Robots Should Go Where Man Hesitates to Tread
When America collectively performs its morning ablutions and looks into the bathroom mirror, what sort of image do we see staring back at us?
Are we still the bold explorers who bravely stride where angels fear to tread? Or have we become a nation of slothful couch potatoes, doomed to settle for the status quo as we sit on the sofa munching cheese puffs and watching the world pass us by? This is the essence of the question posed by former NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin in his July 19 editorial on the anniversary of man’s first historic steps upon the moon.
Griffin complains that the descendants of the pioneers who blazed the Oregon Trail, built a continental railroad, and flew across the Atlantic “gave up the frontier of our time.” In general terms, much to our well-deserved credit, he makes a valid point. America has always been a nation of explorers, pushing back boundaries and tackling death-defying odds to see what lay over the next mountain range.
However, after citing the great exploratory conquests of mankind on our home planet, the author paints a relatively cheap and easy picture of our bid to beat the Soviets to the lunar surface.
The United States spent eight years and $21 billion — around $150 billion today — to develop a transportation system to take people to the moon. We then spent less than four years and $4 billion using it, after which we threw it away. Not mothballed, or assigned to caretaker status for possible later use. Destroyed. Just as the Chinese, having explored the world in the early 15th century and found nothing better than what they had at home, burned their fleet of ships.
The facts and figures are accurate enough, but they fail to tell the entire tale. True, the soup to nuts idea of moving from the initial planning phase to the Eagle landing on the moon in only eight years was a technological miracle which shall likely never be repeated. But the reckless risks involved in our burning desire to one up the Soviets would be completely beyond the pale in today’s safety conscious environment.
In his incredible book, Failure is Not an Option, Gene Kranz -– the iconic voice of Mission Control through most of the space age -– described many of the hazards which were never revealed to the public. The families of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were told in no uncertain terms by NASA that they were realistically looking at nothing better than a fifty-fifty chance that we could get them back home alive, assuming they ever made it outside for a walk on the moon.
The ascent engine in the lunar lander, for which there was no backup, had been tested less than a dozen times on Earth and fully half of them had either failed to fire or hadn’t delivered enough thrust to get the astronauts back up off the surface. President Nixon even had a speech prepared in the event that the two explorers found themselves stranded there, watching their oxygen supplies slowly bleed down and awaiting the coldest, loneliest, most remote death imaginable by man.
Written like a true soulless number cruncher.
What is impractical is using chemical rockets to throw spacecraft and material into orbit. It’s time for another engineering challenge – a Space Elevator.
One such an efficient large-capacity lift mechanism is built, space exploration (manned and unmanned) becomes much easier. Space elevators may also make space profitable. Mining of asteroids and zero-G manufacturing are possibilities. Disposal of nuclear waste is easy – lift it to orbit and guide it towards the sun.
The possibilities are endless. The question is, who has the guts to do it first? Certainly not us for the next 3 years.
If Jazz had been Colonel Sir David Stirling, the motto of the British SAS would have been, “Who Cringes Lives.” Why don’t you spare us your essays and write your autobiography? You’ve already been all you are going to be.
Just think if Christopher Columbus could have used robots…
Everybody dies – whether or not they go into space or not. I’m sure there are many people who would rather die trying for something great than just fade away into obscurity in old age.
You just cannot achieve great things without risk.
Oh spare me sir. “The coldest, loneliest, most remote death imaginable by man.” A lonelier, colder, more remote death than George Mallory or the Franklin Expedition? Death awaits us all whether home in bed, crossing the great plains or crossing the void. He who dares, wins. Humans will do this eventually. Why not Americans? It’s not even a race now.
Whether using humans or robots for exploration, we are not the same people who put men on the moon. We are too risk averse. I heard Burt Ruttan (of experimental aircraft and X-Prize fame) speak on the subject once and agree with him completely. Our society, and especially our government has become bureaucratized. In a bureaucracy the cost of failure almost always outweighs the rewards of success. That is why we no longer take risks, even when the rewards to humanity vastly outweigh the risks either financially or in terms of human lives. The Apollo program was given the kind of autonomy that is inconceivable to see a large program given today.
There are still brave individuals around who know the difference between intelligent risk-taking and recklessness, but they are not bureaucrats and it is the bureaucracy that calls the shots. And so we are at a point today when the US will soon be unable to put a man in space when the Space Shuttles are retired in a year. I do not think that today’s NASA could put a man back on the moon in 10 years even with all of our technological progress.
We need to go back to the moon for He3. Google He3. It is a fantastic resorce for fission power. A He3 fission reactor would not lose all it’s energy to high speed nuetrons. This is the problem with current fission reactors using D or T.
The solar wind has deposited huge amounts of He3 on the moon. The Apallo missions found it in all the rock samples.
I would rather put 10 Geoligists on the moon than 3 test pilots on Mars.
‘Cept we don’t know how to use it yet, and may not for a long time, if ever.
Fusion reaction Ruebacca, fusion. And yes it is just the source of power we need to gain the solar system.
The truley tragic thing is the trillions wasted on poverty. And now for obama’s political payoffs. We spend so little on space.
If we were smart about it, our first payloads delivered to the Martian surface would fe fungi and lichen spores around the polar ice cap regions.
Give ‘em a few decades and see if they “take”.
Then we seed the more complex forms of plant-life.
The point of all this being two-fold: to trap water vapor and produce oxygen.
And the goal of the whole shebang is that when humans actually do set foot on Mars, it’s not as explorers, but as the new landlords.
And when the robot returns from Mars, will he ride in a ticker tape parade and inspire millions of youth to heroism? Is Skynet far behind?
I just wanna know why we aren’t trying to send man to the sun. Have we gone soft? Where are the heroes?
Why back in my day blah blah &c.
Yes, yes, yes!
Someone has to say the obvious – nobody will ever want to live on the moon, on Mars, or in space – unless they are paid a LOT of money or forced to.
Space colonization is fiction. The reality is that there is nowhere else suitable for us but right here. Duh.
Humans should not be in space unless there is no other way to get the job done, like every other extremely hazardous environment. If people want a joy ride, fine – but keep the funding private.
What unmanly nonsense. It is our destiny. I am seeing this tripe all over the internet today. What a nation of wimps we have become. What sissified, feminized little boys we have become. We need to rollback Obama’s disastrous spending programs, roll back the New Deal Government departments and put some spending in this area. Bush had a great plan to restructure NASA, and of course it is being discarded.
We must fight this decent into mediocrity. We must fight this constant defeatism, This constant diminishment. We must fight this cowardice.
The future belongs to the nation that controls space. The Chinese realize this.
A part of me wonders if all of this railing against man in space has something to do with just allowing other to catch up to us. Does the left want to destroy this lead too?
Trillions for Democrat pork, and a measly 18 billion for space. One cannot be more stupid.
This country needs to put all of this nonsense behind it and advance toward the future.
I think Jazz needs to space travel ,I mean really travel to the next void.
Mars is the obvious next step. We need to get off this planet sooner or later so we might as well get started. Until we push them, the boundaries of technology and safety will stay exactly where they are. Ad aspera per astra.
We have too many trekkies. Way too many trekkies.
Let’s let the Euros or Chinese flush billions down the space hole for a change.
from what i am reading the space elevator (SE) is fast becomming a potentially viable option for easy, cheap access to space. the development of new ultra-strong cables/wires woven together strong enough is fast becoming a reality. this end needs to be fairly close to the equator, and at present it looks like the other end must be attached to an object 60,000 miles away. WOW! the principle of centrifugal force, as you feel when water skiing and swing out to the sides of the boat, will literally sling the SE into space, once past a certain point. at the speed the earth is spinning, the main problem might well be finding an adequate braking system. i have a plan. let’s try building one of these here. then maybe one on the moon and then one on Mars, or whatever order. let robots take the first trip. they are a powerful useful tool, and will become more so. the SE may not be the answer: but, i have worked in the space program, and it always seemed to me to be a place where dreaming had a place, partners were badly needed, and guts always an essential requirement.
put me in coach!
Go home, find your balls, and retract this article. Until we do rediscover a larger vision, post modern cynical twits (you are wearing a turtleneck, weezer glasses, and have an apple sticker on your volvo) from the huffpo will actually feel that leaving their detritus on a forum like this is a meaningful gesture.
Oh fooey! Let the Chinese do it. They are obviously a superior society. We’ve so obviously HAD our day.
14. Mongoose:
“A part of me wonders if all of this railing against man in space has something to do with just allowing other to catch up to us. Does the left want to destroy this lead too?”
The left has degenerated to become what Ayn Rand has called “The Anti-Industrial Revolution”. They are driven by a hatred of science and technology.
The old left retained a respect for science, and it was widely believed that “scientific socialism” would out-produce capitalism. When socialism failed to deliver the goods, leftist intellectuals turned on science, rather than reject socialism. The result is the modern anti-rational, environmentalist left.
Here we go again…
“It’s too difficult, too costly, what’s the point, etc..”
The author, Jazz Shaw, says a few good things, but really has no understanding of the pioneering urge that humans, and especially Americans, are born with. Edmund Hillary climbed Everest, just because “it’s there”. Americans in their thousands crossed the plains in the 19th century and a great many died enroute “awaiting the coldest, loneliest, most remote death imaginable by man”. Remember the Donner party? Stories of the deaths and failures that were carried back east by traders and guides didn’t deter the ones that waited to follow. They learned from the failures of the ones who went before them. Settlers found out quickly that you can’t use horses to pull their conestoga wagons across the plains. The available forage was inadequate for them; the horses died. But the lowly oxen would live on just about any forage and could withstand the severe winters of Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming. We WILL explore space! People WILL die in that exploration, but the ones who wait to take their turn will learn from the mistakes made and they WILL survive. Screw the government, Dems and Reps!
The ultimate reason we will explore and colonize this solar system is the obvious one: Survival of the Species! We know that the Earth’s eco-system is changeable, that bacteria and viruses mutate, that asteroids periodically crash into this planet. If enough humans are elsewhere when a catastropic event occurs that wipes out most or all life on Earth, then we AS A SPECIES will have a chance to continue!
We are human beings! Pain and death are our lot! But either we plan for the continuation of the species by planting colonies OFF the Earth or we just go on watching ‘reality TV’ and eating burgers and paying taxes and then, when the event rolls around that wipes us out, we’ll have no one to blame but us! The saddest part of that eventuality will be that there won’t be anyone around to note our passing or to mourn the human race.
Many if not most of America’s technological inovations in the second half of the 20th century came either directly or indirectly from the space program of the 60s.
Such great rewards came from great ambition and daring. Huge leaps in biomedical research was made that would have taken decades more otherwise as just one small example.
If we listen to our fears above all else then yes, we have dwindeled as a people.
Cheez Jazz, with that thinking, we’ed all be freezing and starving in caves dodging the big cats and bears. We should develop and use robots and elevators like we use any tools, but, in the end, there is no way around boots on the ground.
Living has risks, but we are all going to die of something, so avoiding all risk is unsmart.
What is most interesting to me is that so many people, some of them quite intelligent, cannot see the obvious and overwhelming logic of the case against mannned space. The vitriol and name-calling seen in maqny of the above posts shows, a) that these people have no good arguments, and b) they suffer from a kind of “Manned Space Derangement Syndrome”. The trend even in military aviation is to replace the human pilot with robots (drones, UAV’s etc.).
What Old Solider said.
The space Program is about HUMAN exploration of the Solar System in preparation to going beyond it.
Robots will KILL the Space program. NO Human will cough up the money to send a circuit board into space. Congress won’t vote the funds, children won’t send in their pennnies, etc.
Those that make the pure science argument can pay for it out of their pockets.
Yes that is dangerous. SO????????
Life is dangerous, as proven by the FACT you never leave alive.
There is no valid argument against manned space exploration.
Yes, unmanned is cheaper on a penny wise, pound foolish basis. It isn’t cheap enough for the scientists to pay for it them sleves, which is what will happen if there are no Humans involved.
“nobody will ever want to live on the moon, on Mars, or in space – unless they are paid a LOT of money or forced to.”
BULLSH!T. I would in a minute. 1/6th gravity. You have no idea what that means, do you?
Robotic exploration has its place but it also has many limitations. The rovers on Mars have accomplished a great deal of science. However, all of that science could’ve been accomplished by a trained human in a fraction of the time. A robot, no matter how skillfully designed and operated, is by its very nature limited. As but a single example, it’s doubtful any robot would’ve discovered the “Genesis Rock” from Apollo 15.
Human exploration is much more expensive than sending a robotic rover or satellite. That will always be true. But show me the robot capable of making a discovery on its own, or of experiencing true wonder.
People have died on space missions or preparing for missions. Those with the courage to become astronauts know the risks and, while they’re not thrill seekers willing to die, they know that there are some things worth the risk. Have we become so risk adverse (spelled cowardly) that we aren’t willing to even let others risk their lives for what they believe a worthy cause? If that’s the case, then we might as well shut down the military, the police and fire departments, and all forms of recreation that involve risk. We can crawl into our beds, pull the covers over our heads, and die as meaninglessly as we live.
#17 Strawman
Please be kind to your trekkies because as in science fiction, they suppose that there will be a future. That goes for nerds as well. I would not bet on the majority of Euros or Chinese to have the character to explore. Rugged individuals do not fit well in overly tamed societies. Explorers and reformers are different indeed.
325 Jim E.
Of course the probe goes first. Drones are all right for what they do, especially the hovering over an area for long hours. If I flew on commerical airlines, I would not want the pilot somewhere else watching a monitor.
Hiding in the cave is no answer to human survival. The Hubble telescope, a machine, has taught us wonders.
Amazing. We’re utterly bankrupt — at one million dollars a day, it’ll take a quarter million years to repay US debt — and the Star Trek hoo-rah’s are babbling about Moon shots and colonizing Mars.
Is it the Montana-sized America-first ego or left-over pulp fiction potboilers?
We can’t even balance a national checkbook and suddenly we have the coin to travel a sixty million kilometers to populate a wasteland with enough industry to run a lightbulb at a cost that would add probably another half a trillion bucks to an already quite literally unpayable national debt?
It’s past time to face facts: NASA is the biggest waste of money to ever be called science with a straight face. The “space program” is a silly and wasteful ode to misplaced ideals and pointless aspirations that should have died forty years ago. We don’t live in vacuum and we won’t live on extraterrestrial worlds for any good reason or to any justifiable end for generations to come.
Jim E, #25: What is most interesting to me is that so many people, some of them quite intelligent, cannot see the obvious and overwhelming logic of the case against mannned space. The vitriol and name-calling seen in maqny of the above posts shows, a) that these people have no good arguments, and b) they suffer from a kind of “Manned Space Derangement Syndrome”. The trend even in military aviation is to replace the human pilot with robots (drones, UAV’s etc.).
Yeah, I don’t get all the hate for Jazz’s post either. Seems to me all he’s saying is that the nation as a whole has grown too squeamish and risk-averse to support any significant manned space exploration. Given who this same nation voted into the White House last year, I can’t say I disagree.
I would add that the national culture has become so saturated with celebrity-worship that it’s doubtful even a manned mission to Mars could penetrate it. Here’s something to ponder: If American astronauts had set foot on Mars sometime over the past month or so, do you think that story would be more closely followed by the public than, say, the circus surrounding Michael Jackson’s death? Upon returning to Earth (should they have been fortunate enough to do so), would these American heroes be any match for the new season of American Idol? In a nation where even a vice-presidential candidate’s personal life has become the stuff of tabloids, I have my doubts about both these things.
None of Jazz’s arguments, or mine, are knocks against manned space exploration. They’re knocks against a nation that might need, but no longer deserves, nor apparently even really wants heroes like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin anymore.
I have an icky feeling that The Food Network is going to be doing a LOT of “Cooking with Ramen Noodle” recipes.
UGH.
The space Program is about HUMAN exploration of the Solar System in preparation to going beyond it.
Amusing. Beyond the solar system? To where? Do you even know what’s beyond Pluto…or where Pluto is?
But of course you do, spacefarer. It’s well over four billion kilometers, or five years at a hundred thousand kilometers an hour, after which what? You’ll pitch a tent and send back a steady stream of priceless unobtanium ore in order to pay for a trip nobody’d (hopefully) be stupid enough to fund?
Oh wait. You said beyond the solar system to like a million million kilometers or something to the next fueling stop and video arcade.
Using faster than light drive, one has no choice but to conclude.
So why the ignorant claims?
We are human beings! Pain and death are our lot!
So is complete insolvency, Einstein. Yours; not mine.
Fusion reaction Ruebacca, fusion. And yes it is just the source of power we need to gain the solar system.
Actually zero state energy is really cool too. We’ll get right on that right after we invent warp drive and dilithium crystals.
The possibilities are endless.
No. They are not. The possibilities are limited precisely to expending vast monies doing not a damn thing but generating a couple nights of television, a vague new “science” of how dirt works out there versus here, and a sense of idiotic national pride.
While we go bankrupt. Hey, great idea!
It wasn’t a good idea in the Sixties. How it could be a good idea when we’re a dozen trillion dollars further in debt is best left as a cheap fantasy for the quaintly senile.
We must fight this decent into mediocrity. We must fight this constant defeatism, This constant diminishment. We must fight this cowardice.
We must! Hoo-rah! Are we not men? We are Diva!
10. Bilgeman writes:
“..our first payloads delivered to the Martian surface would fe fungi and lichen spores around the polar ice cap regions..Then we seed the more complex forms of plant-life.”
(Oh thank you, Bilgeman, for a rich garden of straight lines!) Seiously, your suggestion is a smart idea.. but we could cut to the chase and rocket a bunch of mouth-breather Dems to Mars and see if they take. After all, they are a life form slightly higher that paramecia but subhuman and we all know that they would not permit the CO2 levels to rise for fear of Global Warming.
26. John Samford writes:
“BULLSHIT. I would in a minute. 1/6th gravity. You have no idea what that means, do you?”
..outa-sight drives from the first tee?
“12. Blarty Blarckleblart:
I just wanna know why we aren’t trying to send man to the sun. Have we gone soft? Where are the heroes?”
Actually we have the moveon.idiotlist. I figure after we launch them wasted mouthbreathers at the sun. ……………
Ruebacca wrote:
We need to go back to the moon for He3. Google He3. It is a fantastic resorce [sic] for fission power.
Strawman wrote:
‘Cept we don’t know how to use it yet, and may not for a long time, if ever.
Not true. The University of Wisconsin Physics department has already made a reactor that uses He3. Small amounts of He3 is obtained from the decay of nuclear weapons and it is given to them.
If we could get 100Kg off the moon alot more enginering could be done quikly.
The problem with D or T fission power is the loss of energy by making high energy nuetrons. He3 gives off high energy protons and does not have this problem. He3 is rare on earth, thats the only problem. Google He3. Its the way to go imo.
Why manned exploration?
Robots don’t carry our DNA or our hope and aspirations for our progeny.
We need to get off this rock if our species is to continue to exist for longer than a blink of an eye that is the intermission between global catastrophies that befall this planet and it’s inhabitants.
Let us turn a deaf ear to these pantywaists that argue the cost in human terms is too great to endure. If we do nothing the cost will be so great that not even a memory of our species will remain.
No, no, no, no, and no. It’s not about the risk. It’s about the money. Hurtling hundreds of pounds of meat through space, and keeping it alive, is a LOT more expensive than sending electronic extensions to our senses. And as a few others have pointed out, our robotics and sensors now are generations ahead of the go-carts that we used in the ’70s. Meat is obsolete.
Ruebacca –
From MIT: http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/19296/
Go ahead and invest your money, I’ll hang on to mine.
For pity’s sake, don’t spend money on a space program! Not when we could be spending it on something useful—such as funneling it into another stimulus (the last one worked so well!) bailing out incompetent corporations and sending foreign aid to the poor, oppressed, Palestinians. They need to shoot some more missiles to fire at Israeli schools. Have you no heart, you silly, heroically inclined Trekkies?
Stop wanting to escape! Stop dreaming! We progressives want you guys right here on good ol’ Earth—where we can keep our eye on you!
(Ten, we’ve already gone broke. Way back in the 70′s, it was argued that we had to shut down the space program, because we needed the money to help people “right here on earth!” The space program was pretty much shut down, but more and more people swelled the welfare rolls, no matter how much money was taken in taxes it was never enough, and crime, social decay, etc., have all become worse.)
Why manned exploration?
Robots don’t carry our DNA or our hope and aspirations for our progeny.
You’ve GOT to be kidding.
We need to get off this rock if our species is to continue to exist for longer than a blink of an eye that is the intermission between global catastrophies that befall this planet and it’s inhabitants.
Sure. You bet. And the local catastrophe’s that befall us daily? The fact there’s no where to live out there?
You can’t reason with these trekkies.
If we could get 100Kg off the moon alot more enginering could be done quikly.
At an efficiency greater than Earth-bound energy?
Frankly, I think we need to find intelligent life on Earth first. Every once in a while we think we see a glimmer, like a mist or a light fog..then it’s gone. Elusive..
Ten,
You show a poverty of imagination and spirit that could only be achieved by a graduate of the public school system.
And your not being able to locate your ass with your hands does not meet the definition of a “local catastrophe”.
That’s right! Can’t reason with these Trekkies! Unlike smart guys, who know heroism, the urge to explore and a desire for knowledge are all stoopit! Only stoopit Trekkies care about such stuff. Smart guys only care about smart stuff. Like how to spend money right here on Earth!
Now shut up, stop complaining and pay those tax dollars for some really important stuff—like government funded abortions, and more foreign aid for countries that hate the US! (Pensions for bureaucrats are good too, as are pork-filled government projects.)
And remember—we want all of you right here, where we can keep an eye on you!
(Ten, are you saying robots DO carry human DNA? Or that they can produce human progeny? Man, you’ve GOT to be kidding about that! I didn’t realize robotics was—ahem!—so advanced!)
47, That reminds me of one of my favorite Feynman quotes:
Now I’m going to hear it from the coast-to-coast crowd…
@ the lot of you:
Can humans continue at present rates of population growth and consumption? What are the costs of doing so?
How can the economies of the world grow in world of limited resources? What is the cost of resource depletion. What is the environmental cost of resource depletion? What is the social cost?
Where can humanity find more resources, economic opportunity and opportunities for humans to live?
Space.
What are all of the costs? We will pay in one form or fashion.
What is the value of having options?
1)If there were a manned flight to Mars and I somehow qualified for it, I would go even if there were a zero percent chance of surviving to return… and I suspect there are others out there who feel the same way.
2)Folks who use “trekkie” as though it were an insult are the same folks who use “nerd” as the ultimate put-down. It is people whose comprehension of science and the world in general is so weak and undeveloped that they can’t imagine any kind of research or exploration to be useful. Educate yourselves… or don’t, and remain useless Luddites holding back the entire human race.
3)Next time you get an MRI/EKG, remember the space program made them possible.
Forget the fact that most of the technology we have today was dreamed up by those pesky science fiction writers (the trekkies of old) tomorrows technology will rely on this as well. Space exploration (and war) are the events which have created more advancements than any other in the modern age.
Sending robots to mars is pointless. The discoveries they make are incredibly slow… for the years we have had rovers cruising around mars a human being could have done the same task in a single day…. and how many 400 million dollar probes are you going to send while stating that a manned mission is to expensive?
If the drive that had existed in NASA in the 60′s had continued we would have been on Mars 20 years ago.
To drop out of the competition in space is to cease to be a leading country.
Many here are obviously Democrats. This seems to be what you want for this nation: Mediocrity, failure and a retreat form super-power status.
Just because you are third-raters does not men the rest of us are. To think it is a matter pf “ego” is a just childish psycho-babble. This attitude shows us all we need to know about the Left. They despise accomplishment and excellence. They want to reduce us to a third-rate nation because they are third rate people.
Wait until you get in the workplace and have to compete. Then talk to me about it. This is the problem of the trolls here: They are afraid to compete. They are afraid to be men (and women).
(and Strawman, Having read and admired your posts at BC, I must say that I am rather surprised at you. To cede leadership here is to cede it across the board. Why do you wish this for your country? Why do you wish to aid the Marxists in degrading and debasing the USA? Reconsider your position in this light, I beg of you.)
Debt? This is a bogus argument. We can turn this debt around soon: Stop the stimulus now. Do away with corp taxation. Do away with all of the New Deal departments. Reduce Federal Government by 80%. Reduce State Government by 60%. Radically reduce individual taxation rates. Do away with government interference in business. Banish from politics all collectivism and firmly embrace capitalism and the rule of law. Reassess “Globalism”, particularly as it obtains to China. Throw the crooks of crony-capitalism in jail, starting with Goldman Sachs. Throw the corrupt politicians (of both parties) enabling this socialist/fascist regime in jail. Stop the “commerce clause” nonsense. Do all this and the debt will be eradicated in a decade. We will see a boom like never before.
It is government that is holding America back, not business.
Irrespective of Space, we will most likely have to some or all of the above. There is really no alternative. Government cannot save us–only hard work in the private sector can save us. Otherwise it will just destroy the nation, which, of course, is what Marxists like Obama want. We cannot have it both ways. Either we as a nation understand this or we go down. Space is merely an aspect of it.
But beyond that, our current expenditure on Nasa is peanuts: 17.5 billion. We will end up giving a lot more to Democrat electioneering efforts on a year to year basis than we will on space, and to little effect but to keep lazy and incompetent people in power and on the dole.
America must lead in space if she is to lead at all. Those they wish her to follow are not thinking things through, or are cowards and traitors.
And the “trekkies” analogy s bogus. Is the USAF made up of “trekkies”? Were the founders of our space efforts in the post war years trekkies? Where the people who designed our nuclear deterrent “trekkies”?
Are the soldiers that rely on space targeted munitions “trekkies”? What about those who man ICBM defenses?
No. Star trek is just a popular expression of something much more fundamental and post-dates the much of the great space efforts of this nation.
Introducing this as some sort of key point is a attempt to trivialize the issue, and those who do so either do not understand the gravity of the issue, or are arguing in bad faith.
You show a poverty of imagination and spirit that could only be achieved by a graduate of the public school system.
And your not being able to locate your ass with your hands does not meet the definition of a “local catastrophe”.
Bzzzt. Private education, non-sequitor-boy. And your ad hominem duly noted.
With an argument like that, I’m converted! I know, if I have imagination and spirit I’d blow another generation’s proceeds on a collectivist effort to wave my dick too!
Idiot.
Where can humanity find more resources, economic opportunity and opportunities for humans to live?
Space.
Proof? Cite? Anything but your assumptions? You’re spending my money, fantasist, do be so kind as to stop parroting the liner notes in your Analog and spell out the economic justification, ‘k?
Space is hard vacuum. Will you be mining in zero state then? Sending back little jars of nothing? Patenting the no-electron, no-nucleus atom?
Huh?
As I said, too many trekkies here.
In what, debt?
You can’t enumerate one reason to Go To Space, brave illiterate starboy, that we can afford. Or that has a positive ROI. Me, as already stated, I’m a Libertarian — a classical liberal who believes in your right to do whatever you want as long as I’m not paying for the folly.
This attitude shows us all we need to know about the Left. They despise accomplishment and excellence. They want to reduce us to a third-rate nation because they are third rate people.
Due to leftism and collectivism and a malaise worse than, yes, European socialism, we’re already a third rate nation, genius. The US owes, as I also already said, a million bucks a day for a quarter million years and you want to Pioneer something you can’t even define, much less defend economically.
I own my business, dipshit, and I partner in two others. I’ve been involved in at least half a dozen start ups since 1980, clyde. Step away from the fallacies.
Beautiful sermon. Not one iota of it will come to pass, Brave Starboy, and we both know it. Not to fund your Tom swifties, Brave Starboy, nosiree. This economic trainwreck is where you will find yourself for the rest of your life. So admit it. The collective, US government-managed “space race” — to spend billions putting some guys in a bucket in order to go once or twice to something like a arid, dead moon or an equally useless, inhospitable planet — is the dumbest idea in the history of bad government ideas.
But yeah, in the face of bad government ideas all we need is a ground up reform of every damnable government policy of literally the last one hundred years. And then we’ll be on our way, making not a dime blowing stuff into hard vacuum. Genius material, that. Albert salutes you.
It is government that is holding America back, not business.
No kidding. So let’s refund NASA!
Sure, and every seventeen and a half billion dollars is peanuts, Brave Spaceboy. As would be, oh, six or ten or fifty times that amount once we really Start Reaching For The Stars, right? And all we need do to get there is to gut the entire Socialist infrastructure, not just in the US, but elsewhere, owing to the global economy. And relearn to be self-sufficient. To produce again within our own borders. TO compete. With the Chinese and the Japanese and the Pacific Rim and everybody else. And to do it from under the burden of tens of trillions of dollars in government and personal debt and unpaid entitlements.
Yeah, that’s all we need do, Brave Spaceboy. Completely clean government house and then we can go to the stars to bounce around them in our super brave spaceboy tie fighters weilding our light sabers.
The words complete ungrounded moron come to mind, Brave Spaceboy, but whatever. Great sermon. There’s a tear in my eye as I contemplate the soundtrack that must come with all that — I have reached out my hand and touched the face of God, and all that. No cowards in beer cans on the Moon, nosiree.
No. That’s the point. You’re a Sci-Fi channel dweeb.
So refute that reality, Brave Spaceboy: For the third time, we can’t afford your fantasies. So prove me wrong. Balance those books. Define the ROI. Heck, define what’s worth going out there to do.
You can’t. You do not understand even the opening act of the “gravity of the issue”. Your argument is in bad faith.
Bravo Ten; exactly right.
Hey trekkies and assorted space freaks, form a joint stock co., invest your own money and explore space. Do what Columbus or Walter Raleigh did; attract investors with promises of profits, just keep your hands off my money. I do not want to fund your pointless fantasies. What we are “celebrating” 40 years on was probably the most useless waste of resources in the history of mankind. Total BS, all of it.
Sure, the robot gets stuck in a hole and that’s it. A few hundred million miles away in mission control … oops. Send another robot to fix it? By all means, let’s include robots on human expeditions to decrease danger and do the dirty work. However, only fools think humans can or should be replaced by robots for all but dangerous, boring, repetitive tasks. Robots are functional. They are not engineers or scientists.
All that money dumped out on the moon when we get there…ah wait, it is all spent here in the US, right here on earth. Money spent that will lead to technological advances that will help mankind.
But, but, but the great expense! Ah, not even close to 1/100 of what the government is shoveling out on airports that serve 3 or 4 people a day or bridges to islands that have no population or recreational facilities, or money given to individuals and companies that even congress can’t know about because the knowledge might “embarrase” the recipients.
No, the money put into the space program is a stimulas that helps Americans and it will produce benefits that will help the world. This isn’t Star Wars, Star Trek or anything else like that. It is looking farther than the tip of one’s nose and seeing what the manned space prgram actually produced directly or indirectly in the past. Do your homework.
“we can’t afford your fantasies”
Who do you mean by “we”? The chronically unemployed whose expertise is making giant paper mache heads of George Bush?
Government is always going to spend money, when has it ever not?
I would rather have the government spend money on NASA than on providing govenment subsidised cab service so that your syphilitic crack-addled Democrat voting girlfriend, and when haven’t they always been Democrat voting, can get to the methodone clinic for her lastest fix.
ALRIGHT, ALL YOU ROTTEN TREKKIES, STOP SPENDING TEN’S MONEY! STOP IT, RIGHT NOW!
(Actually, people like Burt Rutan are trying to get into space on their own—that is, if the government doesn’t step in and tax them out of existence, or force them to stop, because they’re endangering the ecology, or something.
Other countries, acting as nations, such as India and China—which is something to think about.)
Ten, as somebody else pointed out, you really do seem to suffer from a lack of imagination, or admiration for any of the adventurous, forward-looking virtues, and you seem to have a weird hatred for “Dweebs”, “Trekkies” and anyone with any interest in space, or the space program, which sounds more like some irrational hate-on, than a reasoned argument.
By your sort of thinking, any scientist, like Stephen Hawking, any astronaut, any astronomer is just some loathsome “Trekkie”, chuckling evilly to himself as he plots to take your hard-earned cash. (Trust me, it’s politicians, not Trekkies, after your bank account.)
You seem angry about a lot of stuff, and I doubt it’s really the space program, or “Trekkies”, ticking you off.
I have nothing but imagination, Betty. I imagine a responsible government, a revitalized private sector, and your right and ability to go anywhere you please. So enough with the misplaced personal observations.
Can you comprehend a debt and federal obligation load that at a million dollars a day in black ink, takes a quarter million years to pay off? No? Then the goings on in NASA, yet another government program, probably remains well off you radar too.
If you’re gonna read between my lines to come to erroneous conclusions, try reading them themselves to come to the conclusion I intended. Fair’s fair, yo Betty?
No dufus. Maybe reread my posts about leftism, you ignorant twit.
You’re ignorant. Have you researched return on space investment? No? It shows. I’d conclude that instead you still believe in gazillions of bucks wasted to invent crap in weightlessness like ball bearings or fruit punch or something.
You know, if any of you trekkies would bother to raise your lofty ambitions among a group of actual scientists with a knowledge of what space really means for development (aside from Micheal here’s “stimulus”)* you’d be met with guffaws. Going to space for industrial ROI is a laughingstock.
Do you even know what ROI is?
*Barky Obie lurvs him some of that stimulus too. Are you just another Keynesian, Micheal?
There’s enough raw material in the asteroid belt alone to make everyone on this planet wealthy beyond imagining. For all of those people who complain that NASA is a waste, well, Columbus must have been a nutcase, eh? A fool that should have sailed off the edge, but unfortunately didn’t? The whole reason he journeyed, was for trade from India. That’s right: acquisition of wealth.
And he found a place that they called the New World, because that’s what it was.
And it was rich beyond imagining.
And then the Settlers came to this New World, looking for Meaning for their their lives, and the promises of Freedom, and they found it, or they made it with their hands and their minds and their resourcfulness and their refusal to be stopped. They forged ahead with guts, with determination, and a drive in their spirit to make something better than what there was. And they did it.
- Until I read this, and saw some of the responses here.
But if you don’t think Wealth, or Meaning, or Freedom is important, if those are reasons enough, then think on this: if an asteroid could hit the earth and wipe out all humanity with one wet SMACK! then suddenly a self-sustaining Martian colony doesn’t seem quite so silly. You won’t care, though: you’ll be dead, and smugly justified in your grave, eh?
Are you all so worried about your ledger sheets or the quality of your silk shirt, or the brand of your automobile that you fail to look up at the stars and be awed, to reach out to touch the universe…to see what *could* be, if we only tried?
Robots? Robots?
Are we to say “No!” to human space exploration when it is in our grasp? “No!” to the High Frontier of Space? “No!” to inspiring journeys of exploration that would enthrall generations to come? “NO!” to tales of intrepid men and women risking all they have to expand the knowledge and civilization of Man to the Farther Reaches, the places that still stir the imagination like no other? – The places that could change life on this planet for the better in ways we cannot imagine?
Oh,that’s right: we want to enthrall our youth with great tales of how well our accounting methods worked, or “how I won friends and influenced people” to gain 300K and a condo in the Hills, or how chair-sitting technicians pushed buttons so that machines could shovel Martian dirt into hoppers so that we could count silica fragments. My God, *that’s* the new stuff of dreams!
Yay to all you bean counters. Yay to all you who cry out to ensure your place at the trough. Hoorah, your day is here. We have backed away from the Hard Thing, the Risky Thing, the thing that would put us on the cusp of the stars, where possibilities approach the infinite and the rewards can excite the souls of the generations.
Are we such fools that we are sinking back into the mire of our own ennui, where like frogs on the bank of a pond we wait for the next meal, croaking and happy in our mud-bound ignorance?
Are we so in love with our near-sighted squabbling over money, territory, tax bracket and social position that we forget there are truly some things worth doing? Where have you gone, oh you brave and questing people?
Billions for Twitter, but not one cent for Space? God help us.
If you are worried about money being wasted by the government I suggest you look at the Federal budget. One would have to work down a good two thirds of the way through the waste and special interest money to get to NASA and its actually useful and productive research and production.
By the way, get off your computers, cell phones and stop watching for weather reports. Don’t go for MRI’s and laparoscopic robotic surgery. If you hate NASA and all it stands for then don’t be hypocritical and use the results of all that “wasted money”.
I blame the MBAs. For pretty much everything.
We’re cooked as a civilization when everything the government does is justified as economic fellatio. Take it from someone who knows, masturbation doesn’t solve all problems.
That’s just plain ridiculous. If the space program hadn’t have been, we’d still be using vacuum tubes? Can I have a toke? That must be some good stuff.
And there’s a related conceit involved here – that only America can innovate. Keep believing that, as China, India, Japan Korea, Europe, and Israel move ahead. It’s pretty pointless for the US to pursue any technological programs while our schools continue to be dead last among industrialized countries in math and science. Before we go gaga with these Star Trek fantasies, I think we need to bring our schools up to at least the level of India or China (never mind Korea, where they kick our butts).
“Amazing. We’re utterly bankrupt — at one million dollars a day, it’ll take a quarter million years to repay US debt — and the Star Trek hoo-rah’s are babbling about Moon shots and colonizing Mars.”
That’s a pretty strong argument against the wasteful garbage that we are doing to run up that debt, isn’t it? I do think that there’s too much emphasis on manned space flight, but at least we get something out of this kind of research. That’s more than you can say for the payoff the fat cats that the Democrats are always coming up with.
“Do what Columbus or Walter Raleigh did; attract investors with promises of profits, just keep your hands off my money. I do not want to fund your pointless fantasies.”
Someone doesn’t know where Columbus and Raleigh got their funding from. Hint: there’s a reason Columbus spent a lot of time at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, and why the New World was claimed in the name of Spain–not private investors.
“What we are “celebrating” 40 years on was probably the most useless waste of resources in the history of mankind.”
Actually, we learned an awful lot about the origins of the Moon from that trip. Could it have been done with robots? Yes, and doubtless much more cheaply. (I worked on the Voyager missions.) But if you want to look at a waste of resources, look at the Great Society. Or the Vietnam War. Or the National Endowment for the Arts.
That’s just plain ridiculous. If the space program hadn’t have been, we’d still be using vacuum tubes?
Transistors predate the space program, but the development of the integrated circuit has more to do with NSA’s very early 1960s initiative to improve number crunching for cryptoanalysis (something else that liberals don’t like).
I think the space program benefits claim is a bit overstated, but there is truth to the fact that many technologies were certainly jumpstarted or encouraged by the space program. A similar effort to research new energy technologies would almost certainly give us enormous benefits. The Democrats, however, are more interested in distorting the economy for the benefit of their fatcat friends than subsidizing research.
It’s pretty pointless for the US to pursue any technological programs while our schools continue to be dead last among industrialized countries in math and science. Before we go gaga with these Star Trek fantasies, I think we need to bring our schools up to at least the level of India or China (never mind Korea, where they kick our butts).
That would require cultural changes that the left will never tolerate, therefore there’s no point in discussing it, is there?
Ten: I have no respect for you whatsoever. Do not expect a response out of me until you can repsond to my agruemnts without resort to personal attacks. This just affirms you immaturity and the invalidity of your “positions”.
You may think that you are important, but I know that you are not.
Look, Clayton, I know that the space program, as well as some military programs, provided the initial impetus for the development of the monolithic transistor. But answer the question. If the space program hadn’t have happened, would we still be using vacuum tubes now?
Also,
Were you around in the ’70s? Carter threw all kinds of unfocused research money at energy. What did we get that was usable? Not much, and nothing that wouldn’t have been funded by the private sector, anyway.
The one huge lost opportunity was ditching fission technology. Imagine if the industry had remained viable, and R&D (primarily private sector) had continued over the past 40 years. We’d certainly be doing pebble-bed on a widespread basis now, and possibly molten salt thorium cycles. We’d certainly be reprocessing most of our waste instead of stacking it up like we’re doing now. But that was a case of the government, at the behest of ideologue activists, standing in the way of technology.
68. Michael:
“One would have to work down a good two thirds of the way through the waste and special interest money to get to NASA and its actually useful and productive research and production.”
While it is true that government funded science may produce innovations, it isn’t proper to apply the term “productive” to describe that activity, because it is funded by confiscating privately owned resources through taxation and/or inflation.
Morally, the only justification for government is to protect individual rights, so that means just a military, a justice system, and a patent office.
As it stands today, the bulk of government funded science is unconstitutional, with the exception being research that serves a military purpose.
Can anyone here tell me how a government funded, civilian space program is essential for the protection of individual rights?
Look, Clayton, I know that the space program, as well as some military programs, provided the initial impetus for the development of the monolithic transistor. But answer the question. If the space program hadn’t have happened, would we still be using vacuum tubes now?
You might want to look at the date of the invention of the transistor before claiming that the space program drove it, even a little. Transistor radios were already common consumer goods (the iPod of its day) when I was young in the early 1960s.
Also,
A similar effort to research new energy technologies would almost certainly give us enormous benefits.
Were you around in the ’70s? Carter threw all kinds of unfocused research money at energy. What did we get that was usable? Not much, and nothing that wouldn’t have been funded by the private sector, anyway.
Almost nothing. But Carter is only typical of what happens when liberals promote research. There are many other examples of government encouragement of R&D: the Longitude Prize, for example, or the U.S. government’s 1792-1820 musket contracts, intentionally structured to create a modern manufacturing system in America.
I am all for a private space program actually. It won’t happen though. Any program that was successful would be nationalized as a threat to world peace or for using space outside UN control.
Remember, private enterprise is an evil that socialism and the socialy conscious can’t sanction in our enlightened era. Especially if it’s making money.
My oh my. This whole thread turned crazzzzzzzzzzy.
Beam me up, Scotty!
Live long and prosper!
Nanoo-Nanoo [Sorry, had to throw a 'Mork-ism' in there].
he-he-he
Sorry. I have to recalibrate my history. The monolithic transistor was attributed to the DoD contract with Ma Bell. The transistor was actually invented in the ’30s, but the cat whisker junction was impractical, and the monolithic transistor was invented in 1948 by Bardeen and Shockley at Bell Labs.
It was the IC that was attributed to the space program. But I think that if you look closely, the IC was being talked about in the ’50s (Feynman was talking about nanotech in the ’50s), and would have happened anyway, although probably a few years later.
In any event, it’s pretty shaky grounds for justifying something as massive and ambitious and expensive as the space program.
If spin-off technology is a justification at all, it’s the ICBM technology that directly resulted. Both the US and the USSR were able to develop military technology under the guise of space exploration. That’s a done deal. There’s nothing to be gained militarily at this point.
Ten, as mongoose points out, you’re so full of anger, and insults, it really isn’t much use trying to engage you. You really throw “Trekkie” around too much; makes you sound as if what you actually hate really is science and learning (despite all your protests to the contrary.)
What’s the problem? You met a science fiction fan who was mean to you, once?
As for dreaming of responsible government, and a revitalized private sector—well, that’s nice. Is there some reason we can’t imagine, say, space flight, or exploration or future inventions which might have a number of applications at the same time? Does the former somehow cancel out the latter? And are these the only dreams we can have? I mean, liking responsible government (which we don’t have at the moment) and a vibrant private sector, is kinda like saying you support Mom and apple pie. That’s nice—but so what? And how is refusing to explore the universe going to make government responsible, or inject new life into the private sector? Or do you really think human beings should concentrate only on money, and making a living, and forget everything else?
It was the IC that was attributed to the space program. But I think that if you look closely, the IC was being talked about in the ’50s (Feynman was talking about nanotech in the ’50s), and would have happened anyway, although probably a few years later.
James Bamford’s The Puzzle Palace (a history of the National Security Agency), along with other stuff that I read on the subject, indicates that while the space program was initially given credit for IC development, that was a cover story to hide NSA’s involvement. I’m working from memory here, but about 1961, NSA’s director got together with a number of companies doing electronics development and told them that NSA needed a 1000x increase in speed–and he expected them to work on this. It is no coincidence that the first Cray-1 went to NSA (although I’m not sure when this was actually acknowledged).
Were you around in the ’70s? Carter threw all kinds of unfocused research money at energy. What did we get that was usable? Not much, and nothing that wouldn’t have been funded by the private sector, anyway.
This is not immediately clear. Private companies will only fund development if they believe that they will end up with something out of it that will be profitable if they can either keep what they develop a trade secret, or if they can patent the results. Basic research has even more serious problems in this area.
Last year, I figured out a way to get a 60% improvement in PV output, especially suited to temperate latitudes and areas with significant cloud cover. (I built a scale model, and spent a bit of time measuring output under cloud cover, and a variety of other circumstances.) But there was no way to patent it. There was an existing patent that while for a different purpose was sufficiently similar that there was no chance of getting a patent issued. And guess what? I needed about $500,000 to get this into full scale production–but no one will capitalize something like that, without some legally enforceable intellectual property. As a result, this clever idea is going no where.
Lots of stuff simply doesn’t happen without some sort of subsidy or patent protection. That’s part of why the U.S. was a major center of innovation in the 19th century–we were the first nation where patent wasn’t a favor of the crown, but something that everyone could aspire to getting.
The one huge lost opportunity was ditching fission technology. Imagine if the industry had remained viable, and R&D (primarily private sector) had continued over the past 40 years. We’d certainly be doing pebble-bed on a widespread basis now, and possibly molten salt thorium cycles. We’d certainly be reprocessing most of our waste instead of stacking it up like we’re doing now. But that was a case of the government, at the behest of ideologue activists, standing in the way of technology.
Agreed, but there was also some significant insurance aspects that had started the fission power industry down a wrong path. Look up the Price-Anderson Act.
In any event, it’s pretty shaky grounds for justifying something as massive and ambitious and expensive as the space program.
If spin-off technology is a justification at all, it’s the ICBM technology that directly resulted. Both the US and the USSR were able to develop military technology under the guise of space exploration. That’s a done deal. There’s nothing to be gained militarily at this point.
You’ve got the sequence backward. The Atlas missile was developed in the 1950s for delivery of nuclear weapons; it’s use for launching the Mercury capsules was because it was available. (There’s a fascinating history of the engineering development of the Atlas that I read many years ago.) The Titan II, used for launching the Gemini capsules, was developed so that we could launch nuclear weapons on very short notice–hence the use of room temperature fuel and oxidizer, that didn’t require advance notice to prepare. This was developed starting in 1959, and the peculiar requirements of it were for weapons–not for manned space flight.
About the only major launch vehicle that was tied to the space program was the Saturn V–and that was never used for weapons. (I shudder to think of the nuclear weapon that you would need a Saturn V to deliver.)
PV output?
The article is correct but perhaps misses something crucial. Prices are economic signals that help you make better decisions. The high price tag of putting humans on Mars reflects both the difficulty and the current state of technology and is too much to afford at this point.
However it is certainly possible that spending $10B over the next few years to develop better launch and propulsion systems and space habitats will advance the technology enough to cut the Mars price in half, making it affordable. On the other hand if NASA doesn’t spend anything at all or just repeats the same stuff, then no those technologies won’t develop and the price will remain high.
PV output?
Photovoltaic output.
However it is certainly possible that spending $10B over the next few years to develop better launch and propulsion systems and space habitats will advance the technology enough to cut the Mars price in half, making it affordable.
If you want to get the price down, you need to mass produce. I understand that very few power reactors built in the U.S. were ever exactly identical to another, both increasing costs, and reducing reliability, since problems and solutions from one can’t necessarily be applied to others. If instead of building a handful of shuttles–each of them very expensive–we had built a thousand transport vehicles, the development costs would have probably been about the same, but the cost per vehicle for manufacturing would have been dramatically less. Net savings? Probably not. But you learn stuff from mass production that you don’t from handcrafting.
85. Clayton E. Cramer:
“I needed about $500,000 to get this into full scale production–but no one will capitalize something like that, without some legally enforceable intellectual property. As a result, this clever idea is going no where.
Lots of stuff simply doesn’t happen without some sort of subsidy or patent protection.”
As an engineer, I sympathize with your desire to see your invention realised, and I expect that you already understand the points that I’m going to make, but I think it’s important to draw a sharp distinction between the nature of a subsidy and a patent in promoting technology.
If a $500,000 government subsidy was awarded to you for the purpose of putting you idea into full scale production, that money would have to first be taken, by force, from other people in the form of taxes. As such, a subsidy doesn’t alter the economic viability of an idea, it just withdraws capital from already productive employment somewhere else, and diverts it to a task that, left alone, people wouldn’t choose to do in a free economy. The net result is that the lowering of your production costs comes at the expense of raising other people’s production costs, since they now have less capital to use in leveraging their labor through the use of machinery.
A subsidy is also the moral opposite of patent protection because of the injustice that it entails. The implementation of a subsidy requires that property rights be violated, rather than protected, as a patent does.
91, the other thing that bothers me about that is that something doesn’t smell right about a company, ostensibly blithely unaware that their patent has great potential. It happens, but not very often.
Clayton, have you approached them about a licensing agreement? A good patent attorney should be able to feel them out without tipping his (your) hat too much. You do your thing under their license, and they continue to do their thing. Win-win. Yes, it’s always possible that they just want to be butts.
And as an aside, if I were looking to save some money at NASA, the first thing I’d do is get rid of Hansen and his crew. Might not save NASA much, but it would save the world’s economy immensely.
M’am, I think you have a Trekkie infestation.
Take a look at the latest astronomical images coming from Jupiter. We are living in a cosmic shooting gallery, and have thus far been lucky that our race has had a long stretch (somewhere in the neighborhood of 65 million years) since the last major impact.
If you think that space exploration is “optional”, then you are deluding yourself. We will either advance and get off this rock to spread the human race to other worlds, or we will go the way of the dinosaurs.
Saftey? Ha!
You’ll get plenty of volunteers to ride cherry-bomb powered trashcans for you. Besides, living in space will ALWAYS be hard, just the more you practice it the better we become at surviving.
The problems aren’t scientific or even technical. X-plane a Shuttle 2.0 and you might get a beautiful launcher that improves on the weak points (cost of refurbishing, safety problems with a brittle heat shield)
The problem is the will. NASA has been quite poor at communicating a future for space. Show us a future worth working for and we’ll ignore the liars who claim that they could end poverty with just $1 Billion more.
Well, this thread shur brought out the moonbats.
I’ve forgotten more science than I suspect most here know and my own scifi collection is three hundred volumes.
As if that matters, which of course it does not. As to your thin skin, if you can’t defend the cost, kindly don’t send me an invoice. Further, if you want to expose your ignorance about those costs and returns — and there’s plenty of that going around here disguised as the Right Stuff: Hoorah! — and get away with it, good luck with that. I’m not angry but in making nonsensical claims in public and following up with evasive remarks not only gives me the latitude, it’s proving my points.
When someone can stand behind the space program as a net earner, then we can consider having it as yet another government-run program. But why?
Shorter Chris: We’re 65,000,000 years resilient; we needa get outta here now, dude!
More shorter Chris: This rock is less hospitable than places without atmosphere! Blast off! It’s this kind of staggering scientific illiteracy that shouldn’t vote.
Space will kill you, Chris. We’ve found zero inhabitable worlds. It’ll bankrupt us getting to them. We’ll arrive three generations after we leave. Or ten. Or fifty. We don’t really know because we, you know, haven’t found any.
Blast off! Now!
I don’t blame you for declaring victory and leaving every single one of your non-points bleeding on the pavement, Mongoose. I responded paragraph by paragraph and naturally, you went home. What else could you do.
Weren’t you Maverick’s wingman? Or maybe that was Goose. Hoo-rah!
These are garden-variety stoner Trekkies. What you need to be worried about are the phaser circles. Let them grow, and they attract [gasp!] College Know-It-All Klingons!
They’re organizing a trek-in right now. Pretty soon, there will be a wall of Vulcans 7 miles thick! Then it’ll be all over.
Well, this thread shur brought out the moonbats.
*rimshot*
Shorter Ten
Join me in my misery so that I can be happy.
Err, no thanks.
Better go hide under the bed, ten! Evil space, and eeevil Trekkies are out to getcha! Space is horrible! Don’t even think about it! In fact, there really is no such thing as space, or the cosmos! It’s all just a plot, hatched by Trekkies, and that rascal Maverick, to steal government money! And send you the invoice.
Barricade all the windows on your house, so you won’t even have to look at the stars, or the sky! It’s a plot, I tells ya! Hoo-rah! The Right Stuff boys are behind it!
(And, no, we don’t want to join you in your misery, thanks anyhoo. You’re angry about something, and I suspect it’s really not the defunct space program, Trekkies, “collectivism” or the Right Stuff Boys.)
And, ten, far as arguments go, you’ve been given some good ones by Mongoose, and by Thomas L., #60, Michael#61 and Tell us, #67. They raised some good points; your response? You (metaphorically) cram your fingers in your ears and shout, “STUPID TREKKIES!” (as if “Trekkie is the ultimate insult, akin to being called a “pedophile”, or “Nazi”) “YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF DUMB STAR BOYS! YOU THINK YOU’RE ALL HEROES OR SOMETHING! DWEEBS, DWEEBS, I HATE YOU!”
Sheesh, talk about your thin skins!
You claim to have imagination, and to know tons and tons of science, but you don’t come across as someone who has much of either. You come across as someone with a personal vendetta against science-fiction, and/or Trekkies (Did one of them make fun of you, once?), who takes the very mention of a space program as some sort of personal insult, and a threat to send you a bill.
As I said, you’re angry, alright, but I doubt it’s really about any space program.
“I don’t blame you for declaring victory and leaving every single one of your non-points bleeding on the pavement, Mongoose. I responded paragraph by paragraph and naturally, you went home. What else could you do.
Weren’t you Maverick’s wingman? Or maybe that was Goose. Hoo-rah!”
Some of you may be confused about Ten. He’s evidently intelligent, and clearly he can recognize values, because he goes out of his way to attack them. But why? What’s the root cause of his nihilistic impulse?
He is typical of a mentality where quantitative knowledge dominates qualitative knowledge. In other words, he’s mathematical to the exclusion of being logical — he’s a brilliant dummy. This type of mind is anti-conceptual, and lacks deep coordination. Ten lives in a highly mechanical, hyper-visual, semi-real world that is radically divorced from nature. His sense of life is more Stanley Kubrick than George Lucas. His emotional references are inverted: when he sees a value, he feels hate, not love. Philosophically, he is a Kantian zombie, a sub-human creature driven by hate for the good because it is the good.
So not everyone is for Mom and apple pie. Ten isn’t.
That’s cute, Kim. Given that none else here can, can you justify the hallowed race for hard cold vacuum? Can you tell us where man will Occupy the Starz? Walk the Pathways of God? Trod the Milky Way?
No? Well, you self-important sophistic sweating unsurprising little trollop. How about you write NASA a check then.
Imagine that.
Dumbass. How many times do you have to be told that because of the nature of, well, nothingness — that being space — there’s no good cause to go there?* That the science of space tells our better minds that it’s a waste of time, resource, and life going into it? That only the perpetual adolescents natter on about “getting off this rock” (to go to real rocks), propagating the species among the stars (when we can’t even get there, much less colonize their planets), surviving apocalypse (when we’ve been here some millions of years) or solving our Earthbound problems by running from them? Or utterly reforming them when we haven’t reformed a single one of them so far, at least not in the way at least one of you says we’ll need to in order to so much as afford the folly of blasting off Earth with your fishbowls on our heads.
You people are laughable. Which is fine, just don’t tax me indulging your juvenile fantasies. Even life undersea, which is infinitely more hospitable then vacuum, has proved utterly economically unfeasible. But you Einsteins are undeterred by this reality, this concrete evidence, this science.
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*the answer is four. Four times now I’ve made that point and four times you Visionary Scientists have ignored it, simultaneously claiming yourselves to be the open minded and me various of your worst name-callings. Mongoose gets a herd fisking and slinks off, factless. Check out Kim, the armchair psycholiar. You guys present one hell of a case for funding the collectivized failure of the US space program. Yes, yes you surely do.
Silly child: Space is a wonder, and if I’ve been into it for longer than you’ve been alive. Like the good Mr. Whittle not only did I want to go there, but if it were realistic, I would yet, even at my age of fifty two. I’d just do it via free enterprise, where it belongs, where it can profit from the dreams of old guys with money and not inflict it’s otherwise off-worldly financial losses on the rest of the taxpayer base.
I star-gaze nightly, ignorant city-twatwaffle. And I suspect I shall yet go there, in another life. Good luck with your fantasy.
Ten, you are not the only one who has been around a while and not the only one who has an extensive science background.
Ten will never agree with anyone who thinks space exploration is a good idea. He just dismisses any arguement. Closed minds are beyond the ability of science to open.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/07/one-giant-leap-come-on-america-lets-put-a-congress-on-the-moon.html
Closed minds, Mike? How so? Because the numbers don’t add up? Because there’s nothing in space you can prove the value of going and getting? because we can’t live on Mars, or the Moon or on some undiscovered planet light years away? Because space kills just as surely and easily as a thousand feet under the sea does, in terms of living there?
Do you know what a light year is, Mike? Do you know where an inhabitable planet is? Do you comprehend the expenditures of getting there and the impossibility of returning anything of value at anything other than a vast financial loss?
I thought not. And it shows too. Join the other ignorants in this thread.
I’m not even remotely afraid of your or anyone proving me wrong by the facts. In fact, I’d applaud it! But don’t call that openness closed minded, planet ranger, when your argument hasn’t so much as a single fact that supports the space venture on economic grounds.
It’s not my mind that’s closed, little space conqueror. It’s all the goofball minds that still think faster than light drive exists and tons of places have breathable atmospheres (and unicorns and fountains of gold, apparently). That’s closed-minded, pal.
Shorter Ten
Bow to me.
I am the king of space and time.
I am the master of my own domain.
Engineeers and Technologists put people on the moon. Scientists are saying they will build intellgent robots capable of manning space exploration vehicles.
Scientists said 50 years ago we would all be riding around in our own personal hovercraft by now. Scientists said 50 years ago we would all have a domestic robot to do the housework by now. Scientists said 50 years ago that nuclear power stations would produce electricity to chap to bill.
Let’s go back to the moon but make sure we put engineers and technologists in charge of the project if we want to see the astronauts get home safely
Those weren’t scientists, those were futurists. Those are the same guys with 10 pairs of pointed rubber ears in their closets, who spend all their weekends at Star Trek conventions. The scientists were too busy doing actual science to bother with these dweebs.
As an engineer, I sympathize with your desire to see your invention realised, and I expect that you already understand the points that I’m going to make, but I think it’s important to draw a sharp distinction between the nature of a subsidy and a patent in promoting technology.
I wasn’t looking for a subsidy. I was pointing out that sometimes, the only way to get a game changing invention into service may require a research subsidy, or some patent advantage. There’s nothing to what I came up with that justified a research subsidy (it’s all pretty minor development), and there was no room to carve out a new patent.
the other thing that bothers me about that is that something doesn’t smell right about a company, ostensibly blithely unaware that their patent has great potential. It happens, but not very often.
Clayton, have you approached them about a licensing agreement? A good patent attorney should be able to feel them out without tipping his (your) hat too much. You do your thing under their license, and they continue to do their thing. Win-win. Yes, it’s always possible that they just want to be butts.
It has potential, but not for their original purpose. And anyone who holds that patent and couldn’t figure out what we were trying to license would be too dumb to breathe. (There is the slight danger that it might not have qualified for “novel” even though it seems that no one is doing it yet, just because it is pretty obvious, once you think about it for a few minutes.)
To the one who calls himself “Ten”:
What the hell is your problem man? You come off as an arrogant asshole who is nothing more than a pissant of a bully. Nothing good to say about nothing. Disdain for all. Everyone is inferior to you. I’m surprised your handle is “Ten” and not “One.”
So we’re supposed to be impressed that you have been part of startups. Big whup! From your attitude you must have been more of a silent partner because your people skills suck and you would be a disaster at hands on operations.
Think you’ve got imagination? Can’t imagine that in tough times people might want a diversion from all the crap going on in Washington at in the economy to think about accomplishing something beyond our Fearless Reader wanting to redistribute the wealth of the nation, sink us in the developing nation status, making friends with our enemies, and giving the poor black folk some payback for their perceived grievances? I can think of lots better things to do with the trillions being wasted to Stimulate unions and Obama loyalists, on “Crap & Tax” and supposed Health Care Reform to “cover” the uninsured.
And all you can do is rain on everybody’s parade. That is mighty big of you. So why don’t you educate us about how the space program did not produce any payback to society, any economic benefits to Americans, pride, educational achievement (at least for awhile), and advances in scientific knowledge. Go ahead O’Wise One. You proclaim it was all a big waste of money. YOU prove it!
I’ve got an idea. Instead of spending Trillions of dollars on illegal unnecessary wars for example, why don’t we try fixing things here at home. Then, once we can afford it, maybe start considering exploring Mars.
Oh. And all in favor of sending Mongoose to Mars, please stand up!
#118 Pat J – ” … illegal unnecessary wars …” OMG, I think I’ve either entered the Twilight Zone or a wormhole in “Ten’s” hard vacuum of deep space. Bush derangement continues. Make love, not war. No blood for oil. Bush lied, people died. Oh what a bunch of crap. Just go away.
Ten: U Gud Troll.
Your posts mostly are just calling everyone doodieheads, though you use lots of other words, and don’t really convince anyone your position might be right.
Of course, you seem more interested in trolling than in actual discussion, and even when anyone attempts to take your posts seriously you just call them names and say they don’t really get you… sounds like about a 13-year-old boy, maybe 14.
“Space is hard vacuum. Will you be mining in zero state then? Sending back little jars of nothing?” The asteroid belt is filled with big old rocks that are basically pre-refined metals, including some radioactives and some things like nickel, gold, platinum… no use for those, I guess. It would take a push to get them moving in the right direction, and whichever country is the first to develop it will get the easy picking and the rights to more or less set up how things will be handled there. As far as “hard vacuum,” we already have the technology to extract oxygen that is bound into other substances, and could make industrial bases on the moon with not much more than current technology (and likewise on Mars); I guess you can’t think of a benefit to being able to make dangerous substances or those that have toxic byproducts without having a pre-existing environment to have to worry about poisioning, eh?
It takes a long time to get to Mars from here, but not a whole lot longer than it took a ship to get from England to the New World back in the day… guess that wasn’t worthwhile, either, though. It’s not like we ever find new materials, medicines or other worthwhile discoveries when we visit a new place, right?
“Make love, not war.” Nothing wrong with that; given a *choice* I would much rather do the former…