Wow…what a patronizing and condescending post! Just who is being arrogant here? The person who wishes to see proper accountability for his tax dollars? Or is it the person (YOU) who wishes to have ALL of us pay for his desire to see space exploration and colonization without a shred of evidence to support the idea that it is feasible, practical, or economically advantageous?
The idea of space colonization in our lifetime is just absurd - the practical, logistical, economic and political impediments are absolutely enormous. The fact is that many people (you, perhaps) think space exploration is “neato” and so grasp at any and all straws in order to make sure the government continues to waste billions of dollars every year in support of it.
To the charge of being “patronizing and condescending”, I plead guilty-- I do not suffer foolishness gladly.
You will note I did NOT advocate the spending of tax dollars for space exploration. Technology has advanced to the point that private enterprise could get to space by itself fairly soon-- for instance, Xcor Aerospace is testing rocket-planes now that could be upgraded to orbital vehicles in perhaps 10 to 15 years.
Furthermore, the only real reason for the continued expenditure of tax dollars on massive space projects is the impression (fostered by NASA and its “iron rice-bowl” mentality) on the part of the general public that space is “hard” and only government can possibly afford to get there.
As for space exploration and exploitation being an economic gain, see books like “A Step Further Out” by Jerry Pournelle, or “Mining the Sky” by John S. Lewis, and “Halfway to Anywhere” by Harry Stine.
Yes, space is in fact “neato”, but as I wrote above, we really shouldn’t be spending billions of tax dollars on it anymore-- it only crowds out private investment.
As for space colonization, define the term. If you mean the establishment of a space-faring civilization along the lines of Star Trek, yes, that’s a long, long way off. Centuries, if ever. But if you mean a space station, lunar mining colonies, even an elevator to space (see “The Fountains of Paradise” by Arthur C. Clarke), that may happen by 2040. After all, learned men like Vannevar Bush were saying as late as 1948 that a manned landing on the Moon was not likely for at least 200 years.
The economic incentives are out there. We just have to learn to think outside the box called “planet Earth”.
we need to get to space so when nutjobs on this planet blow the whole thing up and Apes take over, we still got humans out there to make more human babies. Being trapped on this rock is a death sentance for the human race, only by expanding so one catastrophie cannot extinct us will we be assured that our genes will survive forever. Sure Star Trek is a long way off, but we aren’t going to get there by sitting on our thumbs.
Perhaps the best answer to this question could be given by remembering the words of British explorer George Leigh Mallory regarding why he climbed Mt. Everest: “Because it’s there!”
The fact that most of those inventions cannot be attributed entirely to the space program does not change the fact that they would never have come into existence without it. NASA did not directly develop Teflon or Velcro or whatever, but the market forces that caused those products to be developed only existed because of the space program. Teflon probably would have been developed eventually anyway because it’s so useful - but there are other things.
Additionally, the Chris Columbus analogy holds true. He couldn’t say what advantages there might be because he hadn’t been there yet. The same applies to us. We still know so little about space that we can’t say what benefits we may reap from it, because we haven’t explored it yet.
How can NASA, or any other organization, be expected to be able to justify its existence when its whole existence is supposed to be about exploring an area we know nothing about? How can they point to tangible benefits that will occur when we don’t even really know what’s out there yet? For all we know the asteroids will turn out to have cores made of naturally formed low temperature superconductors, or pure gold or something. We’ve never examined one so anyone who tells you what they’re made of is only speculating. I’m not saying this is at all likely, but there are so many possible benefits that not to explore them would be just foolish.
As far as Cecil’s column this week, well…I haven’t utterly disagreed with Cecil pretty much since I started reading his column…but this one is a first.
NOT because anything he says isn’t factual (heaven forbid) but because he misses the point. Again the Columbus analogy serves well. Until C. C. came back, that whole expedition looked like a colossal waste of money, didn’t it? It sure didn’t turn out that way. How different would the world be today if nobody had discovered America until a couple hundred years later? I’d be willing to bet the USA wouldn’t even exist. An interesting alternate-history novel could be written on the subject.
Anyway, the point of all this is that it is just plain stupid not to explore, and the only reasons that have been given NOT to explore are the same ones that have been being used for hundreds of years, which have invariably proven groundless.
Please note that in the other thread on this topic, Going into space, Cecil himself comments that he was talking about manned space flights, not about unmanned space exploration.
gotta admit,
i laughed my ass off when i read this.thanks for keepin’it light senor.
anywho, one of the questions adressed in the column was that of the energy needed to propel a vehicle at extra light speed.
what about utilizing the energy already present in space, namely solar power. would it be possible to build a ship with sensitive enough panels, enough of them to keep them pointed at the nearest available energy source, and fast enough computers to keep them continually pointed at same? would this scheme provide enough energy to propel the ship?
i dunno. i’m a union plumber, not a rocket scientist! ;o)
rocket on,
ritchie
But the problem with unmanned flights is that we would need to know what’s there before we can design an efficient probe to study it. That’s the advantage to manned space exploration: humans are generalists. If you send a human, you don’t need to know what’s there. A human is there to figure it out, as well as to be able to see relationships that may not be obvious remotely. Is this more dangerous? Sure. Is it always required to send a human? Well, you can’t really know that until a human goes and looks. In the end, you can put me down solidly for human space flight.
Why go into space? No one here seems to be looking at the history of humankind. Whatever you want to put it down to, we have been exploring the unknown since time immemorial. Why did Europeans travel to China? Why did Magellan circumnavigate the globe, at the cost of his own life? Some may say for the spices or gold or whatever, but someone had to go out there in the first place to even find out that there was gold or spices out there! Even with all that kind of exploration aside (discovery of the Americas, etc.), why did we have to travel to the North and South Poles? What ever did we gain from those explorations? Why do research scientists continue to experiment? In the words of Fred Flintstone, hasn’t everything that could be invented been invented? Territorially, everything on earth has been explored and “conquered.” Space is the only direction to go. It is the only frontier for pioneers to explore. For whatever reason, we have this need to explore. No one has yet to rationalize an expedition to it’s very core. We have always wondered about places we know (or figure) exist, and we will always have the need to check out every place we haven’t been to, even if it takes 5,000 years!
Well put, narphous and byzcath. Cecil also mentioned the impossibility or extreme unlikelihood of ever personally visiting any stars other than our own because of the immense travel times involved. The thing is that I know that NASA (or whatever) could easily find hundreds of people who would be willing to leave Earth knowing that they would never come back, and that even their great-to-the-9th grandkids or whatever probably still wouldn’t come back. They want to explore and they think that that is a worthwhile goal.
Also, NASA is currently investigating a low-thrust ion drive that produces a constant boost of perhaps 1/100 of a gravity. That doesn’t sound like much but it can be maintained for years. This type of system would put all the planets of our solar system within reach with a few weeks or months of travel. Other stars could possibly be reached within the lifetime of one man. The chief problem with our current philosophy of space travel is that we use high boost for short periods of time and then coast for the majority of the trip, which is inefficient. Better methods of propulsion are needed to cut costs and reduce travel time. As I recall, NASA demonstrated a proof-of concept model of the ion drive about a year and a half ago which was able to produce sustained thrust. They’re also investigating other methods, some that were originally created by science fiction writers, such as the Bussard Ramjet (accelerate your ship to some fraction of the speed of light, perhaps 5% or so, and use magnetic fields to scoop up interstellar hydrogen which is funneled to a fusion motor and ejected from the rear. Self reinforcing; i.e. the faster you go the more fuel you collect and the faster you can therefore go. The chief problem being that magnets that strong would kill anything within quite a distance of them, thus making this unsuitable for manned transport. However, recent deveolopments with superconducting materials have shown that some of them are extraordinarily good at completely blocking EMI fields, and thus possibly making a ship of this type habitable).
Here’s another justification for manned space exploration, from the early 1990s:
We build the International Space Station, because it’s better to have Russian engineers and missile scientists working for us, than working for Libya. Better to build white elephants than WMD delivery systems.
What is unclear to me is whether this (rather important) national security concern has become outdated. Does anybody know whether there currently are abundant private sector opportunities for Russian scientists?
BTW, small clarification on the Columbus/Magellan analogy: They DID have a pretty good idea of what they were going after. The “someone had to go out there to find out there were gold and spices” bit HAD happened, centuries earlier – the intended target being * SE Asia*. OTOH, the particulars of their approach to the mission were highly speculative about real returns. At their time it was already proven you could slog your way out there by rounding Africa, but it was unknown if crossing the Ocean westward was at all possible and if so if it was even a tolerable risk vis-a-vis profit potential.
Just two things (although this subject could keep me busy for hours):
Humans go into space because they want to explore. The taxpayers pay for this ‘hobby’ of the few by the same reasoning they pay for art and culture. I am interested in space exploration, not art. I pay for some of your art, you pay for something I am interested in.
Second: This quote from T.S. Eliot sums it up nicely in my view:
“We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”
