We should halt NASA's Manned Space Program for a while,
until we find a reason for it.
The stated justifications for the Manned Space Program are:
We need to discover the wonderful riches out there in space.
But we've explored "near" space (Earth orbit and the Moon) pretty
well, and there isn't much of interest there. Hostile
territory, few resources (except the soil of the Moon does contain metals and oxygen,
and they've found water on Mars;
Homesteading the planets),
no atmosphere, little gravity, dangerous radiation, etc. Why keep going there again
and again ? If we had discovered a decent atmosphere and
protection from radiation, the situation would be different; we'd have a
reason to keep going back. But we haven't. Space is a desert !
Keep using robot craft to look for a reasonable environment, but don't
pour men and huge resources into it unless something worthwhile is found.
"Medium" space (the other planets) is a different story.
Unmanned missions to other planets make sense;
lots we don't know about them, and the benefits could be big.
And I'll bet we could find volunteers for a one-way (suicide)
manned mission to Mars, if we had the political stomach for it.
But what we know about Mars suggests it also is very like a desert;
not much useful there [3/2007: that's changed a bit, with reports of lots of water-ice on Mars].
Little atmosphere, less gravity, less solar energy, few resources (some
hope there's water underground, but it's not proven [this is changing]),
no protection from solar radiation, etc.
"Far" space (outside the solar system) is mostly out of reach,
unless we come up with faster-than-light travel.
We can make great new things in space (ball bearings, vaccines, and, uh, uh ...).
They've been saying this for 40 years, and haven't come up
with much yet. Paying $10k to put a pound of stuff in Earth orbit ($25k to the Moon)
makes most things economically infeasible. They should stop
burning fuel and money doing visually impressive stunts, and put all efforts
into getting the cost to orbit down to $10/pound (maybe via a
space elevator ?). Then start
up the manned program again.
We need to learn the effects of space on the human body.
We need a space program to find out the effects of
a space program on the human body ? Doesn't make sense.
We get all kinds of great spinoffs from the space program.
There have been some neat little
spinoffs,
but we probably could have developed them a lot more cheaply if we'd just
decided to develop them.
We got even more great spinoffs from World War II:
RADAR, jet engines, computers, atomic energy, etc.
By the same logic, maybe we should have another world war to get some more spinoffs.
In fact, military weapon development in general is a great creator of spinoffs;
it always pushes for the best possible materials, energies, and technologies.
If it's spinoffs we want, put the money into the military ?
I wonder how many of the spinoffs came from the "unmanned"
part of the space program ? We certainly didn't need men in space to
get weather satellites or GPS or solar panels, for example.
Many of the claimed spinoffs did not come from the space program.
Some people claim transistors (invented by Bell Labs, unrelated to space),
integrated circuits, computers, Teflon (invented by Dupont in 1938), and other things that
did not come from the space program.
We need to have frontiers and be explorers.
We know very little about the oceans, the mind, how to live
sustainably and peacefully on Earth, how to communicate with intelligent animals,
how to conquer poverty and disease,
lots of things. There are plenty of "frontiers" to work on. We know less
about many of them than we do about "near" space.
From article by Charles Krauthammer in 2/17/2003 issue of "The Weekly Standard":
Saying we should address problems on Earth before going to space is
"a perennial excuse for going nowhere, for dreaming nothing".
And he says the "romance" of going to space "is reason enough" for a manned
program for bases on the Moon and Mars.
But there is plenty of "romance" to be had here on Earth.
Does "romance" have to involve burning lots of fuel and going a long distance
and planting the flag somewhere ? That's a NASCAR-type attitude: loud noises and
lots of beer.
And I challenge the notion that humans are necessarily explorers.
Sure, there have been some famous episodes of exploration in history,
such as the opening of the New World (N and S America). But I would
say most of history has not been characterized by rampant exploration.
In fact, if you wanted to pick one activity most characteristic of human
life throughout history, it probably would be something like farming or war,
not exploration. Few people are explorers, either physically or mentally.
We need to spread off the earth in case we blow it up or it gets
wiped out by an asteroid.
Yes, it would be nice to have a spare planet. But looking
for one can be done with unmanned probes, and there's no
feasible place near enough for a manned mission any time soon.
We'd make more progress toward this goal by financing research into
suspended animation, deep-space ramjets, space-sails, space elevators, etc rather than in
blowing the money on sending manned rockets to nearby rocks again and again.
By the way, I am/was a computer programmer, so I'm no
anti-science Luddite. But the Manned Space Program just
doesn't make sense. Except as a government-financed employment program.
Also by the way, I wrote this before the 2nd space shuttle
blew up. And even if the shuttle didn't cost $500 million
per launch and explode once every 65 flights, it still
should be stopped: it has no rational purpose.
From article by Charles Krauthammer in 2/17/2003 issue of "The Weekly Standard":
The space station and shuttle are "an enormous risk for very little payoff",
and "the entire shuttle/station idea was a wrong turn" and "it does not serve as
a waystation and landing base on the way to the Moon and Mars"
and "No one even pretends that it is doing serious science".
From James Surowiecki in The New Yorker 1/26/2004:
... there is no economic case for space exploration. If the goal is to increase employment
or spur technological innovation, then the dollars invested in NASA would be better spent elsewhere ...
... Many of the innovations we credit to the space program - such as
Teflon and Velcro - were actually invented outside it.
Others originated in space research, but the return the government
got on its R&D investment was fairly slim. To
invent somethig like the CAT scan, to use one of Bush's examples of
NASA innovations, it would be a lot cheaper and wiser simply
to invest in medical research, rather than in moon shots. ...
When John F. Kennedy announced his moon program, in 1961, the
budget deficit was about 3 percent of the total budget. ...
This year, the budget deficit is about 17 percent of the
budget - when you exclude Social Security, 36 percent. ...
you have to wonder where we're going to get the money.
Bush's plan [to go to Mars] sidesteps the budget question by proposing that all
the spending be backloaded. ... The President gets the credit for the big, bold idea,
and his successors get the bill. ...
... 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 2000 tons of equipment into earth orbit ...
...
... There is nothing — nothing, no thing, not one darned cotton-picking thing you can
name — of either military, or commercial, or scientific, or national importance to be done in space,
that could not be done twenty times better and at one thousandth the cost, by machines rather than human beings. ...
Many of the advocates of manned space exploration and colonization seem caught up
in a dream, in defiance of reality. They've probably read too much Science Fiction
(which I love, but it's not reality). They seem to feel that if they could just
get all of us to share the same dream, and dream it hard enough, it
will come true. But that's not the way life works most of the time.
We know enough about the reality of what's in space, and the "numbers"
of space travel (money and time and distance and mass), to know that
this dream is physically impossible (until some amazing breakthroughs are made in propulsion,
and maybe also terraforming, and medicine).
Comparing manned space exploration to the colonization of the Americas by Europe in the
1600's is an invalid analogy. Did the colonists have to bring their own oxygen and water and
food with them, not just for the crossing but for their whole stay ?
Did they have to wear radiation protection or live underground ?
Did they have to bring every plant and animal they wanted to use ?
Did they have to adjust to completely different gravity and temperatures ? The first explorers
found a viable environment in the New World, so colonists followed. We have not
found a viable environment in space.
The Mount Everest analogy:
I think planning to establish manned bases on the Moon or Mars would be like
planning to establish a permanent manned outpost on the peak of Mount Everest.
All three outposts would be exciting to the "dreamers", right ? A challenge,
pushing back the frontiers, an avenue to do some science, good visuals, etc.
Of course, in all three places, we'd have to haul every bit of oxygen, food and energy needed
up a long, expensive supply route.
In all three places, the hostile environment
would be trying to kill all humans, all the time. Cold, dryness, lack of oxygen, cosmic radiation, etc.
All three places would offer a miserable daily experience, huddling inside a dome or two,
living dormitory-style, every bit of space and air and energy and food at a premium,
exercise limited.
Similar to the research stations in Antarctica (except air is not a problem there,
and supplies come via large ships).
In all three places (Moon, Mars, peak of Everest), we have a fair idea of the situation: we've looked for
important resources, and come up empty. So the amount of new science that could
be done is limited. For example, any scientific investigation of biology there
would be limited to spores and fungi and bacteria and such. Little or no chance of growing
anything, finding any more complicated life, etc.
What we need to find on a planet or moon, to support sustained manned presence:
Gravity. Human bodies do not react well to sustained zero gravity.
Atmosphere. For protection from UV, for breathing, for manufacturing.
Magnetosphere. For protection from cosmic and solar radiation.
Water. For human consumption, for growing food, for manufacturing.
Oxygen. For human consumption.
Raw materials to make fuel. Need energy for transportation, living, manufacturing.
Platform to grow food. Soil, nitrogen, other elements ?
Raw materials for manufacturing.
Reasonable temperatures. We can compensate for extreme temperatures, but that
will increase costs of everything else.
Perhaps every one of these can be worked around, by bringing things from Earth or
by living on the planet/moon only for short periods of time, and by not growing food or
doing manufacturing. But transportation from
Earth is very expensive and very slow, and costs and distances preclude
short-term missions.
Distance rules out anywhere but the moon, Venus, and Mars (for quite a while, at least).
Termperature seems to rule out Venus, and maybe the moon.
Gravity rules out the moon.
Atmosphere rules out the moon, and also Mars to some extent.
Magnetosphere rules out the moon and Mars (not sure about Venus).
Very limited traces of water and oxygen on moon and Mars.
So nowhere reasonably close is looking feasible.
Things that are not valid arguments for or against the Manned Space Program:
Risk / danger.
It doesn't bother me at all that space travel is dangerous; the
astronauts knew that when they signed up. That's not a reason for or against the
manned space program.
Competition.
It doesn't matter whether the Chinese or a private company or anyone else starts up
a manned space program. Let them waste their money. But I don't want my government
to waste my money on such a program. (An estimated $150 billion spent
on Shuttle and Space Station from 1971 to 2005; for what result ? Conservative estimates
of a Mars mission are in the same neighborhood, another $150 billion; for what result ?
Yes, these numbers are smaller than, say, the cost of the war in Iraq, but
that's not a justification for spending them.)
And if someone else makes it to the Moon, they won't "own" the Moon or space.
Does the USA "own" the Moon by virtue of having made it there first ?
Do the Russians "own" Earth orbit ?
Often the most profitable company in a sector is not the first, the one that
spent all the money to prove a technology and make all the mistakes,
but the second or third one into that market. If it turns out to be a viable market.
Cost (which is different from cost/benefit).
Big, ambitious, leading-edge projects are costly; no way around it.
I'd support a manned space program if the likely benefits were equally huge.
But they're not; we've scoped out Earth orbit and Moon and Mars a fair amount,
and it looks like there's not much benefit in any of them. That's too bad; would
have been nice if we'd found some viable place. We should keep looking a bit more,
with unmanned missions.
Military implications, including past military involvement with the space program.
Any advanced technology or new terrain will be of interest to the military.
The only way to avoid this would be to stop all development of all kinds, in space
and medicine and materials and computing and all other technologies.
The Mars Society makes a case for going to
Mars, sending an unmanned vehicle first, manufacturing rocket fuel on Mars, sending
a refueled vehicle back to Earth to fetch men, then back to Mars. I don't believe
their cost numbers, I think they minimize the gravity and radiation effects of the
long manned voyages, there are a lot of moving parts (opportunities for failure) in their plan,
and I think they exaggerate the joys of living on the surface of Mars.
Private companies (Bert Rutan) have made it to "space", but that achievement is
deceptive. They've made it (briefly) to suborbital space; it takes about 50 times
more energy to make it to stable Earth orbit. And they did it by replicating old NASA
technology; nothing new.
