Van Allen Questions Human Spaceflight

An anonymous reader writes "James van Allen - the discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belt - has called into question the motivations and expectations of space exploration and research, particularly manned space exploration. Van Allen comments that 'the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure.'"

Old News

[Ethidium]

The Honorable Prof. Van Allen has long been a detractor of crewed spaceflight. This is old news. And not very surprising, either.

I am an Iowa Physics and astronomy student. Van Allen works only two floors up from me. Although I don't know him personally, I have certainly read the various articles and commentary posted by his door.

Why not surprising? Professor Van Allen is a pioneer of robotic spaceflight. As a plasma physicist, humans are of little use to him in any place other than on the ground doing data reduction. That's okay, but there are other scientific disciplines such as geology and SETI (which is certainly taken seriously among radio astronomers, contrary to some popular belief) where human investigators are hard to replace.

Is orbiting the earth in an elderly tin can a waste of our time and money? Maybe, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't go to Mars.

Even if you don't believe that the scientific merits of spaceflight are worth the cost, consider the technological benefits [nasa.gov]. Attempting a new task of spaceflight is a technological challenge that yields benefits felt in every corner of society.

The only thing that can be said for the human cost is that astronauts do their jobs fully cognisant of the risk. They know they could be making more money in a safer job in the private sector, but they do it anyway. They have that "ideology of adventure" that Professor Van Allen does not.

When NASA sent out job offers for the astronaut class of 2004, candidates were asked if they would still want the job, even if there was a chance they would never fly in space. All but one said yes. These are people who are fully committed to the enterprise of crewed spaceflight, even at great personal risk. I for one would not stop them from voluntarily assuming that risk "in peace for all mankind." I would also happily join them.

Re:heh I first read as Van Halen

[RareHeintz]

To the inevitable nit-picking dweebs: I'm aware that "Final Countdown" was Europe and not VH. But the comment above was, "hair metal and space don't really seem to go together".

Re:adventure

[tbannist]

Personally, I think it's a little late to try and learn how to travel in space after we've run into them. The best reason for space travel to Mars and withing the Solar system are four-fold:

1. Humans are better equiped to deal with problems in real time than through a hours-delayed robot feed.
2. Humanity needs to practice travelling around the solar system, and develop better technology that allows us to do so, before we attempt to leave it.
3. Humanity needs experience with the physical and psycological implications of long term space habitation.
4. Lastly, humanity needs to put some eggs in other baskets. As long as we're all here on one mudball, we face the daunting possibility of being wiped out by one stroke of bad luck or stupidity.

Combined those are compelling reasons for humanity to engage in space exploration. And if people actually want to pay to go to space for a vacation, that's really fine by me.

Re:adventure

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

Larry Niven said that.

http://www.space.com/peopleinterviews/aldrin_cla rk e_010227.html

Re:Lets take a 10 year timeout

[Zobeid]

We don't need 10 years to develop new technology. The basic technology for cheap access to space was invented in the 1960s. Just ask Bob Truax. . . He did the cost and feasibility studies for a project he called "Sea Dragon", when he was working for Aerojet General.

Rather than retell the whole story here, let me just provide a URL --> http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm [astronautix.com]

If this idea were updated and developed today, it could both slash the cost of sending freight into orbit and allow launching much larger assemblies -- just think what that would have meant for space station construction!

Sea Dragon was not intended to be a manned vehicle. We would still need another vehicle to replace the shuttle. Developing one specifically for lifting people to orbit shouldn't be that hard -- that might even be something like a scaled-up version of Spaceship One. Part of the folly of the Shuttle is that it tries to be everything: freight lifter, passenger vehicle, miniature research station. Breaking out these functions into specialized vehicles would make everything easier.

Re:Symbolic value

[Anonymous Coward]

3) People knew the world was round; what was not known was how big it was
Eratosthenes [northwestern.edu] measured the Earth's radius to within 2% in 200 BC without needing to send a human led expedition around the planet. This was well-known and accepted in Columbus's time.

Re:You really shouldn't refer to OT nonsense

[Derekloffin]

Nope, you can falsify evolution. Find an elephant fossil that existed before any known mammel and you've pretty much decimated evolution. In fact, find any major out of pattern fossil and you could put a major hole in the theory, assuming it is real.

Another way would be to show with modern species that they simply cannot biologically change in the manner necessary for evolution to take place.

Evolution is a pretty simple theory in the end, basically just giving us that one species can transform over time into another via some naturally occurring process (not to be confused with the theory of natural selection which is just one proposed process).

Re:What you can't learn via robot

[DerekLyons]

As Steven Weinberg points out in his excellent article The Wrong Stuff, if we hadn't wasted money on the useless shuttle program, we could instead have simply replaced the Hubble telescope seven times.

That statement is both true and false.

Without the shuttle, and with the same money, we could have built and launched seven Hubble telescopes identical to the existing one as originally launched, complete with myopia, problematical attitude control gyroscopes and 1970's era electronics. (Assuming A) That Congress coughs up the money to build seven, and B) that money can be found to operate them... Something Weinburg ignores.)

Thanks to unmanned space observatories, we now know e.g. that the universe is not "10-20 billion years old", but 13.5-13.9 billion years. With seven Hubbles, could we now have e.g. found extraterrestrial life?

Fact is, we probably wouldn't have seven Hubbles. We'd probably have none. The bulk of the cost of the Hubbles have been spent in the years since the initial launch, not all allocated up front. That means that after the first ones optics failed, Congress would have to be convinced to fund another, better one. When the first and second one both fell victim to the problems with the gyro's[1], convincing Congress to fund a third would be virtually impossible. Even if they did, who knows how many into the series we would be? (My guess is we would be on our fourth 'blackout' period, I.E. somewhere in the years long periods between Hubble IV and Hubble V.)

Weinburg takes a fairly complex technical, political, and fiscal realities and reduces them to a grade school aphorism. Any resemblence to reality or pretentions of usefulness vanish in the distillation process.

[1]Attitude control gyro's are turning out to be one of the many 'well understood' technologies that aren't turning out too well and are proving harder to master than first thought.

Adventure? BAH! Survival!!!

[code-dweller]

This misses the point entirely. All successful surviving species have some important things in common:

• They are flexible.
• They are resilient.
• They breed relativley fast.
• They are mobile and fast.
• They explore and exploit new habitats.

Bottom line here people: If we do not get off this rock and into space (new habitats) we may not survive the next "big event" here at home - whatever that may be.

This imperitive is, in fact, in our breeding. What we call the "ideology of adventure" is merely this instinct asserting itself. We don't always recognize this fact, but if we were not "adventurous" we would not be here to discuss it. We would have died out in an ice age, or gotten wiped out by some giant rock from space, or some other mass extinction event.

The fact that we are here at all is a testiment to the fact that we are born explorers (at least some of us - enough of us) and that our ancesters happened to be somewhere else when most of their cousins baught it in some big ugly.

All politics aside, please! and I mean that in a "take my wife" sort of way. Get me on the next rocket ship to the new colony wherever... and by the way get on with it - because I want to be part of that crowd that is somewhere else when this blue ball of wet rock takes it's next hit...

Anybody who thinks exploring space is just an adventure, like some E-ticket tourist attraction with a high price tag, has totally missed the point... Exploration of space, deep oceans, or any other niche we can reach is of vital importance in the long run... The fact that it's fun for us is just as biologically imperitive as sex feeling good - and for good reason.

Lets DO IT!