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It seems to me that space proponents need to study other tricky-to-justify programs for lessons. Just do whatever the F-35 people did. I wish that the main th

It seems to me that space proponents need to study other tricky-to-justify programs for lessons. Just do whatever the F-35 people did. I wish that the main thrust (so to speak) was towards permanent off-planet settlement and economies rather than merely having a human grab the soil samples. Also, it would be nice to see a more results-oriented attitude rather than have the whole deal watered down with politics. Of course, you could probably say that about the US military.

SiempreViernes 7y ago
I think it's hard for a civilian agency to use the defence sectors tricks. NASA could probably get a lot of people behind building a giant laser on the moon to "strike the enemy", but it's hard to see how they could get much support from the science community for such a project.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Laser interferometry for astronomy. Just spec the lasers out so that they're useful for science, but can double as a weapon in a pinch.
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  Au contraire. Just scatter around the components of the project into various Congressional districts. Build large facilities in places with political horsepower and name them after important people. Gemini/Apollo is fraught with this. Personally, I doubt that the science community would be behind manned space travel in any case. It's more marketed to the engineering and military world. I wouldn't doubt that internal NASA competition over limited dollars shows astronomers and planet scientists smothering the manned efforts in it's crib now and again.
sq_ 7y ago
> I wish that the main thrust (so to speak) was towards permanent off-planet settlement and economies rather than merely having a human grab the soil samples. Totally agree with you on that. I think the current situation has to do with how political space has become, especially in the US. If missions are being used as popularity boosts on a per administration basis, it makes way more sense to propose something small and relatively feasible on short time scales like a glorified sample return mission as opposed to something that requires real, long term investment like colonization.

SiempreViernes 7y ago

I think it's hard for a civilian agency to use the defence sectors tricks. NASA could probably get a lot of people behind building a giant laser on the moon to "strike the enemy", but it's hard to see how they could get much support from the science community for such a project.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Laser interferometry for astronomy. Just spec the lasers out so that they're useful for science, but can double as a weapon in a pinch.
PorterDuff 7y ago
Au contraire. Just scatter around the components of the project into various Congressional districts. Build large facilities in places with political horsepower and name them after important people. Gemini/Apollo is fraught with this. Personally, I doubt that the science community would be behind manned space travel in any case. It's more marketed to the engineering and military world. I wouldn't doubt that internal NASA competition over limited dollars shows astronomers and planet scientists smothering the manned efforts in it's crib now and again.

sq_ 7y ago

> I wish that the main thrust (so to speak) was towards permanent off-planet settlement and economies rather than merely having a human grab the soil samples. Totally agree with you on that. I think the current situation has to do with how political space has become, especially in the US. If missions are being used as popularity boosts on a per administration basis, it makes way more sense to propose something small and relatively feasible on short time scales like a glorified sample return mission as opposed to something that requires real, long term investment like colonization.