5 ms·

While true, it's missing the forest for the trees. NASA spends almost half it's budget on human spaceflight, and there doesn't seem to be any particular goal th

by bnralt 3y ago

While true, it's missing the forest for the trees. NASA spends almost half it's budget on human spaceflight, and there doesn't seem to be any particular goal there beyond "send people into space because we want to send people into space." Meanwhile, a measly 3.5% of the NASA budget is spent on aeronautics. Yes, the SLS is an inefficient way of performing a mission that NASA shouldn't be performing in the first place, but it's not as if an efficient way of performing a pointless mission is going to get us better results.

svachalek 3y ago
Human spaceflight is more or less the marketing budget or loss leader for all the scientific work they do. It gets the public and Congress behind funding the important stuff.
- sitkack 3y ago
  If that is true, I am not sure it is effective as it was in the past. From my viewpoint, the public doesn’t care much and space flight has been normalized.
WWLink 3y ago
I think you would have to be an incompetent principle investigator if you sent people to space and couldn't figure out a way to maximize scientific knowledge from it. We've been doing that for decades with the ISS and the moon trips and so on. I have no doubts - even a mars mission where you'd send people to interact with things in person and be able to react instantly and not 45 mins later with whatever the camera and sensors happen to show you. Now, whether that scientific information is worth the cost? Hard to say. As much as people like criticizing public programs for "pork barrel" this and "bureaucrat red tape" that and whatever.... publicly funded programs are usually run with penny-pinching oversight and angry politicians wanting to get their day of glory by killing programs. Sometimes the cost of a project goes up when a 3rd party group comes in and intervenes with "can't we do this cheaper?!" lol.
- mcny 3y ago
  > Sometimes the cost of a project goes up when a 3rd party group comes in and intervenes with "can't we do this cheaper?!" lol. What if we made this third party (I'm guessing blue origin/space x) bear the cost until we have a proven result so they put their money where their mouth is... They promise USD 1M per engine, they have to deliver at USD 1M per engine. Not a cent more.
  - captn3m0 3y ago
    That's what recent NASA contracts have been - fixed-price, so the third party bears any additional cost of overrun. NASA has strongly advocated for such contracts. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/03/nasas-nelson-competitive-contracts-are-making-space-exploration-cheaper.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/03/nasas-nelson-competitive-con...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Just curious, what is something we do on the ISS that actually needs a human hand vs a remotely operated or programmed one? Aside from perhaps studies on the effects of space flight on human health.
GMoromisato 3y ago
This is a common sentiment, but I don't share it. Crewed spaceflight is no worse and no different than spending money on Hubble, JWST, or the Voyager missions. We pay for those missions because they inspire us. For many, gaining knowledge about the universe is its own reward, even if it doesn't lead to cancer cures or longer-lasting batteries. In the same way, sending people into space connects us to all those nameless explorers who sailed into the Pacific in rickety boats, or conquered the Americas (the first time) via the Bering ice bridge. When I think of the Apollo 8 astronauts seeing the Earth from the Moon for the first time, I can almost feel what they felt: awe, perspective, loneliness, and maybe even that primal fear that we all get from being so far from home. I truly cannot wait to watch (and to have my kids watch) astronauts walking on the Moon. Sure, we can argue about whether we should spend more money on X and less money on Y--that's what democracy is all about. But to say that NASA shouldn't be sending humans into space is, in my mind, missing the forest for the trees.
- ajross 3y ago
  > Crewed spaceflight is no worse and no different than spending money on Hubble, JWST, or the Voyager missions. We pay for those missions because they inspire us. That's true only in a very strained and tautological sense of "inspire". Science has quantifiable results. There are facts that we know and theories we've understood (and discarded!) because of telescopes and probes that we would not know had they not flown. Whether that knowledge has value or not is, I guess, subjective. But it's not only "inspiration" except insofar as you declare that the only reason for wanting to know about martian geology or the early universe or whatever is "because it inspires us". Which is to say: you're making a semantic argument, not a profound one.
  - josh-sematic 3y ago
    There are also facts we know and things we’ve built because someone watched a manned space flight as a kid and decided to go work in STEM because it’s just so freaking cool. Discounting “inspiration” on the grounds that it has no immediate, tangible results is pretty shortsighted. Also if you’re willing to count facts like “details of Martian geology” as potentially valuable, then one can also say that by doing manned space flight we have learned a lot about how to transport humans to space and keep them alive there, no?
Mizoguchi 3y ago
With China and India successfully launching space missions a permanent human presence in the moon and possibly Mars is a matter of time, likely happening in the next decade. This is critical for both science and national security, anything from future interplanetary exploration, mining and development/testing of new materials.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> there doesn't seem to be any particular goal there beyond "send people into space because we want to send people into space." No, we are figuring out - how do you survive in space? How do you take a shit in space? Toilets would constantly break on ISS and it was a huge problem. And people can get shit done. They are designing robots for mining lunar regolith, but they are all less efficient than a guy with a shovel. You could send 10 dudes to the moon with a shovel and a 3D printer, and they could produce aluminium parts on the moon.
unethical_ban 3y ago
I see this argument enough that I will need to make a form response. Humans should gain the ability to live off this planet sustainably. If we don't work on that now, then when? We gain understanding of the human body and of numerous technologies through the novelties and challenges of human spaceflight. The idea of pushing out civilization forward physically through space is an inspiration for engineers and explorers of all kinds. Even if a child doesn't end up being an astronaut, they end up more curious than if we only sent rovers. Because we are human. It just seems sadly cynical to hear people think "there is no utility to human exploration".
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Surgery is important but was the work of the medieval surgeon experimenting on corpses really relevant to the modern understanding of medicine? Probably not when they were concerned with the source of the four humors or whatever it was, and had zero concept of germ theory much less cellular biology. We are spending too much money and effort on process that will no doubt be obviated with a future technology. We are still very far from having a sustainable method for human settlement and colonization, and having people poop in bags on the iss probably isn’t advancing much understanding in those technologies beyond what terrestrial experiments and simulation could do.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    "Surgery is important but was the work of the medieval surgeon experimenting on corpses really relevant to the modern understanding of medicine?" It actually sort-of was, because slow aggregation of knowledge about anatomy helped undermine a lot of the old Galenic dogmas.
- tzs 3y ago
  > Humans should gain the ability to live off this planet sustainably. If we don't work on that now, then when? I'd go farther and say humans must gain the ability to live off this planet sustainably, and eventually out of this solar system, if humanity is to survive long term. However, just because a problem must be solved for humanity to survive doesn't necessarily mean any effort should be spent now on it. Sometimes a problem is so far beyond current technology and theory that instead of having your best people spend their lives trying to make tiny advances toward solving it you are better off if they work on things that can actually be solved now, and in a few decades or centuries our general level of technology and theory will have advanced enough that the work that took our best people their whole careers to accomplish will be something that would be a decent homework problem in college.

by bnralt 3y ago

svachalek 3y ago

Human spaceflight is more or less the marketing budget or loss leader for all the scientific work they do. It gets the public and Congress behind funding the important stuff.

sitkack 3y ago
If that is true, I am not sure it is effective as it was in the past. From my viewpoint, the public doesn’t care much and space flight has been normalized.

WWLink 3y ago

I think you would have to be an incompetent principle investigator if you sent people to space and couldn't figure out a way to maximize scientific knowledge from it. We've been doing that for decades with the ISS and the moon trips and so on. I have no doubts - even a mars mission where you'd send people to interact with things in person and be able to react instantly and not 45 mins later with whatever the camera and sensors happen to show you. Now, whether that scientific information is worth the cost? Hard to say. As much as people like criticizing public programs for "pork barrel" this and "bureaucrat red tape" that and whatever.... publicly funded programs are usually run with penny-pinching oversight and angry politicians wanting to get their day of glory by killing programs. Sometimes the cost of a project goes up when a 3rd party group comes in and intervenes with "can't we do this cheaper?!" lol.

mcny 3y ago
> Sometimes the cost of a project goes up when a 3rd party group comes in and intervenes with "can't we do this cheaper?!" lol. What if we made this third party (I'm guessing blue origin/space x) bear the cost until we have a proven result so they put their money where their mouth is... They promise USD 1M per engine, they have to deliver at USD 1M per engine. Not a cent more.
- captn3m0 3y ago
  That's what recent NASA contracts have been - fixed-price, so the third party bears any additional cost of overrun. NASA has strongly advocated for such contracts. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/03/nasas-nelson-competitive-contracts-are-making-space-exploration-cheaper.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/03/nasas-nelson-competitive-con...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kjkjadksj 3y ago
Just curious, what is something we do on the ISS that actually needs a human hand vs a remotely operated or programmed one? Aside from perhaps studies on the effects of space flight on human health.

GMoromisato 3y ago

This is a common sentiment, but I don't share it. Crewed spaceflight is no worse and no different than spending money on Hubble, JWST, or the Voyager missions. We pay for those missions because they inspire us. For many, gaining knowledge about the universe is its own reward, even if it doesn't lead to cancer cures or longer-lasting batteries. In the same way, sending people into space connects us to all those nameless explorers who sailed into the Pacific in rickety boats, or conquered the Americas (the first time) via the Bering ice bridge. When I think of the Apollo 8 astronauts seeing the Earth from the Moon for the first time, I can almost feel what they felt: awe, perspective, loneliness, and maybe even that primal fear that we all get from being so far from home. I truly cannot wait to watch (and to have my kids watch) astronauts walking on the Moon. Sure, we can argue about whether we should spend more money on X and less money on Y--that's what democracy is all about. But to say that NASA shouldn't be sending humans into space is, in my mind, missing the forest for the trees.

ajross 3y ago
> Crewed spaceflight is no worse and no different than spending money on Hubble, JWST, or the Voyager missions. We pay for those missions because they inspire us. That's true only in a very strained and tautological sense of "inspire". Science has quantifiable results. There are facts that we know and theories we've understood (and discarded!) because of telescopes and probes that we would not know had they not flown. Whether that knowledge has value or not is, I guess, subjective. But it's not only "inspiration" except insofar as you declare that the only reason for wanting to know about martian geology or the early universe or whatever is "because it inspires us". Which is to say: you're making a semantic argument, not a profound one.
- josh-sematic 3y ago
  There are also facts we know and things we’ve built because someone watched a manned space flight as a kid and decided to go work in STEM because it’s just so freaking cool. Discounting “inspiration” on the grounds that it has no immediate, tangible results is pretty shortsighted. Also if you’re willing to count facts like “details of Martian geology” as potentially valuable, then one can also say that by doing manned space flight we have learned a lot about how to transport humans to space and keep them alive there, no?

Mizoguchi 3y ago

With China and India successfully launching space missions a permanent human presence in the moon and possibly Mars is a matter of time, likely happening in the next decade. This is critical for both science and national security, anything from future interplanetary exploration, mining and development/testing of new materials.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> there doesn't seem to be any particular goal there beyond "send people into space because we want to send people into space." No, we are figuring out - how do you survive in space? How do you take a shit in space? Toilets would constantly break on ISS and it was a huge problem. And people can get shit done. They are designing robots for mining lunar regolith, but they are all less efficient than a guy with a shovel. You could send 10 dudes to the moon with a shovel and a 3D printer, and they could produce aluminium parts on the moon.

unethical_ban 3y ago

I see this argument enough that I will need to make a form response. Humans should gain the ability to live off this planet sustainably. If we don't work on that now, then when? We gain understanding of the human body and of numerous technologies through the novelties and challenges of human spaceflight. The idea of pushing out civilization forward physically through space is an inspiration for engineers and explorers of all kinds. Even if a child doesn't end up being an astronaut, they end up more curious than if we only sent rovers. Because we are human. It just seems sadly cynical to hear people think "there is no utility to human exploration".

kjkjadksj 3y ago
Surgery is important but was the work of the medieval surgeon experimenting on corpses really relevant to the modern understanding of medicine? Probably not when they were concerned with the source of the four humors or whatever it was, and had zero concept of germ theory much less cellular biology. We are spending too much money and effort on process that will no doubt be obviated with a future technology. We are still very far from having a sustainable method for human settlement and colonization, and having people poop in bags on the iss probably isn’t advancing much understanding in those technologies beyond what terrestrial experiments and simulation could do.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "Surgery is important but was the work of the medieval surgeon experimenting on corpses really relevant to the modern understanding of medicine?" It actually sort-of was, because slow aggregation of knowledge about anatomy helped undermine a lot of the old Galenic dogmas.
tzs 3y ago
> Humans should gain the ability to live off this planet sustainably. If we don't work on that now, then when? I'd go farther and say humans must gain the ability to live off this planet sustainably, and eventually out of this solar system, if humanity is to survive long term. However, just because a problem must be solved for humanity to survive doesn't necessarily mean any effort should be spent now on it. Sometimes a problem is so far beyond current technology and theory that instead of having your best people spend their lives trying to make tiny advances toward solving it you are better off if they work on things that can actually be solved now, and in a few decades or centuries our general level of technology and theory will have advanced enough that the work that took our best people their whole careers to accomplish will be something that would be a decent homework problem in college.