Michael Hanlon
SO WE won't be going to Mars, not in my lifetime anyway. And not back to the moon either, not for decades. Buzz Lightyear fantasies are dashed. Don't believe the spin - the dream is over.
OK, the Augustine panel's review of NASA's human space-flight plans outlines several options. Mars may be out, but the moon is still in with a shout, and plans to go to the Lagrange points and even the asteroids are mooted. Technically, all this is probably doable. But it won't happen, and here's why.
The problem is not money: the US can afford an extra $3 billion a year. It is psychological. NASA, the only game in town, has no idea what space is for, and no audacity.
NASA, the only game in town, has no real idea what space is for, and no audacity
There certainly was audacity in 1961, when John F. Kennedy made his lunar pledge. The key line was not the crazy bit about landing a man on the moon, it was the hubristic promise to do so by 1970. If Wernher Von Braun had insisted the moon was unreachable before 1975, they probably would never have gone. Why? Because by 1975 Kennedy's presidency would be ancient history. Some other guy would get all the glory as Old Glory was hammered into the lunar regolith.
Of course that happened anyway, but Kennedy's reasoning must have been that, even in 1969, he would be able to bask in the glory of a successful moon shot.
It may simply be that space exploration is incompatible with US democracy. A Mars shot would take four presidential terms at least. No president will ask taxpayers to fund something he won't be around to take credit for.
Another big problem is the legacy of some terrible decisions that left NASA with the expensive, dangerous space shuttle and a white-elephant space station that manages the feat of making space seem as dull as cardboard. The whole thing is a mess.
So where now? Probably nowhere. Expect the Augustine report to be quietly forgotten. After all, we've been here before. In 1989 George Bush Snr promised the moon and Mars too, and that came to naught. The problem with these visions is that they are too sane. Human space exploration requires a tinge of madness - that theatrical Kennedy hubris - to work.
They'll probably keep the International Space Station going out of bloody-mindedness. The shuttles will fly a few more times. There will be some vague plans, more studies. Robots, of course, but no concerted attempt to look for alien life, the most compelling raison d'être for space exploration. But as to the moon, Mars, infinity and beyond, I'm afraid, in all likelihood, Buzz Lightyear will just have to wait.
Ivan Semeniuk
FOR Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, the transformation was astonishing. Between her first visit to the International Space Station in 1999 and her second in July this year, the orbiting platform had grown from a pair of dormant, empty modules to a gleaming complex lit up and humming with human activity. "We were coming to a place where people live," says Payette.
Conceived in the cold war, reinvented as an emblem of international cooperation, then repeatedly dismissed as a white elephant, the space station has nonetheless come to pass. The scepticism continues, but so does human space flight. Budget crises and periodic refocusing notwithstanding, this is not going to change. Why?
The act of putting a human into space remains a high-profile and politically potent showcase for the world's major industrial nations. What began as a race between the US and the Soviet Union has morphed into a multinational display of membership of the modern world. Like Olympic competition, human space flight has become one of the few acceptable outlets for overt displays of national pride. The fact that China has now entered the game virtually guarantees major western democracies won't back out. Like the US, China will use its space capabilities to cement ties with allies while demonstrating to its own people that it is the equal of other great powers.
The act of putting a human into space remains a high profile and politically potent showcase
In the US, the jobs and material resources invested in human space flight are substantial and politically significant. As long as Florida plays a key role in determining who gets to be president, no US politician would lightly consider disbanding the programme. Early in his nomination campaign, Barack Obama flirted with the notion of redirecting resources from NASA to education. The space industry was unimpressed and by the time he was battling for the White House, Obama had backed off.
Politics aside, there is a subset of the science and technology community that simply will not let human space flight die. If governments abandon their programmes these individuals will keep the dream alive as a private venture. Perhaps not surprisingly, they include some of the brightest young minds on the planet. Earth will always be too small for them, and the conviction that humanity should and will one day reach the stars too strong.
To be sure, the desire to fly in space and journey to other worlds is impractical and risks becoming an escapist fantasy. Yet there is a deeper force at work. Space calls to us, as a species, to be more than we have been. It is a call we have, so far, proved wonderfully incapable of ignoring.
Michael Hanlon is the science editor of the London Daily Mail. His book Eternity: Our next billion years is published by Palgrave Macmillan
Ivan Semeniuk is science journalist in residence at the Dunlap Institute, University of Toronto, Canada
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Have your say
If Obama does what he said he'll do, human space flight will be fine:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/policy/Space_Fact_Sheet_FINAL.pdf
"at 5% light speed it will take over 60 years to get there."
We don't need to travel the speed of light. We need to find a way to manipulate gravity/time. The speed of light is reaching for to much, Nothing is stable at the speed of light. The shell of any type of craft would practically shred.
"Nothing is stable at the speed of light. The shell of any type of craft would practically shred."
Um photons seem pretty stable.
The shell of any type of craft wouldn't shred at the speed of light due to a little thing called special relativity. Any object with mass CANNOT travel AT the speed of light. The energy required to do so increases to infinity the closer you travel to the speed of light. So an object won't shred at the speed of light coz it can't get there in the first place! But why let science get in the way of a good idea eh?
Exactly. Infinite energy to get mass to lightspeed is just not really practical. Plus, even at say 99% of LS, if you hit something (that you probably wouldn't see until it was too late, if at all) then it'll rip whatever craft you're in to shreds.
I , for one, refuse to belive that there isn't a way of using some sort of inter-dimensional gateway to travel to the stars. I dunno, let's call it 'warping', because even at LS it's going to take 7 years or so to reach our nearest star (the Sun excluded, naturally) and that star doesn't even have any interesting planets around it. Well, no planets actually, so to travel to anything of interest would take prohibitively long. And if there's no way of warping space to do this then it seems very unfair of the universe to put all this fascinating stuff out there...but give us no way to reach it...
If Obama Keeps His Election Promises
Mon Nov 23 05:08:53 GMT 2009 by Dave
http://nssphoenix.wordpress.com
This is true, but only if the poiiticians change course. Given Senator Shelby's comments, and Gifford's statements in the House, they are betting the farm on another $3 Billion for NASA. When this fails to materialize, and the commercial sector gets crew services to LEO and cargo launch services, Marshall Space Flight Center withers, Kennedy Center is downsized and the astronauts are reduced to hitching rides on the Russian Soyuz.
Philip Metschan has compose a great interactive graphic at http://www.directlauncher.com/ showing the (long URL - click here) options of the Augustine Commission. The status quo, which the politicians are fighting for, gets us two rockets (one too small and one too big) and no exploration until the 2030s. See our comments at http://nssphoenix.wordpress.com NSS Phoenix.
This is silly talk, our future lies in space. There are only delays.
Sadly, delays that will mean none of us will be around to see any substantial movement in human space flight beyond popping folks up into NEO every now and then.
Maybe both our views on 'substantial movement in human space flight' are different but even at my youthful 27 years of age, I won't even be around to see much in terms of progress either. The joys of being born in the twentieth century...
Au contraire! The problems of space flight to other planets may well prove to be insurmountable. If this is true (and I accept that I may be wrong) it would change the way we see ourselves and the way we look after our planet.
I'm glad you don't have any influence. I imagine 500 years ago someone like you would have said the earth is flat.
Comment
Sat Nov 21 15:12:37 GMT 2009 by GroovyJ
http://members.shaw.ca/groovyj/
Yes, but someone like him would still have sailed to the edge, to see if it really was flat. He's not saying don't try. He's saying try, because even if it turns out to be impossible, that would change things.
Agreed, I think the problem lies in the part political systems that make major spending decisions.
At some point in the future we will have a dictator or "long term government" of a super power, and technology will be a little more advanced, ...
... and humans will travel to planets.
[The few remaining major technical challenges can be overcome with an enough focus]
why does our future lie in space? because that's what was decided by 20th century genre fiction?
i don't see any evidence that humans are capable of surviving off this planet in a significant way.
Our future depends on going into space for all the technical advances and etc. that comes from that exploration. But we need to go out there and do some mining of the asteroids. We need a serious base on the moon. We need to dig into the moon and build a permanent base there and set up bases in L5 and all the other Lagrange points. We need to become masters of our little corner of the universe just to head off the potential space rock that could wipe out all life on this planet. So much depends on our becoming self sufficient with industry out there. Just the prospect of solar powered industries and the convenience of using space as a dump for the polluting industries is mind boggling. Space exploration is like the modern version of pyramid building. What we do in space now will remain as a mark for all time as the most significant achievement mankind has ever accomplished. And we need to get a grip on how important it is for all of us for all time. Baby steps... a whole lot of baby steps. It will become the investment playground for the super rich. What I mean by that is, the super rich will come to see it as a very good investment. Entrepreneurship will happen in the field. Guys like Burt Rutan have proved the will and tallent is there. You combine his type with the super rich backers and you find stuntmen willing to put it all on the line for glory, and you get who we are. This is our Identity now. Luddites will always want to return to a simpler world but the future is with the explorers and mountain men of that kind of frontier. A new version of a less poluted simpler world depends upon taking industry into space. The enlightened minds of the big picture know this. It's inevitable. For the cost of a few wars every conceivable thing could be done out there in space, and an end must come to war. Every technical advance in electronics and material science has a laboratory proving ground in outer space. I will always hope that we go for that. We could unite the nations of this planet with the prospects for the potential. We may pause to reassess our approach but eventually it will happen
Very well said, thank you.
Comment
Fri Nov 20 17:52:55 GMT 2009 by Ben
http://curlyben.com
If only there was some kind of fantasy sci-fi space station project or something that proved your otherwise pointless post pointless.
Oh no wait...
Dave is EXACTLY correct - when the major problems ON this planet are fixed, then and only then should unmanned exploration continue.
dbtinc: "Dave is EXACTLY correct - when the major problems ON this planet are fixed, then and only then should unmanned exploration continue."
Well, dbtinc, then there's nothing at all preventing us from moving ahead with MANNED exploration, huh?
Seriously, though, there might actually be ONE particular "major problem" that CAN prevent anyone from pursuing anything as silly and worthless as learning and exploring and otherwise satisfying our curiosity of the universe we find ourselves in.
It's called being dead.
That would certainly qualify as a "major problem", wouldn't it?
Until THAT is fixed - "then and ONLY then" - should people be permitted the luxury of curiosity and be a little more ambitious than algae.
Oh, and dave? Do try to remember that the Earth and all of its interesting 'down-to-earth' bits already ARE in 'outer space', won't you?
This was only recently discovered, and it wasn't discovered by algae, but by those pesky upstart descendants of theirs.
Although algae did have over 3 billion year's head-start on us; they're still around, but they're not terribly good at anything much except reproducing and metabolizing. You see, they haven't the imagination for performing abstract and entirely worthless feats such as thinking or asking questions, or inventing the wheel or electric lights or computers - or pursuing even more worthless time and money-wasting extravaganzas such as scratching out a sonnet on parchment or smearing colorfully-pigmented liquids around on a canvas to make pretty pictures - because they aren't equipped with any of those annoying and dispicably distracting information-processing organs called "brains".
In fact, they are blissfully unaware of anything and are incapable of recognizing any "major problems" that need any solving - not even death - so they never need to bother about all that hi-minded stuff. "Striving" is for those deluded brain-challenged descendants of theirs. Algae just eats, poops and replicates...exactly the sort of behavior folks like dave and dbtinc 'think' ought to satisfy the complete human condition.
But, hey, that's just me. Here's a compromise deal: let's solve the obnoxious lack of education and science illiteracy and delusional thinking that generally accompanies supernatural beliefs and the general lack of inspiration and imagination in the public - you know, one of those "major problems" - and THEN AND ONLY THEN can we get on with the business of worthless preoccupations that keeps us from doing all those other worthwhile things (such as what algae do so effortlessly, like eat, poop, and reproduce) and continue to extend our senses and explore nature as far and as deeply as we hope.
Just for kicks.
It only costs time, effort, energy, resources and money.
And I'll throw this into the deal as a condition: we must continue to attempt to solve all of the "major problems" you identify, simultaneously, while we gratify ourselves with the worthless pursuit of knowledge.
You can even keep, say...uh, NASCAR. And maybe even Las Vegas. (One wonders where they would be today without wheels and electric generators and other worthless fruits of technology that sprouted on the worthless tree of scientific research and exploration).
Deal?
You think, dave and dbtinc, that there's enough time and space to hold that much worthless human endeavor?
Why? Because the earth's population will easily exceed it's capability to be sustained in a few short decades. If we don't do something soon, we're not only not going to be able to go anywhere, but we will face horrific starvation and depravation worldwide. Raw materials are the issue. The world population has been exploding for well over a century, long before the 20th century fiction genre's emergence.
We should find harmony in living with our planet and using its free and natural resources: they're all there, some of us that are unfortunately in charge will just rather suck all the resources from the earth depleting it and destroying it for profit. Space should definitely be explored, but I don't know if "using it as a dump" is the right thing to do...
It is simpler to start a new world, that to fix this one. This is what I would like to tell to everyone who claims that money would be better spent here on Earth.
We as humanity, are spending much more time on wars and military technologies, than on solving our problems. Spendings on space exploration are infinitesimally small compared to military spending.
I also think, that maybe USA will not pursue space exploration, but other countries, like China for example, certainly will.
It Is Simpler To Start A New World, That To Fix This One
Absurd comment. Much cheaper to do it right here than to try to find another planet to rework into what we want it to be (another Earth).
I'd suggest you go to a gas giant and start working on converting it. (Squish, no more absurd comments).
Man, think out of the box. Why would you want to live on a planet? Why do you want to get from one gravity well to get another gravity well? Have you ever heard of O'Neill cylinder? We do not need a planet, even for gravity. Just spin the space colony.
It Is Simpler To Start A New World, That To Fix This One
Well, ok, if you're talking about a huge space station, that's a different thing. You said "another world", which I take to be a planet or even a moon, but not a space station.
I don't think the huge space stations you're envisioning will be pursued until/unless our population problem gets quite a bit worse than the horrible level it is already at.
Why should we not call space stations worlds? I think that space stations are in many aspects superior to planets - production can take place in zero-g which means lower energy cost for moving things, lower cost of transportations, higher quality metal alloys etc. There are some disadvantages of course.
But my main point is that the main reason we stay in this piece of rock is that it is huge gravity well and it's very expensive to get out of it. What is the point of getting out of gravity well and sinking our duds into other gravity well, if we can use the available energy MUCH more efficiently in space-station manner.
We spend more on insurance than we do on the military. Check your household budget. You will soon see where the largest economic sector in the world gets its dollars from: everybody.
Well, that is sick and that is what is bogging our economy down.
what we did is to support space research.
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