The last flight of the Space Shuttle

Back in the 1970s when the Space Shuttles were being designed, they were sold to the public as a next step in man’s conquest of space. But that’s not how it turned out, is it? After doing the impossible, sending men to the moon and back, what else is there for men to do in space?

I think the problem is that too many people have been watching Star Trek and Star Wars and they think that’s the future if we will only give NASA enough money. They don’t understand that TV shows and movies are fantasy and not a true extrapolation of our current scientific understanding of astrophysics.

If we want to send more robotic spacecraft to Mars just to see what’s there, I suppose it’s worth a few billion dollars to satisfy our curiosity. But spending billions of dollars each year to send people into low orbit over and over again to do nothing especially important was a big waste of money.

One day in the future, I expect that the Chinese will accomplish something in space exploration that will go beyond the American moon landings, but that has more to do with the rise of China and the decline of America, and we won’t halt the decline of America by spending more money on NASA.

Comments

[not too late]

"If we want to send more robotic spacecraft to Mars just to see what’s there, I suppose it’s worth a few billion dollars to satisfy our curiosity. But spending billions of dollars each year to send people into low orbit over and over again to do nothing especially important was a big waste of money."

I have often wondered about this. Is it just a jobs program for smart folks?
Or do we actually get enough new tech from conquering the latest challenge to get a decent return? I lean toward the latter.

[JP]

The argument that "robots can't do everything people can do in space" is going to look increasingly weak as robots get more sophisticated and autonomous.

But, the good news is that Dubya is still working the problems associated with a mission to Mars:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-still-working-on-manned-mission-to-mars-quiet,18154/

[anon]

It was a jobs program for beta engineers, allowing them to have stable careers and raise families, it's the best possible waste of money you could ask for...

[The_King]

Actually space exploration's primary goal was to find a suitable climate for Earthlings to migrate and colonize. Since the natural resources of Earth and the Sun are finite, it will eventually become necessary for humans to either abandon Earth or import necessary natural resources from suitable planets.

The reason Mars' exploration was significant is that astronomers were able to find remains of water and simple organisms. Meaning that other extraterrestrial lifeforms can exist and its possible to find a planet that is similar to Earth.

Privatized space exploration will lower cost for space travel. I believe Russia or China is starting to offer space travel for $50,000 soon.

[HS: We're not colonizing any other planets. You have been watching too much science fiction.]

[Commander Shepard]

Privatization/commercialization of space related endeavors is the next leap forward.

[Abelard Lindsey]

NASA has been a jobs program for 20,000 government employees for over 30 years. Its time for it to go away.

[We Are Doomed]

We have neither the money nor the will to colonize outer space. We have to borrow and spend trillions on unsustainable Ponzi schemes like Medicare and Social Security, educating the ineducable, funding diversity programs, and bringing democracy to seventh century Middle Eastern religious fanatics.

[Kaz]

http://www.spacex.com/

Don't worry, it's not over yet!

[Trew]

As others here have said, government-funded space exploration has been a 50-year jobs program. I'd estimate over $1T spent for very little return. Yes, a few scientific discoveries have been made. Tang and Velcro come to mind. There have been a few other much more siginficant discoveries, but it's not like any of them have been earth-shattering (none of us can name them), or could not have been discovered on Earth.

I better remain deeply anonymous as I live 20 miles from the Shuttle launch site and talk such as this could get one hurt. As the Shuttle program has wound down, over the past three years about 6000 workers have been laid off from the program with about 1000 more to go w/i a few weeks. All of them contractors, mostly employed by United Space Alliance. Not one NASA federal employee lost his job.

The job-placement & re-training complex has been well-staffed trying to find these laid off engineers and technicians jobs, but many will have to leave the area or start retirement earlier than expected. Yet, universities keep churning out more engineers. The local news recently ran a piece that profiled former engineers that got their teaching certificates to teach math and science in the local schools. Basically, it was a program for (laid off) engineers to teach high school kids how to become (laid off) engineers.

[Theslittyeye.wordpress.com]

Well said, it's a pity for the space shuttle though. I mean the design is very cool. In the future, I could only think of one reason to start off the universe colonialism: the eagerness for precious resources... Let's talk about settlement in other planets after we could get fancy minerals from other planets.

But whether this deep universe expedition is ever going to happen... I doubt it. At least not really in the US. Private business will not risk billions of dollars for something more than cashing millionaires for their low-orbit space-trip. Space program needs to get the collective resource of the whole country for its high risk and low short-term economic incentives...

Once again, I hope China's own space station, which is going to launch later this year, is going to compete with the international space station and stimulate more focus on space technology advancement. BUT nowadays way too many social resources wasted on the vanity of financing and virtual Tron world...

[One Radical]

NASA to most is useful for its pissing contest qualities. "We can't let Russia overcome us in the space program". Basically, our dick's bigger than yours because we spend more money on space flight.

[Jody]

**Yes, a few scientific discoveries have been made. Tang and Velcro come to mind.**

FWIW, Neither Tang nor Velcro were created via NASA research, but they were popularized by NASA.

[John]

How much did we spend on health care in the year 1492? Who was the greatest athlete in 1942? What was the inflation and unemployment rate in 1492? Anyone? Nobody remembers these things, but we do remember Christopher Columbus.

200 years from now, nobody will remember Obamacare, or how much we spent on Social Security, or how much foreign aid we gave to Africa. They will know when we landed on Mars. Societies that explore and expand are healthier than those that don't. As someone who cares about human freedom, there should always be somewhere else to go.

Yes, space colonization is expensive. There won't be thousands of people living on Mars in our lifetime. But we could start the process now. We could have already been to Mars for what would have been a rounding error on the prescription drugs program or Obamacare.

Plus, it's just a damn cool thing to do.

[Cat Patrol]

For 5% of what we spend on Blacks and Mexicans, the US could have went to Mars and back.

[Alex]

Sending a manned mission to Mars is more technically challenging than people realize. We don't just send spacecraft to whatever planet we want, we have to wait for the planet to be in a certain position relative to the Earth. For this reason there is a window of opportunity for going to Mars that comes up once every two years.

We could actually colonize Mars much more easily if we were fine with the idea of sending people to Mars with no intent of bringing them back. Ideally, we could just keep sending supplies to the Mars colony to allow it to grow, harvest water, etc. The idea of not bringing the astronauts back sickens people, but frankly I think that it's a pretty small sacrifice to make for our species to live on multiple planets.

[E]

VASIMR - the next big thing or at least that's what TPTB are saying now.
Conventional chemical rockets have a specific impulse of 500s. For Plasma rockets it's 5000s. Basically it's 10 times as efficient in it's use of propellant. The downside is this thing demands electricity like crazy and spits out only very low thrust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket

[Mr. Stricter]

manned space exploration is an utterly pointless endeavor as there is nothing up in space that we need at any cost we can afford.

remote probes are somewhat more useful if we really want data but its a luxury . As I see it given a political system that is unable to find a way to store tons of dangerous nuclear waste long term , its highly unlikely something as mind bogglingly complex as say a space colony is even possible for it.

Humans a whole regardless of race simply are unable to think and act on a long enough scale or behave rationally for long enough.

As for China, hey might manage some "see we are so great" project but its liable to collapse long before they can truly accomplish anything grand. Between shoddy low trust economic systems,the demographic crisis and massive ecological destruction a Chinese collapse crisis and dieback is far more likely than a new century for them.

[Theslittyeye.wordpress.com]

To Mr. Stricter,

China will soar in the space program. And benefit awesomely from the advanced technology invented in the process of sending spaceship to get lucrative resources from other planet in long term.
The economic system is much more robust than American's, and demographics imbalance could easily be reverted by lift the ban of one child policy (which is going to happen very soon); you guys (Americans I assume) will rather have way bigger and irreversible demographic crisis soon. Massive ecological destruction is a price for economic development, don't sound like it never happens in your country or Europe. But your history tells us that we are going to fix the environment as soon as we get enough dough. So many problems emerge in modern China, but they are nothing really new and unfixable. The most important thing is that Chinese are very practical and smart enough to make its own decision.
Sorry for your wishful thinking about China, the rise of China is not by coincidence, it is meant to happen. One thing you should feel consoling is that Chinese are mostly realists and do not have fundamental issues with the Americans, and not interested in destroying the Americans.

[bluto]

When the space race mattered, it was mostly a way to show how advanced the major powers ICBMs were, and to launch spy sattelites.

That said, I'd much rather waste money on space exploration than Medicaid part D or the nursing home benefits in Medicaid vs hospice.

[Camlost]

Well, whenever I see a NASA control room I only see white faces. Every NASA astronaut or engineer - white.

Thus, it was a very easy decision for Obama to start scaling back NASA funding since there are no democratic/minority constituencies to offend. But Obama's not interested in cutting the bloat at any government agencies that employ a disproportionate percentage of affirmative action blacks.

And suddenly Obama wants to wean space exploration off government support and into private corporation funding?

Yeeeeeah, because we know that Obama is such a BIG proponent of the free market and what it can do for the USA. lol

[Jay M]

I am not optimistic as far as space colonization is concerned because: c is a fundamental speed limit in the universe, it would take massive amounts of fuel to accelerate even to 1/10th of c (not to mention that the fuel itself has mass, and thousands of tons would be needed even if the fuel were to lack mass), objectives becoming more massive as they travel faster, even a space pebble could puncture the hull of a spaceship traveling at such an amazing speed, if one component fails then everything else goes with it, etc.

[Meng Bomin]

To follow up on Alex's comment, I think that not only are one-way missions to Mars cheaper and easier to execute, but they are the approach that should be taken. If we want to probe Mars scientifically, we have robotic explorers that can do that more cheaply and efficiently than a human can. Humans should only be sent to Mars with the goal of colonization.

The Apollo mission was all well and good as a Cold War show of engineering prowess, but the only lasting effects are some technological advances (and I don't favor expensive quixotic missions for the sake of technological advance) and some corner reflectors on the Moon. Trying to imitate that success with a similar mission to Mars seems downright wasteful.

I don't think that space mining will be profitable, unless there is some useful element or isotope found in much higher abundances on another solar system body than on Earth (the helium mining in the movie Moon comes to mind, should fusion technology ever become viable). Instead, I think that the focus of a manned space program should be a very long-term eye toward colonization.

Now, Half Sigma is right that colonization doesn't work like shown in fiction and the notion that we need to colonize because we'll run out of resources on Earth is fatally flawed (and actually pretty bizarre). Earth is uniquely suited to human life and terrestrial life more broadly, or perhaps more accurately, human and terrestrial life evolved on this planet in a way that optimized its ability to function on this particular planet. Any other planet would have a suboptimal environment.

The point of colonization would be to provide a foothold for terrestrial life, human life in particular, to maintain existence should something happen to the Earth. By "something happening to the Earth", we're talking about very rare or very chronologically distant events (massive impact greater than the one 65 kya, Earth ejected from its orbit, eventual expansion of the Sun, etc.). Without colonization, the terrestrial life ends when the sun expands, if not sooner. With it, it's possible to lengthen its lifespan, possibly multiplefold.

[HS: It's not possible to get anywhere further away than Mars, and Mars is an inhospitable place where no sane person would want to live.]