Why on Earth would we want to go there!?

Great Debates
61

[QUOTE=Alessan]
Say what you want about space travel, at least it’s an ethos.
[/QUOTE]
My last post may have been a little glib. Here’s the deal. I agree with you that space travel* would bring meaning and purpose to people’s lives. That doesn’t mean it’s feasible. That’s what I mean by “quasi-religious,” It’s not being argued for on rational grounds, but simply asserted based on deep-seated psychological need.

*By space travel I’m talking about large-scale expansion of humanity through space, not simply sending a few astronauts to tool around on the moon and mars for a little while.

62

You’re the fellow asserting its greatness, so please explain what would make space travel the glorious crowning achievement for humanity. Please keep the semi-woo mysticism to minimal levels.

63

[QUOTE=Larry Borgia]
My last post may have been a little glib. Here’s the deal. I agree with you that space travel* would bring meaning and purpose to people’s lives. That doesn’t mean it’s feasible. That’s what I mean by “quasi-religious,” It’s not being argued for on rational grounds, but simply asserted based on deep-seated psychological need.

*By space travel I’m talking about large-scale expansion of humanity through space, not simply sending a few astronauts to tool around on the moon and mars for a little while.
[/QUOTE]

  1. I’m not talking about bringing meaning and purpose to people’s lives, or any other sort of new-age feel-good mumbo-jumbo. I’m talking about having a purpose for the existance of the human race. I’m talking about goals, the type of goals that are greater than any individual person or nature. If you have any better goals than space travel, let me know what they are.

  2. Space travel may not be feasible now, but it will be, eventually. Technology develops at an astounding rate. If you don’t believe me, try explaining the internet to Sir Isaac Newton.

64

There’s plenty of immediate value in sending commercial and scientific satellites into Earth orbit. And there’s plenty of immediate value in sending scientific probes off into deep space. But sending people into space with today’s technology is a waste of lives and money.

Let’s spend a couple of hundred years building up our surface to orbit infrastructure first: cheaper launch vehicles, better solar panels, maybe a space elevator. Before we can even think about building colonies in space we need to grow our tecnological base. Otherwise we’re doing the equivalent of trying to cross the Atlantic in a birchbark canoe.

65

If our culture is so risk-averse, why is there a waiting list to climb Everest, a peak that is littered with dozens of bodies?

66

[QUOTE=AtomicDog]
If our culture is so risk-averse, why is there a waiting list to climb Everest?
[/QUOTE]

Because the government isn’t spending billions of taxpayer dollars to climb Everest.

67

[QUOTE=Larry Borgia]
I think there’s a quasi-religious component to a lot of this. We must colonize the stars, therefore we will colonize the stars. Real-world problems are to be hand-waved away, should anyone have the poor taste to mention them. Just as persistent and annoying atheists are shushed by such phrases as “man should not presume to judge the ways of God,” so space-flight skeptics are shushed by irrelevant and non-sensical comparisons to Columbus, as though the one thing had anything to do with the other.
[/QUOTE]

Why did you bore into my head and steal all my thoughts, man?

The space advocates lose points with me when they resort to romanticizing space exploration with lofty talk about how we must go to the stars. Absent in these arguments is any acknowledgement of realistic concerns. We can conceive of living on planets millions of light years away, therefore we must try to achieve it. Skeptics be damned.

People like their taxes to go to practical things, not to funding the dreams of 11 year old boys with dinosaur posters plastered on their walls. I sound like a bitch but I’m just being brutally honest. Columbus or other explorers weren’t motivated by scientific curiousity and the desire to send new generations to unchartered lands. Most were driven by money.

68

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Why did you bore into my head and steal all my thoughts, man?

The space advocates lose points with me when they resort to romanticizing space exploration with lofty talk about how we must go to the stars
[/QUOTE]
Anti-space exploration types lose major points with me when they cling to the ridiculously naive and romantic notion that $16 billion not spent on NASA will magically cure disease, eliminate poverty and war and somehow result in everlasting world peace.

69

I think this site has something to say about the human benefit gained from exploring space.

[QUOTE=About dot com]

Every day, in a variety of ways, American lives are touched by space technology. Since 1976, about 1,400 documented NASA inventions have benefited U.S. industry, improved the quality of life and created jobs for Americans. The Apollo program has helped change the way of life in America, especially in health care. Here are some of the inventions contributed by the Apollo program.

Top Left: Kidney dialysis machines were developed as a result of a NASA developed chemical process that could remove toxic waste from used dialysis fluid.

Top Right: As a medical CAT scanner searches the human body for tumors or other abnormalities, the industrial version, or advanced computed tomography inspection system, finds imperfections in aerospace structures and components, such as castings, rocket motors and nozzles.

Bottom Left: A cardiovascular conditioner developed for astronauts in space led to the development of a physical therapy and athletic development machine used by football teams, sports clinics and medical rehabilitation centers.

Bottom Right: A hospital food service system employs a cook/chill concept for serving food. The system allows staff to prepare food well in advance, maintain heat, visual appeal and nutritional value while reducing operating costs.
Top Left: Athletic shoe design and manufacture also benefited from Apollo. Space suit technology is incorporated into a shoe’s external shell. A stress free “blow molding” process adapted from NASA space suit design is also used in the shoe’s manufacture.

Top Right: Freeze-dried food solved the problem of what to feed an astronaut on the long-duration Apollo missions.

Bottom Left: Insulation barriers made of aluminum foil laid over a core of propylene or mylar, which protected astronauts and their spacecraft’s delicate instruments from radiation, is used to protect cars and trucks and dampen engine and exhaust noise.

Bottom Right: Water purification technology used on the Apollo spacecraft is now employed in several spinoff applications to kill bacteria, viruses and algae in community water supply systems and cooling towers. Filters mounted on faucets can reduce lead in water supplies.

Top Left: Process for bonding dry lubricant to space metals led to the development of surface enhancement coatings, which are used in applications from pizza making to laser manufacture. Each coating is designed to protect specific metal group or group of metals to solve problems encountered under operating conditions.

Top Middle: Digital signal-processing techniques, originally developed to enhance pictures of the Moon for the Apollo Program, are an indispensable part of Computer-Aided Tomography (CAT) scan & Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technologies used today worldwide.

Top Right: Vacuum metallizing techniques led to an extensive line of commercial products, from insulated outer garments to packaging for foods & from reflective blankets to photographic reflectors.

Bottom Left: Cordless power tools & appliances are one of the most successful commercial spin-offs of space-based technology.

Bottom Middlet: Cool suits, which kept Apollo astronauts comfortable during moon walks, are today worn by race car drivers, hazardous area workers, & people with specific health problems.

Bottom Right: A hollow retroreflector, a mirror-like instrument that reflects light & other radiation back to the source, is used as a sensor to detect the presence of hazardous gases in oil development, chemical plants, waste storage sites & locations where gases could be released into the environment.

[/QUOTE]

EDIT: The Top/Bottom references are to pictures of the described items.

70

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Anti-space exploration types lose major points with me when they cling to the ridiculously naive and romantic notion that $16 billion not spent on NASA will magically cure disease, eliminate poverty and war and somehow result in everlasting world peace.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=kangaroo_in_black]
I think this site has something to say about the human benefit gained from exploring space.
[/QUOTE]
An amusing juxtaposition seeing these two posts side by side. Apparently the NASA budget is too miniscule to have any effect at on medical or industrial progress. Except for all the miracles that are the result of repurposed technology. :rolleyes:

Here’s a suggestion: Let’s cut out the middleman.

71

[QUOTE=Pochacco]
There’s plenty of immediate value in sending commercial and scientific satellites into Earth orbit. And there’s plenty of immediate value in sending scientific probes off into deep space. But sending people into space with today’s technology is a waste of lives and money.

Let’s spend a couple of hundred years building up our surface to orbit infrastructure first: cheaper launch vehicles, better solar panels, maybe a space elevator. Before we can even think about building colonies in space we need to grow our tecnological base. Otherwise we’re doing the equivalent of trying to cross the Atlantic in a birchbark canoe.
[/QUOTE]

I agree completely. And as technology improves, it will be much cheaper and safer to delay manned missions till the robotic probes have cleared the way. APOLLO was a magnificent achievement-but it could have been done later, with much advanced technology. It was a miracle that more lives wern’t lost on it, because there were simply no backup systems.

72

[QUOTE=Liberal]
Then why go?
[/quote]

Why not go? The universe is out there, just waiting to be explored.

Currently we have all our eggs in one basket. One big meteor strike and humanity is history. Personally, I’d rather that humanity not end. Going to the Moon or Mars isn’t the solution to that problem, but it’s the start of that solution. There’s so much we need to learn, and we won’t learn it by not trying.

73

[QUOTE=Liberal]
That’s because they had something to expand into.
[/quote]
So you think space isn’t a place to expand into infinitely larger than the surface of earth?

Why do you insist humans have to slaughter things in order to expand and advance? The wonderful, wonderful thing about space is it’s filled with resources and land area and we don’t have to harm a single hair on a flea’s neck to exploit it all we want.

On earth, a sufficiently equipped maniac just might be able to end it all for everyone, but all he’s going to accomplish on Colony 3995 is the destruction of Colony 3995. A suicidal passenger on a jet 20,000 feet in the air could I suppose, end it all for everyone on board that plane. There’s no where to run at 20,000 feet. Doesn’t stop me from flying.

No, you don’t. Humanity is diverse and despite what you may think, most people don’t run around trying to kill each other. I know no one’s ever actually tried to kill me. I’ve found myself in a scary place from time to time, but I’m not giving up on the human race.

No, a rock the size of a golf ball hitting a sufficiently large colony will have a negligible effect. By negligible, I mean, do you hide in your house because you’re afraid a malaria mosquito might get you? Because the odds of that are probably greater than a micro meteor ever endangering a large colony. A small hole punched into a large colony could bleed atmosphere days, weeks or months before anyone was in danger and I’m pretty sure they’d have a system in place for patching holes.

[QUOTE=Triskadecamus]
You know if the proponents of the destiny of human kind to move beyond the cradle of the old home planet were a bit more up front about what that meant, it would be a more honest, but probably less popular issue. It might well be the destiny of human kind to send a small elite sample of its members beyond the cradle of the old home planet. But that is not the tone of the rhetoric we hear.

Robert Heinlein knew it well. For all his pseudo egalitarian cheer leading, Heinlein was an elitist, who fervently believed the bulk of humanity would be left behind, and little missed by the elite that traveled into his vast new frontier. I am not of that elite. So, I want to hear about the cost, and the benefit in honest terms, on a human lifetime scale.
[/QUOTE]
That’s like saying Europeans should never have left Europe because not everyone got to go. But here we are hundreds of years later and we’ve got lots of Europeans living happily in Europe and lots Europeans living happily lots of other places and Europeans are most assuredly benefitting from some advancements made in places other than Europe.

74

[QUOTE=RickJay]
The amount of money funnelled to the aerospace industry through NASA is a small fraction of the money funnelled through the Department of Defense. Realistically, the aerospace industry doesn’t need NASA. The United States spent as much developing and building just the F-22 Raptor as it spends on the entirety of NASA in four years.
.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t disagree with this at all.
I am saying “the bigs” lobby Congress for NASA cash that they know will be coming to them. They just do and it can be significant

I am not saying, at all, that it approaches the importance of defense to these guys nor that it is the primary focus of their lobbying efforts or who they give money to in political campaigns. I do contend that the bigs lobby congress to throw Money at NASA. I stand by that.

75

[QUOTE=Pochacco]
An amusing juxtaposition seeing these two posts side by side. Apparently the NASA budget is too miniscule to have any effect at on medical or industrial progress. Except for all the miracles that are the result of repurposed technology. :rolleyes:

Here’s a suggestion: Let’s cut out the middleman.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t recall the word miracle appearing in Kangaroo’s post.

But apparently if we eliminate the space program and wait a few hundred years, everything will be okey-dokey here on earth.

76

[QUOTE=Quartz]
Going to the Moon or Mars isn’t the solution to that problem, but it’s the start of that solution.
[/QUOTE]
The thing is, it’s not the start of the solution. It’s just a costly distraction. Europeans didn’t build the infrastructure required to support overseas colonies by repeatedly sending row boats off into the Atlantic.

That’s what manned space travel is right now, a costly distraction. The shortest path to the stars is through decades or centuries of fundamental research into boring things like material science. Romantic stunts like bases on the Moon or Mars are at best worthless and at worst actually drain resources away from real science. (The way the stupid ISS drains resources away from planetary probes.)

77

[QUOTE=ralph124c]
I agree completely. And as technology improves, it will be much cheaper and safer to delay manned missions till the robotic probes have cleared the way. APOLLO was a magnificent achievement-but it could have been done later, with much advanced technology. It was a miracle that more lives wern’t lost on it, because there were simply no backup systems.
[/QUOTE]

Robotic probes did clear the way for Apollo - Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor, some others I’ve forgotten. There was concern about a thick layer of lunar dust, the probes resolved that problem. However, probes are never going to show us how to survive in space - only doing it proves that.

78

[QUOTE=Liberal]
You can’t just massacre the Martians and take their land.

[/QUOTE]

We can do anything we set our mind to.

79

[QUOTE=chappachula]
Because the government isn’t spending billions of taxpayer dollars to climb Everest.
[/QUOTE]

Way to not answer my question. I said culture, not government.

80

[QUOTE=Pochacco]

Let’s spend a couple of hundred years building up our surface to orbit infrastructure first: cheaper launch vehicles, better solar panels, maybe a space elevator. Before we can even think about building colonies in space we need to grow our tecnological base. Otherwise we’re doing the equivalent of trying to cross the Atlantic in a birchbark canoe.
[/QUOTE]

That’s been the policy of NASA for the past 35 years. The shuttle was going to be a cheaper launch vehicle. We have reasonable solar panels - anyway civilian uses will drive that. A space elevator is going to take lots of launch capacity.

Big projects with 25 years before a new one (to save money) will make us take hundreds of years to get any sort of orbital capacity. That’s the time between sailing ships and the SST. Real progress doesn’t happen by waiting until all the pieces are available for the best solution, it comes from incremental steps. When I was programming using my << 1 MIPS 28 K PDP-11, how much better would I have done if the computer industry decided that we needed fast machines with GUIs, so we’d not do anything until semiconductor technology got us to that kind of capacity?

I do think that a Mars trip should wait until we have learned a lot more - it won’t offer much benefit, beyond being a stunt. A lunar colony, though, is very achievable, isn’t a stunt, and will encourage incremental improvements in launch capacity.