This sadens me, not because of the lives lost, they knew the risk, but because of the stagnation of space traval that is going to haappen for at least the next year. The public will have an adverse reaction, asking the question "Is space worth the risk?" While my answer to this question has been not only is it worth th risk, but we should take more risks. These people know what they are doing. All recent NASA mistakes aside, we have had very few lives lost and much money spent.
I fear for the public reaction agenst NASA and space traval from this day forward.
Manned space flight (both shuttle trips, and the International Space Station) are today worth neither the risk nor the money. I like what John Pike [globalsecurity.org] said about the ISS: "The value of the science that can be done on the Space Station is trivial compared to the cost of the Space Station. Piloted spaceflight is about politics."
Let's look specifically at the ISS, which is the destination for most of the recent shuttle flights. Keeping humans supplied in space takes many extra trips up and down: all the air, water, food, living space, and exercise equipement takes up valuable cubic meters. And all of the provisions for safety and gentle re-entry further reduce the fuel efficiency of the rockets.
The ISS program, and the supply flights to build & support it, will have a total price tag of at around $100,000,000,000.
Scientific-notation kinds of fundage ($1e11)!! You'd have to be a NASA researcher just to count it all.
Virtually all of the science and maintenannce done on Shuttles and the ISS could be accomplished by semi-autonomous robots. Sure, today maybe our robotics and AI technology isn't good enough to substitute for some of the tricky things where a dynamic, flexible human is needed. Well, try investing a fraction of the $1e11 budget into researching those systems, and then tell me how well they work!
Developing better robots to operate space equipment won't only make extra-planetary research safer and cheaper- it'll also produce technological advances that will benefit civilians around the world!
(Rocket-boosters are only needed by astronauts and admirals. But reliable robot manipulators could be useful to anyone)
I fear for the public reaction agenst NASA and space traval from this day forward.
I hope the public wises up that manned space flight is an expensive and dangerous form of esteem-boosting entertainment.
No, it's not. More precisely, manned space travel isn't worth the risk. (Unmanned missions are risk-free by comparison)
Umm, not exactly. Ask the people of Texas -- they're having to dodge the remains of Columbia which have been scattered over a large proportion of their back yard. And spacecraft wreckage can contain some deeply hostile stuff.
And deorbiting Mir wasn't exactly risk-free, either.
Developing better robots to operate space equipment won't only make extra-planetary research safer and cheaper- it'll also produce technological advances that will benefit civilians around the world!
The robotic, computational, avionics and practical advances that _have_ been made developing the systems required to take people into orbit -- and back again haven't only gone into the space program, they've gone into improvements in many other walks of life; from the non-stick surface on the inside of your frying pan to the hull designs of modern aircraft the engines which push them into the sky.
There is one, compelling reason why venturing out into space is a _really_ good idea:
Reporter: "After all that you've just gone through, I have to ask you the same question a lot of people back home are asking about space these days. Is it worth it? Should we just pull back, forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home?"
Commander: "No. We have to stay here, and there's a simple reason why. 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-tsu, Einstein, Maruputo, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes - all of this. All of this was for nothing, unless we go to the stars."
-- Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, Babylon 5
(Penned by J. Michael Straczynski)
Umm, not exactly. Ask the people of Texas -- they're having to dodge the remains of Columbia which have been scattered over a large proportion of their back yard.
relatively risk-free, of course. But these people you mention aren't really "dodging". Nobody was hurt. I haven't heard of any real property damage yet.
Can you name any examples of a person killed by an unmanned spacecraft accident? I can't think of any. (If they exist, then they'll be prosaic non-events. Workplace accidents like "fell off a ladder tightening fuel hose")
Unmanned flight is fundamentally safer for many reasons: The vehicle is slimmer and sturdier, because there's no crew compartment. You don't need to land the craft on return. The launch (and recovery, if any) can be further from civilization. If anything goes wrong in flight, the ground team can detonate the rocket in a controlled manner, rather than having to pray that the plummeting ship will meet a miracle. And above all else, it's safer because there's no potential victims strapped atop 50 tons of TNT.
There is one, compelling reason why venturing out into space is a _really_ good idea:
Yes, that's true. Science-fiction has so much to teach us! (The Sun expiring is not the real threat. Astronomers have evidence that within 500 years or so, humanity on earth will be wiped out by nuculear or biological warfare. This evidence is necessarily indirect, but many find it compelling.)
But it won't be relevant for 75 years at least. Today's astronauts don't go to space to live there- they go to operate some buttons and levers, unpack a few sensor arrays, wave to the cameras, struggle with vacum-toilets, and then fly home.
Each of those tasks is either unimportant, or better handled by a machine.
Astronomers have evidence that within 500 years or so, humanity on earth will be wiped out by nuculear or biological warfare. This evidence is necessarily indirect, but many find it compelling.
If you don't want to look like a looney, you're going to have to back that claim up with something. Hint: a prediction is not evidence.
Looniness is quite natural for me, I don't mind at all. But the explanation is entertaining, so I'll share with you. (Hint: negative evidence is still evidence)
Carl Sagan said it better than I ever could. The Drake Equation [setileague.org] posits that by now, at least 100 (or anywhere from 5 to 50000, depending on your assumptions) electronics-capable intelligent species have existed in our area of the galaxy so far.
So where are their radio signals? Their space probes? Why does SETI [seti.org] strain fruitless to discover any kind of extraterrestrial signal?
The possible explanations are that there either never was any other intelligent life, or that it lost its ability to send radio signals and space probes shortly after acquiring it. (The Dyson Sphere [d.kth.se] is another possiblity. So is the Prime Directive [startrek.com], and plain xenophobic paranoia.)
Look at the technology level on earth today. We can already send probes [nasa.gov] out of the solar system. Given this ability, within 100-300 years at most, we'll be flinging a capsule laden with data storage and solar-powered radio transmitters towards every star we can see.
If we ever manage to colonize other worlds, then over a few millenia there will be an exponential population growth, and nary a corner of the galaxy will be free of us.
But evidently, this hasn't happened yet. Where are all the alien visitors?
Again, using ourselves as an example, the most likely possibility is that whenever technology increases to the point where a species can venture into space, it also allows the species to destroy the viability of it's entire ecosystem. Looking around at the relative popularity of military activities vice space exploration, which one do you think will happen first?
Darwinian evolution dooms us- it creates a locally optimal species, which struggles violently against its peers for resources, always knowing there is a frontier to explore where more open land can be found. But when the frontiers are gone, and the planet is full, it leaves us with a competitive psychology that will be unlikely to abide cooperation long enough for us to "get off the rock".
Look at the science-fiction worlds of something like Clarke's 2001. Flight to Jupiter in 1997? It seemed reasonable then- because it was on the assumption that petty nationalist squabbles wouldn't divert our attention and resources in the meantime. Sadly, that is exactly what's been happening.
Even if I accepted the premises that your argument is built on, that still doesn't prove the point you think it does. It is not necessary to wipe out the entire population of a species in order for it to stop sending radio signals. All it takes is enough of a step backward in technology that it is no longer possible. (In other words, a fall of civilization rather than a total wipeout of the species.)
Destroying life on earth is not as easy as we make it out to be. Life has survived meteor impacts and ice ages. Although it was definately transformed by these hardships, it didn't go away. I doubt we could do it even if we actively tried, and set off every nuclear weapon in existence. Destroying humanity, on the other hand (but leaving single-celled critters, some hardy plants, rats, cockroaches and the like around to evolve into new things) is possible but difficult. It would require all-out nuclear war. Resource mismanagement has the potential to destroy cultures and nations, but not all of humanity. Our ancestors lived through ice ages.
Which is plenty close-enough to "doom" for all long-range planning purposes (up to and including extraterrestrial colonization)
Today there are 500 times as many humans as when we last weathered an ice age. Losing 499/500ths of something doesn't count as total destruction, especially if it's something that can regrow, but it's still unspeakably bad. (And there'd only have to be one more tiny push- like a few more degrees of cold- to finish off the 1/500th remaining)
Technologically, we aren't that far past the radio transmission age. That was still less than 100 years ago. It would not take a drastic catastrophe of the human race to drop technology that far. It wouldn't even need a total collapse of civilization.
Your point rests on too many assumptions. 1 - it assumes that aliens would *want* to try to contact us and therefore the abscense of such contact is evidence against them having good enough technology. That's projecting human motivation onto an abviously nonhuman species. 2 - It assumes that alien sentience exists (I'm pretty sure there's life on other worlds, but I'm not so sure it developed any sentience. After all, here on earth with all our varied animal species, only one ever developed signifigant levels of sentience.) 3 - It assumes that alien technology developed along the same track ours did and therefore MUST be using radio waves as a means of communication, as opposed to something totaly alien we've never thought of so far and haven't thought to look for. 4 - It assumes the alien sentient life would have existed somewhere within our observable zone of space (limited as it is by the speed of light and our relatively short history so far of looking for said intelligence with radio waves.) 5 - It assumes that we can't possibly be the first race to have reached this point in technology, since it assumes that if it was possible to survive this level of technology, somoene else would have already done so before us.
Science fiction often explores the notion that we meet aliens who are vastly advanced compared to us, and paints a scary picture of how humbling and dangerous that would be. I'm far more afraid of the other possiblity - that we *are* the most advanced race in our galaxy. The amount of responsibility that would dump on our shoulders would be more than we could handle, I think.
They're referring to Fermi's paradox [ndtilda.co.uk] (no, I'm not a transhumanist, but it's a good essay).
The conclusion "technological civilizations only last a short time" is predicated on a number of assumptions, but if you agree with those assumptions it's a plausible conclusion.
NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:2)
I fear for the public reaction agenst NASA and space traval from this day forward.
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's not. More precisely, manned space travel isn't worth the risk. (Unmanned missions are risk-free by comparison)
Just look at the kinds of leading edge science this crew died to perform:
http://www.wff.nasa.gov/~sspp/sem/about.html [nasa.gov]
Manned space flight (both shuttle trips, and the International Space Station) are today worth neither the risk nor the money. I like what John Pike [globalsecurity.org] said about the ISS: "The value of the science that can be done on the Space Station is trivial compared to the cost of the Space Station. Piloted spaceflight is about politics."
Let's look specifically at the ISS, which is the destination for most of the recent shuttle flights. Keeping humans supplied in space takes many extra trips up and down: all the air, water, food, living space, and exercise equipement takes up valuable cubic meters. And all of the provisions for safety and gentle re-entry further reduce the fuel efficiency of the rockets.
The ISS program, and the supply flights to build & support it, will have a total price tag of at around $100,000,000,000.
Scientific-notation kinds of fundage ($1e11)!! You'd have to be a NASA researcher just to count it all.
Virtually all of the science and maintenannce done on Shuttles and the ISS could be accomplished by semi-autonomous robots. Sure, today maybe our robotics and AI technology isn't good enough to substitute for some of the tricky things where a dynamic, flexible human is needed. Well, try investing a fraction of the $1e11 budget into researching those systems, and then tell me how well they work!
Developing better robots to operate space equipment won't only make extra-planetary research safer and cheaper- it'll also produce technological advances that will benefit civilians around the world!
(Rocket-boosters are only needed by astronauts and admirals. But reliable robot manipulators could be useful to anyone)
I fear for the public reaction agenst NASA and space traval from this day forward.
I hope the public wises up that manned space flight is an expensive and dangerous form of esteem-boosting entertainment.
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:1)
Umm, not exactly. Ask the people of Texas -- they're having to dodge the remains of Columbia which have been scattered over a large proportion of their back yard. And spacecraft wreckage can contain some deeply hostile stuff.
And deorbiting Mir wasn't exactly risk-free, either.
The robotic, computational, avionics and practical advances that _have_ been made developing the systems required to take people into orbit -- and back again haven't only gone into the space program, they've gone into improvements in many other walks of life; from the non-stick surface on the inside of your frying pan to the hull designs of modern aircraft the engines which push them into the sky.
There is one, compelling reason why venturing out into space is a _really_ good idea:
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:2)
relatively risk-free, of course. But these people you mention aren't really "dodging". Nobody was hurt. I haven't heard of any real property damage yet.
Can you name any examples of a person killed by an unmanned spacecraft accident? I can't think of any. (If they exist, then they'll be prosaic non-events. Workplace accidents like "fell off a ladder tightening fuel hose")
Unmanned flight is fundamentally safer for many reasons:
The vehicle is slimmer and sturdier, because there's no crew compartment. You don't need to land the craft on return. The launch (and recovery, if any) can be further from civilization. If anything goes wrong in flight, the ground team can detonate the rocket in a controlled manner, rather than having to pray that the plummeting ship will meet a miracle.
And above all else, it's safer because there's no potential victims strapped atop 50 tons of TNT.
There is one, compelling reason why venturing out into space is a _really_ good idea:
Yes, that's true. Science-fiction has so much to teach us! (The Sun expiring is not the real threat. Astronomers have evidence that within 500 years or so, humanity on earth will be wiped out by nuculear or biological warfare. This evidence is necessarily indirect, but many find it compelling.)
But it won't be relevant for 75 years at least. Today's astronauts don't go to space to live there- they go to operate some buttons and levers, unpack a few sensor arrays, wave to the cameras, struggle with vacum-toilets, and then fly home.
Each of those tasks is either unimportant, or better handled by a machine.
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:2)
If you don't want to look like a looney, you're going to have to back that claim up with something.
Hint: a prediction is not evidence.
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:2)
Carl Sagan said it better than I ever could. The Drake Equation [setileague.org] posits that by now, at least 100 (or anywhere from 5 to 50000, depending on your assumptions) electronics-capable intelligent species have existed in our area of the galaxy so far.
So where are their radio signals? Their space probes? Why does SETI [seti.org] strain fruitless to discover any kind of extraterrestrial signal?
The possible explanations are that there either never was any other intelligent life, or that it lost its ability to send radio signals and space probes shortly after acquiring it. (The Dyson Sphere [d.kth.se] is another possiblity. So is the Prime Directive [startrek.com], and plain xenophobic paranoia.)
Look at the technology level on earth today. We can already send probes [nasa.gov] out of the solar system. Given this ability, within 100-300 years at most, we'll be flinging a capsule laden with data storage and solar-powered radio transmitters towards every star we can see.
If we ever manage to colonize other worlds, then over a few millenia there will be an exponential population growth, and nary a corner of the galaxy will be free of us.
But evidently, this hasn't happened yet. Where are all the alien visitors?
Again, using ourselves as an example, the most likely possibility is that whenever technology increases to the point where a species can venture into space, it also allows the species to destroy the viability of it's entire ecosystem. Looking around at the relative popularity of military activities vice space exploration, which one do you think will happen first?
Darwinian evolution dooms us- it creates a locally optimal species, which struggles violently against its peers for resources, always knowing there is a frontier to explore where more open land can be found. But when the frontiers are gone, and the planet is full, it leaves us with a competitive psychology that will be unlikely to abide cooperation long enough for us to "get off the rock".
Look at the science-fiction worlds of something like Clarke's 2001. Flight to Jupiter in 1997? It seemed reasonable then- because it was on the assumption that petty nationalist squabbles wouldn't divert our attention and resources in the meantime. Sadly, that is exactly what's been happening.
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:2)
Destroying life on earth is not as easy as we make it out to be. Life has survived meteor impacts and ice ages. Although it was definately transformed by these hardships, it didn't go away. I doubt we could do it even if we actively tried, and set off every nuclear weapon in existence.
Destroying humanity, on the other hand (but leaving single-celled critters, some hardy plants, rats, cockroaches and the like around to evolve into new things) is possible but difficult. It would require all-out nuclear war. Resource mismanagement has the potential to destroy cultures and nations, but not all of humanity. Our ancestors lived through ice ages.
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:2)
Which is plenty close-enough to "doom" for all long-range planning purposes (up to and including extraterrestrial colonization)
Today there are 500 times as many humans as when we last weathered an ice age. Losing 499/500ths of something doesn't count as total destruction, especially if it's something that can regrow, but it's still unspeakably bad. (And there'd only have to be one more tiny push- like a few more degrees of cold- to finish off the 1/500th remaining)
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:2)
Your point rests on too many assumptions. 1 - it assumes that aliens would *want* to try to contact us and therefore the abscense of such contact is evidence against them having good enough technology. That's projecting human motivation onto an abviously nonhuman species. 2 - It assumes that alien sentience exists (I'm pretty sure there's life on other worlds, but I'm not so sure it developed any sentience. After all, here on earth with all our varied animal species, only one ever developed signifigant levels of sentience.) 3 - It assumes that alien technology developed along the same track ours did and therefore MUST be using radio waves as a means of communication, as opposed to something totaly alien we've never thought of so far and haven't thought to look for. 4 - It assumes the alien sentient life would have existed somewhere within our observable zone of space (limited as it is by the speed of light and our relatively short history so far of looking for said intelligence with radio waves.) 5 - It assumes that we can't possibly be the first race to have reached this point in technology, since it assumes that if it was possible to survive this level of technology, somoene else would have already done so before us.
Science fiction often explores the notion that we meet aliens who are vastly advanced compared to us, and paints a scary picture of how humbling and dangerous that would be. I'm far more afraid of the other possiblity - that we *are* the most advanced race in our galaxy. The amount of responsibility that would dump on our shoulders would be more than we could handle, I think.
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:2)
They're referring to Fermi's paradox [ndtilda.co.uk] (no, I'm not a transhumanist, but it's a good essay).
The conclusion "technological civilizations only last a short time" is predicated on a number of assumptions, but if you agree with those assumptions it's a plausible conclusion.
[TMB]
Re:NASA site mission STS-107 (Score:1)