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Thinking about how wasteful was the early exploration of outer space gets me thinking if it didn't backfire. There could've been a moment in society where peopl
by henvic 6y ago
Thinking about how wasteful was the early exploration of outer space gets me thinking if it didn't backfire. There could've been a moment in society where people where supportive about it, when the costs weren't clear enough. However, once the taxpayers realized these were not only huge endeavours, but had huge costs just for the rush of being the first at all costs + many catastrophic system accidents... clearly society put these things on hold.
Now, society is getting back to explore science more and more, but with a better, lasting attitude. See, for example, Space X. Likely, they'll send someone to Mars without deaths or even huge accidents that could only be justified by a lack of financial responsibility in NASA's early days.
- oivey 6y agoI don’t know that taxpayers “thought” about the cost of the space program and decided to give up on it. It could be true, but that’s not how I’ve seen politics work. I think it more had to do with the fact that we beat the USSR and the USSR stopped competing. There weren’t any really major milestones to be had after the Moon, either. Sputnik proved to Americans that the Soviets could fire a missile from Russia and hit the US, and we didn’t have a similar capability. Nothing has been quite that scary since. I think it’s premature to claim SpaceX will make it to Mars without deaths. They’ve only done two manned space flights to LEO at this point. While it does appear to be easier, cheaper, and safer to send people to space, sending people to Mars has never done before. It is going to be extremely dangerous.
- henvic 6y agoYou're right. Politics doesn't work this way, and taxpayers have no say on this matter (lest civil unrest, but it didn't went this far). To be honest, I only ended up saying taxpayer because I know how people here are and I was unconsciously avoiding to get down voted for my libertarian-minded opinion.
- JohnJamesRambo 6y agoWhy do you think SpaceX won’t have deaths or accidents? SpaceX has had plenty of accidents and going to Mars is so much more dangerous than any space exploration ever attempted.
- thrav 6y agoSpaceX seems to have an ability to test without human risk that far exceeds past space missions. (Thanks to reusable rockets and autonomous / remote systems)
- henvic 6y agoExactly. I'd argue also that NASA was specially bad regarding safety in its infancy, probably because it was very militaristic and they don't need to care about profit, given its nature – so dozens of accidents might happen and they might still be in business.
- mulmen 6y agoWhat are these dozens of accidents? How many fatal human space flight accidents did NASA have? I can only think of three, two of which came during the shuttle program.
- henvic 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_non-fatal_training_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_non-fatal_...
- mulmen 6y agoNot really. All launches of Mercury era rockets had non-crewed test flights of the spacecraft. And they were on proven boosters. One benefit of using ICBMs is they start out autonomous. Both launch vehicles for Gemini (Atlas and Titan) were again completely autonomous because they were ICBMs. They were tested and proven before astronauts flew them. The first Saturn V launch was not crewed. As I understand all US spacecraft were largely autonomous, especially in the boost phase. SpaceX has refined that to automate docking but it’s not new.
- mulmen 6y agoSpaceX rests on the shoulders of all previous space programs. They did not invent space travel. They iterated. I’m not sure NASA was financially irresponsible. They were doing things for the first time. Mistakes are going to be made, lessons were learned. That’s even true of SpaceX. If your prediction that SpaceX gets people to mars with no deaths turns out to be true it will be because of NASA, not in spite of them.