The US Space Program

[Meekychuppet]

funding might well be around but Obama zapped it from the budget.

[Coito ergo sum]

funding might well be around but Obama zapped it from the budget.

That he did. That he did. I think that was the wrong thing to do, UNLESS he really does amp up the program to something more ambitious. I've heard the words. Now I want to see it happen.

If I were a bettin' man, however, it really smells like he wanted to cancel Constellation and refocus NASA on more Earthly pursuits, but the PR concern was that the 'publicans would be able to lambaste him for canceling it and thereby reducing our space program. He remedied that by suggesting that he wasn't really cutting back on the space program, but instead making room for more ambitious and grander missions. It took the heat of criticism off him, and the short memory of Americans has kicked in and nobody gives a crap anymore.

I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that soon we hear of "Program ______: manned Mission to the Asteroid ______" If that happens, I'm all for it.

[Meekychuppet]

Since I teach astronomy and I am trying to drum up recruitment for physics and astrophysics degrees nothing would please me more than a new space race but as you say, apathy is everywhere. The unfortunate thing is that the US has clearly apexed in terms of 'WOW!' and the science has entered an industrial phase. I read the other day an article by a futurist predicting that USA is heading downhill over the next decade and I can see that. The treatment of Obama suggests that USA hasn't hit rock bottom yet, but when it does aspiration will hopefully return. I just think your politicians don't see that in-fighting and bickering gets you nowhere, and then there are the 'we could feed the homeless' merchants. I think you'll get there eventually, but China landing on the Moon might be the boot up the arse you need.

[Coito ergo sum]

Since I teach astronomy and I am trying to drum up recruitment for physics and astrophysics degrees nothing would please me more than a new space race but as you say, apathy is everywhere. The unfortunate thing is that the US has clearly apexed in terms of 'WOW!' and the science has entered an industrial phase. I read the other day an article by a futurist predicting that USA is heading downhill over the next decade and I can see that. The treatment of Obama suggests that USA hasn't hit rock bottom yet, but when it does aspiration will hopefully return. I just think your politicians don't see that in-fighting and bickering gets you nowhere, and then there are the 'we could feed the homeless' merchants. I think you'll get there eventually, but China landing on the Moon might be the boot up the arse you need.

I think it's even worse than that. Not only is it apathy, but ignorance. Ignorance of the value of science.

I can't tell you how common it is for me to hear someone refer to NASA as a waste of money, when the topic comes up, but say nothing of the fact that $600 million were spent to send people coupons to buy converter boxes so they could receive High Definition Television signals (despite the fact that the proposed "conversion" to purely HDTV signals has not and probably will not occur anytime soon).

The American government wipes its ass with more dollars than it funds NASA with. We talk of handing half a trillion dollars to wall street bankers like it's tossing pennies into a wishing well, yet $18 billion for NASA is "a waste." Otherwise seemingly intelligent people will express extreme ignorance of the accomplishments of NASA - thinking that nothing has happened in the last 40 years except the space shuttle (and that alone, now popularly lambasted, was among the greatest technological achievements in all of human history). Yet, we see the lunar orbiters, the hubbel, chandra and other space telescopes, the routine launching of satellites, multiple Mars landings, Mars orbiters and surveyors, Cassini-Huygens to a moon of Jupiter for fucks sake, ion drive engines, spaceships to comets, spaceships already have gone to asteroids (Eros), we have a probe on its way to Pluto, we've visited in the last 35 years (a mere drop in the bucket on any time scale) every planet in the solar system with the exception of Pluto (now a dwarf planet) and we're almost there too. We have a human made space craft that is right at the heliopause of our solar system that is still working after 30 years!

NASA has brought us images and general knowledge that no humans in the history of mankind have ever seen or been privy to! We all know what it looks like to look at the Moon from Earth. Before 1969, nobody that had ever lived had known what that was like. Now we all do. We all know what it LOOKS like under the clouds of Venus. We all have, virtually, ridden in a vehicle on the surface of Mars.

The requirements of a space program, from the hard sciences of rocketry, aeronautics, astronautics, fuel and fuel systems, ergonomics, computers, robotics, physics, metallurgy, chemistry, thermodynamics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, among many others have all required massive advancements and discoveries in order to further the space program and the advancement of human knowledge in the past 40-50 years has been unparalleled in the history of mankind and the space program has been, while clearly not the only cause, has been a substantial contributing factor to that development.

Many folks pay lip service to the notion that our children need to learn more science and advanced mathematics? Yet those same people quite often reject the notion that we should advance the very industries in which those sciences and mathematics are useful. Why should our children bother to learn advanced astrophysics and astronomy, if none of them will be anything other than burger flippers, accountants, lawyers, etc.? What use will they find the long hours slogging through a physics and thermodynamics curriculum (and having done it, I know it's not easy), when they're going to only use math for balancing accounts on a profit and loss statement?

The space program serves not only as a source of pride in humanity and unifying goal - it serves to actually expand the sciences and engineering fields, and to provide something teachers can point to when a child rightly asks the teacher: why should I learn this? Why do I need to spend 300 hours learning astronomy? That instructor can say to that younger person - because you may want to be an astronomer, or a cosmologist, or an astrophysist, or some other kind of scientist, and you will need to know a certain basic level of stuff in order to do so, and secondarily since our society is moving forward in these areas, if you want to be able think intelligently about and speak intelligently about these things, it's important to know something about them.

The space program is the stuff dreams are made of, and a good part of educating our children means fostering their dreams. The universe "is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries." - Carl Sagan.

Given the actual wastes of public funds that go on every day, it seems almost criminal that NASA's budget is as small as it is.

Besides, "the dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program." - Larry Niven.

"Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds." Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars." Stephen Hawking, interview with Daily Telegraph, 2001

"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in." Robert Heinlein, speech

"The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to space is worth the benefit. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not only for the reasons that are usually touted by the space community: the need to explore, the scientific return, and the possibility of commercial profit. The most compelling reason, a very long-term one, is the necessity of using space to protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity." William E. Burrows, The Wall Street Journal, 2003

"There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?" Isaac Asimov, speech at Rutgers University

[drl2]

Some great photos here taken by an astronaut on the ISS: http://triggerpit.com/2010/11/22/incred ... -wheelock/

[eXcommunicate]

I find it hard to believe that I am in such an extreme minority when it comes to the space program. Nobody cares.

My exact feeling when it comes to civil liberties at the airport, but I digress.

I agree with you here. Obama has pretty much gutted our space program, regardless "budget increases." Stagnation in NASA has cost a loss in so much human capital it's almost criminal. And thanks to Obama we'll almost have to start from scratch if we want to do anything big like go to Mars. And there's no technical reason we shouldn't have had a replacement for the shuttle by now, only political. Can't pin that one on Obama though--that's Clinton's and Bush's fault.

[Coito ergo sum]

I find it hard to believe that I am in such an extreme minority when it comes to the space program. Nobody cares.

My exact feeling when it comes to civil liberties at the airport, but I digress.

Well, I think, as I've pointed out, that a reasonable position can be taken on either side of that issue. There have been pat downs at the airport for decades now, and just because they go from being somewhat searching to searching in depth doesn't automatically change it over from civil rights safe to a deprivation of civil liberties. Furthermore, we've been getting scanned by things in airports for decades, the only difference here is that a fuzzy image that looks somewhat humaniform comes up on a screen for someone to see (but not for general viewing).

I agree with you here. Obama has pretty much gutted our space program, regardless "budget increases." Stagnation in NASA has cost a loss in so much human capital it's almost criminal. And thanks to Obama we'll almost have to start from scratch if we want to do anything big like go to Mars. And there's no technical reason we shouldn't have had a replacement for the shuttle by now, only political. Can't pin that one on Obama though--that's Clinton's and Bush's fault.

I've never blamed one side or the other exclusively. I think the cancellation of Constellation was idiotic, though, and somehow Obama's been allowed to get away with it. Smooth politically talking to be thanked for that -- his fans in the journalist pool were all to eager to accept his grandiose claims of actually expanding space exploration. It's been over 6 months now and nobody in the press or the scientific journals is yet asking, "Mr. President, uhhh....where's that asteroid and Mars program you were talking about?"

[eXcommunicate]

I've never blamed one side or the other exclusively.

Neither have I. I don't think this is necessarily a partisan issue. People from the entire spectrum are to blame. Shortsightedness and ignorance is not exclusive to one side or the other. You have folks who want to gut NASA in favor of a private space industry, which would be fine if the barrier to entry wasn't so astronomical. For the time being only the government has the suitable economies of scale to make space travel, exploration, and exploitation possible. Some people just don't want to acknowledge that government has a role outside of the Constitution (or their own interpretations of it). Then there are those who say NASA is a "waste of money." This argument can be heard from both the "fiscal responsibility" angle as well as the "starving children in Africa" angle, as if fiscal responsibility shouldn't be a holistic exercise with carefully weighed costs and benefits or as if starvation in Africa can be solved by throwing money at the problem.

I think the cancellation of Constellation was idiotic, though, and somehow Obama's been allowed to get away with it.

Quite frankly, no one cares because it doesn't affect them personally and immediately. We have Monday Night Football to worry about here, brah!

Smooth politically talking to be thanked for that -- his fans in the journalist pool were all to eager to accept his grandiose claims of actually expanding space exploration. It's been over 6 months now and nobody in the press or the scientific journals is yet asking, "Mr. President, uhhh....where's that asteroid and Mars program you were talking about?"

They aren't asking the questions because no one cares about the answers. They have poll numbers to report on and Twitter to check in on and mooslim mosques being built in Manhattan to chatter about (and polls and pundits and Tweets about the mooslim mosque).

[Coito ergo sum]

I've never blamed one side or the other exclusively.

Neither have I. I don't think this is necessarily a partisan issue. People from the entire spectrum are to blame. Shortsightedness and ignorance is not exclusive to one side or the other. You have folks who want to gut NASA in favor of a private space industry, which would be fine if the barrier to entry wasn't so astronomical. For the time being only the government has the suitable economies of scale to make space travel, exploration, and exploitation possible. Some people just don't want to acknowledge that government has a role outside of the Constitution (or their own interpretations of it). Then there are those who say NASA is a "waste of money." This argument can be heard from both the "fiscal responsibility" angle as well as the "starving children in Africa" angle, as if fiscal responsibility shouldn't be a holistic exercise with carefully weighed costs and benefits or as if starvation in Africa can be solved by throwing money at the problem.

I think the cancellation of Constellation was idiotic, though, and somehow Obama's been allowed to get away with it.

Quite frankly, no one cares because it doesn't affect them personally and immediately. We have Monday Night Football to worry about here, brah!

Smooth politically talking to be thanked for that -- his fans in the journalist pool were all to eager to accept his grandiose claims of actually expanding space exploration. It's been over 6 months now and nobody in the press or the scientific journals is yet asking, "Mr. President, uhhh....where's that asteroid and Mars program you were talking about?"

They aren't asking the questions because no one cares about the answers. They have poll numbers to report on and Twitter to check in on and mooslim mosques being built in Manhattan to chatter about (and polls and pundits and Tweets about the mooslim mosque).

Yep....'tis a sad sad day...

...and on a selfish note, I was too young to watch the moon landings live, and I will likely be dead before a man walks either there again or on Mars.

It's a crying fucking shame that a flight to Jupiter was within the grasp of our imagination in the 1960s, when Clarke wrote 2001 a space oddysey, and we could envision a real space station with artificial gravity at a Lagrange point....and here it is nearly 50 years later and we are still tinkering around with low Earth orbit crap and satellites....we ought to have a moon base now. We ought to be going to Mars and beyond.

Mankind has the stars in its future.

My friends they were dancing here in the streets of Huntsville when our first satellite orbited the Earth. They were dancing again when the first Americans landed on the Moon. I'd like to ask you, don't hang up your dancing slippers. — Dr. Wernher von Braun

Werner....I think we've hung up our dancing slippers....

[Coito ergo sum]

By the year 2000 we will undoubtedly have a sizable operation on the Moon, we will have achieved a manned Mars landing and it's entirely possible we will have flown with men to the outer planets.

— Dr. Wernher von Braun, 1969

We suck.

[Coito ergo sum]

Nothing will stop us. The road to the stars is steep and dangerous. But we're not afraid . . . Space flights can't be stopped. This isn't the work of one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development.

— Yuri Gagarin, regards the first death in space (Vladimir Komarov), 1967

[Clinton Huxley]

Just started re-reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson - Martian colonies in 2026. No chance of that. We're all gonna buy it on this rock.

[Coito ergo sum]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhPJHfR3Pco&feature=sub[/youtube]

[Clinton Huxley]

Last launch for the Endeavour today. One more flight for Atlantis and then we're done. Sniff.

[Coito ergo sum]

Can't wait for that manned mission to an asteroid and Mars.