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NASA has two options: 1. Massive budget increases to fund missions to the moon and Mars. 2. Realign its goals to match the budget they have now. The Bush-era

by gamble 17y ago

NASA has two options: 1. Massive budget increases to fund missions to the moon and Mars. 2. Realign its goals to match the budget they have now. The Bush-era plan to return to the moon without actually paying for it was the worst of all worlds. Obama's plans may not be inspiring to those who want to relive '69, but I respect that he's willing to tackle problem realistically. We've also got to face the fact that human spaceflight is a prestige project with no scientific value. It's time to force NASA to focus on science. If people want to fart around in free fall, then that's something for private industry to concern itself with.

ericd 17y ago
>We've also got to face the fact that human spaceflight is a prestige project with no scientific value. It's time to force NASA to focus on science. What about the scientific value and long-term species survival value of trying to make it so humans can survive in space long term? Learning how to colonize the moon and other planets? Getting anything sizeable past low Earth orbit is still something that takes an amount of investment well outside the abilities of all but the largest companies. Governments make up a very large percentage of the few entities that have the capital and long-term vision to get us over the first hurdles.
- gamble 17y ago
  I don't believe that human beings will ever be able to exist independently of earth without radically more advanced technology, in every field. If you consider the amount of support the early American colonists required from Europe, despite how primitive their society was in comparison to ours, colonization of space would require an immense amount of infrastructure that simply doesn't exist beyond the earth's surface. Materials that we take for granted, like hydrocarbons and plastics, are unobtainable off-earth. More seriously, the moon and Mars have almost no native sources of energy. Everything would need to be shipped from earth at tremendous expense. Obviously, it would be possible to put men on the moon or Mars and support them with an endless train of supplies from earth, but in the event of some catastrophe on earth that interrupted the flow of materiel, those colonies would become deathtraps rather than refuges.
  - ericd 17y ago
    >Materials that we take for granted, like hydrocarbons and plastics, are unobtainable off-earth. Yes, plastics are useful, but they're not a necessity for very many things. They were invented in the past century. In the short term, many things are unobtainable, but longer term, space contains a hell of a lot of material in a large variety. If there's a reason to figure out ways of doing things in space, we will figure them out. >More seriously, the moon and Mars have almost no native sources of energy. Solar cells work well in space for small needs, and fission provides great fuel energy density for larger needs. Both of these work fine in an environment bereft of oxygen. There's no reason they couldn't be self-sustaining long-term.
PostOnce 17y ago
"No scientific value", eh? If you contemplate the implications of that statement for the briefest of moments you will be staggered by how wrong you are. Exploration leads to discovery. Medical discoveries of the effects of radiation and low gravity on the crew, previously unobserved properties of things great and small, things that men may notice that instruments are not designed to notice, and unknown unknowns that we can't yet imagine. Necessity is the mother of invention. Men in space necessitate certain things: filtration systems, radiation protection, extracting water from Mars and the Moon economically, advanced materials, robotics. Terraforming Mars is one of the end-goals of human space exploration. Humans in space are an incentive to do so. Earth has finite resources, and an expanding population. This is science that we ought to contribute to. Manned space exploration also causes people to be interested in space, to pursue degrees in science, and to contribute to research here on Earth. That being said, you must surely admit that contributions to science can be indirect as well as direct, and that manned exploration of space provides both. I am not in any way an expert on space exploration, but there are a great number of highly knowledgeable people who would love to elucidate the situation for you. ##astronomy on freenode has a bunch of bright people in it. Talk to them, or maybe #space, or take a trip to your local planetarium, museum, or university; get an opinion from someone who has some specific knowledge so that you can engage in debate from an informed perspective, rather than, say, rigidly adhering to things you thought up on the toilet while listening to political talk radio.
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  If you throw money at any hard problem you will get technological advances. They are a by-product of doing something hard. But if you choose the actual task to be one that is useful, you also get the results of the task. So yes, throwing money at space exploration will get you some advances as by-products. But so would throwing money at, say, fusion research, or extremely high speed ground transport, or nanotech, or, heck, I dunno, synthetic (biological) life... and you'd have the chance of getting something useful as a direct product. I worked in astronomy, which is also pretty pointless from a practical point of view (and also has close links with space research). A lot of effort is put into making things look pretty and exciting exactly because people believing - for no sound logical reason - that it's a wonderful thing is what keeps the money rolling in.
TomOfTTB 17y ago
Well, as others have pointed out you're wrong on it having no scientific value. But you're also wrong in a more significant way. Remember two things. First, the Bush administration was all about privatization. It was practically a mantra for them. Second President Bush announced the plan right after the Columbia disaster. When you put things in that context you realize the Bush administration was actually using the moon mission as marketing for other private space endeavors. It's primary purpose was to inspire the public not necessarily to send people to the moon. If successful the end result of the program should be to create a whole new industry of space entrepreneurs spending all kinds of private capital to service the space fascination that the moon mission inspired. Also keep in mind NASA was spending $4 billion on manned space flight. That's $4 billion out of $3.55 trillion in expenditures or around 1/6th of 1% of the U.S. budget. It's still a lot of money but not that much in the scheme of things and I can think of things that I'd cut first (http://www.cagw.org/newsroom/releases/2009/earmarks-rise-to-196.html http://www.cagw.org/newsroom/releases/2009/earmarks-rise-to-...). I was no fan of President Bush but on this he did the right thing.
- gamble 17y ago
  I disagree. It's well-documented that Bush's advisors wanted a "Kennedy moment", and felt that a big announcement that Americans were returning to the moon would be good PR, even if it never panned out. Constellation was an incredibly cynical marriage of political hacks in the administration and NASA administrators desperate to preserve the glory of Apollo. Constellation was dead in the water when public reaction turned negative, even if no one in NASA was willing to admit it. Also, I hold to my opinion that manned spaceflight has produced nothing of scientific value. I'm sure you could come up with the odd technology here or there, but after fifty years it's hard to point to any significant technologies that came out of human spaceflight, much less advances in science. All human spaceflight teaches us is how to put men in space. I'm not suggesting that NASA's budget should be cut, but they should be spending that money on missions that produce real results, like the Mars rovers.
- mturmon 17y ago
  The Bush VSE (Vision for Space Exploration) was actually about directing money to Texas (JSC) and Florida (KSC), two key electoral states. (Ex-Majority Leader Tom Delay's home district in Texas includes JSC, e.g. http://www.spacepolitics.com/2004/11/23/delay-at-jsc-and-other-budget-news/ http://www.spacepolitics.com/2004/11/23/delay-at-jsc-and-oth...). This calculus explains why, as I think you note, they didn't care about actually getting to the moon. ;-) In particular, the VSE was not about using upstart private launch companies (such as SpaceX). It was about JSC, KSC, and the large prime contractors (USA aka United Space Alliance, and ULA = United Launch Alliance, both Boeing/LockMart joint ventures) that are associated with them and that together employ over 10K people. I believe SpaceX employs substantially less than 1000, even today. In typical Bush fashion, the VSE was all slogans and no substance. The officials involved believed in what they were doing, but there was not a coherent plan (actually there have been at least two phases of the VSE, with distinct strategies). And of course, as others above have noted, not enough money. The slogan for that approach was "go as you pay". (I.e., we will do the best we can with what you give us.) Sounds cute, but does not get you into orbit.

by gamble 17y ago

ericd 17y ago

>We've also got to face the fact that human spaceflight is a prestige project with no scientific value. It's time to force NASA to focus on science. What about the scientific value and long-term species survival value of trying to make it so humans can survive in space long term? Learning how to colonize the moon and other planets? Getting anything sizeable past low Earth orbit is still something that takes an amount of investment well outside the abilities of all but the largest companies. Governments make up a very large percentage of the few entities that have the capital and long-term vision to get us over the first hurdles.

gamble 17y ago
I don't believe that human beings will ever be able to exist independently of earth without radically more advanced technology, in every field. If you consider the amount of support the early American colonists required from Europe, despite how primitive their society was in comparison to ours, colonization of space would require an immense amount of infrastructure that simply doesn't exist beyond the earth's surface. Materials that we take for granted, like hydrocarbons and plastics, are unobtainable off-earth. More seriously, the moon and Mars have almost no native sources of energy. Everything would need to be shipped from earth at tremendous expense. Obviously, it would be possible to put men on the moon or Mars and support them with an endless train of supplies from earth, but in the event of some catastrophe on earth that interrupted the flow of materiel, those colonies would become deathtraps rather than refuges.
- ericd 17y ago
  >Materials that we take for granted, like hydrocarbons and plastics, are unobtainable off-earth. Yes, plastics are useful, but they're not a necessity for very many things. They were invented in the past century. In the short term, many things are unobtainable, but longer term, space contains a hell of a lot of material in a large variety. If there's a reason to figure out ways of doing things in space, we will figure them out. >More seriously, the moon and Mars have almost no native sources of energy. Solar cells work well in space for small needs, and fission provides great fuel energy density for larger needs. Both of these work fine in an environment bereft of oxygen. There's no reason they couldn't be self-sustaining long-term.

PostOnce 17y ago

"No scientific value", eh? If you contemplate the implications of that statement for the briefest of moments you will be staggered by how wrong you are. Exploration leads to discovery. Medical discoveries of the effects of radiation and low gravity on the crew, previously unobserved properties of things great and small, things that men may notice that instruments are not designed to notice, and unknown unknowns that we can't yet imagine. Necessity is the mother of invention. Men in space necessitate certain things: filtration systems, radiation protection, extracting water from Mars and the Moon economically, advanced materials, robotics. Terraforming Mars is one of the end-goals of human space exploration. Humans in space are an incentive to do so. Earth has finite resources, and an expanding population. This is science that we ought to contribute to. Manned space exploration also causes people to be interested in space, to pursue degrees in science, and to contribute to research here on Earth. That being said, you must surely admit that contributions to science can be indirect as well as direct, and that manned exploration of space provides both. I am not in any way an expert on space exploration, but there are a great number of highly knowledgeable people who would love to elucidate the situation for you. ##astronomy on freenode has a bunch of bright people in it. Talk to them, or maybe #space, or take a trip to your local planetarium, museum, or university; get an opinion from someone who has some specific knowledge so that you can engage in debate from an informed perspective, rather than, say, rigidly adhering to things you thought up on the toilet while listening to political talk radio.

andrewcooke 17y ago
If you throw money at any hard problem you will get technological advances. They are a by-product of doing something hard. But if you choose the actual task to be one that is useful, you also get the results of the task. So yes, throwing money at space exploration will get you some advances as by-products. But so would throwing money at, say, fusion research, or extremely high speed ground transport, or nanotech, or, heck, I dunno, synthetic (biological) life... and you'd have the chance of getting something useful as a direct product. I worked in astronomy, which is also pretty pointless from a practical point of view (and also has close links with space research). A lot of effort is put into making things look pretty and exciting exactly because people believing - for no sound logical reason - that it's a wonderful thing is what keeps the money rolling in.

TomOfTTB 17y ago

Well, as others have pointed out you're wrong on it having no scientific value. But you're also wrong in a more significant way. Remember two things. First, the Bush administration was all about privatization. It was practically a mantra for them. Second President Bush announced the plan right after the Columbia disaster. When you put things in that context you realize the Bush administration was actually using the moon mission as marketing for other private space endeavors. It's primary purpose was to inspire the public not necessarily to send people to the moon. If successful the end result of the program should be to create a whole new industry of space entrepreneurs spending all kinds of private capital to service the space fascination that the moon mission inspired. Also keep in mind NASA was spending $4 billion on manned space flight. That's $4 billion out of $3.55 trillion in expenditures or around 1/6th of 1% of the U.S. budget. It's still a lot of money but not that much in the scheme of things and I can think of things that I'd cut first (http://www.cagw.org/newsroom/releases/2009/earmarks-rise-to-196.html http://www.cagw.org/newsroom/releases/2009/earmarks-rise-to-...). I was no fan of President Bush but on this he did the right thing.

gamble 17y ago
I disagree. It's well-documented that Bush's advisors wanted a "Kennedy moment", and felt that a big announcement that Americans were returning to the moon would be good PR, even if it never panned out. Constellation was an incredibly cynical marriage of political hacks in the administration and NASA administrators desperate to preserve the glory of Apollo. Constellation was dead in the water when public reaction turned negative, even if no one in NASA was willing to admit it. Also, I hold to my opinion that manned spaceflight has produced nothing of scientific value. I'm sure you could come up with the odd technology here or there, but after fifty years it's hard to point to any significant technologies that came out of human spaceflight, much less advances in science. All human spaceflight teaches us is how to put men in space. I'm not suggesting that NASA's budget should be cut, but they should be spending that money on missions that produce real results, like the Mars rovers.
mturmon 17y ago
The Bush VSE (Vision for Space Exploration) was actually about directing money to Texas (JSC) and Florida (KSC), two key electoral states. (Ex-Majority Leader Tom Delay's home district in Texas includes JSC, e.g. http://www.spacepolitics.com/2004/11/23/delay-at-jsc-and-other-budget-news/ http://www.spacepolitics.com/2004/11/23/delay-at-jsc-and-oth...). This calculus explains why, as I think you note, they didn't care about actually getting to the moon. ;-) In particular, the VSE was not about using upstart private launch companies (such as SpaceX). It was about JSC, KSC, and the large prime contractors (USA aka United Space Alliance, and ULA = United Launch Alliance, both Boeing/LockMart joint ventures) that are associated with them and that together employ over 10K people. I believe SpaceX employs substantially less than 1000, even today. In typical Bush fashion, the VSE was all slogans and no substance. The officials involved believed in what they were doing, but there was not a coherent plan (actually there have been at least two phases of the VSE, with distinct strategies). And of course, as others above have noted, not enough money. The slogan for that approach was "go as you pay". (I.e., we will do the best we can with what you give us.) Sounds cute, but does not get you into orbit.