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I strongly disagree with this opinion. The US space program is incredibly practical, particularly in the last 3 decades. * An unbelievable amount of scientifi

by Nbox9 6y ago

I strongly disagree with this opinion. The US space program is incredibly practical, particularly in the last 3 decades. * An unbelievable amount of scientific data about biology and microgravity comes from the ISS. To say this is “aimless” only is true if you believe humans will always live on Earth and only Earth. * A wealth of fundamental knowledge about the universe comes from spaced based telescopes. These are helping us understand the laws of nature, some of the most raw R&D. * There are significant military applications to our space program. These range from GPS, surveillance, communications, and potentially weapons. There are some government space launches that we know very little about their mission because it is highly classified. The Space Shuttle had a use case for rapid troop deployment. There is significant military applications to the engineering knowledge of rockets. The difference between a rocket and a missile is mostly the application. * Our exploration of our solar system provides possible future avenue for economic development. There is more fresh water, raw minerals, and energy inside our solar system but outside of Earth than there is water, mineral wealth, and energy on Earth. Certain things we consume are non-renewable, and we will need to find sources for them outside of Earth. * It gives hope, inspires young people to become engineers and scientists, and gives us a feeling of awe as we go through the process of understanding our existence in the context of the cosmos. EDIT: This isn’t to say there is major bloat inside the space program, and that NASA is not in need of a significant culture change.

bnralt 6y ago
> There are significant military applications to our space program. It's interesting looking at the military and space, since the military seems to be more objective focused than NASA. Early on (1960's), the military was planning on a manned station (MOL), but ended up going with automated satellites in the end because they made more sense. Likewise the Space Force believes it might eventually send up astronauts, but doesn't think that will happen for decades. They're interested in sending people up when it's useful to do so, not just sending them up for the sake of sending them up.
ufmace 6y ago
I mostly agree, but what in the world do you mean by "The Space Shuttle had a use case for rapid troop deployment"? I can't picture that being anything but the worst way imaginable to get like 2 or 3 guys somewhere.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  The key word here is likely rapid. Doing a suborbital hop is much faster than going through atmosphere, because you get to accelerate to much higher velocities. Even supersonic planes take forever to get anywhere, while a suborbital hop would let you get to any place on the planet in under 2 hours.
  - khuey 6y ago
    There never was a space shuttle sitting around ready to launch on-demand though. A 2 hour travel time is irrelevant if it takes weeks to prep for the mission. The space shuttle could also only land at a handful of runways on the planet.
  - Already__Taken 6y ago
    And everyone on the planet would know you're doing it via national television or every inter-continental ballistic warning system?
    - dnautics 6y ago
      I don't agree with the use case but to play devil's advocate, not every actor would be able to do something about it.
- Nbox9 6y ago
  I’m having a hard time finding the source, but a mission requirement of the Space Shuttle was something along the lines of “Deploy a dozen marines to Moscow in less than 1 hour.”
  - ufmace 6y ago
BurningFrog 6y ago
Yeah, I wonder how much of the real US space program is secret military projects. Keeping much of it secret distorts the public impression of it, when we don't know of a substantial portion of the accomplishments.
nickik 6y ago
> The Space Shuttle had a use case for rapid troop deployment. No it didn't. The DoD didn't even want it before it even flew. Very little of the things you talk about has much to do with the NASA Human Directorate and that is the many part of NASA that people dislike, and this is not just from the outside, even inside NASA this is well known. Watch the talks by Dan Rasky.
jiggawatts 6y ago
Just to play devil's advocate for a bit: "space fans" excuse the wastefulness and obvious corruption of NASA. "Microgravity research" is entirely pointless. A total waste of time. It's an excuse to stay on the ISS, that is all. There would have to be a thousand problems solved with fundamental human biology for us to live in microgravity, some of which are at the genetic level. Alternatively, and much more simply, we could use rotating space stations to simulate gravity. That requires just a few dozen engineering problems to be solved, none of which are fundamental. Admitting that the problem was "solved" in the 1960s would remove the excuse to keep sending people to the ISS, cut NASA's budget, and retrench a bunch of bureaucrats. So of course, NASA management is carefully ignoring the simple solution so that they can keep receiving funding for solving the difficult problems. "Space telescopes" are fantastic! We need more of them! But NASA keeps blowing their budget on the aforementioned waste of time microgravity research they're doing on the ISS instead of the much more scientifically useful telescopes. Many have been cancelled or delayed. Remind me, where's the James Webb space telescope again? Oh yeah... on the ground, that's where. "Military applications" are not a good thing. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." "Resources in space" is commonly trotted out, but first consider that your argument for the militarisation of space is directly contrary to an argument that space has resources. Military spending, as the quote above by Eisenhower points out, is wasting resources that could have gone towards productive uses. But even ignoring that, the problem with resources in space is the ludicrous cost of moving them to where we want to use them, which is here. Even if, say, we get costs down to $50 per pound of returned raw material, there's only a handful of metals that would make that worth the bother, none of which are abundant (or concentrated!) in sources outside the Earth. My point is that all of these apologetics for space, or more accurately, for NASA's current approach are false. We can spin space stations, there's no need for microgravity research. There's no territory in space worth fighting over. No oil wells in the desert we need to bomb. Space doesn't need to be militarised. There are no places outside the Earth where liquid water had concentrated minerals into worthwhile deposits. A trillion tons of gold is worthless if it's evenly spread out in a billion-trillion tons of rocky asteroids. Nobody really wants to live in space. If you think that you do, I challenge you to move to a place much nicer than any place in the solar system for a year, like Bouvet Island. It's a barren island just off the coast of Antarctica. Live there for a year, come back and tell me you like it, or shut up about how it's the inevitable future the human race is yearning for. PS: Meanwhile, SpaceX is doing all of the truly useful things that we need in space. We need a global satellite-based Internet service that isn't slow and expensive. That's astonishingly useful, right now, and isn't something NASA could ever deliver despite a much higher budget than SpaceX.

by Nbox9 6y ago

bnralt 6y ago

> There are significant military applications to our space program. It's interesting looking at the military and space, since the military seems to be more objective focused than NASA. Early on (1960's), the military was planning on a manned station (MOL), but ended up going with automated satellites in the end because they made more sense. Likewise the Space Force believes it might eventually send up astronauts, but doesn't think that will happen for decades. They're interested in sending people up when it's useful to do so, not just sending them up for the sake of sending them up.

ufmace 6y ago

I mostly agree, but what in the world do you mean by "The Space Shuttle had a use case for rapid troop deployment"? I can't picture that being anything but the worst way imaginable to get like 2 or 3 guys somewhere.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
The key word here is likely rapid. Doing a suborbital hop is much faster than going through atmosphere, because you get to accelerate to much higher velocities. Even supersonic planes take forever to get anywhere, while a suborbital hop would let you get to any place on the planet in under 2 hours.
- khuey 6y ago
  There never was a space shuttle sitting around ready to launch on-demand though. A 2 hour travel time is irrelevant if it takes weeks to prep for the mission. The space shuttle could also only land at a handful of runways on the planet.
- Already__Taken 6y ago
  And everyone on the planet would know you're doing it via national television or every inter-continental ballistic warning system?
  - dnautics 6y ago
    I don't agree with the use case but to play devil's advocate, not every actor would be able to do something about it.
Nbox9 6y ago
I’m having a hard time finding the source, but a mission requirement of the Space Shuttle was something along the lines of “Deploy a dozen marines to Moscow in less than 1 hour.”
- ufmace 6y ago

BurningFrog 6y ago

Yeah, I wonder how much of the real US space program is secret military projects. Keeping much of it secret distorts the public impression of it, when we don't know of a substantial portion of the accomplishments.

nickik 6y ago

> The Space Shuttle had a use case for rapid troop deployment. No it didn't. The DoD didn't even want it before it even flew. Very little of the things you talk about has much to do with the NASA Human Directorate and that is the many part of NASA that people dislike, and this is not just from the outside, even inside NASA this is well known. Watch the talks by Dan Rasky.

jiggawatts 6y ago

Just to play devil's advocate for a bit: "space fans" excuse the wastefulness and obvious corruption of NASA. "Microgravity research" is entirely pointless. A total waste of time. It's an excuse to stay on the ISS, that is all. There would have to be a thousand problems solved with fundamental human biology for us to live in microgravity, some of which are at the genetic level. Alternatively, and much more simply, we could use rotating space stations to simulate gravity. That requires just a few dozen engineering problems to be solved, none of which are fundamental. Admitting that the problem was "solved" in the 1960s would remove the excuse to keep sending people to the ISS, cut NASA's budget, and retrench a bunch of bureaucrats. So of course, NASA management is carefully ignoring the simple solution so that they can keep receiving funding for solving the difficult problems. "Space telescopes" are fantastic! We need more of them! But NASA keeps blowing their budget on the aforementioned waste of time microgravity research they're doing on the ISS instead of the much more scientifically useful telescopes. Many have been cancelled or delayed. Remind me, where's the James Webb space telescope again? Oh yeah... on the ground, that's where. "Military applications" are not a good thing. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." "Resources in space" is commonly trotted out, but first consider that your argument for the militarisation of space is directly contrary to an argument that space has resources. Military spending, as the quote above by Eisenhower points out, is wasting resources that could have gone towards productive uses. But even ignoring that, the problem with resources in space is the ludicrous cost of moving them to where we want to use them, which is here. Even if, say, we get costs down to $50 per pound of returned raw material, there's only a handful of metals that would make that worth the bother, none of which are abundant (or concentrated!) in sources outside the Earth. My point is that all of these apologetics for space, or more accurately, for NASA's current approach are false. We can spin space stations, there's no need for microgravity research. There's no territory in space worth fighting over. No oil wells in the desert we need to bomb. Space doesn't need to be militarised. There are no places outside the Earth where liquid water had concentrated minerals into worthwhile deposits. A trillion tons of gold is worthless if it's evenly spread out in a billion-trillion tons of rocky asteroids. Nobody really wants to live in space. If you think that you do, I challenge you to move to a place much nicer than any place in the solar system for a year, like Bouvet Island. It's a barren island just off the coast of Antarctica. Live there for a year, come back and tell me you like it, or shut up about how it's the inevitable future the human race is yearning for. PS: Meanwhile, SpaceX is doing all of the truly useful things that we need in space. We need a global satellite-based Internet service that isn't slow and expensive. That's astonishingly useful, right now, and isn't something NASA could ever deliver despite a much higher budget than SpaceX.