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Even if your goal is to pursue knowledge for it's own sake, the manned moon missions were enormously wasteful. Sending a robotic probe to collect moon rocks wo

by MarkMc 12y ago

Even if your goal is to pursue knowledge for it's own sake, the manned moon missions were enormously wasteful. Sending a robotic probe to collect moon rocks would have been worthwhile. But sending humans to do the same job was far more costly and provided very little additional scientific value.

joshgel 12y ago
The manned missions added tremendous additional scientific value, especially for the time period. They didn't have rovers with the ability to determine which rocks would be of value. The humans were trained to do just that. Plus that wasn't the (only) goal of the missions: beating the USSR there was a stronger motivator.
- MarkMc 12y ago
  'We feel the need to beat the USSR' wasn't mentioned in the letter to the nun - perhaps because being able to boast about winning a race might appear to be less important than people suffering in Africa. Let me ask you this: Given the scientific advances made due to the first moon landing, do you think that the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth moon landings also added tremendous scientific value? Do you think there should have been a seventh?
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    Do you think there should have been a seventh? No, because we clearly weren't willing to commit the resources to make our efforts pay off in the long run. Who knows what might be possible now, if we had used the money we spent on the Viet Nam war to successfully establish a permanent manned lunar colony?
  - lmm 12y ago
    The sixth, certainly; it was the first that had become routine enough to send a professional geologist along. I'd go so far as to say that most of the scientific value in 12-16 was in making 17 possible. There absolutely should have been a seventh, eighth and probably ninth; scientific targets had already been picked for the next three IIRC. After that, maybe not so much. But the program was designed with ~nine landings in mind, and that's what we should have done.
minikites 12y ago
Manned spaceflight saved the Hubble telescope from being space junk, it's not difficult to imagine further situations where manned spaceflight can solve problems with unmanned objects.
- restalis 12y ago
  Manned maintenance of Hubble proved to be unfeasible from an economical point of view. It would have been cheaper to just crash command to the old and broken telescope satellite and then send another one instead.
dinkumthinkum 12y ago
Enormously wasteful? This is just ridiculous. You think the world in 2015 would have been better off than if humans had never set foot on any other celestial body? How can you seriously argue that? Also, as far as the scientific value, I think many of the scientists involved in that exploration would very much disagree with you.
- MarkMc 12y ago
  If the goal is pursuing knowledge for its own sake, then yes: I think the depth and breadth of human knowledge would now be greater if the moon missions were unmanned and the money was instead spent on other areas of scientific research which were judged to be cost-effective. Perhaps the following experiment would be a way to resolve our differences: Let's survey a random sample of 100 scientists asking whether they agree with the above statement. But not just scientists involved in space exploration - all types of geologists, climatologists, astrophysicists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, palaeontologists, etc. If less than say 25 scientists agree then I would accept that I was wrong about the wastefulness of manned moon missions. If more than 75 scientists agree would you accept that I was right?

by MarkMc 12y ago

joshgel 12y ago

The manned missions added tremendous additional scientific value, especially for the time period. They didn't have rovers with the ability to determine which rocks would be of value. The humans were trained to do just that. Plus that wasn't the (only) goal of the missions: beating the USSR there was a stronger motivator.

MarkMc 12y ago
'We feel the need to beat the USSR' wasn't mentioned in the letter to the nun - perhaps because being able to boast about winning a race might appear to be less important than people suffering in Africa. Let me ask you this: Given the scientific advances made due to the first moon landing, do you think that the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth moon landings also added tremendous scientific value? Do you think there should have been a seventh?
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Do you think there should have been a seventh? No, because we clearly weren't willing to commit the resources to make our efforts pay off in the long run. Who knows what might be possible now, if we had used the money we spent on the Viet Nam war to successfully establish a permanent manned lunar colony?
- lmm 12y ago
  The sixth, certainly; it was the first that had become routine enough to send a professional geologist along. I'd go so far as to say that most of the scientific value in 12-16 was in making 17 possible. There absolutely should have been a seventh, eighth and probably ninth; scientific targets had already been picked for the next three IIRC. After that, maybe not so much. But the program was designed with ~nine landings in mind, and that's what we should have done.

minikites 12y ago

Manned spaceflight saved the Hubble telescope from being space junk, it's not difficult to imagine further situations where manned spaceflight can solve problems with unmanned objects.

restalis 12y ago
Manned maintenance of Hubble proved to be unfeasible from an economical point of view. It would have been cheaper to just crash command to the old and broken telescope satellite and then send another one instead.

dinkumthinkum 12y ago

Enormously wasteful? This is just ridiculous. You think the world in 2015 would have been better off than if humans had never set foot on any other celestial body? How can you seriously argue that? Also, as far as the scientific value, I think many of the scientists involved in that exploration would very much disagree with you.

MarkMc 12y ago
If the goal is pursuing knowledge for its own sake, then yes: I think the depth and breadth of human knowledge would now be greater if the moon missions were unmanned and the money was instead spent on other areas of scientific research which were judged to be cost-effective. Perhaps the following experiment would be a way to resolve our differences: Let's survey a random sample of 100 scientists asking whether they agree with the above statement. But not just scientists involved in space exploration - all types of geologists, climatologists, astrophysicists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, palaeontologists, etc. If less than say 25 scientists agree then I would accept that I was wrong about the wastefulness of manned moon missions. If more than 75 scientists agree would you accept that I was right?