Griffin's statement

This is a statement released Wednesday by Dr. Mike Griffin, former NASA administrator and now eminent scholar at the University of Alabama in Huntsville:

A few presidents have been very supportive of the U.S. space program, and numerous others have been more or less neutral. But only once previously has a U.S. president recommended to the Congress that this nation take a backward step in space. On that occasion, President Nixon canceled the Apollo program, a decision which in the long light of hindsight I believe will come to be regarded as one of the most significant, yet strategically bankrupt, decisions in human history.

As a dyed in the wool market believer I understand the facts of supply, demand and filling a need. I think that is the argument you are making - the military and NASA supplied the need,demand and money for incentives. As a result, lots of technological progress was made.

There is an interesting book titled Connections by an Englishman named James Burke. It traces the advances of technology (science) from ancient Egypt into modern times. It shows how one thing led to another and when man was in a certain mode he kept refining and improving on the present technology.

Then all of a sudden, often in a non-linear way, technology would head off in a completely different direction and start refining something else.

Years ago the people at MIT were researching artificial intelligence, making computers more like people. They knew that if they were going to make computers like people they needed to know more about how people think. After lots of research by many people they decided that we learned by association. Often, “new” ideas were simply new associations of old ideas.

Naturally that is an oversimplification on my part as there are many, many nuances and details involved in that description.

From that background and much more I think that we would have done the same today. We would have kept refining the extant technology until we had nearly perfected it and then we would have headed off elsewhere.

I use as examples of the evolution of computer languages with each generation compiling more and more code behind fewer and fewer symbols. This allowed more software to be executed in smaller spaces. Along side that the evolution of computer storage and processing power made even more advances possible.

The invention of the transistor by Texas Instruments and other signal processing technology led to smaller and smaller circuit boards which in turn led to smaller finished products.

The USA is the leading country for venture capital and investment in technology. (or at least it was) The money is available for these advancements and private industry is much more efficient than government bureaucracy. In fact, nearly everything developed for the DoD and NASA are done by independent contractors. Yet, they too, are stymied by government rules and bureaucracy.

That is why I think we would have gotten where we are without the government.

But you neglect to address the central point - using some English guy's theory and being that Britain is so heavily involved in manned space flight - that the speed at which advances occur is determined by the need for those advances. Absent incentive, things go slow. War brings huge advances which might or might not ever happen in peace time. Same with manned space exploration. Your analogy does not hold water.

Technological advances are organic in nature. There is a theory which says that organic life tends to remain the same for long periods of time, until something drastic occurs in the environment. At that point, organic life must either change or die. (catastrophic evolution).

Within civilizations, war is that catastrophe which spurs tech revolution/evolution.

Going into space - a radical non-life bearing environment for carbon based organisms must either change or die. Robots in the same environment have challenges but they do not care if they work or not, only the people who sent them there care.

The people who send things into space are living lives which are not threatened directly by the success or failure of the robot.

A man is space is directly threatened. He must change his environment or die. Everything must work right the first time. Just as the soldier in war must have his weapons work as they are supposed to or he dies.

Necessity, Necessity, Necessity....

That is why we need an active, fully supported manned space program as part of our national defense, economy, and our survival as a nation and a species. Not to mention supplying hope and wonder to all the world as the US did in the 60s and 70s.

Your argument is like saying that the Gold Rush was a fools errand, that California would have been settled eventually, that the railroads would have come eventually to cross the continents, and that some one would have bought Louisiana and Alaska eventually.

What do you propose to do when all the other nations, which realize the absolute necessity for manned space flight, build rail guns on the moon and launch them at you? Private companies are not going to be helpful here.

“I doubt that very seriously.”

Then you are seriously misguided, or are too young to remember WWII. Needs but not pressing needs - I need a new computer, and one day I’ll get one vs. my computer just caught fire, and I must get a new one.

Private enterprise is predicated on proffit and how well something works. Risk is bad. NASA is designed to not be profitable and to take huge risks which private companies will not and cannot take.

Private companies will get into space in a big way when it is profitable to do so - but that point can only be reached when someone takes the huge risk to demonstate it could be profitable. Space tourism to LEO is nothing more than a fancy rollercoaster ride for the very very rich. Does nothing, goes nowhere.

NASA, if it had the budget for it, could start colonizing the moon now, but given the same budget, a private company would do only what was profitable - and colonizing the moon is not one of those things.

You are free to keep your head in the sand, maybe that way you will not notice the Chinese lunar rail gun launched rocks headed to your exact location.

My, that was a spirited reply!

Your analogy does not hold water.

It was not my intention to offer an analogy but to offer some of the background which formed my opinion. I said that. Did not your background form your opinion?

I do not find James Burke's (some English guy) recounting of the history of technological change to be at odds with the catastrophic change theory. In fact, in incorporates it. I also do not disagree with you that the speed of change is affected by motivation.

This conversation started off innocently enough with my statement that it was hard for me to see the benefit of continuing support of the space station.

I guess I am not far sightened because it gets harder and harder for me to see the benefit of the space staion. The Hubbell telescope at least furthers our knowledge of space and physics. What are we learning from the space station? The biggest benefits I see so far are to Russia who has benefited from our technology.

I am sure we have benefitted from other technologies to be used in real life but at what price? Would they have otherwise not been discovered or invented?

cripplecreek offered a logical answer:

The ISS is the placeholder but I do agree that its usefuness beyond that is dubious.

The problem is that we never seem to recover from our backsliding. Giving it up is ground that’s hard to regain.

My reply was:

An ongoing problem for the last few years has been deciding for what is it a placeholder? Taking men to Mars? Building the proper craft for the job which can be used for other efforts, too?

Mars may be close astronomically but it is not time wise. A craft that would significantly shorten the time probably could not be manned so what is the purpose?

I don’t favor killing NASA but is getting harder and harder to justify. It has also become a depository for graft, as have nearly all government programs, and a parking place for some liberals who use NASA to reenforce their credentials.

I agree with most of what you said. Our difference seems to be the speed at which change occurs but that is really not a difference because I agree with you, urgency affects incentive and incentive affects speed of change.

This seems to have been the trigger for our exchange:

“Would they have otherwise not been discovered or invented?”

Sure, perhaps in some other country, but definitly not in your life time. And definitely we would not be using the internet as we are now, cell phones would look like a shoe box, computers would be sporting 128 MB of RAM on a 300 MB hard drive for backups from the tape and punch cards in a 800 sq ft room.

To which I replied:

I doubt that very seriously. There were other uses and needs for all those items. American ingenuity and creativity would have advanced all that on their own and much cheaper than NASA could.

That seemed to rile you. However, I will state what I believe since in many cases you extend my argument beyond what I intended.

I think the internet would have advanced to where it is today even though it began as a military need. Its utilization is such that I think someone would have seen the need and filled it. The same with cell phones, computer memory and storage and such and I do believe private enterprise would have done it quicker and cheaper.

I do not extend that belief to things strictly military and that seems to be the argument in favor of NASA's present direction, to be a placeholder for development of things of military use. MY question was - is the space station part of that and if so, how? cripplecreek offered a logical explanation which I took further.

You then said:

Although I find that specious and another extension of my argument I will address it.

I do believe California, the railroads and the entire west would have been developed had there been no gold rush and that Alaska and the Louisiana territories would have been bought at about the same time they were. None of those were reactions to catastrophes anyway.

You further said:

Then you are seriously misguided, or are too young to remember WWII.

I suppose I am seriously misguided then, according to your judgment, as I lived through WWII with two members of the household involved - one in the Army in Europe and the other in the Marines in the Pacific. Those remaining were in constant angst and paid rapt attention to every item of news.

I only bother with such a lengthy response because your saying an analogy I didn't make failed and that I am seriously misguided. That riled me, too. Summary: We basically agree and the differences can't be proved by either of us.

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