The Folly of Our Age. The space shuttle.

National Review Online ^ | today | John Derbyshire

[Tanniker Smith]

It was designed by committee on a shoestring. And it served as the excuse Carter needed to end the Apollo missions.

[garyhope]

I think we should use the shuttle to put a satellite with nuclear weapons aimed at the middle East in orbit and tell them about it. Any attack on America by Muslims or their agents and ka-boom, they're gone.

[Strategerist]

The "bottom line" was a constant focus and concern of the great age of exploration that people constantly refer to; Columbus, Hudson, etc.; exploration for exploration's sake is a very recent phenomenon of the 19th and 20th centuries (Perry going to the Pole, etc.)

[NautiNurse]

Columbus did not find the riches, spices, nor the faster route to the Far East upon which the Spanish rulers had banked. He found hot chili peppers.

[Steve_Seattle]

Speaking as a rank amateur and ignoramus, I have always viewed the shuttle as a grotesque half-way measure, a hydrid technology that was both ugly and dangerous. The alternative? Well, I've already admitted to being an ignoramus.

[doc30]

If the argument is to be made that machines are more effective and cheaper to operate in space, make it without resorting to the emotionalism of "someone might get hurt".

I agree with your sentiments to a point. To me it's that machines can do more for a lot less money than manned flight. I'm not against manned flight, but rather I'm for the best science return for dollars spent. We could do a lot, lot more without the shuttles devouring NASA's budget.

[Strategerist]

Technologies developed for the space program gave us home computers, cell phones, CT scans, improved cardiac monitoring in hospitals, more fuel efficient and lower maintenance cars etc.

This argument is often a massive overstretch. You can't make a case that none of the above wouldn't have existed without the space program, and also it would have been more efficient to spend the same amount of money on simply developing medical technology without the roundabout method of having a space program and hoping for spinoffs.

[lOKKI]

We agree. I don't dispute that point. What I'm objecting to is the gratuitous use of an emotional argument (dead puppies!!!) to sway the debate

[Rodney King]

I think we should use the shuttle to put a satellite with nuclear weapons aimed at the middle East in orbit and tell them about it. Any attack on America by Muslims or their agents and ka-boom, they're gone.

I think we should claim the moon as rightfully ours, and put ICBM silos on it.

[Steve_Seattle]

hydrid

That is, hybrid.

[biblewonk]

This is excellent!

[finnman69]

Surely there is better technology available. Cant we do better than 1970's technology.

[Rodney King]

Columbus did not find the riches, spices, nor the faster route to the Far East upon which the Spanish rulers had banked. He found hot chili peppers.

True, but he was pursuing wealth, and the land that he claimed for Spain and the path that he paved led to that wealth. Are we in space in search of wealth? No. Did we claim the moon? No. The Columbus analogy is simply false.

[biblewonk]

snip--There is no longer much pretense that shuttle flights in particular, or manned space flight in general, has any practical value. You will still occasionally hear people repeating the old NASA lines about the joys of microgravity manufacturing and insights into osteoporesis, but if you repeat these tales to a materials scientist or a physiologist, you will get peals of laughter in return. To seek a cure for osteoporesis by spending $500 million to put seven persons and 2,000 tons of equipment into earth orbit is a bit like… well, it is so extravagantly preposterous that any simile you can come up with falls flat. It is like nothing else in the annals of human folly.

OH MAN I LOVE THIS GUY!

[shekkian]

Does he have anything to say about privately funded space flight, like Spaceship One?

[chilepepper]

IMHO the shuttle is a wonderful concept very poorly executed

the problem is that TOO MUCH MONEY was available -- rather than use cleverness to solve problems, more money was thrown at it.

a perfect example is the japanese space program - there are actually TWO of them, one that is government run, the other that is run on a shoestring by a group of universities. the LATTER group is so successful that the government actually has restraints in place (no launch vehicle wider than 1m for example) so they won't continue to embarrass the bloated and ineffectual government agency.

so, with the 1m restraint in place, the shoestring group put a satellite around the moon (!!!!!!)

[BlazingArizona]

Robert Park (a University of Maryland physicist)

...and anti-technology leftist crank.

The real problem with the Shuttle is not that it is statistically any more dangerous than any other craft designed to explore a new frontier, but that the government runs it. This means that the people who are willing to take the risks needed to do meaningful eploration are being prevented from doing so because NASA cannot, for political reasons, afford to take the risks needed for interesting missions.

Time to turn over the risky stuff to Burt Rutan. His crews will be the first to explore Europa.

[tx_eggman]

To abandon all euphemism and pretense, they died for pork, for votes, for share prices, and for thrills (immediate in their own case, vicarious in ours).

I mean no insult to their memories, and I doubt they would take offense. You'd be wrong on that one, idiot
I am certain that I myself would not - certain, in fact, that, given the opportunity, I would gleefully do what they did, with all the dangers ... I should be embarrassed to ask the rest of you to pay for the adventure, though.

Even with two young kids who need me, and a wife who (I feel fairly sure) would miss me, ... I'd understand if she didn't... I would still, if given the opportunity to go into space tomorrow, be on the next flight to Cape Canaveral.

That's the draw, bucky. The problem is the shuttle program and its bureaucracy, NOT manned space flight.

Looking at photos from remote control cameras may be safer but without a living, breating presence, without the goal of footprints ... it won't get the job done. Manned is not as efficient ... but it's the only way to scratch the itch.

[Frank L]

"I agree the shuttle is the proverbial horse designed by a committee, but as a whole the US manned space program has reaped many benefits that we take for granted. Technologies developed for the space program gave us home computers, cell phones, CT scans, improved cardiac monitoring in hospitals, more fuel efficient and lower maintenance cars etc."

Tang. You forgot Tang.