OK, We've Paid Billions for the ISS: Where's The Payoff?

Great Debates
21

Oh, I agree with what you’re saying, I’m just sick of hearing the “robots only” people spout off about how robots can go places humans can’t and do a better job of everything. That’s simply not the case. One might equally well argue that since dogs have better senses of smell than humans we should all cut off our noses and simply let dogs do the sniffing for us. (Now think about that, for a moment. We’d be spending our days smelling a lot of ass.)

Well, we won’t know the benefits of what a manned mission to Mars are until we go, and all the plans I’ve seen include a stay on Mars by humans of at least a year. And while NASA has to power down the rovers at night (and even longer during the Martian winter), humans can still toil away inside their protective domes. Of course, a nuclear powered rover could operate for 24 hours, but again, it’s only going to find what it’s programmed to find. It’s not going to get pissed off and stomp off in some random direction to cool down and inadvertantly discover Martian life. Also, if a robot discovers a hint of something important, but lacks the necessary gear to confirm the discovery, it can’t improvise something on the spot to check it out.

You misunderstand my point. The robots which ran through the DARPA Grand Challenge were extremely complex and had the benefits of using GPS technology as well as operating in a benign environment, yet they couldn’t complete a course a human could easily walk. This isn’t a stab at the individuals who designed and built those machines, it’s an attempt to point out that something which is taken for granted by humans is difficult for machines to do at this time. The Mars rovers do not benefit from GPS and have to operate under far harsher conditions than the DARPA entrants (they also don’t travel nearly as fast), and while their software is adaptable, they’re still not able to operate fully independant of humans, this is a detriment to the mission in some sense, because the controllers only have a very narrow window of communication with the rovers in which to respond to a problem.

Of course, there’s been more robotic missions than manned ones so naturally they’re going to return more data. I’ve got no problems with sending robotic probes to the far flung corners of the universe, I do have a problem with people stating that humans have no business going out there. Even here on Earth, people go mucking about in places that are very dangerous, some of it’s for the pursuit of scientific knowledge, some of it’s for the sheer sport of it. We, as a species, have a need to put our grubby little hands on things and while robots can extend our reach and go places we cannot, we still continue to explore and reach out using humans because we have a need to know how things feel.

Let’s say we decide to wait until the cost of sending someone into space is akin to that of a trip from New York to Paris before we send anyone else up. How is the technology to do this going to be developed if we’re not working on it? The big push in electronics now is minaturization, and it’s entirely possible that one day we’d have a robot able to do everything that the current Mars rovers are that’s the size of a Hot Wheels car. No need for a heavy lift vehicle design to send those to Mars. Nope, we can keep on using the same old rockets we’ve been using for decades and put thousands of those little buggers on there. They’ll cover more ground and send back more data in an hour than a human could in his entire lifetime. Now let’s say that we do build larger, more advanced rockets, so that the R&D of building the necessary rocket doesn’t factor into the cost of a manned flight. Still can’t go. You have to design the life support systems for the humans, that kicks the cost up above the breaking point.

The only way space flight gets cheaper is if you spend money on it. Rutan and the other X-Prize contenders are benefitting from the trillions spent on the space program to date. Rutan hasn’t said what the cost of building his craft has been, but admits that the X-Prize money is less than what he spent to develop it. I’d WAG that his R&D costs were $20 million or so, which is less than what Al Shepard’s trip cost. Now, if he can build something like the shuttle, which operates at a far lower cost and with greater reliability, then certainly, NASA’s money would be better spent elsewhere. Just buy Rutan’s Tier Two and spend the money they would have spent on developing a replacement for the shuttle on something else.

If NASA had set out in 1961 to build the Mars rovers the total price tag would have been in the tens of trillions of dollars because so much of the technology which exists today, didn’t back then. The reason the rovers didn’t cost tens of trillions of dollars is because of all the research which had gone before. Spending all your money on robotic missions ensures only one thing, that it’ll be cheaper to send a robot. Spend some money on sending humans and the cost will come down. It might be the private sector which finally manages to pull it off, but it will happen.

22

How about this board that we’re all reading & posting on as one payoff?

Weren’t the microchips that power our PC’s developed as smaller, cheaper computers for use in rockets & other military projects?

23

I’m tired of the “robots can do it better!” argument. Of course unmanned spacecraft can do science for less cost. But that doesn’t matter, because science is not the immediate primary goal of manned spaceflight. The primary goal is to maintain and extend the technologies needed to go to and work in space. America is flying manned spacecraft because enough of the American public wants to see it happen; a successful flight is a payoff in itself. Otherwise you’d see more politicians saying “I’ll shut down NASA’s manned spaceflight program” as a campaign promise.

Another thing: unmanned spacecraft is cheaper now. But it may change in the future if we keep investing in manned spaceflight technology. Space science instruments would be so much cheaper if we could rely on an astronaut to assemble, adjust and repair it. Even the current ISS can make a big contribution if its resources are used for science instrument assembly.

24

I don’t understand this - NASA’s most prominent successes of the past 20 years or so have been unmanned missions, notably the Hubble (yes, I know this is serviced periodically by astronauts) and the Mars Rovers. Not only were these missions unmanned, they were scientific in ultimate goal.

I guess that fundamentally I reject the assertion that the space program should be about the romance, or entertaining the public, as seems to be the contention here. Sure, we can gain tertiary benefits by piddling around in low earth orbit, and by building white elephants in the sky, but why do this when we can gain those tertiary benefits while genuinely trying to achieve expansions of human knowledge?

All the arguments I’m seeing appear to me to be putting the cart before the horse - human space exploration as an end, rather than a means. It’s just unclear to me at this point what human exploration is intended to achieve - we’ve reached the moon, and that was a great achievement; probably the most amazing feat of exploration man has yet managed. We’re not in a reasonable position to make a manned Mars shot, and I don’t see that the ISS gets us any closer to that goal, nor do repeated shuttle missions. I’d support a development effort to develop the technologies to reach this goal - for example I’ve visited the advanced propulsion lab they have living in the same building as the NBL, and that was by far the most exciting development I saw while I was working at Johnson. But that sort of research doesn’t require the institutional HSF that we have at present, which seems to me (and I speak here as a huge advocate of continued NASA research) to be simply putting people in space for the sake of it. Why not leave this to the pioneers like Rutan? There seem to be sufficient philanthropists and rich playboys to make such efforts viable on their own. Add to this the incentive for efficiency that private enterprise has, and it all suggests that encouraging more such projects is the best way forward for near-earth space flight.

At present, it seems to me that we’re putting vast amounts of money into HSF, and medium amounts of money into unmanned science, and getting the majority of the results from the latter. Arguing that HSF will get cheaper if we spend more money on it seems slightly bizarre, to say the least. Why not focus efforts on what is currently achievable, with an eye to what we will make possible in future? It’s unarguable that robotic missions are presently achieving far more than human ones, and it’s not due to a lack of funding for the latter. It’s also wrong to think that there isn’t increasing public disaffection with the goals of the space program. The prestige of the shuttle program and ISS has been waning for some time now; their continuation as an end in itself is not something that can be sold to the taxpayer indefinitely. I’ve not heard a soul complain about the rovers or Hubble, by contrast.

Please note, I’m also not arguing that human missions are intrinsically better or worse than robotic ones - as I said earlier, each must be evaluated on their merits. What I am saying is that to achieve the most value from the taxpayer’s money, there have to be well set-out goals, and that those goals should be tackled in the most appropriate manner. If setting men on Mars is one of those goals, that’s great - I’d support that totally. But I don’t hold with simply having men in space as a goal. It’s been done, it’s not achieving any primary benefits, and it costs a heck of a lot. Exploration can be romantic and exciting, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be rational.

25

Without taking the question literally (everything is relative), the spirit of the question can be answered both from both philosophical and pragmatic viewpoints the same way.

Yes. Knowledge is power.

The more a man learns about the world around him, the more one knows about his place in it.

Know Thyself…

Even if one rejects Socrates, you could view all of the NASA budget as a PR tool to attract the breed of people who value knowledge above all else (scientists…) to the US. America has people like Sikorsky, Einstein, von Braun, and the large numbers of brilliant Japanese and Indian scientists who have come here to pursue their crafts to thank for it’s prosperity today. The world might be a vastly different place if the Nazi engineers working on atomic weapons had access to Einstein…but he left, and came to America.

Shuji Nakamura is a good example of this today. A contemporary genius, he left Japan and came to the US to continue his research. The mass-producable white LED is going to be revolutionary, and the chances that the company that brings it to market first is going to be American are much better now that he is here.

I think NASA’s $15 billion/year more than pays for itself if we can attract a Werner von Braun, or a Nakamura even once in a lifetime.

26

You oughta look at the expense in design changes and outright abandoned projects at NASA and ESA operating each separately before it was internationalized. Actually signing up Russia to get quasi-off-the-shelf 2nd-generation-MIR modules may have finally gotten it off the ground since for like 12 years all NASA and ESA did was throw away money on concept-designing stations, modules, etc. w/o actually launching a thing.

27

Yes, but you’re looking at it all wrong, no really. It was the manned program which got the unmanned program rolling to begin with. We built unmanned probes to get a good look at the Moon so we knew what to expect when we sent humans there. The Apollo program, had it continued, would have been highly successful in expanding our knowledge of the Moon, there were plans for stays of up to a week or more by astronauts. It, however, was not to be because of Nixon. He hated the space program because it was Kennedy’s idea, and so he shut down the Apollo program just as it was really starting to pay off scientifically, and forced NASA to build the space shuttle, which they knew was going to be a dog from the beginning. While there was a lot of good science which went into the Apollo program, and even more came out of it, the shuttle was a lame horse, so the science which went into it and that which came out of it, wasn’t as good as what we would have gotten if Apollo had been allowed to continue. The unmanned side, didn’t get the attention that the manned side did, so it was allowed to develop more or less naturally.

Yes, but the romance side is what the general public sees of any exploration. Ask the average man on the street what they think about Columbus’s voyages, and they won’t talk about the new species of plants which were discovered by it or the technological advances which made it possible and which it inspired, they’ll talk about the excitement of setting sail on a risky voyage or about him looking for the Orient, but finding the Americas instead (and inaccurately stating that Columbus proved the world was round or that he set foot in the Americas, when he didn’t get that far on his first voyage). If you start talking about the scientific achievements of the manned program, you have to talk about minutiae which most people don’t understand or care about. They see the pretty pictures the astronauts take and the ones the robots take and think that’s all there is to it. Where’s the pay off from the images Hubble takes? Sure, we learn more about the universe, but how does that improve life here on Earth?

I’m not slighting the HST at all, mind you. I like the pretty pictures it sends back, and I know that the technology which went into it led directly to the digital cameras we have today. I also know that the data it sends back has value, even if it cannot be applied to things here on Earth, such as improving our technology.

There’s an old saying which goes something like, “It’s not the destination which matters, only the journey.” Perhaps the reason that Rutan and the others are willing to take some of the initative for making the big push into Earth orbit is because NASA’s done such a pisspoor job since the introduction of the shuttle. Will they be willing to make that same push to get us towards Mars? Possibly, but what if they’re not? What if they’re content to simply extend our reach to orbit? There’s nothing wrong with that, but as Kennedy stated, the nation which turns inward is doomed to decline. We need a manned mission to Mars to force us to think in new ways.

Yeah, manned spaceflight takes a huge number of resources, but where would those engineers be if there wasn’t a manned program? Certainly a number of them would be in the unmanned program, but the rest of them would be spending their days designing new and improved turnip twaddlers. Do we really need that?

You’ve never heard of economies of scale or mass production? One of the reasons that the Russians are able to launch things so cheaply is that they’re using essentially the same hardware they’ve been using for decades. Had the US stayed with the Saturn V our costs to put something in orbit would be only slightly higher than what the Russians are spending on their rockets. Rutan and the others are able to what they’re doing by using off-the-shelf technology. Technology which owes it’s existence to the money spent on the various space programs.

And why bother trying out experimental drugs on patients, when we can simply dope them up and let them die?

No, it’s due to a bad decision by Nixon.

You’re not talking to the right people, then. I’ve heard people bitching about any money spent on space, including things like communications satellites, weather satellites, and other things which one would think people could recognize the inherent value of.

I agree that we should have goals, and I’d much rather that we be doing something with the manned than treading water like we are now, but if given a choice between what we have now, and no manned program, I’ll take what we have now, because if we give up on the manned program, people will begin questioning why we have an unmanned program. After all, if they can’t see the benefits of a manned program in any form, and don’t notice it’s loss, they won’t be able to see the benefits of the unmanned program and won’t notice it’s loss either.

Don’t forget that many times something which seems useless in the beginning can turn out to be quite valuable. Ever read the history of the laser? When it was first invented, no one could see a use for it. One article written shortly after it was invented described it as “the world’s most expensive eraser.” Now, of course, the things are invaluable, and so cheap that you can buy them for less than $20. Screaming that there must be a pay off now from the manned program is rather shortsighted. History is replete with examples of things which sat on the shelf until someone came along and realized a use for something. Imagine where we’d be if Hero had realized the capabilities of his steam engine when he invented it. Instead, it sat around for over a thousand years before Neucomen built his.

28

Cite?

29

From : http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa080498.htm

And from: http://www.fact-index.com/i/in/integrated_circuit.html

I’m sure there are many more cites that could be found with more searching.

30

What price mankind’s expansion to the stars?

31

If we focus on what is currently achievable, don’t you think that’s all we will ever achieve? Unless you want to wait for other countries to develop the technology and buy from them. Which would be a viable plan, except you will end up losing all the knowledge and experience accumulated in NASA centers and its contractors over the past few decades. Technology cannot be mothballed - if the previous generation retires without having the next generation of engineers to pass on the technology, it’s effectively lost.

I disagree with the notion that we are not doing anything new in orbit. The ISS is the most complex construction project ever done in space, and space construction will be a vital part of any future space project including scientific projects.

Even if we accept that the current ISS was not a very efficien use of funds, what would you suggest we do at this point? IMO the ISS has gotten to a point where continued funding of the the ISS is more worthwile than putting that money into a completely new project.

32

This whole debate is going to be moot, because the Aldridge Commission report is a death sentence for NASA. The fix was in from the beginning - Bush loudly announcing new, unfunded goals for the national space program (to be set in motion after his term expires, of course) while in actuality he was quietly taking steps to put NASA out of its misery.

If there was a single, overarching problem identified in the Columbia investigation, it was that the downsizing of NASA and shifting of core competency to private contractors led to an environment in which overworked, underexperienced NASA personnel could not exercise sufficient oversight on the private contractors (Boeing and USA) who were actually doing the work. And the use of private contractors ensured that the work would be managed as a for-profit venture, with all the short-sightedness and nickel-and-diming that implies.

What did the Aldridge Commission propose? Heavier reliance than ever on private contractors, and no money to help NASA recruit a new generation of engineers. They should have been upfront about it and simply proposed taking a wrecking ball to the VAB.

33

Oh, puhleez. When Columbus went on his expedition, no one knew there was this uber-landmass waiting to be found! That was a lucky discovery.

Yes, we know more about Mars and the moon than Mr. C knew about his destination, thanks to previous visits, telescopes, science and the like. But we sure as heck don’t know much about planets outside our solar system. Or how to get to them. Or how to survive on them once we do arrive.

These baby steps we’re taking now WILL pay off for future generations. It may take 50 years, will more probably take 200 years, but true European colonization of the Americas took some time after that initial journey, too.

So yes, our journeys into space now are VERY MUCH like the Europeans first crossing the Atlantic. Just on a slightly longer time scale.

Secondly, for those who think robots and unmanned vehicles are all we need, again I state that part of these journeys are to learn how to allow humans to survive in space.

And remember that mars rover that was stuck on the landing platform for a day or two? You really think a human being on there would have had to work that hard to take a couple of steps off the thing? Or to manually move it into a better descent position (low gravity), or to move the obstrucing material out of the way?

I don’t want out astronauts to die on these missions, but I consider it an acceptable cost if safety is taken into consideration and the occasional accident happens. Back to the analogy, how many mariners didn’t make it across the expanses of oceans on their way to the Americas? Heck, if NASA offered me a position on the flight to Mars, I guarantee you I’d be more than willing to take the risk myself.

Meantime, I’m all for the continued exploration of space, and manned travels leading to manned colonies as the necessary first steps for our advancing space civilization.

34

I hold with Robert Heinlein: “Racial survival is the only universal morality.” And with Jerry Pournelle: “There is no physical reason why the human race cannot survive for another 10 billion years.” Provided, that is, that we get off this planet and no longer have all our eggs on one fragile basket. If we ever reach the point where there are a few self-sustaining human colonies in outer space – “self-sustaining” in the sense that they could survive and continue to grow even if they were cut off from all contact with Earth – then, and only then, can we be assured of the long-term survival of the human race. Until then, we live with the possibility that our species, as a species, someday will become extinct, just as practically all species that have ever lived on this planet have become extinct.

Anything that helps us get there from here is worth doing.

That’s the payoff. Any other benefit we might get from space exploration is just lagniappe.

35

NASA is without a doubt, one of the biggest boondoggle’s in the history of the federal government. A complete waste of money.

Explore Mars? For what? It’s a big, red, rock. Who cares?

Most of the experiments they have on the space shuttle involve seeing the effects of things on astronauts in outer space. It’s completely circular. You wouldn’t need the experiments if not for the shuttle. Other experiments are designed by 3rd graders. Real groundbreaking stuff there.

I would cut NASA to 0. The space station is junk. We learn nothing from it. It does nothing but waste money. It isn’t a “step” on the way to “exploring” anything. It’s just a big waste of money.

Did Columbus trip cost 100 billion dollars?

Think of all the good those smart scientists could be doing if they were doing real work that actually had a pay-off of some kind. We’d have new energy sources or something, cures for cancer. Instead we have an orbitting junk pile. Great.

36

I don’t accept that at all. It is important for humanity in general for us to have frontiers. The space program inspires us, gives our kids things to dream about, pushes kids towards engineering and science, gives us a shared experience, and in general makes us stronger, better people.

It is also important to continue to expand our understanding of the universe and our place in it. It is the most important question we can ask.

37

Blah, blah, blah. You people get back in the cave. There’s nothing you’d be interested in out here.

38

I find the claim( that space exploration provided the impetus to develop solid-state electronics ) to be erroneous. Bell Labs developed the transistor as a completeley private effort, and sold the patent righs to any interested partyfor a token payment of $250.00! While it is true that the air force was a major consumer of the firts integrated circuts 9developed by Texas Instruments), the fact is, the Air Force had spent tens of millions of dollars on their own microelectronics program, something called “Project Tinkertoy”. This was a program to develop miniature electronic circuits…based upon miniature vacuum tubes! And, military inctegtayed circuits have little in common with their civilian-designed counterparts…they (military ICs) have to wok under extended temperatures, be radiation-resistant, and cost 100 to 10,000 times the price of their civilian counterparts.
Finally, TI DID NOT invent the integrated circuit…Jack Kilbey (of TI) was assigned the patent, but FAIRCHILD, SPRAGUE ELECTRIC, and several other firms came up with the technology at about the same time. :eek:

39

Could you give us some reference about all the basic science research that is likely to come out of the space station (or has come out of the shuttle program), because people like Park who have looked into this have argued that almost all of the basic science research published in the top journals that has come out of the space program has come out of the unmanned space program.

I’ll add my disagreement to this and my agreement with Sam Stone regarding the importance of us understanding our universe and our place in it. I think the unmanned space program has been far from a waste of money. Wonderful things have come out of it…And, for only a tiny fraction of what we’ve spent on the manned program.

And the fact is that there have also been a lot of tangible benefits from the space program…including all the satellite communications technology to name just one thing. But, again, these are almost entirely benefits from the unmanned space program.

I really don’t understand the sort of logic that wants to throw lots of money into getting us onto other planets but decides that doing things to make sure we don’t fuck up the ecology of this planet too much are too expensive. Personally, if mankind is not able to be a good steward to this planet, I don’t see any reason why we should go out and mess up other ones. Let’s focus our resources on doing well with what we’ve got rather than coveting more. Eventually, there may come a time when the human race will want and have the ability to inhabit other planets but we ain’t there yet.

40

There are no experiments on the ISS in my field (solar physics) so I can’t say for sure. The orbit really isn’t suited for solar observations. But I do know there are a few astronomical telescopes that will be attached to the station and take advantage of the resources there (power, communications and cooling, as well as potential for manual repair and adjustment). One example is EUSO.

The Space Shuttle made an important contribution to solar physics by repairing the Solar Maximum satellite. This wasn’t a make-work service mission, but an actual repair of a failed satellite. There was also the Spacelab 2 mission which pioneered some new observation techniques.