sucked the first time around. I don’t see any benefit to trying to shove our relationship with China into that tired old mould.

I’ve always said that if women were in power, the equivalent would be starting a department for Princesses. When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a princess. Unfortunately, America just lacks the will to make that possible for generations of American girls. Princesses would improve America’s image. Look at the surge in patriotism and interest Britain got from William and Kat’s marriage. and it would spark the imagination of Americans everywhere.

Obviously this is absurd. But that’s kind of how space exploration looks to me.

5

The space program hasn’t been too sexy for quite a while, at least not since the Mars landers. But science, space exploration included, has value aside from its popularity. Why are you singling out space exploration versus, say, the LHC, or the ethnobotany of dead cultures, or medical research that affects miniscule portions of the population? A lot of research starts out esoteric and seemingly pointless, but science usually does a pretty good job at connecting the dots eventually. The Internet you’re communicating on now is the evolved product of space and military research.

I don’t think research programs should be judged by how popular they are with an uninformed general population, and that goes both ways: shouldn’t be continued because of China and shouldn’t necessarily be manned just because the public finds that sexier.

The dreams of Joe or Jane Citizen, while charming, don’t necessarily make for good public policy… or even for the best possible future for Joe and Jane.

6

Lol! “We”! Speak for yourself. I came of age in the 90s too and I fully support every last possible scientific undertaking. As a nation, if you do not explore and grow, in every sense of the word, then you stagnate and rot. My view, although I do not add to it the arrogance of thinking I speak for an entire generation of people incorporates yours as detailed in the OP.

Is this like the printing press generation or the cultivation generation or maybe it’s the iron generation, the molecular genetics generation? Space exploration is a fundamental change in human technology. It’s not a political football or a term we get to label people with. It’s something you shit or get off the pot about if you want to have a modern society. Every single developing nation of any significance is adopting space technology.

Russia, the USA and China are just at the farthest edge of one particular type of technology - human exploration.

Which generation thought science could solve everything?

Actions that are usually informed by scientific knowledge.

So science and technology discover and politics implement. I can work with that. Just remember where the antibiotics and vaccines and planes and shit came from before patting your political will on the back.

Let’s see, science and technology develops the space and ground based systems necessary for the cell phone and internet which then becomes such a cheap and effective form of communication that they spread into pretty much every part of the globe. Some of the most recent benefits of such technology is the freeing of people from repressive governments across North Africa and into the Middle East.

The world’s biggest problem is the incessant need to look down on the dreams of others - to recast them as childish or inane or old followed by the real goal: subjugation and thievery. These attempts at iconoclasm are nothing more than assertion without justification. There’s room at the table for everything and no need to piss on a stereotype of space exploration while doing it.

7

I grew up with Jurassic Park as my sci-fi dream. Would that cost more to build than a city on the moon?

8

There’s so much in your O.P. I’d disagree with…

But I was singing Coming of Age in the nineties. It’s hard to disagree with Tommy Shaw. But Tommy was born in '53 and I was born in '67 and the teenagers up in my house in 2012 seem to think that the only thing they’d prefer Gingrich over Paul about is that going to Mars is a right-o idea because they wrote papers last year considering acid rain and global warming. I and they are convinced that we’re gonna wear the earth out and make it unhabitable for human occupation as we know it. Especially if we keep the human war-mongering nature limited to earth orbit.

Export War to Mars!

9

The idea behind it is just an implied cost-benefit analysis.

What benefit would we get with a National Princess and Gown Administration? None that I can see. We’d have more expensive weddings, but at very best, that’s a wash. It doesn’t make a whole lot of difference for us as a society if a few more people decide to specialize in bridal design. But supposing that space exploration pushed a lot more kids toward science and engineering? There are some technical types who have claimed that’s exactly what motivated them originally. Well, that’s exactly what we bloody need. The more level-headed math and science types we have making new stuff, the more likely it is that we’ll all be able to enjoy something fantabulous which they’ll eventually happen to make. We could potentially solve a lot of problems with energy and pollution and who knows what else if we just get enough brains working on it.

Add to that the general societal attitude about knowledge and education. I’ve heard anecdotes that the US attitude toward science became much more serious after Sputnik. No more Monkey Trial bullshit, no more ignorant doofuses mounting successfully political challenges in fields about which they didn’t have the slightest understanding. It became a status symbol to be a man (at the time) in a white coat doing serious work. If that’s not just elderly nostalgia talking and we could in fact reignite that respect for scientific inquiry, and thus could get the fundies’ filthy hands off of science education and policy, then that would be a freakin huge benefit, too.

Obviously, I’ve got no real evidence that any of this would actually happen. Just stories. But these benefits are at least plausible, and they seem to me large in comparison to the costs. There’s something about SPAAAAAACE that captures the inner scientific imagination in a way that nothing else really does. It strikes me as likely that that feeling can be harnessed for the general good.

Other people will naturally have different impressions of the probable benefits.

10

I disagree that the “space generation” wasn’t also dreaming about other things. Remember equal civil rights? Brace yourself for the cheesiness, but someone was dreaming about that when we were shooting people to the moon.

The cool thing about humans is that for one endeavor–like getting us to the moon–there are other endeavors that occur simultaneously–like the invention of Social Security, the free/reduced lunch program for low-income kids, and anti-pollution legislation. These were not created by the “Lunchables” generation, but by their grandparents. Who were also putting people up on the moon.

So I’m not seeing the dichotomy the OP has laid out.

I also disagree that the space program is some manly-man thing. Yes, it was put into place by men and implemented by men…but you can point at basically any policy of the 20th century and say the same thing. And being “manly” doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, either. Without the space program, we would not have satellite technology. I do not have to tell you how different society would be without satellites, but suffice it to say, those economic improvements you listed have been achieved in large part to advancement in global communication. Especially in Africa.

(It is interesting to note the space program is popular because it DOESN’T come across as “white male”. Personally, when I think of astronauts, my mind goes to Sally Ride or Ronald McNair or Mae Jemison. Nichelle Nichols of Lt. Urhura fame was hired by NASA to recruit black astronauts. Imagine a little black girl raised in Atlanta, Georgia during the 1980s, full of dreams about being the first artist/writer astronaut. That was me. I would have died in a Princess alternative world. As would millions of other women. )

Lastly, I disagree that “your” dream exclusively represents your generation. Every generation has had an activism streak, but it could be argued that the two following the Baby Boomers have been pretty muted in their indignation until recently. And it has nothing to do with others hogging the spotlight. It’s just that we’ve had it good for most of our lives, and it’s only recently when we’ve noticed the boat is rocking anyway, so we might as well rock along with it. And even then, our motives aren’t all pure. For every kid who’s willing to die so no one in the world has to worry about starvation, there’s another one who only cares about getting a “real” job. For every vegan who genuinely weeps over the little worms that were killed in the harvest of their chickpeas, there’s another who has adopted the lifestyle as a fad, along with their Navajo jewelry and Ugg boots. Before you get it twisted, I’m not saying that the current crop of young adults are uniquely like this. Not all political activitists in the 1960s were pure either. There were plenty of them just trying to get with some hot hippie chicks. I’m just saying that all this generational “dream” business is not substantiated.

11

Let’s distinguish here between manned space flight, unmanned space exploration, and other unmanned space activities.

Things like GPS and weather satellites do not owe their existence to manned space flight. They were developed because of military spending and necessity. I don’t believe the OP is saying that we should simply stop using space for these kind of military and commercial purposes, whether it is GPS, communications, or whatever.

As far as manned space flight, let’s think about the fifty-plus year history, how much it cost, and what it achieved. It cost a lot of money, no doubt. Bringing humans into space and to the moon were fantastic achievements, and I wouldn’t erase them.

But going to Mars or establishing a permanent presence on the moon? Why? Mostly I hear stuff about our destiny, which is a rather gratuitous assertion, I truly don’t understand the benefits. I also hear stuff about technology spin-offs, and how great they are. Well, when I read lists like this and this, it is just really, really underwhemling. Whoop-dee-doo, we spend the modern-day equivalent of $170 billion to go to the moon, and society gets bragging rights, cordless tools, freeze-dried food, and a bunch of stuff that probably would have been invented anyway.

So, the idea of spending hundreds of billions more to go to Mars just doesn’t seem like a good investment to me. Sure, maybe that investment will come up with a new material that will revolutionize the track suit industry or an industrial technique that will end up being commonly used in fast food restaurants, but let’s get real – the vast amount of money will be used for improvements in technologies that are mainly applicable to rockets and spacecraft. Thus, we have a self-licking ice cream cone: let’s train engineers to be rocket scientists because we can’t afford to lose out on our previous generation of rocket scientists, and a few decades later we will need more space exploration funds to replace that generation of rocket scientists.

I think putting a human on Mars would be a neat thing, but it will be hard, expensive, and take quite a long time. I think at this point, we will get much more scientific knowledge out of investing in unmanned space exploration technologies, which are less costly and dangerous.

But if one of the goals here is to invest in technology that will benefit mankind, then let’s cut out the middleman (NASA) and make investments in other fields (medical research, nanotechnology, alternative energy, etc) that are actually the areas where we are looking for new breakthroughs that will benefit people.

ETA: I just found out that the earliest use of the term “self-licking ice cream cone” was in reference to NASA’s bureaucracy… so I guess there’s one more breakthrough NASA has that has marginally improved the lives of Americans.

12

Ravenman, I hear your point about waste. But the government has always put money into esoteric research interests. My doctoral dissertation was as esoteric as a project can get, and I was funded by an NIH grant.

OK, let’s get rid of all of it, you say?

Well, I’m likely to agree. But then there’s always this fundamental observation: Every scientific inquiry starts off as “esoteric”. The practical questions and discoveries don’t arise until after the pointless ones have been addressed.

The same with manned space exploration. The idea of establishing a Mars colony bugs the hell out of me too. And yet I know that the quest to get us there will provide all kinds of breakthroughs simply because of all the problems that need to be overcome for it to happen. Those breakthroughs will have implications for medical research, military and communications technology, and everything else. I cannot see how they couldn’t.

Maybe it will happen with or without federal funding, but I don’t see the country losing out either way.

13

That’s a great point. I don’t think there’s any support in the history of the whole planet that human exploration was ever worth anything.

Err.

14

If this is how you heard my point, then I must be a terrible writer.

I attempted to say that the manned space program has resulted in all sorts of technological breakthroughs that are good for the manned space program, and the list of technologies that have transitioned to general use by society is pretty weak. Look at the links that I included in my last post. The biggest successes of the manned space program seems to be cordless tools, freeze-dried food, and some materials used in select applications, all of which would probably be invented without the manned space program.

Again, it is great that we went to the moon. But the idea of arguing for further space exploration on the basis of spin-off technologies that may some day benefit people everywhere is an argument that belies our experience: that investing in manned spaceflight primarily benefits manned spaceflight technologies (creating the self-licking ice cream cone I referenced earlier), and the technologies that spin off to other uses are nice, but are absolutely terrible returns on investment.

There have been no breakthroughs from the manned space program that remotely challenge things like GPS, weather satellites, or communications satellites, which were created by military investment, not the Apollo program.

I disagree. Look at the record of technology transitions from the manned space program to society over the last half-century. The contributions may be significant in very focused, specific fields, but really have had a negligible impact on the big picture to date. On the other hand, the contributions of unmanned space activities are very significant, which I’m sure you’ll agree with.

So, my suggestion is that if we want breakthroughs in medical science, don’t go to Mars – fund medical research. If we want breakthrough military technology, don’t establish a permanent presence on the moon, fund weapons research. If we want better communications, don’t build a reusable space plane, invest in new communications satellites.

Let’s examine this concept of exploration. How about you draw up a list of ways in which your life is better because a dozen Americans have set foot on the moon, and I’ll draw up a list of ways my life is better because Christopher Columbus brought Europeans to the Americas.

Could it be that some types of exploration are more productive than others? Are you in favor of trillion-dollar project to journey to the center of the earth because it would constitute exploration?

15

This, exactly so. The idea that previous generations were indifferent to poverty, disease, pollution and all the rest in the OP is arrogant and ignorant.

The OP says “We dream of beating poverty” but gives no definition of “poverty.” Since poverty is usually defined in relative terms, you might as well say “we dream of a world where nobody is below-average.” Since the space program began, the Green Revolution has done more to reduce hunger among the world’s poorest than anything in history, the observance of human rights made monumental strides, and standards of living across the globe have soared among all economic classes, and certainly in the US. By any objective measure, all the concerns listed in the OP have been addressed effectively, and are continuing to be.

Pollution is a knotty problem because while we have spent trillions of dollars over a period of decades on renewable-energy-research (far,* far *more than has ever been spent on space), at present less poverty generally means more pollution. Nonetheless, air and water quality has been in decline in the developed world for decades, and there are some indications that the corner has been turned globally. even sven is probably concerned about CO2 and global warming, but that was a problem not on the radar of the space generation; as recently as the late 1970s the concern was global cooling. We’re sorry that the scientists haven’t delivered a pony yet, but we’re spending far more time and money on it than we are on space.

16

To be fair, comparing human exploration on Earth with human exploration in space isn’t really a valid comparison.

17

One could read that and think that you’re saying that global health issues like HIV, TB and malaria just really aren’t the big deals that Bono, the United Nations, and Bill Gates make them out to be. I hope you’re not trying to give out that impression, because the greatest impediment to solving those issues isn’t technology, it is money. More money, more mosquito nets, millions of lives saved, greater economic opportunity in the developing world.

Presuming that “it” means global warming, I would like a cite showing how much is spent in the US researching the phenomenon as compared to space exploration.

18

I agree, for the most part. In post #5, I said “I don’t think research programs should be judged by how popular they are with an uninformed general population […and…] shouldn’t necessarily be manned just because the public finds that sexier.”

Earth-facing space technologies and unmanned exploration are to me far more worthwhile (of course, I am too a member of the uninformed public). While I think private-sector manned low-altitude spaceflights are neat just for the sheer coolness factor, I think federal manned spaceflight is mostly a sad desperation move to beg for money from an uncaring public. I don’t think it’s worthwhile science, but it’s certainly more effective marketing than most of what you hear about space these days.

19

I definitely disagree here. The reason we stopped at 12 men on the moon is because of arguments like the ones presented in this thread. What’s the point? We’ve already been there. Money could be better spent, etc.

It would be a better analogy if after the Columbus voyages, Europe as a whole decided to abandon travel to the New World and then asked what the point of Columbus was. I guess my point is that you can’t knock the Apollo program for not producing results which it was clipped in its infancy.

Who knows what space travel would be like today had we used Apollo as a (hehe) launching pad for development of the space program.

20

Then explain to me why we should have continued to send astronauts to the moon. My mind is open. Given that the Apollo project had been fully developed, there were likely few to no additional technologies that would have been developed to benefit society if we are simply putting Saturn rockets on a production line, training new astronauts, and flying them in the same capsules. Sure, there may have been some scientific benefit to collecting more rock samples from the moon, but NASA doesn’t seem to have made robotic exploration of the moon a priority in the last thirty years, so I’m a little skeptical of the scientific imperative there…

But when you say I’m criticizing Apollo for not producing results because it was truncated, I think it achieved the only goal I’m aware of: we landed Americans on the moon. I’m really not familiar with what aims were yet to be accomplished except for the cancellation.

Yeah, but the point of discovering the New World was empire along with trade. The exploitation of the New World for riches is plainly obvious, so of course Europeans had to keep going back: they were getting rich because of it! Meanwhile, as I wrote a moment ago, the point of going back to the moon is… what?

Space travel for what purpose? There’s no conceivable technology within decades or maybe even centuries that would make space travel faster, and thus more practical. The reasons to go to the moon seem to be pretty small. Going back to the self-licking ice cream cone, we still have issues with the long-term health impacts of space travel, but doing more space travel to figure out the long-term impacts seems to ignore the question of what we hope to achieve by sending people on long space journeys.