Space Watch: History's moment of truth

UPI ^ | 06/02/05 | Robert Zimmerman

[Arkie2]

If NASA didn't have to deal with the manned program it could carry out it's current exploration missions with less than half the money it now gets, so your argument is self defeating.

[wagglebee]

We need to step up the space program. We made more progress in the 60's and early 70's than we have since.

[Lawgvr1955]

If NASA didn't have to deal with the manned program it could carry out it's current exploration missions with less than half the money it now gets, so your argument is self defeating.

I agree with what you say. Let government do it that way, yet let those that are willing to seek a different path the freedom to do so.

Let people like Rutan, et al., do what they wish and they will accomplish more, cheaply and quickly. Let private industry into manned space, and it will be conquered much faster and more fully and cheaply than a bureaucracy can dream.

[Arkie2]

Astronaut Mike Fincke and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka paid tribute to President Ronald Reagan during a video downlink message from the International Space Station. The following is text of that message:
"We, the crew of the International Space Station, join millions of others in mourning the passing of President Reagan, who worked tirelessly to bring the world closer together," Padalka said.

"President Reagan proposed building the Space Station," Fincke said, "which Gennady and I are privileged to be working aboard today for the benefit of all humankind. He spoke to astronauts in space during his tenure in the White House, greeted the crew of Columbia at Edwards Air Force Base after its fourth voyage and mourned the loss of the Challenger crew along with the rest of us.

"President Reagan realized that freedom would ring in a new era of International cooperation and with his vision guiding us, the United States again began to work with our former Cold War rivals, the Russians. Within a decade, the American Space Shuttle Atlantis docked to the Russian Mir Space Station, and President Reagan's Space Station Freedom became the International Space Station.

"As the ninth expedition to the International Space Station, and in honor of President Ronald Reagan, our 40th president, we remember him on behalf of all of NASA with 40 chimes of the ISS's ship's bell. We all mourn his passing as freedom loving people around the world. God bless him, and God bless America."

[Arkie2]

I agree 100%

[Finny]

I've since come to realize that the moon program had absolutely nothing to do with exploration and everthing to do with the cold war. We put men on the moon to prove to the USSR that we could put nukes on their cities at will. It's that simple.

Yes, indeed, I agree. And it was a perfectly noble motivation. The romantic part of myself sees space exploration in romantic terms of adventure and progress. But my pragmatic side recognizes that the true import of America's space program is military. The nation that dominates space technology in the next few centuries, will have military dominion of the planet. That, and that alone, is reason enough for America to aggresively pursue space exploration.

I empathize with your opinion that robotic exploration is the better choice, but I do not agree with it. We are only human, after all; our hearts and minds are inspired by the possibility of being there, not by remote viewing. When the hearts of Americans are engaged, they're more likely to support space funding. And as ol' Gus Grissom said in the movie "The Right Stuff" -- "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr., wasn't inspired to write "High Flight" via remote drones.

[Uncle Fud]

Manned exploration of space would be a great idea. Pushing a button to run an experiment on tadpole fertilization in low earth orbit is not exploration.

[Arkie2]

John Gillespie Magee, Jr., wasn't inspired to write "High Flight" via remote drones.


Unfortunatley for your romanticism, modern war is dominated by technology. It's no longer the man in the plane that wins the dogfight, it's the plane. If the US is to dominate space militarily it will be because we have superior technology up there, not men (or women ;^) )

[Arkie2]

Having a man in the ISS push the button to run the tadpole fertilization experiment is so much better. /sarcasm/

[Arkie2]

I think I misread your post. If I did so I apologize.

[Lawgvr1955]

The reason it even remotely gets its current funding is because of the glimmer of hope it instills in the general populace of opening up a new frontier.

When I was young, the general populace was led to beleive that the "New Frontier" was a short distance away. It is clear to me and I would think most others, that government can't deliver on this promise. As I have stated above, in less than 10 years, man went to the Moon on the government's dime, and we aren't close to going back. All who went that way are now elderly and will soon pass away. The vast populace, who believed that we too would be on the Moon and Mars are entering middle age, clearly never to slip away from our planets gravity.

Let people like Rutan or Trump or whomever thinks he can turn a profit exploring space the opportunity, and we will see a return to space not unlike the time of Kennedy's NASA.

I think that your vision is correct. I only think that the true messenger is not government, but private enterprise.

[Hunble]

Yes we do. Eliminate the manned space program and concentrate on robotic exploration. Much more bang for the buck.

I agree with you absolutely. We know what each and every one of our robotic missions to the planets are doing today. Can anyone tell me what they have done on the Space Station in the last six months?

[JamminJAY]

Proving my point that objectivity has nothing to do with manned space exploration.

To a casual observer like myself what the ISS and manned flight has proved to me is we have a long way to go baby.
As far as STS, it’s done. No more shuttles will be built. We need a new one if we want continue any manned flight, it’s just an obiter it can’t navigate open space.
The ISS proves to me we can’t maintain a outpost in orbit much less think about the moon or beyond. It appears to me, it would be better to develop a self sustainable outpost in orbit first, minimal re-supply minimal refuse.
Then we put this on the Moon. Apply some manufacturing abilities we have to the “Moon dust”. BTW, NASA will pay you money to prove processes to do that right now. The cost of Moon to orbit is much less than from Earth.
Robotics will play a very important role in this also. Sadly there are also problems on this side, namely breakage.
In the end the systems we develop over time will be a combo system man and machine depending and maintaining each other like a hybrid, or as defined by NASA long ago a "cyborg".

Jammer

[Axenolith]

It would get NO money than, get it?!?!

Also, the ISS and MIR have contributed invaluable information on the effects of a space environment on humans and materials. The ISS will always be available to add to also. Hell, for want of an ~$30 million booster, skylab would have provided the same thing.

They key to space exploration and colonization will be some type of act that makes it entirely tax exempt, like the internet. As long as you have to cough up 35 some odd percent of what you earn from it, and have lame attempts at touchy feely globalist BS with the treaty for the moon similar to the Law of the Sea treaty, people will stay out of it...

[Arkie2]

LOL! I don't think NASA would disappear under my scenario. There are many influential and powerful interest groups that would see to it that NASA continued to exist. No government welfare program ever went out of existence, especially one that benefits powerful lobbies like the aerospace industry.

[Finny]

It's no longer the man in the plane that wins the dogfight, it's the plane. If the US is to dominate space militarily it will be because we have superior technology up there, not men ...

From the days of the Red Baron, it was always the plane -- at least, on the surface. The better the planes the Baron got, the more victorious he was in battle. In WWII, Germans had planes that were superior in many ways -- the FW 190, the Me 109, the first operational fighter jet Me 262 ... but the truth is that though air warriors had and have an advantage with better technology, it's the pilot who figures out how to use it to win. An ol' P-51 Mustang flown by Urban Drew in WWII downed three Me 262s, German jets, for crying out loud, in one day. Granted, Drew was able to get them from above because he saw them in the process of taking off. But clearly, the Germans had the superior technology in that case, yet it was the man in the inferior Mustang who won the day.

Pit two fighter planes of equal technology against each other, and it's the best pilot who'll win. I daresay that the same rule will hold true for all eternity, no matter whether it's a plane or a spacecraft. A robot breaks down on Mars, and it's SOL. An aircraft breaks down with a man at the controls, and chances are decent that the man can salvage it and put it back in action. No computer comes even close to the human brain for fast-thinking, strategy, and on-the-spot problem solving under pressure.

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

"It is kind of amazing how quickly a nation can give up in a particular area."

How much of what we think we saw when Neil Armstron 'set foot on the moon' was real? At that time we were all convinced that we were witnessing history being made. Many today legitamately ask the question - did it really happen, or was it all an elaborate staging for the TV cameras?

[Hunble]

Also, the ISS and MIR have contributed invaluable information on the effects of a space environment on humans and materials. The ISS will always be available to add to also. Hell, for want of an ~$30 million booster, skylab would have provided the same thing.

Ok, I will assume that you are correct. However, since they have repeated the exact same experiments since the 1970's, in an effort to understand how the human body reacts to a low-gravity environment, have they not learned anything?

If they have learned how the human body reacts to a low-gravity environment, why do they continue to repeat the same experiments?

Quick quiz: What have the astronauts on the ISS done in the last six months?

[spinestein]

[When I was young, the general populace was led to beleive that the "New Frontier" was a short distance away. It is clear to me and I would think most others, that government can't deliver on this promise....Let people like Rutan or Trump or whomever thinks he can turn a profit exploring space the opportunity, and we will see a return to space not unlike the time of Kennedy's NASA.]


I think this is largely correct.

NASA has not shown any results with manned missions since Apollo ended because they have had no worthwhile goals (just going round and round the Earth doing very expensive experiments.)


It seems to me that a goal of establishing a NUMBER of permanent colonies on the Moon, Mars, and a few other bodies would be very worthwhile and something that has enormous (long term) benefits for humanity. We have the technology to start now, it just requires the decision to commit to doing it.

[Arkie2]

Great, except now you don't need the pilot. The F22 was the last manned fighter to ever be built in this country and there are those in the defense establishment who say it's a waste of money since unmanned fighters can already do a better job even with current technology.

As for your comment regarding man's superiority at correcting errors, computers are now designed with software that allows them to recover an aircraft a pilot would bail out of. So much for the man in the machine argument.

I say all this even though I'm a professional pilot. Airliners could now be designed without pilots. The reason they are kept onboard is because the traveling public isn't yet ready to accept computerized aircraft. Frankly I'm glad I'm near retirement from the flying game. If I had 20 or 30 years to go I'd be worried Robbie Robot was going to take my job!