Why Does the US Have a Civil Space Program? 308
BDew writes "The Presidents of the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering have commissioned a study on the Rationale and Goals of the US Civil Space Program. In short, the Academies are asking why the nation has a civil space program (including human, robotic, commercial, and personal spaceflight). The study is intended to provide a strategic framework for the nation's activities in space that can provide consistent guidance in an increasingly interconnected world. The members of the study committee are interested in the views (positive or negative) of the general public, particularly those people with a scientific and/or technological interest."
Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned space (Score:5, Insightful)
And fund our research instead.
Because this is America (Score:1, Insightful)
It's free enterprise.
We need a national science and engineering agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why I'm very leery of scaling back NASA. The moon shot was propaganda, partially, but it also unleashed a ton of new technologies and trained a generation of engineers. Of course, we could go along with the privatizing globalists, but you see how well that's working?
We may or may not find a role for men in space this generation, but space travel and investigation is absolutely fundamental for our survival as a species. And no corporation will EVER do what needs to be done, because it's not profitable except indirectly.
I think it's less of a let's kill it... (Score:4, Insightful)
argument for a civil program (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for a civil space program is pragmatic. The military and government is concerned with goals that are separate and distinct from civilian interests. But what are those interests?
The military is concerned with control, management, and protection of national assets. Communications, surveillance, and counter-terrorism are primary goals. Towards this end, the military produces missiles and delivery systems capable of providing this. But the military has no need to explore space, or advance scientific research beyond this.
There is no military or security reason to put someone on the moon, or map out the surface of other celestial bodies. However our understanding of these can advance civilian interest. For example, the helium-3 surface deposits on the moon could provide a energy source far greater than that of fission or conventional power generation. Exploration of the martian environment could provide clues to the formation of our own planet and answer a question long-sought after by both scientists, philosophers, and theologians -- where do we come from? How did we become what we are today? By deploying powerful sensing technology into space we can peer deeper into the universe and unlock many secrets, providing advances in physics, metallurgy, and many other fields. Putting people into space allows for research in microgravity and zero gravity environments. Certain molecular structures only form in the absence of a strong gravitational field. It could provide for advances in building materials, or allow for the development of quantum devices that may not be possible to produce terrestrially (or be prohibitively expensive) en masse. Frankly, there is considerable research that needs to be done.
Military and scientific needs can sometimes be at cross purposes. The creation of a fusion power generator with a net positive output would be a major advancement for any country. Further exploration of the moon may in fact provide this as there are isotopes found there that are very amiable to this goal, much more so than any terrestrial source. However, such a powerful energy source could be used to create star-wars styled weapons, making land-based particle accelerators a reality, or other advanced weapons systems that simply aren't practical to deploy today. Localized atmospheric heating, strong RF fields to provide an ionization layer above a target, etc., all become possible with a large energy source. Because of this, the military would likely move to be an obstacle in such research because it threatens the balance of power. Perhaps it already has.
The military and civilian programs should work in tandem when possible to reduce overall costs, but should also be allowed to initiate their own programs independently of each other, as the need arises. To collapse the two into a single entity gives rise to questions of trust, integrity, and overall effectiveness. Ultimately, it would not be as beneficial to society as the present system is, though in the short term it would offer some economic benefit -- but at the expense of long-term economic and social gain.
Re:We need a national science and engineering agen (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with 'scaling back' NASA is that it's not like a factory or a bunch of servers that you can just switch back on in 5 years with a bit of maintenance.
If you cut funding and they have to cut engineering jobs, you're going to lose talent: experience that may not return when you decide you're in another space race.
Re:Something I would ask (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the real use of getting a man to Mars or another planet other thean bragging about it for the next 70 years? Somehow, some people are in favor of a manned space program. The question is, what is the tangible benifit of sending people to the moon/Mars/Jupiter/Proxima Centauri?
That's right up there next to the question "Why spend any money on space at all when we have so many problems that need solving right here on Earth?" I can't buy into either viewpoint. Manned spaceflight has its place, and I'll fight any effort to terminate it.
I feel that there is a lack of a concrete goal, something to stand behind.
Now this I can totally get behind. Goals are good, and a lack of them, or more accurately a continuous redefining of them, has crippled the US space program for decades.
Something that has a good probability of pay-off in the future. Is "finding out things about other planets" a goal that convinces people to support (manned or unmanned) spaceflight? What do we really want?
Sounds like your answers would be "No" and "Profit". The whole "pay-off" bit is a club that has been used to beat the space program repeatedly over the years. "What's in it for me? What's the return on my investment?" As with other forms of research and exploration, it's nearly always impossible to give firm answers to these questions. But experience has shown that the real answer usually is, "Far beyond expectations."
Ad astra per aspera!
Re:Because this is America (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a little brief, but the idea is correct. The government space program will always function and exist at the whim and will of those holding the purse-strings, and those trying to balance purely scientific pursuits with simply commercial projects.
The government is simply the wrong vehicle for this project. Look at what we've accomplished since putting men on the moon... Oh yeah, robotic explorers, no complaint, the knowledge alone was worth the trip, but the future of people getting off our little rock has been virtually forgotten.
We need to come up with cost effective means to put robotic construction equipment on the moon. Build LARGE human habitats safe from radiation, meteor impact, and most typical problems folks on the moon might encounter, and build a human colony capable of supporting million (ultimately billions of people.) With a significant presence on the moon, we now have the capacity to build large vessels, in a small gravity well, capable of taking a lot of people to other places in the Solar System. Lots of human habitats means less chance of the species getting taken out by a rogue comet, or local gamma ray burster.
In the short run, we need to make lots of space business, make a lot of wealth from space, and make the opportunity for average people to leave the confines of Earth's atmosphere as common as a jet flight. We need industry in space. We need to begin using all the goodies available to us in our little slice of the solar system.
If seperate civilian space goes, .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Something I would ask (Score:1, Insightful)
To be trite "To get there."
Putting people in space is impractical and in most cases completely unneeded. However, the complications of delivering humans to sub orbital space, orbital space, lunar orbit, the lunar surface, or to mars then successfully retrieving them have no analog on earth or even unmanned spaceflight.
Our understanding of material science has been greatly helped by the space program with the research done on working with titanium and ceramics. The considerations for RF interference are much greater when in space. As is designing power efficient circuits and solar cells. Life support systems are very complex and pose a wide range of questions as well, and moving towards longer term missions in increasingly hostile environments will force for better and more complete solutions which will find their way back to our daily lives.
Space travel isn't about what will it do for me today or tomorrow, it's what will it do for me on tomorrows tomorrow.
Re:SpaceX (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BECAUSE (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:3, Insightful)
Sendng an unmanned "V-ger" out is great and all of that, but we really want the Star Trek/Wars/etc fantasy and are loath to let it go.
That's 3 questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does the US have a civilian space program?
Because so many other nations do. Even India has a great space program. Why wouldn't the US?
Why does the US have a civilian space program?
Because militarization of space at this point in time is impractical and expensive, so international treaties require the separation of peaceful space exploration from military conquest in a transparent fashion.
Why does the US have a civilian space program?
Because space is the future of human kind. Earth was the cradle of humanity but one cannot stay in the cradle forever.
Re:SpaceX (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Blue sky activities such as research on manned space travel are inherently not susceptible to pure private enterprise. That's why I laud groups like SpaceX and initiatives like the X-Prize, which break things down into manageable chunks for private enterprise to tackle, while still keeping around the government in areas that private industry is weak (distant goals with extremely large but speculative payoffs).
The reason I say it's inherently not susceptible to pure private enterprise is because there is an extremely high upfront (and continuing) investment cost, coupled with a stupendously large but very distant payoff. I haven't seen any evidence that there will be significant payoff in manned space travel before we get to the point where our technology is ready for colonization, but once we reach that point how do you even measure the "profits" they're so large?
In a purely rational marketplace, this may not make a difference, as 1 trillion over the next 10 years in return for 500 trillion in 50 is a great deal (with nothing or virtually nothing before 50). However, in the real world, no private actor would ever touch that deal with a ten foot pole. The problems are numerous, such as the fact that humans have finite lifespans, and 50 years is generally too long a time frame to wait for a payoff for an investment. A related problem is how you get together 1 trillion dollars to start with, especially since you've limited the pool to only those with extremely long investment windows. Corporations can help with this, since their immortality, like the government's, gives them a longer view on things, but the need to make short term (or even medium term) profits due to the finite lifespan of human investors means it's pretty much unrealistic to expect a corporation that doesn't plan on turning a profit for 50 years. Now, I just made up these numbers, but in general, I just don't see how private enterprise without purely altruistic goals can expect to gather humongous amount of money X in order to invest for long time frame Y in order to make stupendous amount of money Z.
Furthermore, in the case of space travel, the gains would be immeasurably large, but would be paid over a very large time frame as well. What good is it finally reaching a feasible method of inter planetary travel if within 21 years when your patents expire, or likely even sooner, all your competitors can cheaply leach off your initial massive outlay and develop cheap copies of your space travel methods, possibly even surpassing you (i.e. Rio mp3 players vs. Apple iPods). Even a rational immortal actor in a perfect world wouldn't invest in that case, unless they seek solely to benefit society and mankind as a whole, like ideally the government would.
Re:Something I would ask (Score:3, Insightful)
The ultimate goal, to me and most people I know involved in the industry/movement, is permanent, sustainable, and eventually self-sufficient human life beyond Earth. Of course, this is to improve the odds of the survival of our species in the long run (so Hawking says).
At a lecture by Rick Tumlinson at ISDC 2007, he was talking about being in the working group defining what Bush's Vision for Space Exploration meant. The conclusion they came to is that the ultimate goal of any moon/Mars/etc. plan has to be permanent settlement. Now whether or not the current Constellation mission architecture fulfills this goal is a matter for some debate, I can't really argue effectively either way.
I do think that a lot of work up till now has gone that direction. The Mercury/Gemini/Apollo program developed the fundamental technologies to keep a human alive. The space shuttle/ISS science program has always had a strong focus on life sciences and determining the effects of life in space on humans. A well-developed lunar or martian mission would build on these, develop technology to facilitate life on another planet's surface, and study the effects of long-term presence in reduced gravity fields. Of course, having the people present does make the planetary science goals a bit easier.
I'd also say that the purer sciences of planetary and solar studies are important, and not particularly controversial since they are cheaper and safer. And one can't forget the Earth science objectives that are especially important right now with the potential of global climate change and demographic changes forcing food and water issues.
All of these do compete for resources, and it is necessary to allocate resources between the goals. However its not unreasonable to have three missions (four actually, remember aviation), since one doesn't preclude another, and in fact they are intricately linked. Earth-science and planetary exploration share many instruments and technology; understanding the environment of the solar system and the planets is necessary to keep people in space alive. The hard part is deciding the proper allocation: I imagine the Obama administration is going to build up earth-science, leave planetary exploration as is, and attempt to focus the manned program on more immediate goals by decreasing the manned gap while pushing back eventual moon and Mars missions, which makes sense to me since climate issues are more immediately critical, while the long-term goals of planetary settlement are important but can be delayed.
Re:Something I would ask (Score:4, Insightful)
Robert Browning had an answer, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"
So did George Mallory: "Because it is there".
Re:Because this is America (Score:5, Insightful)
As lead mechanical engineer who designed, built, and tested a lunar mining machine within the last year, I can assure you: we're working on it.
Let me just indicate that if NASA (or some other government entity) had not funded the project, the private space sector would have taken decades to begin considering funding it.
The civil space industry provides funding and support for state-of-the-art space technologies, while the private space industry - with their ROI requirements - follows behind. There is nothing wrong with this protocol. If you'd like to see more private space industry, fund NASA so that companies can justify spending money on more mature technologies.
And tell me sir (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not " why " , " shoud " (Score:2, Insightful)
Tend to appreciate what comes as a result, you know, the spinoffs of such research. Space research and development doesn't stay in space, it spreads into other fields like medicine, automotive technology, and sometimes general consumer products.
The money available from voluntary funding would probably be so small as to be insignificant. You won't see corporate donors of any real scale (not these days) unless there's a direct return on investment visible in the short term (2-5 years.) The majority of people can't see past their neighborhood, and wouldn't be able to point out something spawned from space development even if they had used it their entire lives.
They want it, they just don't realize it. Maybe if they weren't so anti-science and encouraged it instead, they themselves would realize what around them would benefit from meeting the design and engineering challenges for as harsh an environment as space, and maybe then we'd not need tax dollars.
But progress must continue in the face of ignorance. Or we could, you know, just blow up more brown people.
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:0, Insightful)
I agree that I don't like space to be militarized. However, if it is, that would be good overall for manned space flight. Nobody can get funding like the armed forces can, and they tend to push the envelope on things that normally wouldn't get looked at twice. Big waste of money? Yes. Possibly the best thing to promote manned space flight that could happen? Absolutely.
True dat. I don't think it's a question of whether space gets militarized, but when and by whom. I guess that, given that it's going to happen, I'd prefer we be competitive in that area. Space is, after all, the ultimate "high ground", and anybody who knows anything about tactics will tell you that controlling high ground is nearly always desirable.
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:4, Insightful)
The military seems to have zero interest in maned space flight due to 4 issues.
1) Why send a person when you can send a bomb?
2) It's hard to do stealthy reentry.
3) How do you get people home once they are there?
4) It cost way to much to send enough people do do something meaningful vs flying someone in from a near by base.
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that military space flight necessarily means militarized space-flight, myself.
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the above, and given the geological record's testament to the finite probability of life on this planet being periodically ( not completely ) destroyed, and given the new factor that Human Civilization may be responsible for its own destruction, one may logically deduce from the basic laws of probability that our chance of extinction is an ever increasing number, slowly but surely approaching 1, and that the following quote from the late Carl Sagan rings true, now more than ever : "All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct."
jdb2
Re:My submission (Score:5, Insightful)
A military space program would subvert this goal through misallocation of resources and refusal to publicly disclose publicly funded developments.
I agree with almost everything you said, right up until there. If you look at the history of technology you'll find that nearly every major new technology in the last 200 years has been advanced by military support, not hindered. Rockets, nuclear power, jets, RADAR, computers, etc. were all just curiosities at best until they became weapons. And as a bonus those weapons happened to have useful civilian and scientific applications. In practice, I think the US military, at least, is fairly pragmatic about keeping secrets, especially once they know that another major power has already figured something out. If we'd funded a real military space program back during the Cold War then I suspect most of the mass-prodced technology would long since be public knowledge.
The military also has a healthy attitude toward risk, a very important factor that is missing at a publicity-shy civilian bureaucracy like today's NASA. Any kind of manned exploration is inherently dangerous, and NASA views danger as a threat to their funding and their existence. There's no profit motive, no patriotic motive, and no national security objective to fulfill. They have every reason to avoid danger and no reason to overcome it. Their robots work fine, but where people are concerned it's mostly lip service and paperwork. That's why we're having this discussion.
Re:Great idea (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be a pretty cool way to spur the development of a species...
Re:Not " why " , " shoud " (Score:4, Insightful)
By that logic it's wrong to force people to fund any programs if they don't want them.
Yes including Welfare, Schools, victim support groups, anything.
It's called living in a representative democracy. You don't get a direct say in any of these things. I'd love to stop having my tax dollars stop funding LOTS of things. My option is to elect representatives that reflect my desires and hope they aren't corrupt (heh).
As long as pork barrel dollars are funding garbage I don't care about, I'm fine with them funding at least one thing I DO care about.
Or were you going to get people to fund Welfare and Education and Food Stamps voluntarily too?
Re:von Braunians, Saganites, and O'Neillians (Score:4, Insightful)
1. How to get off the rock - Von Braunian.
2. How to behave once off the rock - Saganite
3. Why get off of the rock in the first place - O'Neillian
There's of course overlap and commonality, but the three mindsets still differ in each of the three items you mention. Stereotypical von Braunians tend to want huge manpower-intensive rockets and are largely motivated by national glory. Saganites don't think much about launch (they often consider it as something which will always have static economics) and are largely motivated by science and discovering the unknown. O'Neillians are largely concerned with making space launch as economical and sustainable as possible, and are largely motivated by spreading humanity throughout the cosmos.
However, we're all still in the Von Braunian stage of knowledge for the first point (with many deep bows to Space Ship One as I say that) - light up explosives/propellents under/behind your seat and use bulky chemicals to reach escape velocity.
Sure, but there's a difference between the von Braun approach (as exemplified by the Saturn V or Space Shuttle) where every launch is a huge national endeavor involving tens of thousands of workers, and the SpaceX approach which has a launch crew of 25 and only 6 people in mission control (the company as a whole has just 600 employees).
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:4, Insightful)
When India [bbc.co.uk] says their going to map the minerals of moon, I think the time for excuses is over.
Conservatives Not Happy with DOD Spending Either. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this conservative, who would ordinarily disagree with you on military spending, might have to honestly concede that the current US procurement and R&D program for defense is insane. We need to actually ask some hard questions about military procurement and this is a debate worth having.
Yes, we know there is a cost in wear and tear due to the wars but the USAF and USN are not flying that many missions. I would question the Army spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a "Future Combat" system built around smaller vehicles than the M-1 tank, when the M-1 tank is the only survivable assett we have in theater. I would question why the US Navy needs to have a brand new F-35, when, it just re-armed itself with F-18 Superhornets, and those are honestly almost a brand new aircraft. Speaking of carriers, how many carriers do we need to have in peacetime. Yeah, its nice that we have about 12 active duty super carriers, but do people know that the 20 or so assault carriers operated by the US Marines are actually about the same in capability as the carriers of other countries? And what's up with the sudden replacement of Seawolf with Virgina, and why can we only build one submarine a year? Why does it cost so much to operate 20 submarines when scarcely two decades ago we operated 100? Why does the US Navy have more money than ever, but less ships than it did when even Jimmy Carter "ruined the Navy"? Why is it before we needed 600 ships to adequately patrol the world's oceans, but now, we can't even spare a ship to go take out some pirates? I thought the reduction in size of ships was ok because the more expensive ships were more capable.
And don't even get me started on the USAF, except for this. why we are still building two classes of advanced fighters when the most glaring problem with the usaf is an inability to supply the army from the air. Hello...
We could go on all day.
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:3, Insightful)
Like the idea. I think that we could create a hoax that works just the way you say. Maybe we should try it on a smaller scale to begin with. I propose that we piss of some religious fanatics and get them to blow up some buildings. We can then pretend that some other country was in some way responsible and has masses of WMDs pointing right at us.
So much for those who claim that the Bush admin wasn't working to a sensible plan.
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:2, Insightful)
But you need to keep pushing the limits of technology in order to develop those ships, so that there is someday a "good time" to do it. If you just wait for the tech to magically show up, you're screwed.
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:3, Insightful)
What we really need is an alien race to show up, blow up a major city or two,
What we really need is a small asteroid to hit in a rural area causing a large explosion that doesn't cause a misinterpretation of a nuclear attack which scares the public into realizing without a space program they are going to eventually end up like the dinosaurs.
Sadly, I suspect the asteroid won't be so polite to where it lands.
Re:Let's rephrase : scientists say, kill manned sp (Score:2, Insightful)
They need to make it cool again for the younger generations instead of boring as hell geeks in space.
Having grown up all my life living under the knowledge that man has gone to the moon, and we have spaceflight, is what makes it "uncool" to me. It's a conquered experience. There's no great "space race" anymore, we're not doing anything new and exciting in space. We're studying things like "The effects of micro-gravity on the reproductive cycle of some bacteria" or "How do crystals grow in micro-gravity." Wow. Exciting shit right there. In my opinion outer space is just a waste of funding, until all the problems of living on Earth are solved (feed the hungry in Africa) I could give two shits about solving the problems of living in outer space. Geek or not.