Every so often I become worried about whether we’ll have a future in space. Right now my thoughts run this way because we’re sacrificing so much to go boldly where we went 40 years ago.
The robotic Mars exploration program has been truncated, the Terrestrial Planet Finder and Europa Orbiter have been cancelled, work to expand the International Space Station has halted, the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts has been shut down, and the list goes on and on. All because this President says that we should send humans to the moon again for no really obvious reason.
The moon program will go away soon. It’s already limping because Bush hasn’t actually requested from Congress the cash he promised NASA when he announced his “Vision for Space Exploration” in January 2004. It seems unlikely that the programs scrapped to make up for those missing funds will be revived immediately, however. There’s the little matter of a trillion-dollar deficit fueled by ill-advised tax cuts and the monstrous Iraq debacle.
After Bush, after the Vision for Space Exploration, after the restoration of fiscal responsibility - what then for spaceflight?
I want to see a human-robotics partnership. It’s an old concept, and it was making serious in-roads into NASA’s thinking before the Bush Vision. It boils down to using astronauts when it makes sense, and using robots when it makes sense. By “makes sense,” I mean when the benefits outweigh the costs. The tricky part of this is that using astronauts only occasionally makes sense, and that alarms some powerful political players.
There are several reasons why using astronauts only makes sense occasionally. For one thing, there’s the financial cost. Piloted spaceflight is expensive. It’s tough to come up with anything that astronauts can do that justifies the cost of doing it.
There’s also the risk. Every piloted spaceflight is dangerous. Piloted spaceflight is not routine. Every piloted spacecraft can fail in many, many ways. People routinely do dangerous things - for example, smoking cigarettes and neglecting sunblock. When it comes to spaceflight, however, there’s a lot of risk aversion. Americans don’t want their astronauts to die to conduct obscure experiments.
Robots are relatively cheap. Take Opportunity and Spirit, for example. The twin Mars Exploration Rovers have been at work on Mars since early 2004. They cost less than one Shuttle flight.
Risk means something different for robots. No one wants to see $500-million robotic spacecraft fail, but if one does, no one dies.
Now, before you accuse me of being anti-astronaut, let me say that I think people belong in space. Eventually, people will settle the Solar System. I think that it’s inevitable.
Astronauts have vital roles to play in space. Their chief role right now is to serve as laboratory subjects in Earth orbit. That’s not dramatic, but it’s a duty that this generation of astronauts has to future generations. We need more data on how people operate in space so that we can design countermeasures. We did not evolve to live in space, so we have to use our brains to adapt to it, and we can’t do that unless we understand the problems we face.
Though it’s commonly assumed that people can settle the moon and Mars, the fact is that we don’t know if people can survive for long periods in moon or Mars gravity. The moon and Mars are smaller and less massive than Earth. Lunar surface gravity is only one-sixth strong as Earth surface gravity. Martian gravity is only one-third as strong. Is the moon’s gravity strong enough to stop the bone loss that plagues astronauts in weightlessness? Is Mars’ gravity enough?
It might be a good idea to build a space station in Earth orbit that can rotate at different speeds, enabling it to simulate different levels of gravity. Such a station might serve as a prototype for a rotating spaceship for eventual piloted missions to Mars. In the meantime, a centrifuge module for the International Space Station might be a good idea. (Such a module was another victim of Bush’s Vision.)
In a human-robotic partnership, robots could support human exploration missions. They could scout out landing sites, test new technologies for piloted spacecraft, assemble habitats, pre-deploy equipment, locate resources such as water, relieve humans of the need to perform dull routine maintenance, tote equipment for exploring humans (like a pack mule), and venture into places too risky for humans - for example, into deep crevasses and caves where traces of martian life might persist.
They could also be used to ensure that humans do not contaminate other worlds. Space suits inevitably leak, spraying moisture and microbes in all directions. The first piloted mission to Mars might see astronauts remain in Mars orbit on board a spacecraft revolving to provide Mars gravity. The astronauts would study their own bodies’ reactions to Mars gravity while they remote-controlled biologically clean robots operating on Mars. Using the robots, astronauts could collect uncontaminated samples and launch them to their spacecraft in orbit for immediate analysis. Missions similar to this were first proposed in the 1960s.
Remote control is just one way that humans could support their robot partners. They could also repair damaged robots and upgrade systems on especially valuable and costly robotic spacecraft. The Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions are the prototype for this form of support.
If NASA wholeheartedly embraced the concept of a human-robotic partnership as the basis for its programs, then the number of piloted missions might shrink to one or two per year. The funding freed up could be applied to more and better robotic science missions. Robots could then reveal many new wonders. Freed-up funding could also be applied to the development of advanced technologies that would reduce the cost and risk of piloted missions.
I suspect that, after a time, people would no longer be satisfied to see robots do all the exploring. At some point, the decision would be made to send humans in their wake. By then, we would understand human reactions to the space environment. By then, new space technologies tested during robotic missions would be ready to make piloted missions easier and safer. By then, we’d know how astronauts could best contribute to the further exploration of the Solar System.
It’s possible that, by then, we’d be ready to send humans to other worlds to settle indefinitely, not merely to improve on the exploration capabilities of robots. Since humans first left Africa, most exploration has really been settlement. Robots could set up living places for settler-explorers. Together, robots and humans could open the door to the most exciting form of exploration of all - the exploration of the alternatives new environments create for human societies.
Why?
By that I mean both, why do you think it’s inevitable, and what would our reasons be for doing it?
David, I read your blog entry earlier today and came back this afternoon to make a comment about human spaceflight vs. robots. But Lindsay’s comment, above, is fascinating. Lindsay is our resident 22-year-old blogger (and a very excellent blogger). I’m fascinated by her asking why we would ultimately settle elsewhere in the solar system.
I think this interests me so much because - when I was her age - I was very starry-eyed and felt, definitely, that it was inevitable that humanity would spread outward into space and ultimately settle on Mars, perhaps in space colonies farther out in the solar system.
But now I’m not sure I feel that way anymore.
I guess you do still feel, David, that - even if we use robots for early exploration of the solar system - human space exploration will happen someday. Is that a correct characterization of how you feel?
So … I’m curious now, too.
I think using robots is a great idea. Using them for certain tasks would only help us further our space exploartion, cheaply and safely. Afterall, our goal is to learn more about space, who says we can’t be efficient at doing so?
One very basic part of human nature is that we are curious. I think we will continue to send people into space because people want to go, want to see, want to experience the unknown, or experience it vicariously through another person. Plus, we are always up for a challenge. You’ve got to give our species credit for that. It doesn’t mean that I will go to the moon, or you. But humans do not seem to be content to stay where they are.
Maybe we’ll fail at colonizing space. But I do not think that any danger will stop us from trying.
Eleanor
I think David’s right that it’s inevitable that we’ll reach out into the solar system. We’re reaching out there now. Sending robots into the deep ocean helped pave the way to send humans deeper, and sending robots into space is helping pave the way to send humans farther than ever before. Robots cost less now, and I definitely agree that more robots now will mean less dead astronauts and space pioneers later. It’s not anti-astronaut to think we need to send more robots up first. How many astronauts die when a robot explodes in space? Zero. How many when we lose a shuttle? All of them. I definitely feel that blowing up robots is better for space exploration than dogs, monkeys or people. We use machines for so many things here on Earth, robots are just the right machines to use in space.
Why will we reach into space? Why do we care that the Mars rover found pure water trapped as ice on Mars? Because someday we’ll be drinking it. It’s just economics. We never stop finding ways to tap Earthly resources further, up to and beyond the point of completely destroying them, reducing supply. With 6.5 billion humans and more on the way (is it 9 or 11 billion by 2050?), the demand keeps increasing. Not too far back in our past, people wondered why anyone would pay to ship Chinese goods when local American goods cost so much less, but now it’s obvious that their greater supply of labor meets our demand more easily, even after the additional cost of shipping. How long until rocketing those Martian ice caps back to Earth is cheaper than cleaning the little, heavily polluted water that’s left here? A very long time, I hope. But humans use resources, and with this many of us, some resources in space will become cheaper than their counterparts on Earth, and when that happens, we will go out there to get them.
While it’s less risky to send robots to explore for us, eventually the explorer types will want to be there, first. And as Ben said, it can pay to be first.
I like what Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society said recently in an article in the Independent, “My view about manned space flight is that, as a scientist and practical man, I’m against it, but as a human being I’m in favour of it.”
I definitely agree with the sentiments being expressed here about the human spirit and the need to expand and explore.
I guess I just have the feeling that nature - including nature on other worlds - might be vastly more powerful than we are.
Good reason to send robots at first!
The Earth is a metaphor for the shape of the Universe. As humans explore the Earth by seeking out new horizons, they will do the same with space. No matter where you explore there will always be a new horizon.
As Eimster said above, humans are curious. I know I am.
Lots of great comments! I’m not sure that I can address all of them, but I’ll try to get the lion’s share.
Why is it inevitable that humans will venture outward, beyond low-Earth orbit? Anything can and does happen. Wait long enough, and chemical elements turn into 22-year-old bloggers named Lindsay.
As for reasons, I doubt that we can predict them. That sounds like a cop-out, I know, but who could have predicted Apollo?
I’m pretty sure we won’t send people out to obtain resources like water. The cost would be collosal. No, there’s nothing for it but to control our population. Can we do that? There’s reason to hope.
Earth is not really a metaphor for space, Shannon, if by that you mean that Mars is Jamestown or the U.S. West. The most hospitable place on Mars is far less hospitable than the South Pole in winter. Exploring Mars is like exploring the deep ocean trenches in terms of our dependence on advanced technologies - only worse. We are designed to live on the Earth. We are not designed to live anywhere else. Humans basically walked to every corner of the Earth before recorded history began; they cannot walk to the moon or Mars. It’s a whole new ball game.
Here’s something I wrote about Mars a number of years ago. Every so often I recycle it.
“Mars is the Solar System planet most like Earth, but only because the other planets are even more alien and inhospitable. A human dropped unprotected on Mars’ red sands would gasp painfully in the thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, lose consciousness in seconds, and perish within a two minutes. Solar ultraviolet radiation would blacken the corpse, which would freeze rapidly, then mummify as the parched atmosphere leached away its moisture.”
And that’s on a good day. That’s the version that will appear in my forthcoming book HUMANS TO MARS. You should go buy a few copies when the University Press of Florida publishes it late next year.
By the way, a trip into Earth orbit is like getting a bad flu. Half of all astronauts puke their brains out for a day or a week after they reach orbit, and then puke their brains out after they return to Earth. And we have the most experience with trips to Earth orbit. Human spaceflight is all about sending fragile organisms to a place where they will be abused.
One thing is certain: if we’re to extend our reach beyond Apollo’s 72-hour lunar surface stays, we need to answer some questions and lay some technological groundwork. Right now, it’s premature to talk about settlements on other worlds - or even long visits to other worlds - for the reasons I gave in my post. We simply do not know whether people can survive in partial gravity - that is, gravity less than Earth gravity. Rabid space fans will tell you that that’s not an issue, but that’s because they are rabid space fans. There are other issues, too.
And, we lack the tools we need. Various committees and advisory panels have recommended increasing the share of NASA’s budget devoted to new technology development for more than 20 years. It runs at about 2% of NASA’s budget right now, and programs that 2% funds tend to start and stop frequently (usually they quit just when things get interesting). As the Ride report stated in 1987: “Until advanced technology programs. . . are initiated, the exciting goals of human exploration will always remain 10 to 20 years in the future.” In 1988, the National Resource Council estimated that NASA needed to spend $1 billion per year on space technology development to make up for past neglect. That has never happened. How to get that $1 billion a year? Cancel a Shuttle flight. They cost about $1 billion each.
By the way, I didn’t say anything about the new Crew Exploration Vehicle NASA is trying to develop. I say “trying” because it hasn’t received enough cash to do the job. The CEV, aka Orion, promises to reduce the cost of piloted spaceflight to something reasonable by abandoning a lot of the pretensions that dictated the Shuttle’s design. It’s non-specialized, so it could be adapted to many interesting missions. It’ll still be costly compared to most robots, but it’s a hopeful step forward. I support it even though I think that returning to the moon is a waste of time and money.
An example of a technology we’ll need to develop to send humans out of low-Earth orbit is advanced life support. Basically, that’s about recycling everything we can. If we tried to do a Mars expedition with the life support technology we use on the International Space Station, we’d need to send along many tons of water, air, food, etc., etc. That’s just not practical, given foreseeable launch costs.
Robots can help lay some of the technological groundwork. Obviously, they don’t have much need for life support, but a Mars lander could, for example, test new lightweight heatshield materials, or could demonstrate making rocket fuel for the return trip from martian air. We came very close to seeing an experiment testing the latter on the 2001 Mars Surveyor lander, but that lander was grounded after the 1999-2000 Mars Climate Orbiter/Mars Polar Lander failures. The experiment remains in storage.
I also think that robots can inspire people as much or more than astronauts do. I don’t know about anyone else, but to me Mars is much more “real” after viewing it via the Internet through the imagers on the Mars Exploration Rovers. It’s not a fantasy, and it’s not like the desert Southwest (no matter what anyone says). It’s an alien place of its own, but it’s appealing - even beautiful. Martian dust devils rock! Maybe astronauts will follow the rovers to Mars. Even if they don’t, however, I think that the visions of other worlds obtained by our robot proxies have a significant impact on our culture.
Finally, the fact is that robots have already made humans superfluous when it comes to planetary exploration. Forty years ago robots were crude things. But as the decades have gone by, the jobs we thought we’d need humans for have been taken over by machines. When the Hubble Space Telescope was first proposed, back in the 1960s, it was going to be operated by astronauts on board. When the Shuttle was first proposed, back in the 1960s, we thought that it would pay for itself by conveying astronaut repair crews to satellites. Turns out that satellites are now so cheap that we can launch a whole new one with updated technology for a fraction of the cost of sending a servicing crew. Only big-ticket spacecraft like Hubble are worth servicing, and some people say that that’s not even true: they argue that we could launch a more modern, more capable instrument that could operated for a decade or two without servicing for less than the cost of one Hubble servicing mission.
We don’t know whether humans can find new roles in space - roles for which they are actually required. Right now, we aren’t trying hard enough to find out.
You’re 100% right that we need to be exploring g-levels between microgravity and Earth gravity. Keeping astronauts healthy, determining appropriate missions, understanding the basic role of gravity in our multi-millenia-adapted biology, and figuring out the barriers to eventually moving beyond this cradle are all good reasons.
If NASA won’t do it, we MIT kids will
Check out the Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program at http://www.marsgravity.org
This discussion has been very interesting, but I still don’t understand why humans settling the solar system is inevitable. It just doesn’t make sense to me. To me, spaceflight seems like an expensive diversion, from the challenges actually facing our planet.
Maybe it’s a generational thing. If I had been alive to see humans land on the moon I would probably feel differently about our destiny in space. I imagine that the space program gave people a huge reason to be hopeful about the intelligence and survival of humanity - if we can land on the moon, what is really out of our reach?
But I just don’t have that feeling, and none of my friends do, either. What I sense in my generation is a lot of cynicism about the intelligence and survival of the human race. There’s general agreement that our planet is doomed, and we’re not getting anything done fast enough on Earth (or in space) to give ourselves much of a chance.
So when I hear that we’re spending more of our budget on human spaceflight programs than Earth-observing satellites, I have to ask, why? Shouldn’t we be trying to save life on our planet instead of trying to figure out how fast we can ditch it?
Hi, Lindsay -
NASA recently removed studying the Earth from its mission statement, arguing that its purpose is to reach out to the moon. Of course, this is amazingly dumb, and probably directly traceable to the flagrant stupidity of the Bush Administration. If nothing else, it ignores public opinion, which is finally lining up behind the idea that we need to understand and mitigate human-caused climate change.
Please don’t look at this as an either/or issue. One reason we understand climate change on Earth as well as we do is that we can study other climate systems on other worlds. The more knowledge we have - even apparently “useless” abstract knowledge - the more tools we have in our toolkit. Simply cutting all spaceflight isn’t going to help very much, and it could hurt a great deal. I think that re-prioritizing to focus on science is the way to go. Which, of course, leads us back to robots, since humans can’t affordably do much real science in space.
Do young people really think that we’re doomed? I think that it’s fair to say that your generation is in for a wild ride. My daughter’s generation might be, too. (For context, she’s 4. I’m 45.) But I don’t think that we’ll become extinct or that our civilization will collapse. There are little sparks of hope all around.
Why do I think that it is inevitable that we’ll settle the Solar System? Again, I can’t give a firm reason. By the time it happens, a lot is likely to be different. Maybe the U.S. will have abandoned spaceflight. Maybe the first Mars settlers will be from Indonesia or Brazil or the independent Republic of California. Could anyone in 1007 have imagined the world of 2007?
There’s a vignette that sums this up. I’ll probably get the details wrong, but it goes more or less like this: a tale is told of a prophet in Germany in 1919 who came to the attention of the authorities. Germany had just been defeated in the First World War. It’s territory had been cut in half, its Emperor was in exile, and its economy was in a shambles. Yet this prophet insisted that in 20 years Germany would be a great power again. Three years after 1939, its empire would span Europe.
The authorities were pleased. They remarked that 1959 would likely see the German Empire span the world.
No, the prophet said. In 1959, Germany would have been occupied by foreign soldiers and divided into two countries for more than a decade. Its capital, Berlin would be split in two. Germany would be a key flash point in an on-going struggle between two world-dominating blocs, a struggle based on weapons so terrible that they could destroy civilization.
The authorities were not pleased. They told the prophet that this probably meant that Germany - and the rest of the world - would be destroyed soon after 1959 - certainly by 1969.
No, said the prophet. In 1969, the western half of Germany would be one of the world’s most prosperous countries. Nearly everyone in West Germany would own a magical box that would allow them to watch as a man stepped out of a spaceship onto the moon.
The authorities locked up the prophet. He was obviously dangerously insane.
Great story, David. We truly don’t know what will happen.
Yes, my generation really does believe that we’re inevitably doomed, as much as yours believes we’ll inevitably settle in space. A scientist recently mentioned to me that he believes we’re headed for mass extinction, and whenever I dispersed this knowledge I received an emotionless, “Yeah.”
And this wasn’t followed by, “We should really do something about that.” So I guess we’re just going to have to take that wild ride when the time comes.
But back to the original topic, I heard an interesting piece about women in the early space program on NPR today. Do you know anything about this?
Lindsay:
I know that they weren’t treated very well. There were, I’m given to understand, 13 women who, apart from the fighter-jock qualifications, met the requirements to be Mercury astronauts. Jerrie Cobb really stood out; when subjected to the same test regime as the Mercury astronauts who eventually flew, she out-performed several of them. I’m not sure which ones!
The story was much the same in the Soviet Union. Valentina Tereshkova, though flown in space in 1963, was used by the male-dominated aerospace establishment as an example of why women should never fly again. She had some difficulties, but then so did all the cosmonauts who stayed in orbit for any length of time.
Geoffrey Landis, an aerospace engineer and award-winning science fiction author, wrote a paper a few years ago in which he said that the world’s space programs had gone down the wrong path when they focused on flying men. On average, women are smaller than men, lighter, and use less food, water, and air. They also tend to get along better when locked up together in a small space. That’s important for spaceflight.
I think we’re in the middle of a mass extinction. I don’t think that it follows that humans, the cause of that mass extinction, will become one of its victims. I mean, it could happen, obviously, and people are certainly dumb enough to let it happen. Call me a hopeless romantic, if you want, or a coward for not facing reality. Maybe it’s because I remember the 1980s, when many people were sure we’d see a nuclear holocaust any day. I mean, we’ve got things like Earth & Sky to help spread the news, increase awareness of the dangers, right?
Other than losing the obvious benefits for all living things on our earth, I believe we would be doing a great disservice to our children if we do not continue with space exploration. My lifelong interest in science was fueled by the Mercury, Gemini, and Appollo programs.
mankind has, for thousands of years dreamed of going into the heavens. even if civilization were to collapse tomorrow,mankind as long as he exists will dream of space and or a better future and higher state of intelligence.history proves this theory.the world is, however,not in danger of collapse.right this very minute i am looking out a window in cape canaveral fla watching 2 police cars an eighteen wheeler and two more police cars entering the south gate to the space center and they are not hauling produce. the time is 1:21am
A comment or three about a number of things David said (please excuse the length).
1) “Robots are relatively cheap. … No one wants to see $500-million robotic spacecraft fail, but if one does, no one dies.”
No human may die, but several hundred million dollars in taxpayer funds (several billion if the craft is a particularly expensive one like Cassini) going down the proverbial drain is not exactly chicken feed. If its masters still want to have the failed mission to be performed, the loss of the spacecraft means they will now have to go back to the bean counters, cap in hand, and beg for more millions to pay for building and sending a replacement mission.
Now they could start from scratch, but the tendency of NASA in recent times seems to have been to assuage the bean counters (and save money) by flying secondhand hardware the second time round: namely, unused spares of the failed mission. An example of this is the Phoenix mission, which as I understand it is basically a reflight of one cancelled mission (the lander part of Mars Surveyor 2001) and one lost mission (Mars Polar Lander). Other examples are Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey (which were reflights of the lost Mars Observer’s science instruments).
Mars Climate Orbiter was another reflight of Mars Observer hardware. Unfortunately, it too was lost.
(All of which means, when you think about it, that after Mars Observer was lost NASA then spent the next decade re-flying Mars Observer hardware rather than newer–ie more modern–instruments to Mars orbit. No wonder “Faster Better Cheaper” was able to work!)
2) “[N]o one dies.”
So who cares if a robot “dies” (apart from the scientists whose instruments and careers were riding on its success and the bean counters who will now be hauling NASA over the coals for losing it)?
Probably nobody–at the moment. At present robotic spacecraft are expendable–much in the same way as animals used to be.
Back in the early years of spaceflight the Soviet Union lofted a dog named Laika aboard Sputnik 2. The US sent up chimps. AFAIK all the chimps landed safely. Laika, however, did not survive the trip.
Dogs and chimps were sent up because flight testing needed to be done before humans could go up and the lives of dogs and chimps were more expendable than human lives.
Whether they are still expendable is a more debatable matter. The animal welfare lobby is far more powerful nowadays than it was in the days of Laika and those chimps.
Which brings us back to the robots. Animals were (and in some cases still are: think of the proverbial white mice in labs across the globe) treated as expendable because they are unintelligent and non-human. So too with robots. They are expendable BECAUSE they are unintelligent automatons without feelings and without life.
However, some day not too many decades down the track somebody is going to develop A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Once that happens sooner or later somebody is going to want to put an A.I. into a robotic spacecraft.
The advantages of doing so are obvious. If you want a robot to be able to function under circumstances where it cannot communicate, at least easily, with its human masters, it needs far more autonomy and intelligence than the current line of dumb bots, all of whom for the most part still ultimately depend on (human) intelligencies back on Earth to do their thinking for them, even if only to the extent of telling them where to direct their science instruments and what observations they should be making and went. By contrast, robotic craft sent to far off Alpha Centauri, say, will not be able to rely on human intelligence to know what to do when it gets there, while a craft sent diving into the putative ocean beneath the ice of Europa or exploring a Martian lava tube would be more capable (and therefore more useful) if it did not have to keep deferring to its masters back on Earth because that would require that it stay in constant or at least periodic communication with them.
In short space missions which used intelligent robots will probably to be quite useful; and for some types of missions they will probably be an essential requirement. However, using them is inevitably going to add a new dimension to such missions: an ethical one. If NASA of the 21st Century would not treat human beings, dogs, and chimps as expendable chattels, will it still treat robotic spacecraft as the same way once they start being controlled by intelligent machines?
If not then needless to say that will inevitably impact on the expense of sending them out into space in the first place is going to skyrocket, and may well impact on the viability of using them at all on such missions, which in turn may in time impact on the viability of using robotic missions. For example, if it would be unethical to send a human being on a 50-year one-way mission to the solar focus would it be any more ethical (and therefore viable) to send an intelligent machine?
In other words, it may well be that in the longer run, as the technology progresses and kinds of mission swing more and more towards those which would require, or functiob best, with intelligences onboard rather than staying behind on Earth and using robotic proxies to do the exploration, the pendulum may swing away from robotic missions back to human crewed ones, doubtless with A.I.s accompanying them, if not necessarily robotic ones.
3) “Their chief role right now is to serve as laboratory subjects in Earth orbit. That’s not dramatic, but it’s a duty that this generation of astronauts has to future generations.”
You do realise that that’s a circularity in the logic here. You only need that data if you plan on keep on sending human beings into space. In particular if you plan on sending them further out into space on extended missions to the Moon and beyond. If the US decided it was not going to send its astronauts on such missions–or effectively did so; eg by cancelling the VSE without proposing an alternative–then that sort of data, along with the need to gather it, would become less important. That in turn would undercut that “chief role” and thus (presumably) the need for astronauts to be sent up into Earth orbit to perform it. For what would be the point of spending money gathering such data if those paying to have it collected are not going to pay to use it in a useful fashion? (If Senator Proxmire were still around I can almost envisage him awarding one of his Golden Fleeces already.
4) “It might be a good idea to build a space station in Earth orbit that can rotate at different speeds, enabling it to simulate different levels of gravity. Such a station might serve as a prototype for a rotating spaceship for eventual piloted missions to Mars.”
No doubt.
However, I also think it is safe to say NASA will not be building any more space stations, rotating or otherwise, any time soon. Not when the common if jaundiced view of the one already up there is that it is an expensive white elephant whose chief purpose at the moment–that is, when it isn’t acting like Count Dracula, sucking funds that would have otherwise have gone (or so some fondly imagine at any rate) for unmanned space flight and/or the manned exploration of Mars–seems to be to act as the private playground for the well-heeled billionaire space tourist.
5) “Remote control is just one way that humans could support their robot partners. They could also repair damaged robots and upgrade systems on especially valuable and costly robotic spacecraft. The Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions are the prototype for this form of support.”
First of all, the examples are not parallel. Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions are conducted by humans travelling to the robot to carry out the repairs themselves. The idea that some floated after Columbia was lost of sending up a remotely controlled robot instead has been firmly knocked on the head. Which is why the next HST servicing is now back on the Shuttle’s agenda again and will be conducted by human flying up in the Shuttle.
Mind you, that is not say such a thing cannot be done. However, IMHO I think you’re underestimating the complexity, especially if the robots are on the ground and the astronauts are in orbit. The notion of humans repairing robots by remote control presupposes the existence on the ground–or of sending from orbit to the ground:
1) a way of carrying out those repairs.
2) a ready availability of spare parts.
For example, if a robot has a damaged circuit board inside it would need to be opened up, the insides probed–with maybe some of those insides moved or removed also so that the damaged part can be got at–the damaged board extracted, and a replacement one inserted. Such a thing would imply the existence on the ground of ANOTHER robot with specialised arms, cameras, and other tools. A robot for repairing other robots, in other words.
Furthermore, unless you also presupposing an ongoing capability by the astronauts to send spare parts down from orbit to the ground (mini reuseable space shuttles maybe?
it also implies the existence on the ground of a cache of replacement parts.
Assuming we’re talking rovers here, unless the repair robot & the cache follow the other robot around like a couple of faithful dogs more than more than likely when something goes wrong the robot with the problem will be one place and the repair bot in another. (Or in a worst case scenario: the problem robot in one place, the repair bot in another, and the cache in a third!) Getting the right part to the right rover will therefore probably take time. Maybe a good deal of time if the bots are not Speedy Gonzales and the terrain not conducive to racing anyway.
And of course all this also assumes:
* the bot with the trouble is in a place the repair bot can reach and has the space to work in.
* that the damaged part has been correctly identified beforehand (otherwise there will need to be further investigation and testing to find out what is causing the problem).
* that opening up the damaged robot (assuming the parts in need of repair are inside) will not cause the insides to be contaminated by dust etc in a way which may compromise the workings of the machine. (I am assuming here that the landing of a fully functional equivalent of a NASA white room will be out of the question.)
Stephen:
I think you might need to read what I wrote more carefully. I don’t mean to be rude here, obviously. For example, I didn’t say that I thought that teleoperated robots could do HST servicing. That Sean O’Keefe said such a thing reflected his lack of technical know-how. I said that HST servicing by humans is a prototype for human servicing of other valuable robotic spacecraft in the future. It’s one of the things humans bring to the robot-astronaut partnership. Humans would, of course, be given servicing assignments selectively; when benefits outweighed costs.
My “vision for space exploration” presupposes that all the relevant players will sign on. You are absolutely right about the circularity of the argument; I assume that people will decide that exploring space is a thing worth doing. If people decide otherwise, or if space exploration gets lost among all the many priorities people have so that they never get around to making that decision, then what I suggest is moot.
If people do decide that space exploration is worth the level of effort required to involve humans, then ISS suddenly has an important role to play. It won’t be a white elephant. Perhaps people will decide that knowing about the effects of partial gravity on astronauts is important enough to justify a variable-gravity space station. Perhaps work with centrifuges on board ISS will be sufficient, and it won’t be needed. Perhaps people will decide that the benefits of piloted Mars exploration outweigh the risk that a long stay on Mars could harm astronauts and just go for it. It’s impossible to predict right now.
I’m not proposing a master plan; I’m suggesting a philosophy. Basically, it has four parts. First, space exploration is a good basis for NASA’s programs. Second, humans should be used to explore space when they make sense and robots should be used when they make sense. “Make sense” means when the benefits outweigh the costs. Third, we have a lot to learn about how humans operate in space, so humans should focus on that for the time being while robots explore. Fourth, if we find that humans can operate in space and on worlds for long periods (decades), then maybe we should consider “exploration by settlement.” That model has served humans well for hundreds of thousands of years.
As I stated, no one wants to lose a $500-million robot. But most people would rather lose a robot than an astronaut. If you suppose that a given space exploration task has some benefit, then you have to decide what level of risk is acceptable to achieve that benefit. Is it worth the risk of losing a $150-billion piloted mission, or is it worth the risk of losing a $150-million robotic mission, or is it worth something in between?
By the way, I think that the moon has value, but not enough to risk astronauts in any major way. The moon would be an ideal place to explore using teleoperations; it could be the place where teleoperations in space comes into its own. I do not believe that the moon is a good place to get humans ready for Mars exploration; the costs outweigh the benefits, not least because the moon is very different from Mars. I do believe that it would be handy to be able to land humans there occasionally.
Your point about the ethics of placing intelligent machines at risk in space is intriguing. If we designed robots that were “human,” then it would be unethical to treat them as anything but “human.” This is, however, an immense can of worms; thankfully, it’s not one that we have to worry about quite yet.
my last comment was about the rollout of the next shuttle launch. i have to say that the men and women that go into space are willing to do so under any risk. and without people actually doing this science you would see a decline in public enthusiasm and a loss in funding for nasa. without the human element the public at large go about their daily lives and would question the tax dollars going into orbit.its dreams that push the space buisness and the fear of risk in anything creates stagnation.without risk we are not human in the idealist or romantic sense.its a case of move forward or stand in place.out of fear, we are at risk of being walked over by those that want to move forward.
Sam:
I know a fair number of astronauts, and I can’t think of any off-hand who would travel into space “under any risk.” They have families and want to watch their kids grow up just like anyone else.
I’m all for people doing science in space, as I stated in my post. I’m not saying that robots should replace people entirely, only where it makes sense. I do disagree with the notion that astronauts have to be involved for people to care about space exploration. Piloted missions to ISS generate hardly any Internet hits; robots on Mars beat Internet traffic records. People want to see new places.
David
while seeing these same astronauts daily as they practice routine actions and study the pieces of machinery,along with learning over and over the design and purpose of every experiment and even the way they will lift an object i can tell you that they speak of the joy and danger of what they do.space is an environment that is like no other. space is danger to the nth power. there are risks that earthly minds (average minds) cannot fathom.just the launch is like a gamble even with years of other launches under ones belt.i would agree that the iss missions get very few hits, but if you look at global warming website hits vs who won that baby in the bahamas one would assume we are a nation of duncecap wearing,self absorbed,well meaning, free spirited, idealist and at the same time complicated blah blah blah…..anyway,if the youth of america believes space is a non issue the rest of the world will eat their lunch,so to speak.
David,
Very nice job. I’m sorry I didn’t read it earlier, and I have to say that I probably couldn’t agree with you more. However, I should point out that the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission has not been cancelled. I know there was some talk to that effect a while back, but this mission is still on the books. You could be justified in considering it delayed or even on hold, I suppose, because it does not have a confirmed launch date (the goal for now is 2015). But “cancelled” is definitely premature.
Larry Sessions
JPL/SSA
I think the idea of robot-human partnership is good. There will always be things we need humans for, but for the instances when risk outweighs benefits, the robots should be out there rather than us risking human life.
David wrote:
>Mars is the Solar System planet most like Earth…
Foul! I call Foul, there David! :o)
Actually VENUS, (at an altitude of around 70-80km :o) is the “most” Earthlike planet in the Solar System :o)
Sure you need a “Lighter-Than-Air” space station there to stay on, but you have 90% Earth gravity and atmospheric pressure, (ok you can’t breath it :o) and protection from UV and sun/space radiation, and the temperature isn’t too bad, (90s to low 100s) so you CAN’T actually say that Mars is the ‘closest’ Earth-like planet :o)
You also wrote:
>By the way, a trip into Earth orbit is like getting a bad flu.
>Half of all astronauts puke their brains out for a day or a week after
>they reach orbit, and then puke their brains out after they return to
>Earth.
Ok, might there be a ‘little’ exaggeration here? The number of people who get space adaptation sickness is closer to 75% and NASA, the Russians, ESA, and all the astronauts swear it doesn’t last over a couple of days and the number of cases that last over 24 hours are very rare.
You saying all these folks are lying? If so this is important news, because a lot of what has been proposed for such things as orbital tourism and experimentation are ‘assuming’ that SAS isn’t as bad as you say it is. Which version is right?
>An example of a technology we’ll need to develop to send humans out of
>low-Earth orbit is advanced life support. Basically, that’s about
>recycling everything we can. If we tried to do a Mars expedition with the
>life support technology we use on the International Space Station, we’d
>need to send along many tons of water, air, food, etc., etc. That’s just
>not practical, given foreseeable launch costs.
“Advanced” life support research has been on-going for decades, to get a ‘bit’ snooty about it, you have to look “beyond” the launch pad and get over the “if it ain’t done in a government sponsored lab, it ain’t real science” altitude that seem to permeate a lot of folks views on space research :o)
You see we have spent a good portion of the last 30 years doing “Advanced” life support research, most of it by people who could care less about the space program or manned space flight. On the ‘gripping’ hand, the REASON we know so much about said ‘research’ at all is, again, those ‘fanatical’ L5-er types because they were the first “space” cadets who looked beyond ‘just’ technology to solve the problems related to human space flight. They were the first ‘techies’ who looked to natural systems and process’ to reduce the supply needs of humans in space, and as a “by-product” (spin-off? :o) they also found common ground for dialog with the Ecological movement and the counter-culture/alternate living folks, allowing the rest of us ‘techies’ access to mounds of data on alternate and more ‘efficient’ ways to attack the problems of long-term spaceflight.
So for ‘advanced’ life support ‘ideas’ NASA has finally turned back the pages to research ways of providing for living in space and ways to recycle as much as possible through less ‘equipment’ intensive methods. Stuff that the “Eco/Alternate” folks have known and worked with for decades, and have perfected to a high degree. Now is this stuff ‘plug-and-play’ for use in space? Of course not, who’s had a chance to try any of this stuff on actual space flights with the flights so heavily restricted and so few?
But it doesn’t mean the ‘means’ are not there, just that more work needs to be done, but not as much ‘work’ as one would think. Need to recycle air? Plants due this intensively, but they need to be watered and fertilized, guess what humans produce an abundance of :o)
(Some more than others of course :o)
Lunar soil (chemical analogs actually) doesn’t provide any nutrients for plants but makes a very adaptable ‘base’ for growing them. How about the question of the toxicity of the Martian soil? Again using analogs we (almost by accident) have found out that human, er… semi-solid waste products, neutralize the toxic portions and actually turn it into pretty good ’soil’ over time, as well as ‘recycling’ the waste. In addition other ‘areas’ of science and technology are being ‘discovered’ to have already addressed some aspects of the problem of long term living in space by looking for and finding ways to deal with similar problems here on Earth. As long as you look beyond the ‘usual’ sources you’ll be surprised at how ‘prepared’ we can be for living on un-hospitable worlds or in space itself.
One problem has been what to do with the massive amounts of ’solid’ waste that would be amassed over the long term such as plastics, ‘toxic’ wastes, and metals. Strangely enough we know how to take most of these items and ‘re-make’ them into hydrocarbons (oil) and separate out all the ‘other’ elements during the process very efficiently. Thermal Depolymerization would even work to de-tox Martian soil. With access to high levels of solar power, and using the recent much less ‘power’ hungry plasma incinerator technology and adjustable magnetic fields we can ‘transform’ any material into its constituent elements and then separate them into pure forms ready to go back to the manufacturing process.
What about those manufacturing process’? Won’t that need a huge high-tech base to support? High-Tech yes, ‘huge’ not at all, we currently have several ways of fabricating replacement parts including ‘printing’ them atom by atom or other rapid prototyping process.
Lastly let me say this; The ISS can’t provide the platform to do more than perform simple tests or very small experiments with any of these processes.’ It just does not have the designed capacity to do anything more and never will. This is a planning and budget shortfall that is inherent in the program, and the ‘reason’ we have the ISS and not Space Station Alpha. It is also the only Space Station that Congress was going to fund, just like the Shuttle is the only ’spaceship’ as it is that they would fund.
Neither of these will ever be enough to actualize the needed innovations, testing and research that will make mans presence beyond Earth truly possible. Without larger scale access to space, without more platforms in Earth orbit to carry out the experiments needed, we won’t be able to do enough to get beyond our current ‘exploration’ phase. (Which is actually less than easy and more expensive than exploring the deep ocean.)
Lindsay wrote:
>This discussion has been very interesting, but I still don’t understand
>why humans settling the solar system is inevitable. It just doesn’t make
>sense to me. To me, spaceflight seems like an expensive diversion, from
>the challenges actually facing our planet.
Lindsay; to put it bluntly because I think you and your friends can handle the truth, your absolutely correct. The Earth IS doomed, this doom is inevitable and impossible to avoid no matter what methods humans try to forestall or avoid this doom. None of it will matter because the Earth will be consumed in the fires of its home star as that star expands to become a Red Giant sun, we may only have a few billion years. Or we could have only a few moments after you read this post. The Dinosaurs died because they didn’t have a space program. Without one they were unable to take any action but to watch the huge fireball that killed them when an asteroid slammed into the Earth. We can easily suffer the same fate as we KNOW there are Near-Earth Objects out there we haven’t found yet with the pittance we spend searching for them now.
Challenges? Oh you probably don’t even realize how precarious life on Earth is. Global warming worrying you? Perhaps it should, but without a robust space program that looks outward instead of just inward we might have ‘just’ assumed that humans caused it instead of finally verifying that our sun IS a variable star, and that its output has been increasing since the late middle ages. We might even have missed the fact that its output had stabilized over the last few years and missed the data that is showing what might be the beginning of a decline.
Is global hunger and poverty a Challenge that deserves attention more than spaceflight? (Just to take one example)
No, probably not since the ‘challenge’ has always been transportation rather than capacity. There is plenty of food to go around, but it is almost impossible to get it to the ones who need it fast enough to do them any good. Add in sovereign states, governments, or just simply groups of powerful people who would rather others didn’t actually GET the food and the Challenge becomes quite large. But compared to what is already spent on addressing this challenge already the entirety of the budget for ’spaceflight’ is not even enough to make up for the ‘wasted’ monies that are paid as ‘bribes’ to the above groups to allow what food get through.
This is not something that money will solve, no matter how much is thrown at the problem. It is a social issue.
Worried that because NASA is going to stop observing the Earth we’ll be caught by surprise by other changes we may miss? Bit of a news flash, but Earth resource and data collection from orbit has been a money making endeavor for the last 10 years and the coverage is expanding. NASA, the ESA, and most commercial that need data now BUY it from private providers who loft their own Earth monitoring satellites. (The ‘down-side’ being so do people with less than friendly intentions :o)
I’ll let you in on a well un-kept secret :o)
“It” is not a ‘generational’ thing…. it’s an ‘age’ thing, among other reasons.
Your profile says 22, hi, my name is Randy Campbell and I’m 46. (Mentally around 13 according to my wife, but I beg that you take that assessment with a grain of salt as there is a good possibility she may be biased on the matter :o)
I’ve not ’stopped’ trying to save the world since my first realization that some things in the world weren’t ‘right’ and it was one of my jobs to MAKE things right for those that came after me.
My methods and focus’ have changed but not the basic nature of my NEED to do something. I dug into issues as they came into focus for me and found that many times ‘conventional’ wisdom was based on false or outdated assumptions, what surprised me most though was that often the ‘un-conventional’ wisdom that I embraced in my efforts was often ALSO based on such shakey ground. Often times the dread word of ‘compromise’ and the idea of making a ‘deal’ to at least get the side to talking on solutions, REAL solutions, turned out to be the biggest ‘challenge’ of all, and the hardest one to face.
I don’t know anything (well not much really I should say considering you DO have a blog :o) about you and your friends beliefs, passions, and concerns, but I can make a prediction on them; 20 years from now most of them won’t be the same.
Some advice, if I may, (it’s ‘free’ so take it for what it’s worth in any case and the spirit in which it is offered :o) fight for our concerns, embrace your passions, and always believe, but in doing so ALWAYS ensure you look at BOTH side of an issue as completely as possible when taking up the fight. You might not agree with, like, or even believe what the ‘other’ side is about, but until and unless SOMEONE takes that step to both understand those stances, and the viewpoint they come from compromise is impossible, and long range solutions that actually SOLVE anything are rare.
Humans’ moving out into the Universe at large is either ‘inevitable’ or we are totally doomed as a species and a ‘promise’ as a life form.
For when the last human dies, so dies Hitler, Stalin, and Jeffery Dahlmer, but so does Picaso, Nelson Mandela, and Lincoln. Each of us embodies the best as well as the worst features of the beings we call humans and we each have to decide which of those sides will be remembered, but we always have to keep in mind that for all we can tell with all the data we have at the current moment is that WE are IT. The ONE, the ONLY species that has the capability to leave their home planet and move out into the Universe. The only life form we KNOW has the ability to go from a fore-doomed species inevitably to go extinct when its home world/sun/galaxy finally dies to a species ‘immortality’ by moving outward into the vastness of space and time itself.
Are we ‘worthy’ of such? I can’t really answer that, because my personal feelings are optimistic, therefore my ‘outlook’ is inclined towards thinking that our ‘good’ will always out weigh out ‘evil’ and that we as species are worth saving and protecting. Your mileage will probably vary, but that is the basic ‘choice’ of the matter.
Do we stand and ‘fight’ the good fight to raise ourselves and our species to the Challenges before us and survive as a race as we move outward over the millennia? Or do we realize that nothing we do will matter in the long run because we inevitably doomed as a species as our world is destroyed by our inevitable solar immolation, and any good we do as well as evil will be lost for all time, spread as cosmic ash over our racial grave site?
Then again, that’s what life is all about isn’t it? Choices and what we make of them.
Randy Campbell
Good thread.
First for the host.
Bluntly, the reason Bush pushed for the return to the moon – was to GIVE NASA a last chance to show it could do something big right. Shuttle was a great concept with stuning capacity – and tons of problems you would expect in a new craft – but NASA never seemed able to focus enough fix them. Not even after they killed people.
Stations a political mess, and technologically a strong singe of what to many buracrats in a kitchen leads to.
In the ‘70s and ‘80s they sent probs all over the solar system, in the 90’s they crashed them more often then not.
NASA cost more and more, was widly seen as nothing but a pork project, and they kept doing less and less. So return to the moon was a put up or shut up – or maybe shut it down. …and the best they could come up with is a really bad Apollo program knock off?? By now private citizens are assembling their own space programs, building their own craft, and openly talking about launching maned missions to Mars in perhaps 10-15 years. At this point the next American to walk on the moon, will very likely be a tourist – not a NASA astronaut.
The human-robotics partnership gets talked about, but historically robots get a standard fraction of what humans get. Its not nASA policy or anything – its just about all politically that can be supported. Likely people figure if weer not going to send anyone there soon – theres not much reason to spend a bunch to hurry a robot there.
Problem is there isn’t a pressing reason urging us to go into space. Contrary to the eternal “we’re all about to die” crowd, who have been assuring folks for centuries that they were going to be the last generation. (The baby boomers seem to have been more successful at this them most – and for far less reason) Earths resounrces are plentiful, which might explain why our biggest shortage is for landfill sites, and the average world standard of living and life expectancy is soaring.
That doesn’t get much press. I mean the fact that this year for the first time in history more of the worlds population suffers from overweight then starvation got a foot note, but pictures of some group starving (usually due to a local war) is world headlines.
However space is loaded with resources of fuel, ore, etc almost beyond imagining. Enough ore to build us huge space stations with thousands of times the surface area of earths continents. Oil enough cover all our continents with seas of it. Etc etc… If we use all that up we could actually start looking at whats on the planets.
As our tech gets better and we get richer, we’ll find more and more use and interest for that. Rule 1 in nature, grow or die. Several low or negatyive growth first world nations are proving it works for civilizations to
> we don’t know if people can survive for long periods in moon or Mars gravity. ==
Not and keep healthy, and yes we know that. Low or zero gs main effect is due to exercize loss. You get the same effects by prolonged forced bed rest, with the same dire effects. Its like being the ultimate couch potato and would take decades off you life.
Course you don’t have to go to the planets, or stay there for years.
Life support?
The Navy has been operating submartins for over half a century that surface only to exchange crews and restock the food supplies. They recycle or produce all the water and air. The use sea water as a source, but you can just recycle the exhaled (and other) water vapor we make from consuming food.
No you don’t get recycled food that way – but you can carry years to decades of food for the weight of a recycling farm.
lindsay
You likely spent you life hearing dire warnings from your elders about how everything is wrong and dieing. They lied! (It’s a baby boomer whinner thing. Your to young to understand.) As a species were healthier, wealthier, with more plentiful resources then ever before, less racial and other conflict etc.
Do you realize the irony of doubting the intelligence of humanity on a internet streaching across the world and beyond to other worlds? Built out of circuits using quantum mechanical principles Even Einstein though.were impossible a half century ago? Where there is free global reconnaissance data of higher precision then the best military sats of 40 years ago?
Randy Campbell! - you get all over the place don’t you?
As to your comments.
> Actually VENUS, (at an altitude of around 70-80km :o) is the
> “most” Earthlike planet in the Solar System :o)
> Sure you need a “Lighter-Than-Air” space station there to stay on,
> but you have 90% Earth gravity and atmospheric pressure, (ok you
> can’t breath it :o) and protection from UV and sun/space radiation,
> and the temperature isn’t too bad, (90s to low 100s) so you
> CAN’T actually say that Mars is the ‘closest’ Earth-like planet :o)
Actually I think there is a altitude where you CAN breath it. Not sure about the smell though? You can terraform it easier then Mars – though what you do about the thin crust that’s making the surface so hot is a question, but that’s easier to deal with then low grav.
Guess Venus is like the original Earth before that Mars sized rock smashed into it and kicked out the moon and the rest.
> The number of people who get space adaptation sickness is closer
> 75% and NASA, the Russians, ESA, and all the astronauts swear
> it doesn’t last over a couple of days and the number of cases that
>last over 24 hours are very rare.
And they found that its worst on folks who are athletes. So the astrounat core tends to have more trouble then the mission specialists.
But hell – The North Atlantic Liners had more trouble with it I guess.
You WAY over thinking the life support issue. That’s why Bio-sphere 2 was such a disaster. They were thinking to ecologically. Thinking they had to nuild a full complex biosphere. We don’t do that in cities and fars here. No reason we would do that in space? Veruy good reasons of safty and reliability that we wouldn’t!
Will a Mars or space colony be full close cycle completely sef suficent? Nope. Neiather is New York (or the country), but folks have been living there for a long time.
>… How about the question of the toxicity of the Martian soil?
> Again using analogs we ….
Ah, we don’t have a good chemical analisis of whats in the Mars soil dissolving organic matieral. So we can’t be sure how good or analogs are?
True that with power you can decompose materials back into raw elements – but..
> What about those manufacturing process’? Won’t that need a
> huge high-tech base to support? High-Tech yes, ‘huge’ not at all,
> we currently have several ways of fabricating replacement parts
> including ‘printing’ them atom by atom or other rapid prototyping process.
No that kind of operation requires a pretty heavy supply chain of support infrastructure – and the atom by atom parts are little more then lab toys. No nanotech replicators yet.
So Colonies in space are dependant on the big civilizations of earth, just like each nation depends on something from some of the others.
> Lastly let me say this; The ISS can’t provide the platform to do
> more than perform simple tests or very small experiments with
> any of these processes.’ It just does not have the designed capacity
> to do anything more and never will.—
True. It was built only as a political showpiece so funds were only authorized for enough to build it and keep it minimaslly operating. Not enough to actually do anything with it.
==
> Lindsay; to put it bluntly because I think you and your friends
> can handle the truth, your absolutely correct. The Earth IS doomed,
> this doom is inevitable and impossible to avoid no matter
> what methods humans try to forestall or avoid this doom. None
> of it will matter because the Earth will be consumed in the fires
> of its home star as that star expands to become a Red Giant sun,
> we may only have a few billion years. ===
Geez man, give the girl a heart attack!! Its not like the sun dieing in 4 billion is a pressing problem for a 200,000 year oold species!!
> == Or we could have only a few moments after you read this
> post. The Dinosaurs died because they didn’t have a space
> program. Without one they were unable to take any action
> but to watch the huge fireball that killed them when an asteroid
> slammed into the Earth. We can easily suffer the same fate as
> we KNOW there are Near-Earth Objects out there we haven’t
> found yet with the pittance we spend searching for them now.==
Ok, point here. We usually find them as they swep past the Earth, or in many cases HIT IT!!
Did you know recon sats see a Meteor caused A bomb sized blast a month and a H bomb sized blast a year? Hardly ever in a civilized area, and almost always to high up in the air to hurt anyone. But then folks wonder why 4 major fire occurred the same night as the great Chicago fire across the Midwest. And if whatever Caused Tunguska had hit a few hours earlier it would have trashed a eouro country of so.
We really should track these all down and shove troublesome ones out of our planets way.
> Challenges? Oh you probably don’t even realize how precarious
> life on Earth is. Global warming worrying you? Perhaps it
> should, but without a robust space program that looks outward
> instead of just inward we might have ‘just’ assumed that humans
> caused it instead of finally verifying that our sun IS a variable
> star, and that its output has been increasing since the late middle ages. ==
NASA got seriously on Gores S**t list for pointing things like that out in the press. Little things like 3 other planets and moons in the solar system are having simultaneous climate shifts with Earths. (Mars Jupiter, and do you remember which Jovian moon?) I amazed by the demonic evil powers folks credit Bush and car companies with, but I don’t care how many suvs and republicans we have on earth, they did not melt Mars poles and shift Jupiter’s bands polar!
[No, I’m sorry, It really won’t go away if we all sign Kyoto and drive a Preis!!]
Oh, on the good news side, last time we got this warm (a couple degrees warmer actually) from 1000 ad to 1500ad was a great surge in human civilization. [The records show the French were whining about cheep imported wine from England and Scotland were spoiling there market. --- Have the French always been whinners??]
> Worried that because NASA is going to stop observing the
> Earth we’ll be caught by surprise by other changes we may miss?
> Bit of a news flash, but Earth resource and data collection from
> orbit has been a money making endeavor for the last 10 years
> and the coverage is expanding. NASA, the ESA, and most
> commercial that need data now BUY it from private providers
> who loft their own Earth monitoring satellites. ==
Yeah NASA has LOOOONG been a also ran in Earth and climat sats. But theirs good PR in a mission to earth” sat to study climate chance – so as long as they keep the results out of the headlines (what it really got cooler from WW-II to the ‘70’s? and really going no where the last 20 years?) it’s a good way to get budget money.
>== my name is Randy Campbell and I’m 46. (Mentally around 13
> according to my wife, but I beg that you take that assessment
> with a grain of salt as there is a good possibility she may be
> iased on the matter :o) —
Ok, that’s just to easy – it must be a trap.
I’m Kelly Starks a 50 ? year old aerospace engineer and exNASA contractor – if we’re into backgrounds.
>.. I’ve not ’stopped’ trying to save the world…
Can’t see why your trying to save the world – its been trying to kill you for 46 years now.
If you want to save the world, first get past the political posturing and sound bytes and find out whats really happening and why, not what crap a politician or cuase leader is using to con you.
Micheal Moore was asked about how his movies are almost complete false and staged by Moore. He answered that “its not important if what I say is true, as long as it convinces folks to do whats right..”
If you buy that, don’t try to save the world, you’ll do more harm then good.
Want to strike a major blow against air and other pollution? Ignore eco groups and renewable BS systems. Go to http://www.emc2fusion.org/ and give Bussard enough money to get his WORKING fusion reactor from lab prototype built under the Navy contract, up to a full commercial product.
Want to feed the hungry – Ban ethonaol and build a UN that stands up to despots and warlords that burn crops and food convoys to weaken enemies. (World food production has outpaced world population growth since the civil war!)
Want to stop species extinction? Do you know how many known actual species have gone extinct in the last couple centuries? 2! Dodo and Carrior pigion. Past that is all hand waving about likely spies we never knew existed, or redefining whats a species.
[Did you know the Northern Califiornia spotted owl ISN’T a species? Just the spotted Owls in northern Cal (oh and they are doing fine, they thrive in areas THAT AER HEAVILY LOGGED!! A birds got to see wats on the ground to grab and eat it you know. Hard in dence old growth parks and preserves.)
Want to stop climate change …. You’r on a planet idiot! The climates are always changing. Cope or stay inside all the time.
>== I dug into issues as they came into focus for me and found that
> many times ‘conventional’ wisdom was based on false or outdated
> assumptions, what surprised me most though was that often
> the ‘un-conventional’ wisdom that I embraced in my efforts was
> often ALSO based on such shakey ground. ===
Its not what we don’t know that hurts us – its what we know to be true, that isn’t, that really hurts us”.
The most important resource really is free educated people. Ones able to build whatever they want. But that means you don’t have a right to make the rest of the world do what you want either.
>== ALWAYS ensure you look at BOTH side of an issue as completely
> as possible when taking up the fight. ==
And sometimes assuming the exact opposite of a popular unchallenged assumption can be a very informative point of view to try out on issues.
> == when the last human dies, so dies Hitler, Stalin, and
> Jeffery Dahlmer, but so does Picaso, Nelson Mandela, and
> Lincoln. Each of us embodies the best as well as the worst
> features of the beings we call humans ==
Yeah this “humans are a desease infesting the universe is so disgustingly pathetic. Its about as well founded as the “well the ‘other’ races [every races has a list of ‘others’] are all just inferior” mindset. We’ve made everything from skyscrapers, to Dogs, to sonnets, to porn, stupid TV, to mass food production, medicine to dramatically extend our life expectancy, weapons able to melt a city – or destroy as attacking asteroid or power a starship. Vehicles to carry up to the far corners and depths of the world – out to the edges of the solar system – and cable networks to send everyone back video so they can see to. Technology to power the dreams of the world – including psycho religious nuts and dictators. And we literally just starting.
No other species or group of species, on this rock can claim even a fraction of that.
Not bad for a few centuries of civilization.