7 ms·

As far as I can tell, the primary purpose of manned space missions is to redirecting taxes to congressional districts and defense contractors. The secondary pur

As far as I can tell, the primary purpose of manned space missions is to redirecting taxes to congressional districts and defense contractors. The secondary purpose might be to inspire interest in STEM, but it seems much less successful at achieving that objective.

goodcanadian 7y ago
I almost down voted you in a knee jerk reaction. I believe that manned space exploration serves a very important purpose in advancing humanity . . . however, from the typical Congress critter's point of view, I suspect you're right.
- avmich 7y ago
  I suspect GP underestimates the scientific value of Apollo missions. It's so much difference to e.g. study samples brought from the Moon (and taken with reasonable care) in Earth labs than to send robots to do the same. There is a POV that robots are good for scientific missions up to certain price point. After that manned missions become more cost effective.
  - smaddox 7y ago
    I don't see how it would be cheaper to send a human to the Moon to retrieve samples than it would be to send a robot.
    - ticmasta 7y ago
      and that's really just the cost the actual mission. Consider the impact of having to prepare a program that meets acceptable risk levels for humans vs. machines. This is a huge consideration. I'm not suggesting unmanned exploration can take a trial and error approach, but losing a robot is sad & expensive while losing a human astronaut can terminate the entire program.
    - avmich 7y ago
      Some arguments are here: https://phys.org/news/2005-11-unmanned-space-exploration_1.html https://phys.org/news/2005-11-unmanned-space-exploration_1.h... Retrieving a sample is cheaper with a robot - Luna-24 costed a fraction of Apollo. Knowing what to retrieve while having flexibility of choosing surface regolith, separate rock, samples dug out from a better place or else - that's where humans win.
      - mopsi 7y ago
        Indeed. Apollo 17 even flew an actual geologist to the surface of the Moon and gave him 20 hours to explore it.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    The money spent on Apollo would support a large number of robotic missions, including sample return. And they could visit a bunch of different areas. If we were trying to maximize science per dollar, every manned program would have a lot of robotic preparation. Are we doing that? No. We've spent almost nothing on the Moon and only a tiny, tiny fraction of the manned budget on robots to Mars.
  - checktheorder 7y ago
    I would bet good money that when Starship makes its first safe return to Earth after a manned lunar landing mission, there's going to be some serious-as-a-heart-attack talk within the worlds' universities about pooling cash for manned missions.
BurningFrog 7y ago
The other cynical view is that the moon program was really military. As in, if the Soviets got to control the ultimate "higher ground", they could rule the world from it. Apollo made sure no one could control space, and we now have peace in space. I kinda believe in this, though I don't know how historically verified it is. It's of course not what you ever say in your rousing speeches to the nation and the world!
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  The moon program was quite explicitly a showboat for American Engineering vs Soviet.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  There was fear that if the Russians got to the moon first they might set up a base, and having a base they could shoot down any other landing attempt (literally, with guns mounted in their moon base). Thus the moon could become Russian domain, which would not just grant them great research opportunities but also a virtually unreachable weapons platform. (Remember that the first crewed space station was 2 years after the moon landing, and also Soviet) On that basis the military was advocating for a moon mission years before Kennedy's speech. It's hard to tell if this actually played a big role in the decision to go to the moon, but it was the cold war after all. Also the Soviet Union was winning most of the relevant milestones in space (first satellite, first animal in orbit, first human, first woman, first space walk, etc), and this was a great source of national pride. Beating them had great propaganda value.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Shooting people from the moon is probably the least practical military endeavor ever seriously contemplated, and that is saying a lot. The Cold War resulted in a lot of really nutty thinking so I can't rule it out entirely, but it's hard to imagine what such a base would look like, especially with 1960s tech.
    - wongarsu 7y ago
rtkwe 7y ago
There's also a lot of value in the research NASA/JAXA/ESA/Roscosmos does in space. Some experiments are only really doable under long term microgravity The US runs it as a national lab and many companies use it for experiments. Maintaining it that way makes it way easier for companies to run experiments in space, with out the ISS each company would have to design, build and launch their own satellite for each experiment they wanted to do. That could be done but it would be very complex and quite fragile compared to having an established station where humans can do the work.
- Retric 7y ago
  The catch 22 is any experiment that you can only do in microgravity is also only really relevant in microgravity. That’s fine if we have a larger goal, but not really useful on it’s own. Sure simply learning this stuff is interesting, but the costs are so extreme it’s effectively a vanity project.
  - mcguire 7y ago
    You could say the same thing about experimental high-energy physics.
  - jemorya 7y ago
    I'm not sure that the information from such experiments is only really relevant to applications in microgravity environments. (Hopefully I'm not misunderstanding your point too much.) The data points from microgravity experiments don't exist in isolation; presumably there are data points for similar experiments at surface gravity. Removing gravity from a system could say very much about how gravity affects the system, and thus how the system works on Earth. We also might discover effects so important that it would be worth going to microgravity to get them. Stepping out into the unknown just to learn how it works is important. (Disclaimer: I know jack about what kind of microgravity experiments are going on.)
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    This generalization isn't true. One modern example is manufacturing optical fibers like ZBLAN[1] -- they work great when you bring them back to Earth. Another new example is 3d printing organs in microgravity[2] to take them back to Earth. The traditional example is doing basic physics that needs long duration microgravity. These sorts of research aren't a large fraction of what's currently done on the ISS, but it's also not zero. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZBLAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZBLAN 2: https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/growing-human-organs-in-space https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/growing-human-...
ticmasta 7y ago
especially when you look at the scientific pay-off from relatively cheap unmanned space exploration vs. what we get from shooting humans onto the space equivalent of the front step of the house.
joquarky 7y ago
What disappoints me is that we could be paying the same organizations to build things to expand space exploration rather than warfare.

goodcanadian 7y ago

I almost down voted you in a knee jerk reaction. I believe that manned space exploration serves a very important purpose in advancing humanity . . . however, from the typical Congress critter's point of view, I suspect you're right.

avmich 7y ago
I suspect GP underestimates the scientific value of Apollo missions. It's so much difference to e.g. study samples brought from the Moon (and taken with reasonable care) in Earth labs than to send robots to do the same. There is a POV that robots are good for scientific missions up to certain price point. After that manned missions become more cost effective.
- smaddox 7y ago
  I don't see how it would be cheaper to send a human to the Moon to retrieve samples than it would be to send a robot.
  - ticmasta 7y ago
    and that's really just the cost the actual mission. Consider the impact of having to prepare a program that meets acceptable risk levels for humans vs. machines. This is a huge consideration. I'm not suggesting unmanned exploration can take a trial and error approach, but losing a robot is sad & expensive while losing a human astronaut can terminate the entire program.
  - avmich 7y ago
    Some arguments are here: https://phys.org/news/2005-11-unmanned-space-exploration_1.html https://phys.org/news/2005-11-unmanned-space-exploration_1.h... Retrieving a sample is cheaper with a robot - Luna-24 costed a fraction of Apollo. Knowing what to retrieve while having flexibility of choosing surface regolith, separate rock, samples dug out from a better place or else - that's where humans win.
    - mopsi 7y ago
      Indeed. Apollo 17 even flew an actual geologist to the surface of the Moon and gave him 20 hours to explore it.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- greglindahl 7y ago
  The money spent on Apollo would support a large number of robotic missions, including sample return. And they could visit a bunch of different areas. If we were trying to maximize science per dollar, every manned program would have a lot of robotic preparation. Are we doing that? No. We've spent almost nothing on the Moon and only a tiny, tiny fraction of the manned budget on robots to Mars.
- checktheorder 7y ago
  I would bet good money that when Starship makes its first safe return to Earth after a manned lunar landing mission, there's going to be some serious-as-a-heart-attack talk within the worlds' universities about pooling cash for manned missions.

BurningFrog 7y ago

The other cynical view is that the moon program was really military. As in, if the Soviets got to control the ultimate "higher ground", they could rule the world from it. Apollo made sure no one could control space, and we now have peace in space. I kinda believe in this, though I don't know how historically verified it is. It's of course not what you ever say in your rousing speeches to the nation and the world!

NikolaeVarius 7y ago
The moon program was quite explicitly a showboat for American Engineering vs Soviet.
wongarsu 7y ago
There was fear that if the Russians got to the moon first they might set up a base, and having a base they could shoot down any other landing attempt (literally, with guns mounted in their moon base). Thus the moon could become Russian domain, which would not just grant them great research opportunities but also a virtually unreachable weapons platform. (Remember that the first crewed space station was 2 years after the moon landing, and also Soviet) On that basis the military was advocating for a moon mission years before Kennedy's speech. It's hard to tell if this actually played a big role in the decision to go to the moon, but it was the cold war after all. Also the Soviet Union was winning most of the relevant milestones in space (first satellite, first animal in orbit, first human, first woman, first space walk, etc), and this was a great source of national pride. Beating them had great propaganda value.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Shooting people from the moon is probably the least practical military endeavor ever seriously contemplated, and that is saying a lot. The Cold War resulted in a lot of really nutty thinking so I can't rule it out entirely, but it's hard to imagine what such a base would look like, especially with 1960s tech.
  - wongarsu 7y ago

rtkwe 7y ago

There's also a lot of value in the research NASA/JAXA/ESA/Roscosmos does in space. Some experiments are only really doable under long term microgravity The US runs it as a national lab and many companies use it for experiments. Maintaining it that way makes it way easier for companies to run experiments in space, with out the ISS each company would have to design, build and launch their own satellite for each experiment they wanted to do. That could be done but it would be very complex and quite fragile compared to having an established station where humans can do the work.

Retric 7y ago
The catch 22 is any experiment that you can only do in microgravity is also only really relevant in microgravity. That’s fine if we have a larger goal, but not really useful on it’s own. Sure simply learning this stuff is interesting, but the costs are so extreme it’s effectively a vanity project.
- mcguire 7y ago
  You could say the same thing about experimental high-energy physics.
- jemorya 7y ago
  I'm not sure that the information from such experiments is only really relevant to applications in microgravity environments. (Hopefully I'm not misunderstanding your point too much.) The data points from microgravity experiments don't exist in isolation; presumably there are data points for similar experiments at surface gravity. Removing gravity from a system could say very much about how gravity affects the system, and thus how the system works on Earth. We also might discover effects so important that it would be worth going to microgravity to get them. Stepping out into the unknown just to learn how it works is important. (Disclaimer: I know jack about what kind of microgravity experiments are going on.)
- greglindahl 7y ago
  This generalization isn't true. One modern example is manufacturing optical fibers like ZBLAN[1] -- they work great when you bring them back to Earth. Another new example is 3d printing organs in microgravity[2] to take them back to Earth. The traditional example is doing basic physics that needs long duration microgravity. These sorts of research aren't a large fraction of what's currently done on the ISS, but it's also not zero. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZBLAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZBLAN 2: https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/growing-human-organs-in-space https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/growing-human-...

ticmasta 7y ago

especially when you look at the scientific pay-off from relatively cheap unmanned space exploration vs. what we get from shooting humans onto the space equivalent of the front step of the house.

joquarky 7y ago

What disappoints me is that we could be paying the same organizations to build things to expand space exploration rather than warfare.