icemann on 14/3/2017 at 16:56
Too true. I stand corrected.
It's the nature of the vast majority of politicians to only care about the span of their turn in office and nothing else. Same reason we see the lack of action on climate change, even though the reality of it is visible if one compares weathers and natural disasters just within their own life times. So short sighted.
I hope we get there someday space wise, and don't blow ourselves to oblivion or completely ruin the planet before then.
heywood on 14/3/2017 at 19:39
US administrations haven't had any real appetite for manned spaceflight since GHW Bush announced his Space Exploration Initiative proposal which included building the ISS, returning to the Moon, and a manned mission to Mars. Bush was the last President to back up the rhetoric with funding. NASA's budget went up by around 50% during his administration, but he had pushed Congress for even more. NASA's budget and employment have been shrinking ever since.
Back then I was all for it. I was born in the early 70s and like many kids my age I was practically brainwashed into an obsession with space exploration. TV watching was dominated by space-themed shows. My early movie favorites were too. We watched Cosmos, and pretty much every PBS program about space. There was extensive media coverage and hype about Skylab and especially the Voyager missions. It was fascinating, and we all coveted fancy reflector telescopes. The schools I attended also heavily encouraged our fascination with space. I remember when I was in elementary school, most of our class showed up early at school to watch the first space shuttle launch on the big TV they had in the library, and then again to watch the landing. In the 7th grade Jim Irwin and another Apollo astronaut visited our school and we spent a whole science class talking about the future of manned space flight. Visiting the Smithsonian Air & Space museum was a right of passage, and most of us grew up wanting so bad to go to space camp.
So when President Bush said we should establish a Moon base and eventually go to Mars, and cleaned house with NASA management and increased their funding, I was pretty excited. Then Clinton came in and reversed course. IIRC, Clinton tried to cancel the space station too but the Russians made cooperation on non-proliferation & weapons reduction contingent on US aid to keep the Russian space program alive.
Now that I'm older though, I question whether manned space flight makes any sense. The ISS is probably the worst science facility in history if judged by scientific value produced vs. money spent. And going back to the Moon makes no sense to me at all. There's very little that a manned mission could accomplish that an unmanned mission could not, and it doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to go beating our chests about, considering the feat is already done and that was nearly 50 years ago. I don't fancy sending people to Mars either. It would be a grandiose accomplishment if we could do it, but ultimately it's as pointless as putting people on the Moon. It just doesn't seem like a worthy use of resources and we have much bigger problems to solve.
icemann on 15/3/2017 at 03:45
So we should just give up and settle for living on 1 planet for all of eternity until we've ruined it to the point where we all kark it from rising temperatures etc? Bugger that.
Plus with the global population rising quite massively with each passing year and fewer wars than in previous generations, we simply don't have the space to support the amount of people on the planet very soon. Colonization of other planets solves this + allows humanity to continue on and to expand.
I still see it as inevitable that we'll have to expand out into space someday. It's that or overpopulating the planet to the point that all resources run out and we all just die out slowly. That'd be a horrible way to go.
Sulphur on 15/3/2017 at 05:22
We're not colonising Mars any time soon. There's a bunch of logistical and habitat-related problems to be solved first, which I haven't seen Musk talk about. If he has a colony engineering plan, I'd dearly love to see it.
Bulgarian_Taffer on 15/3/2017 at 10:48
Quote Posted by heywood
Now that I'm older though, I question whether manned space flight makes any sense. The ISS is probably the worst science facility in history if judged by scientific value produced vs. money spent.
About ten years ago, I used to think like you. I was literally in love with unmanned space probes and though that we're giving too much money for manned spaceflight. Now, after pursuing a carreer in science and with a PhD degree behind my back, my viewpoint is a little different. In a sense, I learned how to grow a heart about the International Space Station.
First, I came to realize that what you consider to be a "scientific value produced vs. money spent" is a bad comparison. Money spent - that's easy to measure - we know how much the Mars rovers cost, and how much the ISS costs. And the difference is indeed damning. But how do we measure the scientific value? That's a tricky question. One may point to scientific articles and whether they're published in high impact journals. This is what we, researchers, usually do.
However the amount of articles is not always a good measure. For example, we know that the ISS took a long time to be built. Construction started in 1998. Modern research laboratories like Kibo and Columbus were not added until 2007-2008. And utilization as a science lab only started in full in 2011, after construction was declared complete. Some advantageous modules weren't added at all, like the Centrifuge module. Right, I don't argue it's a loss for science. However, next year we mark 20 years since the birth of the ISS. Of these only 7 years were dedicated to research. The ISS is scheduled to be used until 2024 and maybe even beyond that. I'd guess 2030. It's still too early to judge the real value.
Some experiments have been meaningful. I could point to results in my field - plant physiology. Outside of these, the Scott Kelly flight was very interesting. There were cutting edge genetic studies between him and his twin brother Mark who served as a control on Earth. The results have just started to arrive and there are some intriguing differences of the telomeres between the brothers.
And here comes the most important part of my point. How can you tell that these results are really worthy? Intriguing to scientists? Yes, of course! But sometimes decades pass between a scientific discovery and its application in practice. Maxwell wrote his famous equations about electricity and magnetism, but the TV was invented 80 years later. It would certainly take time to see if there are spinoffs from ISS research.
Let's also remind that the Human Genome Project was initiated in 1984. Real work was started in 1990 and it was declared complete in 2003. Now it's 2017 - and we've yet to see some real applications in practice. Sure, we have deciphered the human genome. And sure, we know the mechanisms of many diseases. But we're nowhere close to their cure. It was thought that genetic engineering will lead to curing most diseases, but this has yet to happen. What we can do right now is to scan a human fetus for dangerous diseases and if we're not happy with the genetic background, we are able to abort it. This is the biggest disappointment for Francis Collins, one of the leading HGP scientists.
Quote:
And going back to the Moon makes no sense to me at all. There's very little that a manned mission could accomplish that an unmanned mission could not, and it doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to go beating our chests about, considering the feat is already done and that was nearly 50 years ago. I don't fancy sending people to Mars either. It would be a grandiose accomplishment if we could do it, but ultimately it's as pointless as putting people on the Moon. It just doesn't seem like a worthy use of resources and we have much bigger problems to solve.
In a sense you're right - a robot can do everything a human can do. And for the cost of building the ISS we could send an armada of Mars Rovers. However, this is only if we watch the scientific merits. In order to meaningfully defend manned space exploration to other planets, we must step outside of science. Yes, robots are better. But humans, working alongside robots, could inspire the public in a way a robot alone can't. Just think about it - there are many space telescopes around. The biggest one is the Russian Spektr-R (Radioastron). There are many others - Chandra, Kepler, Swift, Spitzer, Integral etc etc etc. But people know mostly about Hubble. Why? Because Hubble is a good example about cooperation between humans and robots. Hubble would have never been famous enough without the drama of the failed instruments and repair missions.
The biggest boon of the Apollo program was not science itself. Nobody cares too much about lunar geology. But those trips inspired many people during 70s to pursue carreers in science. This is called "The Apollo Effect" - and it lead to many technology wonders in our world.
I'm fully convinced that my generation doesn't just need rovers and satellites. My generation needs another Apollo - a program that could inspire countless people all over the world, so the kids would become scientists and engineers. Right now being a scientist and an engineering is not considered prestigious enough amongst young people. This is something we should fix ASAP. So why not create a viable space program?
Kolya on 15/3/2017 at 12:01
Space isn't the next frontier. Settling on another planet is so far out of reach, it would be much easier to solve our problems here instead. And if we don't we would just bring these problems with us.
Bulgarian_Taffer on 15/3/2017 at 12:08
Quote Posted by Kolya
Settling on another planet is so far out of reach, it would be much easier to solve our problems here instead.
Space exploration vs solving our problems first - it's a false dichotomy. We have resources to do both space science and colonization, and solve our problems. Plus space exploration already produces important spinoffs. Including planetary exploration.
Sulphur on 15/3/2017 at 12:24
Quote Posted by Kolya
Space isn't the next frontier. Settling on another planet is so far out of reach, it would be much easier to solve our problems here instead. And if we don't we would just bring these problems with us.
Indeed. Hoping to escape to another planet makes sense if the resources available and potential benefit outweigh the cost, because this is a few orders of magnitude larger than, say, colonising North America. Mars is an uphill struggle and a colony plan has many, many things working against it. The amount of legwork required to make the first Mars colony not have the highest mortality rate in human history makes it, by default, something that needs the joint co-operation of multiple nations.
At any rate, looking to the stars as a form of egress because we can't solve our problems down on the ground is a somewhat depressing thought to me. (Makes for great science fiction though.)
Pyrian on 15/3/2017 at 14:06
Quote Posted by Kolya
Space isn't the next frontier.
Then what is?
Quote Posted by Kolya
Settling on another planet is so far out of reach, it would be much easier to solve our problems here instead.
The problem of settling other planets is merely one of resources - money and time. We certainly
have enough. We
can do it (in-system), eventually. Our "problems here" are, by-and-large, not at all due to overall lack of resources. Indeed, many of them (certainly Trump) are symptoms of an overconcentration of resources.
Quote Posted by Kolya
And if we don't we would just bring these problems with us.
Is that not inevitable? Wherever we go, there we are.
Starker on 15/3/2017 at 17:19
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Wherever we go, there we are.
Even so, not all of us are all there.