I know you asked sam, but for my ansewer would be to revert NASA back to its original form and task the air force/navy with the space program. Privatize the international stuff but keep the heavy lifters for defense purposes.
Declan
My opinion?
Ditch all the science except for rocket science. Focus entirely on developing better manned spacecraft, and especially cheaper ways to reach orbit.
We have to get the hardware in place. The science can come after getting into space is easier.
That’s why the Shuttle program was such an abomination. I mean, why build five identical craft? Build one shuttle, then use the lessons learned from it to design a better one, and so on; by the time you get to no. 5, it should be completely different - and significantly better - than the first.
The space program’s sole purpose should be to build better spacecraft.
Sam, thanks for the detailed info re Ares I. That does sound like a messed up design. I’m more interested in Ares V, since, as you point out, there were other perfectly capable designs for a ground->orbit low-weight rocket. Any early feedback on Ares I’s big brother? Ares V to me sounds like a worthy goal, though we’ll see if it is worthy in practice.
NASA =/= Manned space flight. In fact, manned space flight is the only thing that NASA consistently does ineptly and way, way overbudget. Much of the rest of NASA does good and real science…and much of it on a shoestring compared to the bloated and stupid manned missions.
It is not really NASA’s fault though. It stems from the basic fact that in the modern age of robotic technology it is much, much less efficient to use manned spacecraft. It is one of the most inefficient use of resources imaginable and how it attracts the support of people who want government to be smaller and more efficient is beyond my ability to comprehend.
Okay, it is late and this post is suffering a bit from hyperbole due to excess adrenalin…But, seriously, it drives me batty when people equate NASA with the least scientific, most expensive, and most boondoggled part of its mission while NASA continues to do great science at little cost with the unmanned missions (and studies of the earth and land-based observing and so forth)!
Greenspan lost all credibility when he essentially endorsed the Bush tax cuts at a time when we actually had our deficit under control. Obama didn’t just inherit debt. He also inherited a financial system at the state of collapse and an economy that was imploding from a sudden drop in demand along with the collapse of credit. In that situation, throwing money at the problem is the only way to prevent a full-blown depression. The only entity that could inject money into the economy was the entity that could print it (and there was no danger of this being inflationary in an economy in freefall). Obama didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s…although some economists like Paul Krugman think he still tried to do it on the cheap and should actually be throwing more money at the problem.
But we ARE talking about manned spaceflight. The robotic landers actually make my point. They are generally successful because they are extremely tightly focused. Weight is planned down to the ounce. Every screw and plate that goes on the deep space probes has to be justified against something else. They generally know exactly what science they are trying to achieve, what instrumentation they want to send, where they need to land it, etc.
Apollo was like that. Building the LEM, for example, was an exercise in tradeoffs down to the last minute detail. Everyone knew exactly how much weight they had to work with, and exactly what the mission entailed. That allowed them to optimize the craft.
Imagine how the LEM engineering might have gone if the mission had been, “Well, someday we’re going to land people on the moon. But we’re not really sure when, or how many, or how long they’ll stay there, or what they’ll do when they’re there. We don’t know how big the rocket will be, but we’re working on some paper research designs right now. Okay, come up with a lander for us. Oh, before you do, make sure it meets the military’s requirements, and half of it has to be built in Lindsay Graham’s state. Oh, and we’re not sure we’ll be landing on the Moon - it might be Mars, or an asteroid or something. But go ahead and make us a real good design.”
Take this heavy lifter that is supposedly being funded. What’s it going to lift? To where? For how much? No one really knows. There are no deadlines, no milestones, no real budget. That’s no way to do advanced engineering.
To be honest, exactly WHAT the goal is is less important than that there be one. If we decide that we need a spaceship that will take four astronauts to the Lagrange points to install and service the next generation of telescopes, allow them to loiter there for 90 days, and carry payload that fit in standard container ‘B’ (see detailed dimensions), and weigh no less than X pounds and be subjected to no more than Y ‘g’ forces, then you can come up with a nice optimal design and you have the data you need when faced with engineering choices.
Now, I can see some very interesting moon missions that could be done to give the thing focus. A mission to the polar area to prospect for water. If we can find some uncollapsed Lava tubes, let’s send a rover there to look around the mouth for an entrance, and if we find one let’s figure out how we could pressure-seal one and send a crew there to test an experimental seal on a section.
If we could seal a largish lava tube, we’d have an instant environment that could potentially hold thousands of people, be sheltered from cosmic rays, and be thermally stable. Proving out techniques for turning lunar materials into dwellings or support buildings would be a valuable skill to have. Working out techniques to deal with sharp lunar dust will be important if we travel to other moons or asteroids.
We might even be able to find a partially collapsed lava tube filled with ice. Seal it off, warm it up, and suddenly you’ve got a habitat with all the oxygen and water you need. Let’s go look for those.
Defense against whom or what? What threats does America face, against which better space tech would mean better defense?
N.B.: There are probably not going to be any Orbital Weapons, ever:
The claim was specifically that there is no obvious economic return on going to the moon again. I believe those words were chosen carefully because there are plenty of hypothetical economic returns on going to the moon again.
Likewise, there is no obvious economic return on getting a haircut. There are some hypothetical returns that may or may not ever appear, like getting a better job, but the only immediate result of getting a haircut is that your hair is shorter and your wallet is $13 lighter.
I’d rather live in a country of shaggy-headed nerds who can send people to the moon, than a country of neatly coiffed video-game-playing jagoffs who had the ability to do so but pissed it away.
Such as?
If mining the Moon could be made profitable, we would already be mining Antarctica.
Living space? If we get crowded enough for that to matter, it’s simpler and cheaper to use Earth’s currently uninhabited deserts and tundras, or build giant floating cities on the seas.
In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein envisioned the Moon’s economic importance as, pre-independence, a farm, and, post-independence, a way station between Earth and the Universe beyond. But we don’t need the Moon as a farm, that idea was based on an outmoded Malthusian expectation that Earth’s population would outgrow its agrarian carrying capacity. And, once you achieve orbit, you’re already halfway to anywhere in the Solar System – who needs a way station?
Maybe a theme park . . .
Tell me. If two waiters give identical service, who is likely to get a better tip? The waiter with neat hair, or the waiter with wild unkempt hair? If two people are in front of a jury trial with similar circumstances, who is the jury more likely to look favorably on? The defendant with neat hair, or the defendant with wild unkempt hair? If two identical applicants go for a job interview, who is more likely to get a job? The applicant with unkempt hair or the applicant with neat hair (well, maybe in certain industries, like IT, it doesn’t matter). Economists do sit around and study these things, and there’s ample data to support the idea that people get direct economic benefit (and increasing the odds of something happening is a direct benefit) based on their appearance. Even if the only benefit you get from a haircut is filling you with confidence and happy feelings, that itself is a direct economic benefit.
If getting a haircut makes you unhappy or you aren’t involved in an industry for which appearance is important, then perhaps you personally get no economic benefit from it (so don’t get one). But most people work in industries where they are judged by their appearance and lots of people get happy feelings from looking well-kept, so there is a direct economic benefit for them.
So…the confidence you get from a nice haircut counts, but the confidence you get from seeing a US flag on a lunar outpost doesn’t count? You have a very elastic definition of “direct economic benefit”.
You go ahead and enjoy the serene happiness that apparently only a haircut can engender. I’d gladly give up haircuts if enough other people would do so that it would enable another moon mission.
We have no way of knowing how many people, if any, will feel happy or confident by seeing a flag on a lunar post, or how that will translate into an individual economic benefit–which is why it is a hypothetical benefit. We can look at economic studies regarding the effect of appearance on people’s circumstances or the fact that people voluntarily opt to get haircuts to determine that there is a real individual benefit to getting a haircut.
All of which apply equally well to the economic effects of space exploration. I think there is a very close analogy between the kind of prestige a haircut bestows on a person, and the kind of prestige a space program bestows on a nation. As China well knows.
No, it doesn’t. We have good data on the economic benefits tied to appearance. The data on economic benefits of space exploration is rather marginal (since not much of it is done, compared to the daily activity of people upkeeping their appearance), and what data we do have isn’t that favorable to the idea that space exploration is economically valuable. For example, see this Straight Dope article on the profitability on NASA.
You can speculate on hypothetical benefits all you want. And some people do think the government should spend money on hypothetical benefits (such as me, when I stated I’m okay with unmanned space exploration), but for something like space exploration, we have no way of knowing what the benefits will be until they actually materialize. With haircuts, we know what the benefits are because they materialize daily and they have been actually studied.
And I will also point out that you seem to be approaching the issue of haircuts in a completely backwards manner. In the US, very few people are subject to government regulations requiring haircuts, and there are almost no subsidies for haircuts. That means government-induced market distortions in the market of haircuts are almost non-existent. If a lot of people are voluntarily choosing to spend money doing something in the absence of market distortions, then the assumption should be that there is a direct economic benefit–otherwise why would they choose to do it? Now, if you want to posit an economic philosophy other than market economics to afford an explanation for this phenomena, that’s fine, but I’m not sure which economic philosophy would adequately explain this phenomena. You certainly haven’t provide a cogent explanation for the phenomena of people getting haircuts.
It doesn’t make sense to try and analogize between individual spending which clearly has direct economic benefits and government spending which has hypothetical benefits.
I don’t think you can underestimate the value that a robust exploration program has on the psyche of a country. I think the value of this in terms of motivating kids to study science and engineering, of motivating people to work hard and take risks and have a ‘can-do’ spirit is incalculable.
I think NASA has done more for education in America than the Dept Of Education has ever done, and it has more than twice NASA’s budget.
When I was a kid, the space program was running full bore. Apollo was still putting men on the moon. There was talk of Mars missions, and space colonies, and all kinds of stuff. Everyone assumed that we were moving into space in a big way.
Half the kids I knew wanted to be scientists and engineers and astronauts. Every science classroom had models of the Saturn V rocket and the LEM in it. We read science fiction. And when we got older, we went into science and engineering. NASA was a big part of that.
How often did you used to say “If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can do X”. That statement was a general indicator of how people felt about our abilities - we could do anything we wanted, if we just tried.
You need manned spaceflight for this. You need heroes and martyrs. Children need role models other than basketball players and movie stars.
A nation that stops looking outwards, that starts gazing inwards and worrying about safety and security and comfort instead of pushing new boundaries, is a nation in decline. We’re about to enter an era where instead of saying, “If we can put a man on the moon, we can do X”, people will be saying, “Do X? Hell, we can’t even put a man in space any more.”
We’re in the process of replacing, “When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut!”, with “When I grow up, I want to get one of those government jobs were I can sit on my ass and then retire when I’m 50. Sweet.” Thus begins the long decline.
I just want to make clear that I think this is certainly possible. But, it’s still speculative. While it may be that we get a similar kind of benefit to the moon missions, we simply have no way of knowing.
However, given your general economic outlook, I’ve always found this argument bizarre coming for you. Although this is prohibited by treaty, I can think of several hypothetical market ways to approach the issue of manned space exploration. For example, you could divide up the moon into thousand acre plots, and award property rights to anybody who manages to land on a plot and maintain a continuous presence. The government’s sole responsibility would be to coordinate flights to and from the moon so that they don’t crash into each other. Can you explain to me why you aren’t advocating such a solution?
BrightNShiny — I have nowhere claimed that space exploration has any direct economic benefits, so none of your arguments about whether it does or doesn’t are relevant. My point, which you are clearly not understanding, is that people spend money all the time on things that have no economic benefit, one example being a haircut. You want a “cogent explanation for the phenomena of people getting haircuts”? They like to look nice, and would rather have a haircut than $13 in their pocket. I could have chosen any number of other examples: maintaining a lawn, wearing socks, buying records, eating steak instead of hot dogs. No economic benefit to any of those things. How about having kids? Talk about money down the drain. Yet, people are still having kids. Does this really appear inexplicable? It is said that an economist is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing - does this describe you?
I would rather have a space program than $35 billion a year spent on haircuts. I’m not suggesting that anyone be coerced into giving up their haircuts, just that I would rather see the money spent on space.
There are real economic benefits to all the activities you have described (except for space exploration). Simply because you choose to not place a value on them, that doesn’t mean every agrees with your arbitrarily defined value standard. The only mechanism we have to see what value people place on these activities is how the market behaves, and clearly people place a value on these things and obtain economic benefit since they choose to spend money on them (and again, we have ample data to back this up). This amounts to you trying to decree by fiat that certain activities have no value simply because you think they don’t have any value.
No, but it aptly describes you, since you are unable to recognize the value of many common place activities.
That’s fine. I never suggested you were expecting people to give up their haircuts. Merely that your comparison between haircuts and space exploration is silly.
We have more evidence of the benefit of the Space Program than we do for the benefit derived from the Department of Education. Test scores have declined since the Dept. of Ed was formed. But if you do a survey of engineers and scientists who graduated in the 1970’s and 1980’s and ask them what motivated them to go into science and engineering, you’ll hear the space program mentioned a lot.
That specific proposal? No. Because right now, I don’t see that you can reasonably figure out the value of any amount of land on the Moon. And there’s a huge moral hazard problem here in that I don’t think anyone trusts that property rights they were granted today would be honored if the property turned out be so valuable that a plot of land of a reasonable size would be worth the billions it cost to claim it.
But I have always advocated private space involvement wherever possible. And I already said I support the new NASA budget overall, precisely because it offloads more work onto the private sector. I’m also a big advocate of the use of prizes to spur civilian development. So go team.
But what I think was done wrong was to cut NASA adrift without any sort of long-term measurable goal for manned spaceflight. You’re going to see a lot of engineers drift out of the agency, and in ten or twenty years if NASA decides it wants to send astronauts into space again, it will have no experienced people left who know how to do it. NASA’s engineering staff is already very old. It won’t be long before all that know-how is gone, unless they take steps to maintain it.
Well I really was not talking about battle stations in orbit, just that the administration wanted to subcontract stuff out to private companies. Which in some cases is fine by me, does not matter who brings stuff up to the space station, French, Russian , China, private company, someones gonna build rockets or systems to take it there and that trickles down.
What I dont like is the idea of having no heavy lift capability when it comes down to lifting a next generation spy satelite or equally sensitive payload and having someone else do it. The airforce already has its own heavy lift vehicles already, adding a few more items to their baliwick would not be that far out.
Declan