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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Why a reinvigorated space program is a good idea |
| 2004-01-11 |
| Chas Martin knocks away the objections to a bigger, better space program: Gads, folks, wouldn’t an informed opinion be more useful? Cost: NASA’s total budget right now is only $15 billion. The total Federal budget is about 2 trillion. That about 0.75 percent of the federal budget; doubling it would be a rounding error. So let’s not panic about "how expensive" it is. (Cf. $22 billion for Iraq reconstruction -- and doubling NASA’s budget is rather more than Bush is really talking about.) Cost benefit: we’re talking about perhaps as much as $15 billion a year; the return is two whole worlds. If the long-term aspects of the investment bother you (why? It’s proportionally less than the government investment in the railroads in the 19th century, and much the same time scale) then consider just the commercial launch market right now. Loral is doing about $1 billion a year in revenues on satellites and satellite services, and it’s not like satellites have stopped going up. We’re talking about making an investment that would reduce launch costs -- necessarily; we’ve got to get much cheaper, better heavy lift for any of this to work -- that’s only fifteen times the current net revenues from one such company. (Yes, yes, this isn’t a complete cost-benefit study or anything like it; I’m pointing out that we’re talking about relatively small change in the current budget and perfectly reasonable commercial scales of investment.) Risks: Yes, people could die. People will die. Not to be callous, but so what? We lost more people in one helicopter crash in Iraq than have died in the history of space flight. It’s a shame. It’s a bummer. But somehow we’re managing to cope. Why not robots? The Shuttle program actually demonstrated this neatly not many years ago. The Shuttle was up to do repairs on a satellite and they were unable to grab it with the manipulator arm. The astronauts finally dealt with the problem by ... reaching over and grabbing it. Humans are the universal tool: we can do things that no one thought of needing. If we’d had a human on Mars in 1976, the question of whether there is life there would have been solved. As it was, we sent Viking, and brilliant as it was, the three life-detection experiments netted out to "Gee, we don’t really know." The easy answer to the results was "yes"; the results weren’t enough, though, and it was possible to interpret them as a "no". With people on site, you can say "hey, let’s try this." Finally, though, the real reason to go is because that’s what people do. The way we are treating the Solar System now is like mailing an Instamatic to cousin Francoise and claiming we’d "seen Paris" when the pictures come back. |
| Posted by:Zhang Fei |
| #6 I agree,do it in focused stages(1)get the ISS up and running, I mean with a perminant crew,large enough to do something. Get industry into research,development and manufacturing of materials,chemicals,and medicine. Use the ISS as a staging area to put a perminant presence on the moon. Get industry up there to start mining and manufacturing materials,etc. Once the things are up and running the rest of the Solar System is within reasonable reach. |
| Posted by: raptor 2004-1-12 7:21:41 AM |
| #5 Val, You are forgetting the first mars rover that was on mars a few years ago... Also it is unfair to blame NASA for the lack of focus they have. The lack of focus is due to the fact that we are just giving them a bunch of money and saying do something with it but don't screw it up. NASA has been given no mission. If we tell NASA to get men on Mars, they will do it. I'm sure of it. |
| Posted by: Damn_Proud_American 2004-1-11 11:51:00 PM |
| #4 Its been nearly 50 years since man stepped on the moon, For values of 50 that are 3/5ths of normal. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-1-11 10:15:43 PM |
| #3 Personally, if we're going to throw bushels of $$$ at NASA, the entire administration there should be swept out beforehand. Get some direction (and val touched on this), quit trying to juggle so many things at once, and actually get something DONE (without exploding or burning up). Right now it should be ISS and whatever rovers are working. That shouldn't be too much to ask, but apparently they can't get that right, either (air leaks, balloons blocking the rover?!?!). Then go back to the moon as cost-effectively and as safely as possible. And use that as a staging for Mars. |
| Posted by: 4thInfVet 2004-1-11 10:03:35 PM |
| #2 The problem with NASA is not simply the budget. I dare say Americans wouldn't mind even tossing up to 50-70 billion at NASA. PROVIDED of course they actually got something done. Its been nearly 50 years since man stepped on the moon, so many probes, satellites, launches and lives have been lost and yet not another visionary challenge has NASA come up with. NASA tries to do many things at once rather than try to focus on goals one at a time. We killed the Saturn program, it took until now to get a device like Spirit back on Mars as a followup to Viking. Whats our follow on to Voyager? Sorry, NASA's only method of survival now is to reinvent itself, it needs to find a way to get those scientists and engineers back and a lot of the management problems out. |
| Posted by: Val 2004-1-11 9:47:46 PM |
| #1 Amen. In spades. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-1-11 9:41:00 PM |