7 ms·

It's sad that the biggest barrier to space travel remains the inability to mobilize large amounts of money to fund ambitious projects. We have no difficulty fu

It's sad that the biggest barrier to space travel remains the inability to mobilize large amounts of money to fund ambitious projects. We have no difficulty funding the most nugatory military operations at ten times the cost of a manned mission to Mars. But peaceful projects, whether on Earth or in space, run out of political support at a fraction of that price. It's a lot more fun to focus on the technology because the technical obstacles to space flight are potentially tractable. The human obstacles seem to resist any solution.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Yes. If history of aerospace teaches us something, it's that humans can make pretty much anything from scrap metal and duct tape if they care enough about it. Lack of advanced manufacturing techniques didn't stop Soviets from building awesome supersonic jet fighters from plain steel and with hydraulic controls. Lack of computing power didn't stop us from landing on the Moon, even though the machines that got us there are a joke compared even to a pocket calculator. The sad thing is, it's the same phenomenon that gave us all the growth and awesome technology we enjoy today that prevents us from ambitious space missions. Progress of technology is in a tight feeback loop with the economic system, and from the point of view of the latter, space exploration is a big no-no.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  The economic and political system is Problem #1. It's not fit for purpose, and humans can forget about becoming a successful space-faring species until it's replaced by a system capable of rational long-term project planning, and which also rewards inventiveness, creativity, intelligence, and other talents.
andrewflnr 12y ago
I think it's a variant of bikeshed syndrome. It is (or seems) easier to understand the pros and cons of a military operation than a trip to mars, so it's easier to approve. Something weird will tend to get ignored to death. The cost figure doesn't even enter in, and is so huge to be out of the realm of reckoning for most people. This happens for earth-bound weird projects, too.
QuantumChaos 12y ago
That argument is not logical. Military spending may or may not be justified, but if the whole world cut all military spending, it's not like space travel would get dibs on that money. Space travel has to justify its existence on its on terms. Right now I'm pretty happy with NASA's science based program. The Mars rover strikes me as a great way to get a lot of science for the money, and learn a lot about operating autonomous robots in space.
- idlewords 12y ago
  You're rebutting an argument I didn't make.
tptacek 12y ago
Uneducated guess: Military spending hits a sweet spot of being a tried-and-true generator of middle-class jobs, responding to a perceived urgent national need, and also functioning as a sort of insurance policy, in the sense that we're often paying for something not to happen, making it hard to assess value. A space program doesn't necessarily hit any of these notes. It requires specialized talent, responds to no immediate need, and, perhaps perversely, because you can measure the success of a space program, it's too easy to foresee things going wrong. I think you could make a similar case for why we don't plow $500bn into curing cancer, which is a manifestly better idea (even just from an actuarial perspective) than spending 10x more than the rest of the word on defense.
- idlewords 12y ago
  I'm not sure what you would do with billions of dollars thrown at cancer. At least with guns and rockets there's hardware to build. I suspect breast cancer research, for example, can't usefully absorb more money. I think you're overlooking an emotional component to military service. For a lot of people it ties into issues of heritage, national and personal identity. For many Americans it's synonymous with the idea of national service. If our grandfathers' Space Corps had stood strong and unbending in the face of the Martian landing pods, we would likely not have any trouble getting the cool missions funded now.
  - mikeyouse 12y ago
    >I'm not sure what you would do with billions of dollars thrown at cancer. Giving every cancer research on earth the freedom to actually research instead of preparing grant submissions would probably be enough to substantially decrease the amount of time before significant strides are made. Especially if the money would pay for research assistants, statisticians, and quants to parse the data being collected. Outfitting labs with the latest in high throughput robotics, microfluidics, sequencers, etc. would amplify their efforts.
    - marcosdumay 12y ago
      I doubt all that would take more than a billion or two. For the entire world. And giving more liberty to researchers will probably lead to savings, not expenses. It's both sad and great that we probably can not spend those $500B in cancer research, yet there is so much to improve.
jp555 12y ago
Money is just the unit we use to measure what we value. The less we value space travel, the harder it is to do. It's a marketing problem, not an engineering one.
- chc 12y ago
  I don't see why it can't be both. If advanced space travel weren't a ludicrously expensive way of committing suicide, I'd support it more. But as best I can tell, the engineering reality is that we aren't ready to start accomplishing anything meaningful off the earth, so pouring money into that before the foundational technology exists is like funding alchemy. We don't currently have people living in a sealed-off bubble at the bottom of the Southern Ocean or something like that, so why are we trying to market a Mars mission or something even more outlandish? In short, I think the problem is that the evident state of engineering makes the venture look somewhat unlikely to succeed. So no matter how awesome your marketing makes the cause sound, it has to be marked down in the final equation in proportion to the likelihood that it is just an expensive way to die.
Shivetya 12y ago
I seriously doubt the lack of space travel is because we spend money on the military, if anything it might be the only reason development is still being done. Social programs are where the money is truly going, in the US alone there are over two thousand assistance programs at the Federal level. Space doesn't get money because space doesn't get votes. Military accounts for a large portion of the science of similar hardware because its development and deployment can be spread around and people can relate to it easier. Still giving the every day person a choice, go to the moon, protect us from the bogeyman, build schools, or free prescription drugs, I know pretty much the order it will go in.
- BugBrother 12y ago
  The amount of money involved is not really the problem. I've seen arguments from the end of the 80s (sci.space.tech, Henry Spencer et al) that if the launch costs went down, the costs of building hardware would go down. From that, there should be elastic demands when e.g. universities can send their own probes. They also discussed how to do it (Big dumb booster etc). The point was, not that much more money would be needed for this (just check the really expensive launcher being developed by NASA now!). To lower launch costs is the key and it might be rocket science but, well, not rocket science. The reason this haven't happened until Space X seems to be mainly NASA's need to protect the shuttle (which was really, really expensive) and oligopolies in the launch business for military contracts. So maybe not the military, but the military contractors are involved.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Yes. If history of aerospace teaches us something, it's that humans can make pretty much anything from scrap metal and duct tape if they care enough about it. Lack of advanced manufacturing techniques didn't stop Soviets from building awesome supersonic jet fighters from plain steel and with hydraulic controls. Lack of computing power didn't stop us from landing on the Moon, even though the machines that got us there are a joke compared even to a pocket calculator. The sad thing is, it's the same phenomenon that gave us all the growth and awesome technology we enjoy today that prevents us from ambitious space missions. Progress of technology is in a tight feeback loop with the economic system, and from the point of view of the latter, space exploration is a big no-no.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
The economic and political system is Problem #1. It's not fit for purpose, and humans can forget about becoming a successful space-faring species until it's replaced by a system capable of rational long-term project planning, and which also rewards inventiveness, creativity, intelligence, and other talents.

andrewflnr 12y ago

I think it's a variant of bikeshed syndrome. It is (or seems) easier to understand the pros and cons of a military operation than a trip to mars, so it's easier to approve. Something weird will tend to get ignored to death. The cost figure doesn't even enter in, and is so huge to be out of the realm of reckoning for most people. This happens for earth-bound weird projects, too.

QuantumChaos 12y ago

That argument is not logical. Military spending may or may not be justified, but if the whole world cut all military spending, it's not like space travel would get dibs on that money. Space travel has to justify its existence on its on terms. Right now I'm pretty happy with NASA's science based program. The Mars rover strikes me as a great way to get a lot of science for the money, and learn a lot about operating autonomous robots in space.

idlewords 12y ago
You're rebutting an argument I didn't make.

tptacek 12y ago

Uneducated guess: Military spending hits a sweet spot of being a tried-and-true generator of middle-class jobs, responding to a perceived urgent national need, and also functioning as a sort of insurance policy, in the sense that we're often paying for something not to happen, making it hard to assess value. A space program doesn't necessarily hit any of these notes. It requires specialized talent, responds to no immediate need, and, perhaps perversely, because you can measure the success of a space program, it's too easy to foresee things going wrong. I think you could make a similar case for why we don't plow $500bn into curing cancer, which is a manifestly better idea (even just from an actuarial perspective) than spending 10x more than the rest of the word on defense.

idlewords 12y ago
I'm not sure what you would do with billions of dollars thrown at cancer. At least with guns and rockets there's hardware to build. I suspect breast cancer research, for example, can't usefully absorb more money. I think you're overlooking an emotional component to military service. For a lot of people it ties into issues of heritage, national and personal identity. For many Americans it's synonymous with the idea of national service. If our grandfathers' Space Corps had stood strong and unbending in the face of the Martian landing pods, we would likely not have any trouble getting the cool missions funded now.
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  >I'm not sure what you would do with billions of dollars thrown at cancer. Giving every cancer research on earth the freedom to actually research instead of preparing grant submissions would probably be enough to substantially decrease the amount of time before significant strides are made. Especially if the money would pay for research assistants, statisticians, and quants to parse the data being collected. Outfitting labs with the latest in high throughput robotics, microfluidics, sequencers, etc. would amplify their efforts.
  - marcosdumay 12y ago
    I doubt all that would take more than a billion or two. For the entire world. And giving more liberty to researchers will probably lead to savings, not expenses. It's both sad and great that we probably can not spend those $500B in cancer research, yet there is so much to improve.

jp555 12y ago

Money is just the unit we use to measure what we value. The less we value space travel, the harder it is to do. It's a marketing problem, not an engineering one.

chc 12y ago
I don't see why it can't be both. If advanced space travel weren't a ludicrously expensive way of committing suicide, I'd support it more. But as best I can tell, the engineering reality is that we aren't ready to start accomplishing anything meaningful off the earth, so pouring money into that before the foundational technology exists is like funding alchemy. We don't currently have people living in a sealed-off bubble at the bottom of the Southern Ocean or something like that, so why are we trying to market a Mars mission or something even more outlandish? In short, I think the problem is that the evident state of engineering makes the venture look somewhat unlikely to succeed. So no matter how awesome your marketing makes the cause sound, it has to be marked down in the final equation in proportion to the likelihood that it is just an expensive way to die.

Shivetya 12y ago

I seriously doubt the lack of space travel is because we spend money on the military, if anything it might be the only reason development is still being done. Social programs are where the money is truly going, in the US alone there are over two thousand assistance programs at the Federal level. Space doesn't get money because space doesn't get votes. Military accounts for a large portion of the science of similar hardware because its development and deployment can be spread around and people can relate to it easier. Still giving the every day person a choice, go to the moon, protect us from the bogeyman, build schools, or free prescription drugs, I know pretty much the order it will go in.

BugBrother 12y ago
The amount of money involved is not really the problem. I've seen arguments from the end of the 80s (sci.space.tech, Henry Spencer et al) that if the launch costs went down, the costs of building hardware would go down. From that, there should be elastic demands when e.g. universities can send their own probes. They also discussed how to do it (Big dumb booster etc). The point was, not that much more money would be needed for this (just check the really expensive launcher being developed by NASA now!). To lower launch costs is the key and it might be rocket science but, well, not rocket science. The reason this haven't happened until Space X seems to be mainly NASA's need to protect the shuttle (which was really, really expensive) and oligopolies in the launch business for military contracts. So maybe not the military, but the military contractors are involved.