Americans need to get serious again about space! 11

[whotmewory]

I wanna toss my hat in for American getting serious again about space!

American's gotten a pretty black eye from industry shifts away from home, and now with chine being soooo good at aircraft manufacturing thanks to the traitorous folks at Boeing, seems to me there's one last area where - at least for now - America leads the way, and that's SPACE!

Sure would be great if GW or the next Prez would come out - like Kennedy - and say "Let's do this!"

In '69 with Armstrong kicking up dust on the Moon, Stanley Kubrick's "2001 Space Odyssey" was seemingly a No Brainer and a lot of us kids envisioned working for NASA and us being as far as Mars if not at leaset mining the Moon.

Something went wrong somewhere - now all we have is a junker shuttle and a program lacking vision.

Perhaps we ought to hassle our legislators about this screw up - so younger engineers have a field to work in in 2020.

Let's go for space again and leave the Earth to China!

Cheers!

 

[EddyC]

Humanity's home and future rest upon planet earth. Our engineering efforts should be centered around this fact. I don't like a large segment of my taxes being spent upon gathering scientific facts that are useless to the vast majority of humanity.

 

[epoisses]

It's a very intesting discussion whether this is a waste of money or not.

Of course the benefits of the few discoveries mostly on materials science level that were made thanks to space travel do not outweigh the huge cost. Space travel cannot be considered "economically justified" in that respect.

The aim is a different one and the discussion is about the very fundaments of what is useful and what is not.

As a comparison, one might state that the entire Hollywood movie industry, as well as the music industry, is a waste of money. Movies and music are not economically justified at all, people spend lots of money (probably much more money than NASA's biggest yearly budget ever) on watching nonsense stories or CD's with crap they listen to a few times, then put them on a shelf to rot.
Yet nobody would say this is a worthless industry that should be closed down (as a matter of fact, this is a line of business where competition from China has not made it very far but that's a separate thread).

So why then are there so many objections against space travel, which is probably cheaper and probably more useful (least useless)?

As soon as our basic needs (the lower half of Maslov's pyramid) are fulfilled, we can find further satisfaction in more "sophisticated" activities, music, sports, you name it. Why would space travel, which has inspired humanity since the prehistory, not be one of those?

 

[arunmrao]

China are way ahead in space technology too. They have their manned mission planned !

 

[MadMango]

Whotmewory,

Where have you been?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-3.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3950099/

http://www.marsnews.com/articles/20040124-mars_society_responds_to_bush_space_initiative.html

Highlights:
Complete the International Space Station by 2010.
Develop and test the Crew Exploration Vehicle by 2008.
Conduct the first manned mission of CEV by 2014.
Return to the moon by 2020.

I don't agree our ultimate future rests upon planent Earth, but yes, the tangible future does.

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[arunmrao]

Space technology cannot be ignored by arguments from an accountant regarding their worthiness or return on investments. It is the grand vision of policy makers and scientists which helped progress. Though not all of space technology can be used in everyday life,. The urge to know about outer space is thrilling.

 

[VisiGoth]

It is great for China to give a gift to humanity. The far future of mankind will benefit. It will also give China some pride and will do it without any wars.
Unfortunatly, part of the plan is for China to take away the IP and knowledge from Taiwan in order to have the on shore technology to really pull big things off and that could be a big detrement to humanity. China is experimenting with new ideas, maybe one of them is to give back all of the property and ownership rights and pride back to the people of China, and if the space program is a step in that direction, then I am all for it. China is delivering quality products and low prices to the entire wolrd, that is something to be thankful for, not bitter or jelous of. It can only be hoped the human degradation of implementations of socialism is one of the benefits that China will derive from it's space program.

 

[Maury]

I would like to see the U.S. pursue space exploration, but at a rate that can be sustained over a many years, not the short term high cost, high waste projects such as the moon landing and the shuttle. As exciting as they were, a more measured approach would have been better.

 

[MadMango]

China has made great advances in modern music and the arts. Have we already forgotten William Hung's contributions?



[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[arunmrao]

Spending on moon landing is far better than spending all the resources on Iraq/Iran etc I guess. Reduce expenditure on war fare and utilize it on more meaningful avenues.

 

[BJC]

Some people critize the space program as a waste of money, however there was no pile of money left on the moon. The only thing left probably amounted to less than the beer cans tossed away on any given weekend in any large city.
Was the space program really wellfare for engineers and scientist? Would you have the computer you have if there was no space program?

 

[kchida]

I think manned missions, such as the one to Mars, are pretty darn close to utter uselessness. I don't think we need to make efforts to inhabit Mars anytime soon (the moon is another story as it is a satellite of our planet).

However, I still think they should continue with space projects. Have you all heard of the "space elevator" concept? I think that would be a worthwhile effort.

Now this is where I get SciFi: What if we could use such an elevator to economically lift millions of modules into space to collect the Sun's energy (the origin of all renewable energy sources on Earth)? Since the Sun's intensity drops off in proportion to distance from the Sun squared, we could place said modules as close as possible to tap the largest "fusion reactor" in our solar system. The collected energy would then be concentrated and transmitted via laser beams to the moon (or somewhere outside of our atmosphere). Another space tether can be used as a transmission line(maybe). As an added bonus, the independent & self-orienting modules can also be used for NEAR purposes. Also, the Sun is 2/3 the distance than that between Earth and Mars. Forget Mars, we don't need any more dirt!

 

[ziggi]

Nothing is ever really useless, some things are just more cost effective than others. Without the space program, computers would not be what they are today. Without World War 2 there would be no space program and no jet planes and no nuke energy. Even the recent Iraqi war is beneficial to the world of technology. Mind the benefits of any action are also economic and cultural.

Personally I completely agree with the privatisation of space, a giant hulking behemoth like NASA just doesn't have the drive and cheap infrastructure to pull off a space program again. I say leave it to the innovative little guys.

 

[Beggar]

China are way ahead in space technology too.

Yeah, that 40-yr-old Russian technology that they bought is simply awesome.

Personally, I'd rather see the NASA money going toward energy-efficient vehicles, alternative means of electrical generation, etc.

Heck, we live in a country (us Americans, that is) where 30% of the population can't afford care through the medical system that we've developed. How 'bout dumping money into means to drop the cost of medical care?

Personally, I think the manned mission stuff is a colossal waste of time and money. Cool, yes -- just a waste. Let the Chinese go to the moon; let them go to Mars.

We've got a current deficit of something like $250bb and a national debt of over $6tt. In the face of that, how can anybody really be advocating dumping money on Mars exploration?

--------------------
Bring back the HP-15

http://www.hp15c.org

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[BJC]

Your right on Beggar
The first spaceship to fix is "Spaceship Earth".

 

[Jabberwocky]

Was it a waste of money to develop the space technology that allowed weather satellites to exist? Would you like to argue this case to the millions of humans worldwide that have personally had their lives saved by such space tech?

You can't start out to say, "I will solve this problem and no other". Everything learned helps the whole in time.

 

[Beggar]

How exactly do manned space missions help develop weather satellites?

--------------------
Bring back the HP-15

http://www.hp15c.org

--------------------

 

[whotmewory]

What a lot of great feedback!

Please know this is not an anti-China post. China though is entering the space race and we should recognize that "superiority in space" - military and commercial - is that trump card of the leader of this planet in the coming centuries.

PS: Many of the computer technologies we have, chemical compounds, building materials, and aircraft, as well as composites for so very many applications - cars, toys, industrial products, etc. - are the decendants of discoveries made in our space travel and time spent in zero-gravity.

Kchida: There were folks of your opinion who felt "the New World" was a hilarious and insane proposition. Thank god there were men and women of guts who - dismissing the "flat Earth" concept of their times - looked beyond their own horizons.

But really, this isn't just about "adventure." It's about tourism, industry, more "ground" to live on, taking those first "planetary footsteps" to the outer reaches of our universe. Yeah, yeah, it won't be in our time, but we can have fun starting.


For me and looking back at my childhood hopes of space age employment - I would love it if - at 80 or so - affordable lunar tourism had developed enough such that - prior to my demise - I could look back at the Earth from the dusty lunar landscape.

Cool!

Then I'd slap a golf ball!

 

[casseopeia]

Hey, isn't William Hung a civil engineering student at Berkeley. He'd be the PERFECT person to send to Mars.

I'll be the first to downlod 'She Bangs, the Martian remix' to my iTunes!

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

 

[whotmewory]

casseopeia:

I have walked on thin ice and I did fall through! Brrrrr!

And here's one for great moms: mine let me back on the ice skating! Yeah!

PS: So, who sings 'She Bangs, the Martian Remix?' If it's a joke, forgive me - I'm a rockabilly fan!

Here's to KEXP and Shakin' the Shack!

Cheers!