Replies

I agree with him. Space adventure is not about low earth orbit taxi drivers running spiders into space.

It is about the hope, dreams and wonder of the future of the human race; it is about loss; love; life and prosperity. It is about the natural human desire to explore and to reach to the fartherest points known...it is about heroes and daring. It is about the extreme.

We should be on the MOOM and MARS now. In over 20 years of space shuttle launches what great adventures have we been exposed to?

Space Trucking

Well we had a lot of luck on Venus
We always have a ball on Mars
We're meeting all the groovy people
We've rocked the Milky way so far
We danced around the Borealice
We're space trucking round the stars

2 times :
Come on, come on, come on,
Let's go space trucking

Remember when you did the woonshot
And Ponny Treeper lid the way
We'd move to the Canaveral moonstop
And every night would dance and sway
We got music in our solar system
We're space trucking round the stars

2 times :
Come on, come on, come on,
Let's go space trucking

The fireball that we rooled was moving
And now we got the new machine
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the treaks said,
Man those cats can really sing"
They got music in their solar systems
They're rocked around the Milky way
They danced around the Borealice
They're space trucking every day

Many times :
Come on, come on, come on,
Let's go space trucking.

One of the things that's started to bug me over the last few days is the constant references to the need for "space exploration" and the acceptance of risks involved.

With all due respect -- those seven astronauts were not involved in much "space exploration" at all. The author makes this point very well. We stopped exploring space (from a manned perspective, that is) the moment we decided not to go beyond the moon. Maybe that's a practical reality, but let's not pretend that we are pushing any limits here -- we're just playing the odds until they catch up to us.

I agree that there needs to be a serious assessment about the future of the shuttle program. Not that we should eliminate it altogether, but that we should stop the costly, dangerous use of human crew members on missions that could be accomplished without them.

Columbus was truly an explorer, but if he dragged an extra 100 people along who had no real function on his ships just for the hell of it, we'd be calling him a moron.

Yet the shuttle has become its slave, hauling up huge pieces of equipment and bringing up astronauts to do the construction work.

It's worse than that: the ISS has become--as it was designed to be--the Shuttle's justification.

Here's what the space program should look like, right now. Robotic exploration, first and foremost. A heavy lift vehicle (Saturn V was a nice one). A simple, inexpensive capsule for moving astronauts (Soyuz). A simple, inexpensive cargo vehicle (Progress). A space station constructed of a few (preferably one) large, self-sufficient modules assembled on Earth and launched in one piece to orbit with the heavy lift vehicle (like Skylab, only not half-assed). A ground-controlled space tug capable of hauling and manipulating large pieces of equipment (station modules, for example).

If we had all of that, we could do FAR more in space, FAR more safely, for FAR less money. We have (or had) all of the necessary pieces except the space tug.

Of course we will fly again. And fly more complex missions, to farther venues. And of course we will do that because as human beings, and as Americans, we could do no other.
I was delighted to hear Charles Krauthamer express these views on Sunday on Fox with Brit Hume. I am pleased to see the same views expressed in this piece on Townhall. (Like many Freepers, I never miss a Krauthammer byline.)
I also wrote similar sentiments before Krauthammer did. My latest column for UPI, first link below, was submitted to UPI late Saturday, though it is not on the wire yet. It may, I think, fairly be read as a companion-piece to Krauthammer's.

Congressman Billybob

Click for latest column for UPI, "Those in Peril on the Sea" (Not yet on UPI wire, or FR.)

As the politician formerly known as Al Gore has said, Buy my book, "to Restore Trust in America"

I'll add another comment to Krauthammer's, and it was something I first said after the Challenger disaster in 1986: You can be sure that the space program is ripe for a disaster when the sub-plots and stories about individual crew members become bigger than the missions themselves.

I knew the space program was going nowhere when I heard that some guy from the Back-End Boys (or whatever their name is) wanted to train for a trip on the shuttle.

The biggest problem with the space program is the inability to come to terms with and admit that the shuttle is a failure. At least part of the reason this can't be admitted is that the blame lies with congress.

The shuttle is so hideously expensive it precludes anything but itself. It should have been replaced ten years ago. In 1986, it became abundantly clear that it was never going to provide the number of flights needed, nor was it going to reduce the cost of getting to orbit. In fact, it greatly increased it.

Lets first outline goals of reducing mission cost and decreasing turnaround time. Once the problem of reaching orbit is solved, the rest can be tackled.

I think NASA needs to rethink their mission statement to include colonization of other worlds. If any current program doesn't work towards this goal, then it's terminated. That would mean the shuttle goes and ISS construction is halted immediately. They would immediately begin construction of a forward base at a lagrange point to facilitate contruction and servicing of spacecraft bound for the moon,Mars and near-Earth asteroids. Then they would build outposts on all of these and begin laying the groundwork for colonization. That's the best way to pay tribute to those that have given their lives for the exploration of space. In the back of the astronauts minds, the dream of space colonization is what they all yearned for. Why don't we at last acknowledge what this all about officially and stop playing these expensive contractor games?

What an end. What a dead end. After millennia of dreaming of flight, the human race went from a standing start at Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years. And yet in the next 34 years, we've gone nowhere. We've gone backward. We've retreated from the moon and spent our time spinning around endlessly in low-Earth orbit.

Very true and sobering. That sums up the whole space program.

Frankly, I am far less interested in Mars than in the asteroids. We need to develop an infrastructure so that asteroids can be nudged into (safely far away) earth orbit (or maybe in the same solar orbit as the earth, but leading or trailing us). The asteroids could then be mined, and the minerals processed into manufacturing feedstocks in space. We also need to develop massive solar energy farms in space. There is also speculation that He3 can be mined on the moon, and that this can become a feedstock for fusion power (and fusion reactors may also have to be built in space due to their size and potential hazards). With energy and material supplies developed, manufacturing operations can commence in space. The goal should be to develop a self-sustaining infrastructure in space, so that we don't need to send up everything from earth. Perhaps it could even get to the point where space is the preferred location for most manufacturing operations, yielding some huge environmental benefits on earth.

Most of this commercial activity can and should be private sector. But there are numerous crucial things that the govt will have to do to develop the infrastructure so that it can become possible.

Western exploration and settlement didn't happen because of scientific curiosity -- it happened because there were resources to be had (gold, land, etc.) Space exploration will have to be driven by the same basic economic realities.