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I really do wish NASA had a focus. The 60s showed the power of NASA given a clear goal and direction, but now a days they feel like they're operating a mile wid

I really do wish NASA had a focus. The 60s showed the power of NASA given a clear goal and direction, but now a days they feel like they're operating a mile wide and an inch deep. Probes are great, but I think many overestimate the amount of information they can genuinely provide. Even on Mars where we have had multiple rovers on the surface, there are still ongoing debates about things such as whether the streaks on the planet's surface are water, which NASA made a large announcement of, or indeed just sand which is where the latest interpretation stands. And that's for a very peaceful and close planet (in comparison to Uranus or Neptune) that we ostensibly have a great understanding of. I don't really care what their goal would be, as long as it would be a goal that they could work towards - a base on the moon, a base on mars, expanding the ISS, or anything - preferably with a human element as that's what attracts people to space, and thus gets the money to make these missions become reality. But these probes are not really advancing society. And here I would make an exception for things like the Kepler missions. Those were a directed mission with a specific, valuable, and new purpose that could (and did) provide information that substantially advanced society. Let's go shoot some probes off around Uranus and Neptune and grab some pics and atmospheric readings is better than nothing but it feels like spending funding for the sake of spending funding.

mturmon 9y ago
Not a down voter, but: This isn't accurate. Planetary science (as in the OP) tends to be more diverse and exploratory than Earth or Astrophysics, but it still has a strategy. It's not just stamp collecting. See: https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/focus-areas https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/focus-areas
- TangoTrotFox 9y ago
  I'm not sure what your link is supposed to show?
  - mturmon 9y ago
    Well, you wondered, "I don't really care what their goal would be, as long as it would be a goal that they could work towards..." and that link shows the basic four orienting science questions (right panel in blue text) - how did life begin, how did the solar system evolve, how did the planets originate, etc. Those are the top-level questions that the National Academies panel doing the Decadal Survey arrived at and that motivates the portfolio of planetary missions that are planned. I would have linked to the Decadal Survey (overview at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Science_Decadal_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Science_Decadal_Surv...), but the report itself is a very long pdf - and this gets into the strategy in detail. For instance, the next Mars mission (Mars 2020) is set up to address the "life" question, and the "how did the planet [Mars] evolve" question, etc.
    - TangoTrotFox 9y ago
      Do you know what the Uranus probe's goals are? They're laid out here [1]. It's to measure wind speed and atmospheric densities/temperatures. And that is typical. This is what I was getting at when I said that these probes do not achieve near what many people seem to think they can. We have a limited budget and I think this budget should be directed towards things that can advance us in the most meaningful ways possible. Measuring the wind speed and density on Uranus does not really fit the bill there. Think about SpaceX. What they've done should have been impossible. A private company operating on a shoestring budget revolutionized space in 15 years? That doesn't mean Musk is a genius, it means that our current space system is simply incompetent. There are certainly many reasons for this, including congress using NASA as a jobs program, but I think a lack of direction is also a major reason. 'Discovering how life began and evolved on Earth' as a mission statement is like a philsopher stating his goal is to 'discover the meaning of existence.' It's a goal that's so impossible and so broad that anything can be justified in its name. 'Easier' goals are in many ways much harder since you need to remain focused. And when NASA has focus they, at least in the past, have shown themselves capable of amazing things. Going from having never even put a man in orbit, to putting a man on the moon in a decade? Think about that, if you even can. In today's times that should seem completely unbelievable. And we should be capable of exponentially more now a days. And that is where we should set our sights. The point I'm getting at is that if you aim low, that's always where you're going to hit. Aim high and you might miss, but at least you're pointed in the right direction. --- As one brief aside, those mission statements immediately made me think of Oumuamua [2] -- that cylindrical weird interstellar object (it's exact nature is, and will likely remain unknown - the name translates to 'first scout', as the imagination might imagine) currently looping around the sun on its pass through and on its way out of our solar system. Being able to get ships and ideally humans onto that thing would be groundbreaking and actually go a long ways towards pushing those mission statements, abstract though they may be, forward. But our space program and technology is so backwards and dated that we're instead left watching jaws agape as arguably the single most relevant tracked celestial object lackadaisically (...as lackadaisical as 30km/s can be) laps us on its way on out of our solar system. It's again absurd that the primary interest in trying to perform an intercept with this object has come from the private industry. But hey, at least we'll know the wind speed in Uranus... [1] - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20170006873.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201700... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua

mturmon 9y ago

Not a down voter, but: This isn't accurate. Planetary science (as in the OP) tends to be more diverse and exploratory than Earth or Astrophysics, but it still has a strategy. It's not just stamp collecting. See: https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/focus-areas https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/focus-areas

TangoTrotFox 9y ago
I'm not sure what your link is supposed to show?
- mturmon 9y ago
  Well, you wondered, "I don't really care what their goal would be, as long as it would be a goal that they could work towards..." and that link shows the basic four orienting science questions (right panel in blue text) - how did life begin, how did the solar system evolve, how did the planets originate, etc. Those are the top-level questions that the National Academies panel doing the Decadal Survey arrived at and that motivates the portfolio of planetary missions that are planned. I would have linked to the Decadal Survey (overview at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Science_Decadal_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Science_Decadal_Surv...), but the report itself is a very long pdf - and this gets into the strategy in detail. For instance, the next Mars mission (Mars 2020) is set up to address the "life" question, and the "how did the planet [Mars] evolve" question, etc.
  - TangoTrotFox 9y ago
    Do you know what the Uranus probe's goals are? They're laid out here [1]. It's to measure wind speed and atmospheric densities/temperatures. And that is typical. This is what I was getting at when I said that these probes do not achieve near what many people seem to think they can. We have a limited budget and I think this budget should be directed towards things that can advance us in the most meaningful ways possible. Measuring the wind speed and density on Uranus does not really fit the bill there. Think about SpaceX. What they've done should have been impossible. A private company operating on a shoestring budget revolutionized space in 15 years? That doesn't mean Musk is a genius, it means that our current space system is simply incompetent. There are certainly many reasons for this, including congress using NASA as a jobs program, but I think a lack of direction is also a major reason. 'Discovering how life began and evolved on Earth' as a mission statement is like a philsopher stating his goal is to 'discover the meaning of existence.' It's a goal that's so impossible and so broad that anything can be justified in its name. 'Easier' goals are in many ways much harder since you need to remain focused. And when NASA has focus they, at least in the past, have shown themselves capable of amazing things. Going from having never even put a man in orbit, to putting a man on the moon in a decade? Think about that, if you even can. In today's times that should seem completely unbelievable. And we should be capable of exponentially more now a days. And that is where we should set our sights. The point I'm getting at is that if you aim low, that's always where you're going to hit. Aim high and you might miss, but at least you're pointed in the right direction. --- As one brief aside, those mission statements immediately made me think of Oumuamua [2] -- that cylindrical weird interstellar object (it's exact nature is, and will likely remain unknown - the name translates to 'first scout', as the imagination might imagine) currently looping around the sun on its pass through and on its way out of our solar system. Being able to get ships and ideally humans onto that thing would be groundbreaking and actually go a long ways towards pushing those mission statements, abstract though they may be, forward. But our space program and technology is so backwards and dated that we're instead left watching jaws agape as arguably the single most relevant tracked celestial object lackadaisically (...as lackadaisical as 30km/s can be) laps us on its way on out of our solar system. It's again absurd that the primary interest in trying to perform an intercept with this object has come from the private industry. But hey, at least we'll know the wind speed in Uranus... [1] - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20170006873.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201700... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua