Slashdot Log In
Why Space Exploration Is Worth the Cost
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Jan 12, 2008 01:50 PM
from the it's-all-spent-right-here-on-earth dept.
from the it's-all-spent-right-here-on-earth dept.
mlimber writes "The Freakonomics blog has a post in which they asked six knowledgeable people, Is space exploration is worth the public cost? Their answers are generally in the affirmative and illuminating. For example David M. Livingston, host of The Space Show, said: 'Businesses were started and are now meeting payrolls, paying taxes, and sustaining economic growth because the founder was inspired by the early days of the manned space program, often decades after the program ended! This type of inspiration and motivation seems unique to the manned space program and, of late, to some of our robotic space missions.'"
Related Stories
[+]
NASA Vets & Administration Clash Over Moon Plans 158 comments
mattnyc99 writes "There's a serious feud brewing this week over the Bush administration's plan for a manned mission to the Moon as an eventual stepping stone to Mars. The Planetary Society, a top group of former mission managers, space-based scientists and NASA astronauts argues, is set to rebuke the Moon plan at a conference next month in favor of hopskotching an asteroid on the way to the Red Planet. Agency chief Michael Griffin issued an abnormally strong response to the society, calling it an overly political criticism of Bush for a plan that he says was 'the best legislative guidance NASA has ever had.' Either way, it's clear that the stars are aligning for the whole space race to be reconsidered as a new administration steps into the White House. So far Clinton and Obama (who just added his) are the only contenders with space proposals."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
John F. Kennedy, 9/12/1962 [virginia.edu] mp3 [virginia.edu]
We will go. The only question is: will we be first to climb this mountain, or will we be shown the way by better men?
Parent
Broken window fallacy (Score:4, Interesting)
Space exploration may be justified, but let's see if we can talk about without getting dazzled about all the jobbies it creates.
Yeah, yeah, flamebait, etc.
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right. We shouldn't have to justify our ambitions economically, it's such a depressing way to see the world. Lets just do something because its awesome.
We should be capable of deciding what are the goals for mankind, especially those we cannot realise as individuals. I suppose the economic benefits help to sugar the pill for those who are not inspired by exploration and understanding of the universe.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with space is that humanity dropped the ball. We should have done more sooner. Of course part of the problem is that America had to keep footing the bill. But think about what space travel has brought:
GPS, Satellite Media, The Ability to detect global warming, Satellite phones, etc, etc...
I am even thinking if we had traveled and lived in space quicker we would have less of a global warming problem. After all to be able to live in space you better be efficient and learn how to recycle...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps you're misunderstanding the question. It's not realty "why do anything?". For a question like that, you don't reall
Because it is hard (Score:5, Insightful)
John F. Kennedy, 9/12/1962 [virginia.edu]
Parent
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of life is to survive. Being stuck on this planet will lead to your extinction either caused by ourselves or external forces (aka. asteroid). It is just a matter of time. All the talk about military in this discussion (see other threads) just underscores that we are still thinking small. We'll kill each other for the tiny resources on this small planet instead of taking what is freely available elsewhere.
We should be at war with universe*, not ourselves. We must shed our stone age mentality, now.
* - this means in terms of "conquering" new places that are deemed inhabitable and making them habitable. Like Moon or Mars or Ganymede or Titan.
Parent
Take it from the military. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, why should my tax dollars finance an over-powered military which sucks hard at stopping current terroristic threats? Because you're pants-filling fear says so?
(Hyperbole used for effect)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because that's the way the world has worked since the time the Pyramids were built.
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:5, Informative)
Your ancient history knowledge is 50 years out of date. Archaeological evidence shows that they were built with paid labor, not slaves.
And in every single stage of history you mention, people were taxed to pay for big government projects. They still are. Why do some people act as if they're surprised by this?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, one should realize that many pyramids were constructed over a period of a thousand years, so who's to say that in every period that pyramids were constructed with societal labor. We don't know ancient Egyptian culture that well, even with pictographs.
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Space Exploration serves economically as an impetus for invention and innovation, and as general inspiration for the nation at large. It is a national contest, and national contests have positive economic impact. Space Exploration isn't a broken window -- it's the game of baseball.
The most common form of national contest is war -- if you're having a hard time understanding it, think of it this way. Space Exploration is a way to have the economic benefits of a nation-at-war state, without the significant economic drains from the actual war.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would offer that space exploration requires solutions to problems that wouldn't otherwise exist and/or be known - as with any untried or unimagined thing. Solving these problems has benefits here.
Sure we probably would have eventually invented: TV Satelite Dishes, Medical Imagers, Ear Thermometers, Vision Screening tests, Fire Fighter Equipment, Smoke Detectors,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Broken window fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that economics provides no real way to quantify the relative benefits of either space exploration or curing childhood leukemia, apart from the obvious jobs created, non-stick pans, boring etc. How do you economically measure the magnificence of space travel or the fulfillment of human ambition? Can you put a value on knowing how the Earth looks from space?
By the way I am a medical researcher, and although I think my work is valuable, I often wish my job was more about achieving something positive for mankind, rather than just preventing bad things from happening. I also sometimes am involved in health economic assessments, and to see a year of healthy life expressed in its worth in $$ is also quite depressing.
Parent
Actually, there's a more subtle fallacy there (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a more subtle version or relative of the broken window there. The fallacy is assuming that those jobs wouldn't have been created by someone else, for another purpose.
The thing is, since we've been Keynesian [wikipedia.org] all along, all the governments have known about the Phillips curve [wikipedia.org] too. In fact, applied it.
The short and skinny is that there's an interdependency between inflation and unemployment. So for more than half a century what all governments did was try to stay at a point of their choosing on that curve. That's the reason the Federal Reserve tries to keep inflation at a given point, for example. Because too much inflation is bad by itself, but too little creates unemployment.
So in doing so, it fixes the employment where it wants it too.
Basically if those jobs hadn't been created by the space program, then they would have been created somewhere else. Not the same jobs, mind you, but a roughly equal number anyway.
The even more insidious part of the "but it created jobs!!!" sophistry is that it tries to imply that something was gained where nothing would have been created instead otherwise. People already nod and imagine that all the things those people achieved in those jobs, are surely better than nothing at all, because they wouldn't even be employed without a space program. Which just isn't so. Those people would have been employed, and would have produced _something_ in all this time, with or without a space program. Each job there, came at the expense of exactly one job somewhere else. Every 8 hours day spent reviewing why the shuttle's heat tiles broke, are 8 hours that weren't spent (by that guy or someone else) on some other project.
A point could still be made whether we benefited more from those jobs, than from the alternate history version without a space program. Unfortunately, none of us knows what would have really happened in an alternate history. Maybe all those jobs would have been cabbie and McDonalds jobs instead. In that case, sure, we're better off with them working (directly or indirectly) for NASA instead. But at least theoretically it's equally possible that they would have worked on some better project instead. Maybe in that parallel universe without a space program, all those smart people worked on fusion power instead and now have cheap energy everywhere and a bunch of innovative electronics trickled to other domains from _that_ research. We don't know.
Parent
The Late Carl Sagan's Argument (Score:5, Insightful)
But anyway, at some point in that book, he talks about ordering this novel device that is a world in a globe. It's a nutrient mix in water with some sort of tiny aquatic animals. But the globe is sealed. The instructions are to leave it where sunlight can hit it and let nature do the rest. So Sagan puts it on his desk.
The next day, the water is foggy. Soon after it is teaming with microscopic life.
But after a short amount of time, the globe goes silent and there is a dark residue on the glass with nothing else in the water. Sagan pondered if the earth had a similar "maximum capacity." Now, there are differences, we can cite different natural processes that replace what we take making them a replenishable resource. But our numbers and pollution threaten them. He also discusses population control and ends up with the general conclusion that war, diseases, natural disasters and the like will cap us out somewhere around 2010. I, unfortunately, don't see our growth slowing as much as he projected.
In fact, it made so much sense to me that, at the age of fifteen, I wrote a letter to my Minnesota senators urging them to push for more spending to NASA & even subsidizing the private sector--after all, how many billions go into defense? Surely some of that could be better spent to begin the lengthy process of insuring that we will not have a glass covering over the earth. My words fell on deaf ears as I received no response. I don't believe I've written a letter to a politician higher than the county level since then although I have received a letter from the vice president for completing the Eagle Scout Award
The point is that if we continue down the path we are taking with pollution, don't invest in space travel and continue to procreate, we are sitting in a glass casing. It's only a matter of time before we put ourselves in a near suicide contention with constrained resources. If we don't have peaceful space exploration and means of growing outwards, our only solutions are war, mass genocide, famine, disease and many horrible ugly scenarios.
I still see the need for making extraterrestrial planets sustainable to human growth and development.
Re: (Score:2)
We don't need people (Score:4, Insightful)
It has changed before and it will change again, homo sapiens or no.
In my opinion, the capricious nature of Nature is an even better argument for extra-terrestrial human colonization.
In other words, saying we need to develop space travel because we are screwing up this planet is pretty lame. A big rock can fall from the cosmos next month and kill us all. That should be motivation enough.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Launching 5 billion people into space would take all the energy and bankrupt the planet. I agree that we need to branch out, but more as a hedge against wars and asteroids, not overpopulation. Unless we find super-cheap energy, moving existing crowds into space is a medicine worse than the disease.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that Greece has telephones. They certainly have a country code assigned to them. I'm sure they built telephones there at some point in their history, even if now they just import them from countries with cheaper labor.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've Seen All I Need to See (Score:3, Insightful)
Get out of your basement and do some traveling.
Well, I know I'm not supposed to feed the trolls but ... I have been to the boundary waters canoe area twice. For two weeks, we went about 50 miles in towards Canada from Minnesota. Beautiful. Just unbelievably beautiful. Northern Minnesota soil used to have a higher moisture content than the everglades. Yeah, hard to believe, huh? Well, the settlers came along and cut drainage ditches into it so they could farm it. Used to just be switch grass and sorghum and the like, now they were growing beans a
private spaceflight (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Just imagine what would have happened if we had tried to go to the moon with tax breaks and encouragement. We would have been laughed out of the space race.
private industry only does TOURISM-mod parent down (Score:4, Insightful)
parent is a troll...doesn't provide even the most basic support for his contention
please mod down
on topic, i think private space exploration is great...too bad no one is really doing it. right now, the only active presence of private industry in space is for SPACE TOURISM, not exploration...it's all about some rich guy doing a sub-orbital shot and going 'whooopppeee!' during his 10 minutes of 0g
space tourism is not the same as true exploration, no private industry has any legit plans/funding to actually DO any exploration...all they have is a power point presentation and a sales pitch...slashdot has discussed this thoroughly...can't we accept this and move on now?
Parent
It might be but we'll never know ... (Score:2)
"Everyone seems to be in agreement! I would think so being that 4 of the 5 panel memebers are current or former NASA employees! Perhaps more care should have been taken in ensuring the diversity of the panel. There must be some arguments to the contrary out there and I'd be curious to see those debated as well.
-- Posted by Mike Mogie"
Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
- G. Scott Hubbard, professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and former director of the NASA Ames Research Center
- Joan Vernikos, a member of the Space Studies Board of the National Academy and former director of NASA's Life Sciences Division
- Kathleen M. Connell, a principal of The Connell Whittaker Group, a founding team member of NASA's Astrobiology Program, and former policy director of the Aerospace States Association
- Keith Cowing, founder and editor of NASAWatch.com and former NASA space biologist.
- David M. Livingston, host of The Space Show, a talk radio show focusing on increasing space commerce and developing space tourism
- John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute and acting director of the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs
They all said yes. Who would have thought.
All the eggs in a basket.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I loved the "Why do it now?" question of a senator... you can ask the same question every day, except the day that is already too late.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if things dont go very wrong in the short/middle term, will be side effects, developing bombs that travel further we got worldwide communication after all.
About diverting money, investing here dont mean to stop worrying about
Oferchrisakes... (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's ask Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, and Attila the Hun if Genocide is | Why not ask some people whose mortgages and careers are not so completely ied up in the venture. What a dumb article. I guess it's just our wonderful News Media coughing up blood and not able to get it up anymore.... as usual...
RS
Define "Worth it" (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, I've seen someone talking about private space exploration, but we must remember the amazingly high costs and the relatively high chances of failure in any specific operation. There is no way a private "for profit" organization will take such expenses with this odds against it, not until it's relatively safe and simple due to government-funded research. It is no coincidence that most modern inventions (computers, for example) were made by government-funded bodies or at least, by a company that it's main costumer is the government.
This is really a debate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is really a debate? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is really a debate? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if I did my math right, and Iraq is up to about a trillion, NASA could have been funded some 55+ year (not including interest). Or double NASA's funding 27 1/2 years. What a waste.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And what are these conservative investments that you'd put a trillion dollars into? Government bonds?
You do realize that taking a trillion dollars out of circulation just might have some effect on the overall economy and the value of a dollar, no?
You talk about a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon it starts to add up to real money.
Bringing back technology (Score:4, Funny)
they asked about MANNED, got answers about ALL (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the answers and justifications include manned and unmanned exploration. If you take the benefits from unmanned exploration out of the responses from the selected pundits, the answers are much less emphatic.
(not my view, just an observation that the question wasn't properly answered)
OK so let's extend that... (Score:3, Funny)
Soooo... let's make Jane Fonda a budget item.
sloppy thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Why we should spend 1/2 of 1% of our budget (Score:3, Informative)
Interviewer asks: "Why should we spend money on space? Why do we need to spend billions building space stations, the ships to get there, unmanned probes, why are we interested in finding and someday visiting other planets in our solar system and, someday, outside it? What's the point? Why have a space program at all?" And I always mentally add the unspoken question of "why does the space program constantly get bad press for using, at most, 1% of the federal budget and why does it still get reamed out for being a money-waster when we spend trillions on killing people, which is not as productive and doesn't inspire dreamers? Please explain to these shortsighted idiots why it's important."
The answer was:
"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophenes
What the hell is with trolls like this? (Score:3, Insightful)
News flash: the future matters.
Are you really that oblivious that you have to post arrogant, rude, and profanity-laden troll responses on message forums when people dare to think beyond their own tiny little world?
Disincentives. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Heck, if the American beef and wheat industries can invert the food pyramid, and if the CIA and military c
The first trillionaire will be made in space (Score:3, Insightful)