Spirit is successfully on Mars

[John_Mace]

*Originally posted by hansel *
**Perhaps a different question is in order: Why wasn’t the private sector competing with the government during the last five decades? Surely if they can do it alone, the presence of a huge, cumbersome, slow moving, bureaucratically top-heavy and inept competitor would be not just bearable but desirable. **

Well, I’d postulate that the private sector did compete in just about the amount that it made sense to, given the ability of the gov’t to command massive amounts of funds without risk.

I’m not necessarily saying my way is the only true and right way. I am saying that you have to be fully aware of what assumptions you are making when arguing about things such as government spending. And I’d never advocate an instantaneous switch from government funding to private funding for anything. But a blind assumption about government funding being necessary makes it hard to consider possibilities, such as the one Sam suggested, that direct government spending is the only way to go.

[hansel]

*Originally posted by John Mace *
**There certainly is a legitimate argument that can be made for government funding of sattelite technology for military defense purposes. But I’m not putting the argument backwards at all. You are assuming that funding basic research is a priori something that must be done. I think private individuals are better positioned to determined where their money should be spent. There are legimate expenses for the government, but those entail things like national defense that are in fact a priori necessary for the survival of a country. **

I’m not assuming that government must do basic research, I think it should do basic research or fund it through public institutions like universities because it leads to faster development of speculative, world-changing technologies. Per my question above, there’s no reason private industry can’t compete with the government to develop revolutionary technologies, so why don’t they? Basic research by government offers only long-term benefits that are huge but diffuse. A private entity could keep the money all to itself.

Here’s the reason: I work for a manufacturer of plastic goods with revenues under $100MM a year. We invest nothing in materials science research in polymers because we can’t mobilize the capital to make the kind of effort needed while defraying the cost of a high-risk, long-term investment. Neither does our parent company, with $2B/year in revenues, for the same reason. It takes a financial entity the size of the U.S. government to bear the cost of large-scale, basic research that pays off decades in the future in ten or eleven or twelve zero sums that can benefit the whole economy only in a diffuse fashion.

[hansel]

*Originally posted by John Mace *
Well, I’d postulate that the private sector did compete in just about the amount that it made sense to, given the ability of the gov’t to command massive amounts of funds without risk.

Well, we agree on this point, then. Do you think that without someone taking that large-scale risk, that the aggregate of risk undertaken by the private sector in piecemeal development would equal that?

I think so, but only on a much longer term. I think government driven basic research is faster because it’s not so bound by the need for short-term success.

[Sam_Stone]

Probably true, but that is not an argument that proves that particular research must be done now as opposed to 50 yrs from now. I’m a scientist by training and love this type of stuff as much as anyone. But I don’t believe it is appropriate for me to use my own personal interests and desires to draw from the public trough.

Well, can’t that argument be used for all government spending? There are people out there who disagree with welfare spending, social security, roads, police, courts, and pretty much everything else that government does.

If you’re a strict libertarian, you’ll answer “yes”, but if you’re not, where do you draw the line?

As an aside, I just saw one of the most idiotic things a TV personality has said in a while - on Canadian TV, they were interviewing one of the JPL scientists, and during the interview they played that animation of the landing that NASA did. The commentator interrupted the scientist and said, “While we’re watching this spectacular footage, I’d like to know what your first thoughts were when the video of this whole landing sequence came into JPL last night.”

The scientist looked befuddled for a moment, then said, “You mean that simulation we were just watching? We actually don’t have the ability to film the entire landing sequence…”

[jshore]

*Originally posted by Sam Stone *
There was a time when Bell Labs funded more research than did the entire government. Motorola, Lucent, even Microsoft and IBM do tremendous amounts of basic research, and not all of it has direct commercial applications. Let’s remember that the 3 degree cosmic background radiation was discovered at Bell labs.

I have some question doubts, based on admittedly anecdotal evidence of what has happened at most of these research labs, that such corporate funding of basic research is continuing today in the generally more competitive marketplace. When you look at who did some of this basic research in the past, it seemed to be companies like Bell, IBM, Kodak, … that had effective monopolies or at least a substantial market share. Admittedly, there are some companies coming in to take their place…e.g., Microsoft is now funding some basic research…And, I guess you have a point about a few wealthy private benefactors. But, I’d like to see hard numbers on this. Because, I get the feeling that the days may have changed from the time when a place like Bell Labs (i.e., almost like an academic institution within industry) can exist, at least on the scale that it did.

[John_Mace]

*Originally posted by Sam Stone *
Well, can’t that argument be used for all government spending? There are people out there who disagree with welfare spending, social security, roads, police, courts, and pretty much everything else that government does.

If you’re a strict libertarian, you’ll answer “yes”, but if you’re not, where do you draw the line?

Where do I draw the line? Probably pretty close to where the “strict libertarians” draw that line. But it’s interesting to argue this with you in particular, but you’re philosophy about government is very close to my own. I’ll admit that I’m needling you on this, but the fact is that the best argument you made so far is that the research wouldn’t be done for another 50 yrs if the gov’t didn’t fund it now. Why is it necessarily a bad thing that this partuclar research wouldn’t be done for another 50 years? That argument is, in fact, one that could be used to argue in favor of almost anything.

[Sam_Stone]

jshore: I think you’d be surprised by how much research is being funded. In 2002, Microsoft’s R&D budget was 5.3 BILLION dollars. That is more than NASA’s entire space science budget, and almost a third of NASA’s entire budget.

Intel spends about 4 billion a year in research. Texas Instruments spends 1.7 billion. Lucent spent over 9 billlion on R&D between 1996 and 1998.

In fact, overall private research spending has INCREASED since the 1970’s. Back then, it made up about half of all R&D spending, with government and academia madking up the other half. Today, private research makes up about 75%.

And much of this is ‘basic’ research, and the amount of ‘basic’ research being done by private companies is increasing because commercial applications from things like genetics, nanotech, semiconductors, and space science and becoming increasingly closer to fundamental limits, requiring basic research to move the competitive envelope. Companies like 3M, DuPont, pfizer, Dow chemical, and Merck do a ton of basic research.

Even Microsoft does long-term basic research in computing science. Have a look around the Microsoft Research web site and you’ll see lots of stuff that has no commercial application in the near future. For example, Microsoft Research has office at [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/cambridgeshire/science/2003/12/microsoft.shtml]Cambridge.

And that 75% figure is even higher if you consider how much academic research is actually done by grants from corporations and private foundations. I paid for part of my college education with a bursary from Motorola.

John: Well, here we get into an area that’s really a matter of personal opinion. My belief is that there is nothing more important we can do than expand the boundaries of human knowledge. Even things like health care and welfare just make us more comfortable while we are alive, but to me, just existing isn’t enough. We need to explore, to push our boundaries, to contribute to the base of human knowledge.

If I had my druthers, I would quintuple the budget of NASA, which would still make it barely more expensive than the Department of Education, which I don’t think has returned ANY value to society at all. I would put the Terrestrial Planet Finder program on the fast track, and start spending serious money on a large array of space interferometry telescopes.

For near earth orbit operations, I’d move it entirely into the private sector, with government funding if necessary, preferably in the form of prizes.

[Apos]

That rather makes my point for me, doesn’t it? See this article, for example.

If the point of citing the article was to note that government funded researchhas its drawbacks, then it is the equivalent of arguing that there is too much murder in New York, so you should move to Chicago. There is murder in Chicago too. Private research is just as, if not more, questionable in many cases, especially when it comes to social science data. More political think tanks and less organizations that are at least funded to try and be objective is not a direction I’d want to go either.

But I do think that, as long as the government is going to be funding research, it shouldn’t be directly running the research. I’m not sure prizes are the way to go (mostly because you might have to offer far more than it would cost a single company to do the work, because a winner-take-all prize would involve quite a lot of risk for competing firms), but funding quasi-independant quasi-private orgs with no direct stake in the outcomes would certainly be prefferable to the current situaiton.

[John_Mace]

Well, here we get into an area that’s really a matter of personal opinion. My belief is that there is nothing more important we can do than expand the boundaries of human knowledge. Even things like health care and welfare just make us more comfortable while we are alive, but to me, just existing isn’t enough. We need to explore, to push our boundaries, to contribute to the base of human knowledge.

Important enough to force people to participate if they are not inclinded to do so voluntarily? Because that is what it boils down to. Personally, I believe the most important thing a government can do is to allow the people it governs to be free. Free to push those bounderies if they so choose, and free to not push them if that is the case. You seem to be forgetting that there is nothing stopping people from pushing scientific bounderies w/o the “help” of the government.

[asrivkin]

Right. Professional planetary scientist and “pig at the trough” here.

(Obviously, I’m not speaking on behalf of anybody. Heck, I may not even make much sense…)

I have a few different gut reactions to the posters who are against public funding for space research (I assume they are in favor of public funding for health/disease research as something with obvious benefits for society).

1. Before large-scale public funding of science in this country, the “gentleman scientist” was the norm-- Newton was well-off enough to be able to do his work without government intervention (I think). But in this day and age, anybody can be a scientist, whether or not one has access to a personal fortune. It is in the strategic interest of the USA (or any country) to engage and interest the populace in science.

2. The taxpayers, via NASA and NSF, have invested at least $250k (if not quite a bit more) in my education. Typically there were 20-30 grad students in my department at any given time. There are ~5 planetary science departments of that size in the USA, with numerous smaller ones. Part of working on grants from NASA is a charge that our data ultimately becomes available to the public at large, and a mandate to bring our science to them. If I were to work for a private company, much of the work would potentially be proprietary and the public investment could be considered a loss. Why should the public invest in education for space scientists if there is no public application? Taken to that conclusion, private companies would have to pay for education of scientists and engineers through grants, fellowships, prizes… That adds significantly to their costs.

3. The questions we seek to answer are those which have interested people for millenia: How did the Earth form? How old is the universe? Is there life somewhere else? How unusual are we? Do we need to answer these questions right now? Well, I guess not. But do we want to stop seeking the answers altogether?

4. I’m not sure that I trust large companies with large rockets.

5. As a nation, as a community, we have decided to do things that one may not be personally interested in. If someone wants to withhold their $10 (or whatever) share in NASA’s budget this year, why should I pay my share of road maintainance in Idaho, or foreign aid to Botswana, or forest thinning in Colorado? You’re not arguing that the government shouldn’t pay for NASA-- you’re arguing that the government shouldn’t pay for anything whatsoever.

“Duh”, you say.

[Sam_Stone]

Important enough to force people to participate if they are not inclinded to do so voluntarily? Because that is what it boils down to. Personally, I believe the most important thing a government can do is to allow the people it governs to be free. Free to push those bounderies if they so choose, and free to not push them if that is the case. You seem to be forgetting that there is nothing stopping people from pushing scientific bounderies w/o the “help” of the government.

Again, the argument that every bit of government funding is coercive is a strict Libertarian position that would disallow everything including military spending (there are citizens who do not want a military. They may be deluded or silly, but that is their desire).

Let me give you a description of my ‘pure’ libertarianism: I used to believe that the only things government should do is maintain a military to protect people from external aggression, a police force to protect people from internal aggression, and a court system to objectively settle disputes among citizens. That’s about it.

But over time, I’ve spent a lot of effort looking at things like road systems and concluded that you really can’t get around government involvement in the commons - those things that benefit everyone, but which are very difficult to do individually, or even by large corporations. I also think that limited amounts of welfare and other safety nets are reasonable from the standpoint of maintaining societal stability. It is not in my interest to live in a country where the poor are so desperate that they become militant. One look at the Middle Eastern tyrannies should give you some idea of what that can lead to.

And when society can get to the point where spaceflight is possible, but can only realistically be done at the societal level and not by individuals or corporations, then I consider that part of the commons as well.

I draw the line whenever the government tries to do something that can be done by private industry, or where government attempts to exert control over the direction of science or industry. Things like the MITI agency in Japan, or the Semiconductor consortium funded by the government in the U.S. are anathema, as are subsidies and tariffs designed to protect industry from competition or just to throw money at them to buy votes.

So I heartily support NASA flying deep-space probes or building multi-billion dollar interferometry arrays. Perhaps you can foresee some of these smaller projects being done by a consortium of Universities in partnership with industry - that’s possible. And if so, we should let them do it and get NASA out of the way, or at least give NASA a supporting role.

But some projects are within the capabilities of our society, but completely outside the capability of business. For instance, if we put space interferometry on the fast track, within my lifetime we may be able to build telescopes so large that we can image small features on planets orbiting other stars with the same resolution we get imaging Mars from the Hubble. Such images could spot large scale agriculture, and we could certainly analyze atmospheres for things like the products of combustion or other signs of life. But for sure, we’d gain a great understanding of our neighborhood of the Galaxy.

Such a telescope system might cost $100 billion dollars. There is no way private industry will be able to fund something that grand. If you want it done, the only way to do it is to involve the government.

As to whether it should be done, now we’re in the realm of philosophy. I happen to believe that there is nothing more important that we could achieve now while we have the capability. We sometimes take it for granted that we’ll get better and more capable at this stuff as the decades progress, but I think that’s far from clear. Wouldn’t it just suck if 100 years from now we looked at the only time when mankind was rich enough to fly to other planets, and realized that we only spend pennies doing it while blowing hundreds of billions on usesless social engineering and misguided attempts to have a central government micro-manage our educations?

[Squink]

*Originally posted by asrivkin *
Right. Professional planetary scientist and “pig at the trough” here.

Oink Oink, Enjoy the feast!
Have you got any guesses on the nature of those peculiar crater shaped objects on Wild 2?

[John_Mace]

*Originally posted by asrivkin *
1)It is in the strategic interest of the USA (or any country) to engage and interest the populace in science.

You have to demostrate that people, Americans in particular, would not be interested in science w/o government nudging them to do so.

2. Why should the public invest in education for space scientists if there is no public application? Taken to that conclusion, private companies would have to pay for education of scientists and engineers through grants, fellowships, prizes… That adds significantly to their costs.

You’re right. The public should not have to finance the education of space scientists.

3. The questions we seek to answer are those which have interested people for millenia: How did the Earth form? How old is the universe? Is there life somewhere else? How unusual are we? Do we need to answer these questions right now? Well, I guess not. But do we want to stop seeking the answers altogether?

You have made the fallacious assumption that “not providing funding” is the same as “preventing funding from taking place.”

4. I’m not sure that I trust large companies with large rockets.

Then pass safetly legislation. You trust private companies with thousands of airplanes. Those, taken together, pose a much greater safety risk.

5. As a nation, as a community, we have decided to do things that one may not be personally interested in. If someone wants to withhold their $10 (or whatever) share in NASA’s budget this year, why should I pay my share of road maintainance in Idaho, or foreign aid to Botswana, or forest thinning in Colorado? You’re not arguing that the government shouldn’t pay for NASA-- you’re arguing that the government shouldn’t pay for anything whatsoever.

I’m not. And I’m not arguing about whether a democractic country such as the US can fund said research, I’m arguing about whether we should. There are things that a country, by necessity, must have and must fund-- a military, a police force, a court system, things like that. And then there are those things which are optional. I propose funding the necessities from taxes and the optional things thru private organizations. We can argue a lot about where you draw the line between the two, but I can’t see that space exploration can be anything but optional.

[elucidator]

You make very rational, very reasonable arguments. And I would be less than honest to try and counter them with same. Because the truth is, I’m a total space junky.

When Apollo went to the moon, I spend hours listening to Walter Cronkite telling me that the astronauts were asleep. How asleep are they, Uncle Walter? REM sleep? How much longer till…oh, I see, 22 hours, 11 minutes and 24 seconds, yeah… My friends all thought I was crazy. (Well, one friend thought crazy, the other thought not enough brown rice…)

I counted the days till Hubble went up. When I found out that some dildo had screwed up grinding the optical mirrors, and it would be months before they could fix it…I threw the last full blown hissy fit of my life. I seized strangers by the lapels, urging them to immediate, if nonspecific, action.

It it comes to landing something on Titan and knocking to see if anyone is home, and saving all the dolphins, I say, Flipper, get a gun. You’re on your own. If it comes to a probe to ascertain the core temperature of Alpha Ceti 5 and funding laptops for inner city students, I say, get with the program, kiddys. Entrepreneurship. Bootstraps. Get a job. Steal a job. I don’t care.

So when I give you all these sensible reasons to support space exploration, just skip over them. I’m lying, I don’t give a rats patoot about any of them, I’m depraved, I admit it.

If the Dem candidate promises to shut down all space programs and funnel the funds into worthy humanitarian goals, and the Force of Darkness promise 10 times as much funding with a special SETI grant of a gazillion bucks…

I’m going to feel very, very guilty.

But I can’t help it. I’m a space junky.

[Squink]

*Originally posted by elucidator *
If the Dem candidate promises to shut down all space programs and funnel the funds into worthy humanitarian goals, and the Force of Darkness promise 10 times as much funding with a special SETI grant of a gazillion bucks…

I’m going to feel very, very guilty.

But I can’t help it. I’m a space junky.

I’d rather consider you patriotic and far sighted enough to realize that America will not fare well in a future in which the red chinese hold a monopoly over lunar deuterium production and importation.

[pervert]

Well, no, I think you misunderstood elucidator. I think (correct me if I’m wrong of course) that if America decided to stop space travel and China became the dominant space faring nation, he might just learn to speak mandarin.

I’m even more anti communist that he is. But if they started offering rides for defectors…

[asrivkin]

*Originally posted by Squink *
**Oink Oink, Enjoy the feast!
Have you got any guesses on the nature of those peculiar crater shaped objects on Wild 2? **

At this point I’ve only seen the two pictures that have been released to the public. The first thing I thought was that they’ve got to be blowouts from explosive release of volatiles-- they don’t look like they’re deep enough to be impact craters, and they’ve got flat floors.

Having said that, I’m an asteroid guy not a comet guy, so I could be completely off. Naturally.

This is a sweet time to be an astronomer, though. I do consider myself blessed.

[asrivkin]

*Originally posted by John Mace *
You’re right. The public should not have to finance the education of space scientists.

Should the public, in your view, have to finance the education of civil engineers? Aerospace engineers? Chemists? Anybody? Do you think space science is particularly pie-in-the-sky?

You have made the fallacious assumption that “not providing funding” is the same as “preventing funding from taking place.”

The state of the art is such that without funding at a certain level, the science will not progress. In practice, removal of national funding by the USA would remove the only agent capable of mobilizing the necessary money.

I’m not. And I’m not arguing about whether a democractic country such as the US can fund said research, I’m arguing about whether we should.

That’s exactly what I said:

Originally posted by asrivkin
You’re not arguing that the government shouldn’t pay for NASA-- you’re arguing that the government shouldn’t pay for anything whatsoever.

Originally posted by John Mace
There are things that a country, by necessity, must have and must fund-- a military, a police force, a court system, things like that. And then there are those things which are optional. I propose funding the necessities from taxes and the optional things thru private organizations. We can argue a lot about where you draw the line between the two, but I can’t see that space exploration can be anything but optional.

And yet, there are many people who would disagree with you, and who feel that the training of scientists doing cutting-edge basic research is critical to our national (or the future of whatever nation) future.

I recognize that like elucidator, I may be speaking from the heart rather than entirely rationally. But I think that’s valid, too. Great nations do great things. I think giving up on space exploration would be a retreat for the USA. And I shiver to imagine the first people on Mars saluting the flag of the Golden Arches. :eek:

[elucidator]

So, you’d prefer the first colonists to be Starbucks?

[John_Mace]

*Originally posted by asrivkin *
Should the public, in your view, have to finance the education of civil engineers? Aerospace engineers? Chemists? Anybody? Do you think space science is particularly pie-in-the-sky?

Nope. No public money for college.

The state of the art is such that without funding at a certain level, the science will not progress. In practice, removal of national funding by the USA would remove the only agent capable of mobilizing the necessary money.

Maybe. But we don’t know what a society with the wealth of the US would do if the gov’t was not in the science subsidy business. We really don’t know.

That’s exactly what I said:

No, you said my reasoning implied that the gov’t shouldn’t fund anything. I specifically said I thought some things were legitimate sources for gov’t spending.

And yet, there are many people who would disagree with you, and who feel that the training of scientists doing cutting-edge basic research is critical to our national (or the future of whatever nation) future.

True. They’re wrong:)

I recognize that like elucidator, I may be speaking from the heart rather than entirely rationally. But I think that’s valid, too. Great nations do great things.

Card caring space junkie here, too. I’m with 'luci all the way. I’m still pissed at the guy who took 1st place in my Jr High Science fair. Not only did I just get 2nd place for my Apollo 11 exhibit, the numnut teacher announced my prize by saying my project was about “Apollo 2” (it’s not Roman Numurals, you idiot). I’m just saying that I’m able to seperate my own personal wants and desires from what I think is the right thing to do (at least in this case). Hey, I’d love the gov’t to give me $1B, but it would still be wrong.