Requiem for the Once-Imagined Future 674
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The underwhelming Discovery mission has the Wall Street Journal Online's Real Time columnists lamenting the space program's failure to realize the sort of intergalactic exploration they once imagined as kids through the works of Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein. Considering the Viking landers were digging around Martain soil back in 1976, 'we figured the place would be necklaced with orbiters and cris-crossed by rovers by now. Maybe there'd even be astronauts (or cosmonauts or taikonauts) tracing the courses of unimaginably ancient rivers.' Instead, we get a mission whose highlights were 'a) it came back; and b) an astronaut pulled bits of cloth out from between tiles.' At this rate, the columnists fear the innovations of the future won't be much more exciting: 'Maybe Real Time 2030 will fret about how our college kids do little more than steal full-res holographic porn when they're not getting their financial identities stolen by cyber-jihadists eager to build more backpack nukes.'"
The crossroads of my generation (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, maybe part of the problem is that progress just outran the global society's ability to adjust at some point -- that definately seems to be the case with a lot of the more disaffected people both in the US and overseas. IMO, the crazed religious zealot in Iran and the crazed Kansas schoolboard member have a lot of root causes in common. Those wackos are extreme examples, granted, but it seems like they're also symptomatic of larger societal problems.
I'm ready to pick up and keep moving, though, and I think a lot of people of my generation are. We never saw a moon landing; it happened before we were born and, frankly, even if we went back it would seem like old hat. "Yeah, Earthrise. Great, never seen that before". We read about this shit in the *history* books, man. But that's not a bad thing: I suspect a lot of us wouldn't find the concept of, say, mining asteroids as exotic as the Boomers would, and maybe that's all we really need. And hey, if that's possible, if that improves our lot, maybe it'll finally be that human advance where, once it starts, it just continues on and on.
Of course, speaking of the Boomers, I fear that my generation (I'm 28) might be one of those unlucky historical examples of one which didn't get to do jack shit because they were so busy catering to the needs of their wealthy elders while trying to patch up the disasterous debts they left us. By the time they start to croak en masse it'll be too late to do anything all that interesting -- we'll be too old and too unimaginative, left only with the shadow of the dreams we once entertained.
Honestly (and sadly), I'm pretty sure that's the direction we're headed in. Happily, however, I also believe it's not too late to change that. That's why I support ideas like the Space Elevator; it's the sort of kick that might get us out of this funk and allow us to overcome the fate of being a generation the just paid too much for their houses.
Why Mars? (Score:5, Insightful)
From there, with we'd have better understanding and experience in exploration and cultivation, and thus we could more easily work out our grander visions of Mars exploration.
Re:Far greater things lie ahead (Score:1, Insightful)
Transhumanism will never happen (Score:4, Insightful)
If I had one wish... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sigh...
Re:Far greater things lie ahead (Score:1, Insightful)
The rich will be powered by lithium-ions, and thus need no oxygen. As the rich will be engineered machines, the whole terraforming things will be moot.
Those backpack nukes won't be much of a problem. Tanks for example are quite protected against nukes, and the rich's vastly superior engineered bodies will not have much problems with nukes unless one goes off right by you (get better implanted radar!). Of course finances [of the poor] will go quickly as the rich become self reliant machines travelling in space.
Re:Far greater things lie ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
Link here. (Score:3, Insightful)
Urgh, link here [wikipedia.org]
Simon.
The problem is power (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear Sci Fi Whiners (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, it appears most sci-fi writers and buffs were somewhat lacking in the taste of reality department. Economics, i.e. business potential are more likely to drive space exploration than scientific interest. While we're seeing fledgling efforts, it's still a pretty iffy thing to leave a perfectly good planet behind to build a house on the Moon or Mars.
Seems much of the Sci-fi I've read was more a vehicle for another story, i.e. it's not about the lasers stupid, it's the exploration of man's inhumanity to man, sorta thing.
Looking at how ultimately fragile our space crafts are, and the terrific amount of stored energy it takes to escape the Earth's surface, the one thing that should come home to people who expect Buck Rogers is this isn't as easy as putting pen to paper and scribbling up interplantetary travel.
Sadly, the real drama of what has transpired to get this far isn't as entertaining (although The Right Stuff and Apollo 11 took a stab at it) as Star Wars.
The (now) future is better than I ever imagined (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, there are large portions of the globe that do not have access to these modern miracles, but it will come... it will come.
Culture change (Score:3, Insightful)
Today, we are obsessed with our own personal wealth. Sure, we think, it would be nice if we could "afford" to do basic research, to spend serious money on exploration -- but no, we can't afford it, because it's more important to be able to buy more fancy cars (or boats or airplanes) than anyone else.
Reading sources from the '50s and '60s, I get the impression that there was much more concern (possibly driven by the race with the Soviets, but who cares?) for the advancement of knowledge for its own sake. People were much more willing to sacrifice a little bit of wealth for the long-term future of the society.
I wish people would think less about whether they can afford the electronic seat cooler in their new Benz and more about what kind of society they want to live in over the long term. And, no, I'm not trying to take away anyone's "freedom" -- I'm just exhorting them to think less shortsightedly.
This just in! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though, a lot of science fiction writers have been warning us about just what is happening. If we focus on "solving all our problems on the ground first" then we'll never move into space properly. The same will happen if we're too pussyfooted to accept the occasional death due to space travel. It's already safer than any major frontier exploration in history. (I'm not saying we should waste astronauts, but that doesn't mean we should quit going into orbit for 2+ years just because a few die either.) If we don't go out and build something semi-permanent beyond Earth (the Moon or the asteroid belt, maybe Mars) pretty soon, we're going to end up screwing things up on Earth badly enough (economic collapse, ecological disaster, evil killer robots, whatever) that we can't go to space. In the long run, having groups of humans separated by a few million miles is probably the best way to keep us from killing each other all the time.
Physical limitations to the universe (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this highlights the fundamental difficulty we face in getting elsewhere in the universe, namely the difficulty of getting enough energy to move stuff around. This is not an easy nut to crack, and despite optimistic predictions it is quite possible that it is one that is insoluble. Yes, we have had many scientific breakthroughs throughout human history. Yes, naysayers are frequently proven wrong. But "past success is no indicator of future performance", as the disclaimer says, and I think this is no different.
Until we are able to get bodies of non-trivial mass to speeds that are an integer percentage of light speed we will for all practical purposes be stuck on this zealot-infested rock. Getting men and women into space and having them survive is extremely difficult even for the short periods of time the STS is in orbit. This shows that allowing them to survive for months on end is a nigh-impossible task without some fundamental advances, and there are no areas in physics that we can look to for hope in this regard.
Yes, it's possible we may one day colonize Mars, Kim Stanly Robinson style. But I doubt it. Just because it is wished for and can be imagined does not mean it is physically possible in any real sense.
Problems on the ground come first (Score:4, Insightful)
It is hard to justify the cost of "the future" when there is still so much turmoil and suffering on the surface of our own planet.
I usually try to avoid politics and social debates, and I'm all for space exploration, but can you really tell me people in the USA or the world should go hungry or go without health care while we spend billions on sending people to space?
No, great things have, and KEEP HAPPENING (Score:5, Insightful)
The rich will be powered by lithium-ions, and thus need no oxygen. As the rich will be engineered machines, the whole terraforming things will be moot.
Come, now. You wouldn't have to go too far back before you'd have said the same thing about refrigeration, anti-biotics, and tiny little devices that you could hold up to your ear and use to talk to other people, almost anywhere in the world. I'm not rich, but I've got things that my great grandparents would have considered essentially magical.
Re:The crossroads of my generation (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Accept that space exploration is risky, people will die, they knew the risk when they signed on, taking reasonable steps to ensure safety - great, stoping an entire program because of a small chance of something going wrong - not so great
2. Congress needs to think about what is in the best interests of the American people as a whole, not just thier constituents, even better they would think about the best interests of the world.
3. Congress needs to realize that most great discoveries are not predicted, funding a strong space program could provide unimagined rewards.
Frankly I doubt thats going to happen. I think the future of space lies in the hands of privite industry, they will find ways to make money is space and that is what will push us into the future. If the Government of the US lacks the will to lead us into space others will step forward eventually.
-P.S. I know that NASA has plans to go back to the moon etc, but they are not nearly ambitous enough.
Re:The crossroads of my generation (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't consider citing the basic facts to be "passing the blame". In the Real World, things happen for interconnected reasons -- that includes both progress and decay. You can't just *decide* that it's time for a renaissance. You need to move the things that provide the foundation for progress into position first, and that's not something that can always be done quickly or easily.
My worry is that the energies of my generation will be wasted, have already been wasted by the state of the world we've been handed. At best, I fear we're the set-up generation rather than one which moves mountains. At worst, we might be the ones who live through the decline of our civilization (not out of the question -- war without end and short-sighted economic policies can't go on forever without having an impact).
To The Idiots at the WSJ: (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to know why we don't have a space program like the one you're imagining? Because you and the idiot businessmen you write for decided it was too expensive, and pushed your pet politicians to cut funding for it and dump productive space programs in exchange for pork, business pay-offs, tax cuts, and other corrupt practices. Now you've realized that to expand, your economy needs to go into orbit, and that you needed to fund these things 20 years ago for them to be ready now, and are trying to find someone else to blame for the predicament your greed caused, so as not to risk your grossly overinflated salary.
Of course, I doubt you'll learn anything from this, as you and said businessmen have, as a collective, the recall and adaptation ability of the average peanut. But on the off-chance that you do, in fact, remember something, I'd like it to include the phrase:
"Payback's a bitch, ain't it?"
How about robotic exploration (Score:3, Insightful)
NASA's current thinking on space seems to be like dreaming about a fairy land, with chocolate rivers and peppermint trees. Just because we can manufacture candy and we can make a place like Disneyland, doesn't mean that fairylands are going to become real.
We are doing cargo cult Star Trek.
And wasting a lot of money on it. Our money would be much better spent on robotic missions, which have a far bigger bang for the buck. And by the time we are ready for a human Mars mission, robots will probably be quite capable of the autonomous thinking and initiative that humans bring to the table. So what purpose is served by spending the extra overhead for human exploration, and doing 1/100th of the science that we could be doing for the same money? None, other than perpetuating a fairyland fantasy.
Other interests (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gov't (Score:1, Insightful)
The X-prize winners didn't even get into orbit. They didn't even rival the Mercury missions, which happened so long ago you probably haven't heard of them.
Plus, why can't anyone in this damn discussion spell bureaucracy?
duh! it was a test flight! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, there is something to be said maybe about "wasting" a mission like that, but they did exactly what they said they would do, and now its a suprise?
The next flight doesnt have much more of a goal, so why not rip on that instead of the (admittedly low-goaled) extremely successful flight?
I'll take the asteroid (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why, for what little it's worth, I was disappointed to find that 2004 MN4 [wikipedia.org] was going to miss the Earth in 2038.
Because 35 years is just about the right length of time, not just to develop the technology to deflect the thing, but also to generate a new generation of kids - who won't merely value science and engineering as career paths, but who will see them as essential survival tools for the species.
Instead, we've got a dumbed-down educational system that would make Harrison Bergeron cringe, and the mentality that the only careers worth having are those of criminal/thug, celebrity/whore, or lawyer/lobbyist/politician.
Fuck it. We deserve to have that rock hit us.
Don't do that! (Score:4, Insightful)
NASA seems to have lobbied to stop other launch systems. To keep job security and their empire at maximum size.
All the space money went to the shuttle (and to the brutally expensive space station). It costs literally a couple of orders of magnitude more to send a lbs to orbit than NASA promised. (They promised hundreds of dollars/lbs to orbit.)
All other projects in human history with that kind of failure has been shut down. Often the responsible people were buried alongside, while still breathing.
To protect the shuttle, NASA (and their allies) murdered the Dream; they fscked our (as in humanity's) future. For job security and kickbacks. This can arguably be called a crime against humanity.
If you just shrug and say that it doesn't matter, it will keep happening.
Before the 70s no one saw cheap computer resources (Score:5, Insightful)
I grew up on science fiction in the 70s and recognized around 1977 that things were not going to be like in the books. Just because we didn't meet one goal doesn't mean that we should be pessimistic about the future. What the future holds is unpredictable.
Re:The crossroads of my generation (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to think the same thing (I'm 42). I remember double digit infation [huppi.com], and things looked pretty bleak. Only recently have I begun to look back at how life has changed since then, and how change is (usually) a gradual process. Most of the big changes that have occurred were unexpected, so the place to look for the future is not the present.
(BTW) The August issue of IEEE Spectrum [ieee.org] has a interesting article on space elevators, which could really sidestep the shuttle debate and render it mute.
Emotional words...check (Score:5, Insightful)
As for repugnant, I happen to think that staying as human is severly repugnant.
Re:The crossroads of my generation (Score:5, Insightful)
We do send rovers and orbiters to Mars, all the time - at any point in time, there's usually 2-4 operational rovers or orbiters. So I don't know what he was talking about when he mentioned that he was expecting to see Rovers crisscrossing the planet. Perhaps he wants more capable rovers (ignoring that the current ones gave us a treasure trove of info)? Then don't divert money into manned spaceflight, which is incredibly expensive. Even as is, it won't be long before we get to see Mars Science Laboratory on the Red Planet - a rover the size of an SUV which can take drive around, take core samples, do complete isotopic and minerological determination of samples, and even burn coatings off a rock with a laser from a distance to do spectral analysis.
Speaking of manned spaceflight, his desire to have people trudging over the red planet ignores one sad, but true fact: chemical energy density isn't getting any better. We somewhat peaked out on fuel potentials in the 1960s. Now, there have been small improvements - for example, strained-ring hydrocarbons may replace kerosene - and there are some interesting "high ISP/high density" fuels that they're trying to stabilize (such as alane - stabilized aluminum hydride); however, the sky is not the limit as far as fuel density goes. And, as chemical fuels look to be our way of getting off the planet any time soon...
So, what can we advance, as far as getting payload off the Earth is concerned? We've improved engines, but there's only so much performance that improved heat management and refined shapes will get you. We can advance materials, but while we have some great "potential" materials on the horizon (such as nanotube composites and CVD diamond), and superalloys have been coming down in price, we're not the leaps-and-bounds beyond top-tech 1960s materials that would help.
So, in short, lugging payloads into space on disposable rockets remains expensive. Reusables were supposed to change this, as fuel is cheap; however, at least our first-gen reusable had serious maintenance problems (will a next-gen reusable be better? We'll have to wait and see).
This is simply the problems on getting large payloads off of Earth. Getting humans to Mars and back safely requires a complex system of precursor missions, engine and power plant development, habitation R&D, lots and lots of shielding research (the "bremsstrahlung issue" from GCR still hasn't been solved), getting reliable long-term use versions of *almost all* of the things that keep breaking on ISS (oxygen generation, water reuse, spin stabilization, etc - you can't just ship up a new one), "large mars entry craft" development (the atmosphere is nothing like ours, and we've only dropped in small craft, which are easier to deal with), dust handling (Mars dust is particularly nasty, with its electrostatic potential and tiny grain size), return fuel generation (optional), and dozens of other issues that the Apollo astronauts never had to deal with.
In short, the Mars mission is much more complex than Apollo, and yet, our rocket technology, bound by physical constraints and the requisite constraints of a spiral development process, has not come that far. Hence, the cost is high, the immediate payback low, and thus securing funding for it has, to this date, not occurred. It's not a difficult thing to understand. Meanwhile, our various robotic probes and telescopes keep dumping back copious amounts of valuable data to Earth, while tech keeps on advancing at its "slow and steady" pace.
The future isn't all it's cracked up to be (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, I'm overshooting the topic at hand (Mars), but this is the undercurrent beneath our greatly protracted exploration of our environment. Complicating the fact is that Mars appears to be an essentially dead planet, in which case it's difficult to get people to pay attention when you want to spend (from their perspective) a billion dollars to study rocks on another planet. There is no real, juicy carrot at the end of the stick.
Meanwhile, our future is mapped by Asimov, Bester, Heinlein, Stephen Baxter, et al... most of whom were scientists. So I find myself amused at their dismissal of the soft sciences, from which I believe they could have drawn some temperament. There's just no way, in my opinion, that the human race is going to spread its wings just because it can. Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I don't think we'll get our asses of this rock until we've almost completely ruined it. And by then, it may be too late.
Because in our community, we take intelligence for granted. No, we really do. How many times a day do you find yourself extremely aggravated at the sum of stupidity you deal with on a daily basis? That's because you're encountering the general public, which on the whole is a pretty average bunch of people. But it is this group that holds the reins of the future, for better or worse, primarily through the buying decisions they make and how they choose to conserve, either through recycling or not leaving the tap on when they brush their teeth.
These people are slow to gather around a movement. They aren't into science fiction. As long as the Right Now is good enough and doesn't give them too many problems, the seductions of gadgetry and possibility aren't quite strong enough to get them on the bandwagon.
Highlights? Highlights?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
we get a mission whose highlights were 'a) it came back; and b) an astronaut pulled bits of cloth out from between tiles.'
From NASA:
Several elements will be carried in Discovery's payload bay for delivery to the Station. These include the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Raffaello, containing racks of supplies, food and water, and the Human Research Facility-2 rack. Also, the External Stowage Platform and a replacement Control Moment Gyroscope will be carried in Discovery's payload bay.
Excuse me for doubting the infinite wisdom of a whiny journalist, but I think I just saw a spaceship take food, water, supplies, and new equipment to a fucking space station. I apologize for not taking that accomplishment for granted. I don't know if I will ever get used to that being a simple, common occurence.
As for the astronaut who made repairs to the spaceship in fucking space, one has to wonder if the same whiny journalist changes the oil in his own car... on Earth.
$15-20M vs. 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS (Score:3, Insightful)
"intergalactic" ARRGH! Word usage rant! (Score:4, Insightful)
Use "interplanetary" for Solar System stuff and "interstellar" for travel betwwen stars within a galaxy.
Cathedrals in the Sky (Score:3, Insightful)
USA but is missing the larger point. Despite the bravado
of free-marketers to the contrary, big projects that
do not offer immediate financial windfall simply
wither and die in our global capitalistic system. Where
is IGY 'cheap and clean' energy? Why a heath system
that lines pockets and forgets kids?
Space exploration and space colonization are akin
to cathedrals in the sky. While important in terms of
mass pride they make poor investments (Zubrin's
economic case for Mars is laughable). Bush's
repurposing of NASA is an obvious good idea but is
ultimately doomed unless monies appear (even if
private contractors do the work). Space will ultimately
be colonized by creative imitators, political radicals
or religious dissidents. The USA and Europe no longer
look to the sky.
The first Mars colony will belong to the Scientologists
for the Mormons have taken Utah.
---537
Re:Problems on the ground come first (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile, sending people into space *is* a problem we know how to solve, it has a known upside in terms of nice technology spin-offs, and who knows what wonders we'll discover when we finally go and look. There was no reason to expect in 1492 that exploration would lead to the re-invention of democracy as a governmental system, yet major (even revolutionary
No, it's not either/or. Never has been. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm. Yes.
In the sense that people going hungry is a result of behaviors that hundreds of billions of dollars won't (and, even as we spend them, can't) fix. Throwing money at social problems doesn't always fix them, and sometimes makes them worse (see the comparitive self-sufficiency of kids born to other kids completely hooked on welfare, etc.). These are generally cultural issues, and it's simply going to take time. Twice the money in schools today won't make parents born 20 years ago any better at raising children right this minute. Those kids aren't going to be hungry at any time during their lives unless it's because they're not participating in the wider economy, and keeping that economy growing, efficient (through technology and its shrewd use), and reaching into new areas, is the best way to make that happen.
Yes, there are going to be circumstances beyond each of some individuals' control, and you can be born to parents that simply don't care whether or not you grow up into a someone who can feed herself. But to the extent that we do put resources into helping out people in those situations, we're not excluding doing the more magnificent things of which we, as a species and especially as an adventuresome culture, are capable.
I usually try to avoid politics and social debates
And, given the breathtakingly adolescent tone saturating most of those conversations (especially on slashdot) I can hardly blame you, but none of the cool nerdy stuff we love happens in a vacuum. Without weaving it into the wider cultural landscape (and the resources therein), the cool nerdy stuff would barely escape a handful of college labs. So fans of all things nerdly need to truly understand the larger societal and politcal contexts in which technology gets funded, used, praised, villified, and considered (too often) mutually exclusive with warmer, fuzzier "humanities" issues.
If you haven't noticed, though, I'd consider the progress of technology on all fronts to be the single greatest contributor to the conditions in which the potentially "hungry" live in the US. By conditions, I mean, as opposed to, say, that of those poor bastards in Niger, literally dropping dead from lack of food. In the US, you pretty much cannot drop dead from lack of food unless you want to, or are so addled/sick that you can't grasp what's being offered to you. Every city in the country at least has a place to obtain a meal for those that ask, and it's only through even grander technological feats that we polish the efficiencies and productivity that make that largess possible.
Besides, it's not like the money spent on space programs is actually packed up in boxes and launched into space. It mostly pays people, all of whom themselves buy houses, hire carpenters, rent videos, take the occasional vacation. Certainly some of their effort, put solely into making, say, an MRI machine so cheap and safe that we wouldn't think twice about using it on everyone with a sniffle, insurance or not, might lower the cost of health care a touch. But for that to happen meaningfully, we've got to take the lawyers out of healthcare first. It's not the lack of healthcare for a family that's really horrible, it's the fact that a lawsuit over someone else's test regimine, or the insistence on the use of fantastically costly drugs can burn up more "healthcare dollars" for one family than basic good care for 50 families would otherwise cost.
Of course, if everyone who owns a Bentley were to sell them, buy a Scion, and use the extra cash to buy 40 Scions for other people, there'd be less complaining about car ownership, either. But we're not a culture that prohibits the Bentley-ables from celebrating their prowess at basketball, charisma as an actor, insight at founding Google, or willingness to risk a lot on commercial space ventures, and nor should we be.
Re:Libertarians in Space !!! (Score:3, Insightful)
But the answer to your question is:
The ones that found a working business model. (I.e. the ones that managed to give diseases to the native population so 90% died -- and found something to steal.)
The scandinavians of the period could organize large projects, given likely gains. And so could probably most large groups of people in Europe do for at least a couple of thousands of years.
Re:Far greater things lie ahead (Score:3, Insightful)
It's repugnant because it is not human. What is the point of being alive if you can't touch and feel and listen and eat and sleep and make love and sing and do all of these human things? What is the advantage of elegance and efficiency if you are no longer yourself, no longer human?
Re:Emotional words...check (Score:3, Insightful)
Self-hatred will get you nowhere.
Re:Far greater things lie ahead (Score:4, Insightful)
-Jesse
Re:Culture change (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. But you've got it exactly backwards.
Reading sources from the '50s and '60s, I get the impression that there was much more concern (possibly driven by the race with the Soviets, but who cares?) for the advancement of knowledge for its own sake. People were much more willing to sacrifice a little bit of wealth for the long-term future of the society.
Nope. Notice when the space program came to a screeching halt: in the early '70s, when the bill for Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the Vietnam War came due. The prevelent feeling was that the money should be spent for social programs "for the good of society" rather than "impractical" things like space flight. Trust me for that - I lived through that era.
I'd point out that in the '50s and '60s, when we had an active and dynamic space program, taxes and governmnet revenue were a helluva lot lower than they are now, and we still managed to find the cash for rocket science.
It's not a matter of being willing to sacrifice a little bit of wealth for the long-term future of the society. It's a matter of priorities. These days, giving a handout to their constituents for votes is higher priority for most politicians than space flight. The government actually has a helluva a lot more money at it's disposal today than it ever did in the '50s and '60s.
The rise and fall of the Space Age (Score:2, Insightful)
A related shuttle = useless post from a blog I found yesterday. Yes, the shuttle exists only to serve the ISS - which does no real science, and is merely there as a place for the shuttle to go. "They're a co-dependant waste of money". I agree. http://www.thewils.net/dave/blog/archives/000288.h tml [thewils.net]
The Space Age ended in 1972, when we left the moon for good. We live in the Digital Age now. The future's changed.
Re:Dear Sci Fi Whiners (Score:3, Insightful)
Science is concerned with investigating properties of the universe, or of mathematics, that we don't presently understand. Pretty much by definition, that means that we don't know what will result from scientific discovery.
Generally speaking, however, science tends to confirm in greater detail what we already know. Ho hum. At that rate, reality seems a pretty boring thing to investigate. Of course it's not, but it takes a certain discipline to appreciate the more subtle kind of discovery that science typically delivers.
People tend to react with anger when their expectations are not met. For that reason, I think it's most unfortunate that, as a society, we've suddenly come upon science and have elected to treat it like a giant video game. We're bound to be disappointed, just as we were in the dot com bubble.
People who encountered the Internet for the first time thought that they were witnessing a sudden explosion of technology. They had no idea, and evidently no interest in acquiring the idea, that the Internet was the result of gradual development that had gone on for decades before that, right back to Von Neumann if you like. They didn't care to see that the rate of development over this period was about as rapid as human industry could make it.
Dot com investors, however, thought they were seeing a radically shorter timeline, thus a steeper growth rate, thus unrealistic expectations that such a rate would continue or even accelerate, thus all sorts of crazy excesses, thus harsh disappointment and a sudden retreat of capital. All of this proved catastrophic for a lot of us in what had, until that time, been a stable industry.
The actual rate of progress continues to be about as rapid as we can make it. We simply have to be satisfied with that. Science is not a consumer product, and wanting a thing very, very, very much does not magically make it possible. Science fiction is a valuable form of speculation, but the physical properties of the universe are not likely to change through greed or wishful thinking.
Let's take a lesson from Easter Island. It's now a barren outcropping of rock, treeless and desperately uninhabitable, though dotted with large stone statues that suggest it once supported a flourishing civilization. Unfortunately, it seems that civilization got a bit carried away with the technology of carving statues and transporting them using log rollers. There came a time when the last tree was cut down, the last animal hunted to exinction. The remaining inhabitants turned their fury on the statues, smashing and defacing them, but it was too late. Lacking materials from which to build boats, they had no means to escape the island.
Re:Far greater things lie ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
That's good--but transhumanist organizations deserve more as it is a far more pressing goal.
It really isn't
Space isn't all the pressing given the problems we have on Earth, but I do recognise the value in getting people off Earth for our survivability, science and technology we learn, and less tangible benefits like inspiration and wonder.
Transhumanism though? A tiny, tiny group of people want to turn themselves into something else. Great, you go work on that, but it isn't a priority at all to the vast bulk of humankind, who wants to stay that way.
I'll add even if it were to solve current problems, its naive to think there wouldn't be new one. Biological viruses don't kill you but computer ones do. If you "transhumanist" looks like a machine, others will have a lots less inhibitions killing it. I do think some humans will choose to modify themselves in the future, but I don't see any sort of utopia there.
Unrealistic rant. (Score:1, Insightful)
The fact that you and me are not going anywhere in space on our life times, does not mean that advancement is stalled,
or that the promised future was "stolen" from us. It's your fault if you believed what you saw in the Jetsons in your childhood,
not NASA's.
Unfortunately, we are part of a generation that grew up looking sci/fi, and believing that space transportation was only a refinement of
current technologies, and that in some time years we will have the means. Well, we didn't, live with that.
It seemed easy, cheap and ready, but reality has widely disproved that. It is difficult, expensive and dangerous, and
despite all that, there have been some really impressive advancements indeed. In my personal opinion, the Mars Rovers, the Mars Express and the Casini mission
are far more impressive that anything a sci/fi author could write, because they are REAL, they really happened.
The authors are neither realistic nor giving the space programs the credit they deserve. It is understandable that it's disappointing
to realize that you are not going to live enough to see your geek-dreams come true, but to involuntarily belittle what has been done
is still unfair in my opinion.
Re:The crossroads of my generation (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, the irony of a Slashdot commenter denigrating blogging...
Go back to whittling your stick on the porch, grandpa. We'll happily stay off your lawn if it means you'll shut the hell up.
Re:Far greater things lie ahead (Score:3, Insightful)
It's very simple. We're not ready. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sci-fi creates a world that suits the creator, and if done well, draws the user in. But the creator would never finish the thing if s/he had to also talk about how the plumbing works. The fact is there are so many details left out that even Blade Runner, in all its anti-glory, is idealized (how exactly did Decker *pay* for his noodles?)
Take Star Trek: only the Ferengi talked about money, but apart from hoarding it, it didn't seem like it got used a lot. I seem to recall some talk of "credits", whatever those are, but the real *believable* sci fi has Riker wondering how he's going to pay for that special trip he and Troi have been thinking about, especially based on a military salary.
"The devil's in the details"...well, they got that one right. The problem is that we dream of a details-free world where men and women live in harmony on Mars doing
Space exploration doesn't sound so appealing anymore.
No business case (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is actually untrue. There is a great business case for geosynchronous communications satellites, and new ones are going up all the time, having gone from C-band to Ku-band and now to Ka-band with small spot-beam "cells" for enhanced frequency re-use that will deliver many more channels of HD video.
But outside of geosynchronous satellites, there isn't much business to be done. I suspect that sub-orbital and LEO space tourism will come about slowly, but that market will remain tight for quite a while due to a limited pool of of risk-taking rich people.
Re:A rule of thumb (Score:3, Insightful)
When president Carter was president, we had "Conjunction Junction", we had a push to adopt a metric system, we had recycling and bills to push car MPG ratings. We even forced companies to list the ingredients in the food. In short, there was a push to improve Americans as good citizens.
Then the politicians so seductive "you are already great and its everyone else's fault". Corporations embraced Leveraged Buyouts and steel companies got run into the ground while they leased their own equipment to strip capitol from pension funds.
Look, if you wanted to make money in the '80s, you became a lawyer, an MBA of a Finance major. I knew Engineers who washed cars. We changed our priorities as a culture from doing great things to making a buck. How can you reach the stars with such a culturally vacuous goal? We have become apathetic and decadent and ignorant, in general. And we don't reward true innovators--just those holding the patents. Those of us who decried the cultural wasteland were put down as ignorant by anyone with a business 101 degree (I got a CIS degree myself, to add credibility to my lowly BS in Art). We didn't know what we were talking about.
So now, it is the fault of the dreamers? Those with great ideas who inspired others? What the f***? Arthur C. Clarke wasn't elected-- he doesn't have any responsibility other than to sell books. This parent post is talking about what Sci-Fi writers didn't predict (don't agree), but how does a cheaper computer stand in the way of going to the stars? Wow, I have a 3D paperclip in my word processing program and the computer costs under $500. OK. Where is the real progress. We have massive networked computers systems, and other than blogs like Slashdot-- what has that produced of truly great significance? Direct marketing?
I'm making broad strokes with black and white but I'm trying to hit home that we aren't any closer to space because not enough people cared to support the effort.
Now, I really don't care too much about better rockers. I really care about fixing the damage we've done to the earth and about energy-- Two things that Jimmy Carter had as priorities. Whatever we end up doing, it will require Social Engineering, which conjures a lot of fear in people. But really, all collective actions result in Social Engineering. The past 3 decades of Laissez Faire culture has left us with a populace of greedy sheep.
I want Universal Healthcare, real alternative energy research, real conservation, mass transit, and free internet for all. And of course, the business 101 people who took a course in economics will tell me how unrealistic and anti-business such things are. But ask yourself, the last time you saw a fire truck pass by-- how come a system that works so well and cheap doesn't charge extra to show up on time? Because the culture that lives at the fire-station is driven by people who want to be heroes and are allowed to be. And it is not being an absolutist to want government to do useful things. If you took the money we waste on not regulating banks and stock fraud, plus subsidies to huge corporate farming conglomerates, mega billions to mercenaries and others "helping" with the business of war, huge grants to oil companies and a whole slew of government pork to a thousand other businesses-- you dwarf by a factor of ten any social program I've mentioned. We've spent more on the Iraq invasion in inflation adjusted dollars than was ever spent on the Apollo program. And we will never get the control of the oil out of that botched mission that some would have thought might pay for it.
The problem with great American accomplishments seems to me to stem from us not being so great anymore.
When next we revisit the idea of a space program, maybe it wouldn't have to compete for dollars with welfare. Maybe. But don't blame the dreamers because we sold out on the dream.
Re:Highlights? Highlights?!! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I believe that's why the media (WSJ, included) covered this particular mission so closely and the general population was more interested in the mission and results than usual. Another loss so soon would be a media circus and would take NASA PR decades to recover from.
We've lost two shuttles... out of 114 missions. Both were horrible tragedies and we would never accept a 1.75% catastrophic failure rate in a consumer vehicle, but we're talking about space flight. The flights had become so routine to most people that the media coverage was non-existent between the disasters. On top of that, the astronauts are all extremely bright people and I doubt they would accept a mission if anyone involved believed the main purpose was just to see if they could make it back.
there wasn't even any real science involved
We used to do the scientific work on the shuttle because there was no other location. Now, we do the scientific work on the space station and the shuttle supports it. I would still rate that as being "involved" in the science, even if the connection isn't immediately apparent.
I'm not so sure (Score:4, Insightful)
First, as you say, new technology would have to be developed and perfected. Not impossible but it's very difficult to predict the pace of such things. If, in fact, it took 36 years we'd still be screwed. Almost making the deadline [pun intended] wouldn't cut it.
The biggest problem would be mustering the needed level of international cooperation. No doubt the cost of the program would be too much for even the richest nations to go it alone. How many years would go by before enough nations could get together and decide on a plan of action? What would the USA do if 20 years down the road more accurate estimates of the impact point proved that the asteroid was going to impact on the other side of the globe? Would the USA withdraw its participation? I'd like to think not but I've lost much of my faith in American largess. Anyway, balancing an enormous economic drain versus the morality of allowing a serious disaster to occur to someone else (possibly an enemy) would be a serious quandary for any nation.
The problems are certainly surmountable; in theory. The world's track record regarding other crises is spotty at best. How much progress have we made at:
eliminating controllable diseases,
controlling global population growth,
controlling greenhouse gas emissions?
The list goes on and doesn't even address the more important but tougher issues like war and poverty. I'm sure someone will come up with a good example where the world got together and solved a problem but overall history shows little that it's rare and difficult.
So I don't think 35 years is really enough time. I'd say more like 300 years. At least in that much time one could hope for salvation from radically new technological advances such as anti-gravity or really really frickin powerful lasers in space.
-scsg
Re:Transhumanism will never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
It is misleading to extrapolate short term price fluctuations, which tend to reflect global politics and production quotas more than actual oil and gas reserves. In any case, the cost of fuels will not rise indefinitely, because eventually they will become competitive with fuels produced by renewable energy sources, and price will plateau. An additional source of energy in the medium term is likely to be nuclear power, because with newer reactor designs, and greater awareness of the environmental damage from combustible fuels, the hazards of nuclear power no longer look quite so daunting.
Re:Culture change (Score:2, Insightful)
And the 50's and 60's were all about getting the newest TV. (Not unlike the current HD mania.)
Technology may change rapidly, but people do not.
Face it folks: it's over. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the 60s, we faced a geopolitical adversary that claimed the tide of history was on its side. Demonstrating, as a nation our technological superiority was a way of disproving this. Maybe going to the moon wasn't necessary before, but it when Kennedy threw down the gaunlet, the world was measuring us on our ability to follow through.
We don't have anybody we need to prove anything to anymore. Going to the moon will be a huge leap in credibilty to China; going to Mars is not going to make much difference at all to our national prestige. If you've ever coached an athlete, you'll know the best training resource you can have is a rival. It will take more than a moon shot to get us to look at China as a serious technological rival. It will take the emergence of a China that can extend its will across the globe in the same way we can, and that's going to be more than ten, possibly twenty or more years out.
In short, what I'm saying is forget about the US doing any kind of high cost, high profile space exploration anytime in the next couple of decades. There'll be talk about it, but talk is cheap.
I'm not against manned space flight. And I commend the president for increasing federal R&D to the highest levels since the early 90s. But there's no money for anything that looks like a start for a real Mars effort any time in the next five years, and I don't see why this would change in the five or ten years after that. What I'm against is sacrificing real goals we might actually be willing to pursue for the fiction of pursing more glamorous sounding ones. The worse case is that we continue what we've been doing with the shuttle program -- funding enough to keep our manned space flight program treading water, but not enough to make real progress.
Better to phase out the manned program as our ISS commitments wind down, than to spend just enough money to maintain a stagnant program. Stagnation is a waste of time, and dangerous. Long term human space exploration would be better served by actual scientific and technological progress, even if it is less dramatic than biting our nails watching astronauts flying inadequate spacecraft.
Re:The crossroads of my generation (Score:3, Insightful)
The atomic age was just what it seemed. It saw the development of technologies from the Atomic Ramjet and Nuclear Rocket engines to Thermo-electric Generators that could run for decades. Fuel pellets the size of a marble that hold the energy equivalent of tens of thousands of gallons of hydrocarbon fuel. The technology to free ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil and the effects that dependence is wreaking on our economy.
That technology is all still here, but naive people like you have been deluded into believing that it was just a pipe dream. ;)
Re:The crossroads of my generation (Score:3, Insightful)
Risk is acceptable when the reward is acceptable. Risking your life to just to get to orbit to prove that the shuttle is worth keeping around for a few more years is stupid. Risk is also acceptable when there aren't less risky ways of accomplishing the same thing (like paying the Russians for a ride on a Soyuz).
2. Congress needs to think about what is in the best interests of the American people as a whole, not just thier constituents, even better they would think about the best interests of the world.
The only way to have a government to represent the interests of the entire world is a world government- that's not going to happen any time soon, and probably wouldn't be a good thing if it did.
3. Congress needs to realize that most great discoveries are not predicted, funding a strong space program could provide unimagined rewards.
I've heard this argument a million times in support of space, and I've heard it many more times for any vaguely technical endeavour. Since as you say great discoveries are unpredictable, funding anything at all might provide unimaginable rewards.
Focus on the concrete- space technology demands improvements in high temperature and strong lightweight materials, precision engineering, project management, robust hardened electronics, error-free software, and some other things. And remember that advances created are not always usable in a profitable way by other industries- if space industry invents techniques and technologies way far beyond and so much more expensive than other industries, those other industries will probably just ignore them (it can happen even within the same company).
There also needs to be a real goal in mind. Planting a flag and foot print on Mars might give you a warm fuzzy feeling but it's not good enough- I think the number one goal of the space program is to get a good situational awareness of our planet, sun, solar system, and rest of the galaxy and universe. I want to know where every sizable asteroid is, a complete inventory of the Kuiper belt, what's under the ice in Europa, in the atmospheres of the gas giants- and are there any earth-like planets in within a 100 ly- and what's going on in the galactic core behind all that dust? I don't want a trickle of probes every couple of years, I want a fucking convoy, a never ending stream of sensor platforms spreading out to nearby planets and deeper space, and huge arrays of orbital telescopes, sending information back so that whatever is going on out there we're on top of it.