Striking point. Makes a lot of sense. Keep up the good work.

Engaging opinion. I’m not sure everyone would see it that way.

Out with NASA, in with the NTSB.

Matt

Hey Abner,

You speak pretty authoratatively though I don’t know what ground you speak on.

I can see a number of ways that you CAN go to mars without a space station. More importantly so have a lot of people with a lot more credentials than my own. Read The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. Look the book (and author) up for all sorts of information about him and the idea.

Rudy, you can’t go to Mars with out having a space station of some sort in orbit around earth. Sorry.

You know, there’s a nearly perfect analogy that throws JCM, Gideon and all the others a curve ball. This is something we have done before.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but the analogy is the opening of the new world. It’s another land with natural resources and most importantly, room to grow. Mars, and all of the bodies in space are other lands with natural resources and room to grow. Yes, there are big differences: there were already people in the Americas, you could breathe in the Americas, food grew here. In all, it’s a lot easier to live here than on Mars.

That’s true, but that’s not to say that it didn’t require amazing technology, huge risks and lots of money to get to the new world. Many, many people died in creating the countries that exist here now. People need to look at deaths in the space program as tragedies, learning events and unavoidable. They should cause us to look at what we’re doing, fix the problems, then GO ON. Life isn’t safe and the truly valuable things can not be obtained without risk. We take those risks because the end results are so important.

Those first missions to the new world were sponsored by the governments. They were the only ones with pockets deep enough to take the risks. It wasn’t until their ventures became profitable (at the expense of the Aztecs, etc.) that private industry moved in.

Extending the analogy, I would consider near-space (orbit) to be roughly the equivalent of fishing grounds off Europe. Governments have shown how to do it, have made it profitable. Now it’s time for them to move into a regulatory structure and to let capitalism do what it does best: maximize profit margins (at the expense of the Aztecs, etc.).

But, by all means, they need to continue to push the envelope in the areas that need to be developed to the point that corporations (and individuals) are willing to take over. They need to push for Mars. They need to develop the science that will allow humans to go on long duration missions.

And that comes back to Phil’s original point. NASA must continue a human mission because the principles aren’t understood well enough and the market hasn’t developed enough for the resources to be exploited by society. And those are resources that can’t be questioned: they exist. (You can only really argue about how valuable they are…)

What they shouldn’t be doing is sitting around in near-earth orbit doing make-work jobs. ISS is a joke and nearly useless in its current incarnation. NASA needs a true mission. Something worthy of spending our cash on. Forget the space station. Sell it to Tito as the first near earth hotel. Buy Mars with the cash.

Jim, the model you hint at is quite prevelant. Left to itself, the private sector would not invest the resources to make great scientific advances. I wonder how many advances in computing were funded by military contracts. IBM surely would not have taken on multi-billion dollar risks on their own.

The same applies to NASA contracts that fund new developments, eventually applied to commercial products by Boeing, etc. Chomsky gives much better examples than I can come up with…

Just because the Space Shuttle is in a rut with ancient technology sending ant farms into orbit doesn’t mean manned spaceflight has no benefits.

Some of you who have actually bothered to study history may recognize a little thing called the Apollo Program. While it certainly didn’t help Donald Trump throw up any casinos, it did trigger a wave of scientific and technological development that triggered waves throughout academia and the corporate world, with results we’re still enjoying today.

Similar developments were done during the early days of JPL’s unmanned probes.

A NASA that sought actual challenging goals would be able to continue to stimulate science and the economy. Unfortunately, short-sighted individuals (both within NASA and outside) continue to limit their scope to being Shuttle-pushers.

All of this leaves aside the immense cultural benefits that we wreaked from the Apollo Program, but I won’t bother to get into that because most free-market types believe culture is something only the wealthy are entitled to.

As noted above, the correct answer is that there appears to be little point for humans to be in space, government employees or otherwise. A minor nit on an otherwise fine blog entry: on the point about “oh, by the way, if you’re going into space anyway, would you mind conducting these experiments for us?” — this assumes that these experiments have some value. In fact my impression is that the space shuttle experiments are purely make-work. I would be happy to be persuaded otherwise about this, but my impression is that all of NASA’s scientific successes of any substance have come from unmanned craft of various sorts (e.g. the Voyager satellites; the Mars robots — the ones that didn’t crash; the Hubble telescope).

dgm, I read your comment about the issue of insurance and I have to disagree. What you have stated about a rocket landing on a day centre has direct parallels to the risks that are inherent in aircraft travel. Many aviation accidents have happened over the years all over the world that have cost huge numbers of lives and yet air travel still happens and is still insured.