Dennis Wingo says that we need a compelling reason for a space program, and we don’t currently have it. I agree. This is the space policy debate that we need to have, and never really have, at least not since the early post-Sputnik period. There is no way to come up with the right transportation architecture/infrastructure if we don’t understand the requirements, and we don’t really understand why we’re doing it. People persist in thinking that the VSE was a destination (the moon, then Mars), and then proceed to argue about whether or not it was the right destination. But it was, or should have been, much more than that — it was a statement that we are no longer going to be confined to low earth orbit, as we had been since 1972. But the failure was in articulating why we should move beyond LEO. Dennis has done as good a job of that here as anyone to date.
I would also note that it’s hard to generate enthusiasm for spending money, or astronauts’ lives, when we don’t know why they’re doing it. As I wrote a couple years ago:
Our national reaction to the loss of a shuttle crew, viewed by the proverbial anthropologist’s Martian (or perhaps better yet, a Vulcan), would seem irrational. After all, we risk, and lose, people in all kinds of endeavors, every day. We send soldiers out to brave IEDs and RPGs in Iraq. We watch firefighters go into burning buildings. Even in more mundane, relatively safe activities, people die — in mines, in construction, in commercial fishing. Why is it that we get so upset when we lose astronauts, who are ostensibly exploring the final frontier, arguably as dangerous a job as they come? One Internet wag has noted that, “…to judge by the fuss that gets made when a few of them die, astronauts clearly are priceless national assets — exactly the sort of people you should not be risking in an experimental-class vehicle.”
What upset people so much about the deaths in Columbia, I think, was not that they died, but that they died in such a seemingly trivial yet expensive pursuit. They weren’t exploring the universe — they were boring a multi-hundred-thousand-mile-long hole in the vacuum a couple hundred miles above the planet, with children’s science-fair experiments. We were upset because space isn’t important, and we considered the astronauts’ lives more important than the mission. If they had been exploring another hostile, alien planet, and died, we would have been saddened, but not shocked — it happens in the movies all the time. If they had been on a mission to divert an asteroid, preventing it from hitting the planet (a la the movie Armageddon, albeit with more correspondence to the reality of physics), we would have mourned, but also been inured to their loss as true national heroes in the service of their country (and planet). It would be recognized that what they were doing was of national importance, just as is the job of every soldier and Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But space remains unimportant, and it will continue to be as long as we haven’t gotten the public and polity to buy in on a compelling “why.”
Where is the movie that shows asteroid resources being used to help an Earth that has been ravaged by:
a) a Yellowstone explosion
b) a pandemic
c) nuclear terrorism
But space remains unimportant, and it will continue to be as long as we haven’t gotten the public and polity to buy in on a compelling “why.”
Agreed. What make anything important to people is their self interest… security, wealth and knowledge.
We don’t have a compelling national interest beyond commercial and military assets in orbit because nobody lives in space (they occasionally visit.)
Self interest happens where people live… we don’t live in space. We will never have that compelling reason until either we do or our security where we currently live (on Earth) is threatened.
I for one, don’t want to wait 10,000 years for the rock that wakes up the nation to it’s security interests. Barring that or Vulcans attacking us, we have little or no national interest in space except for military and commercial assets in orbit.
The other potential is international competition. If a nation claims sovereignty somewhere beyond the Earth, other nations are going to compete. First in the courts, but eventually in space as well. As long as there are no nations beyond Earth, you have little national interest. This may be why some hope for any and all ‘space races.’
What little national interests there are can mostly be attained with robotic missions. So we are left without a why for humans in space.
But we don’t need a national interest if private interests can make their way to colonize. Colonizers have a self interest, and self interest has enough power to strongly motivate. It would provide an abundance of why.
But that’s a private interest, not a national interest.
People with vision are going to leave this Earth and it’s nations behind if they can survive long enough financially to do it. They may use government money or not, but it’s not the government that’s going to give us our future.
we need a compelling reason for a space program, and we don’t currently have it.
Bullpucky. So where is the government funding coming from? There’s a very compelling reason for a space program and it’s to keep a bunch of politicians in their phoney balloney jobs, which means keeping NASA folks in their phoney balloney jobs.
We’ve been in the post modern age now for 30 years and the people here keep looking for rational reasons for stuff.
Silly rabbits.
Some idiot was comparing space to Antarctica at spaceref.
The reasons we aren’t developing Antarctica is not economic, it is political as in the case of a stupid treaty that never should have been signed.
One Saturday around 8 PM (over a decade ago) I turned to my friend Hugo and said “Do want to go see what the Lincoln Memorial looks like at night?” and he said “Yeah, I would.” It was a five hour drive to DC from New York. We got there at midnight and walked around until 2 AM, all over the Mall and the monuments. We were the only ones there.
Then we drove back. We were back in time for breakfast at a good cafe. I didn’t mention to anyone else that I’d been to DC, because I didn’t do it for any reason other than that I wanted to see it with my own eyes.
I want to see how many stars I can count from the dark side of the Moon. I want to lie on my back and stare out at the Universe. To see that with my own eyes. You guys can have whatever reasons you want; that’s mine.
By the way, what’s the point of cave paintings? Or Mt. Rushmore? Did Sir Edmund Hillary find anything important on that peek? I think they do have a point, and that he did find something – just don’t ask to see it on a balance sheet.
Brock: ” want to see how many stars I can count from the dark side of the Moon. I want to lie on my back and stare out at the Universe. To see that with my own eyes. You guys can have whatever reasons you want; that’s mine.”
For an eloquent re-iteration of Brock’s aspiration (and, to a great extent, mine as well), see Robert Heinlein’s short story “Requiem”, about D.D. Harriman getting his last wish.
There is a myriad of answers to why of course, but there are couple of them that can universally be communicated. Acquisition of strategic resources for instance.
Who in the world has direct control over supply of PGMs for example ?
Acquisition of strategic resources for instance.
Who in the world has direct control over supply of PGMs for example ?
Mostly Russia and South Africa. Russian company Norlisk owns the U.S. Platinum/Palladium mine in Stillwater Montana and if you google the term PGM Cartel, you will find where Russia is trying to negotiate such an entity with SA over the past few years.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-9672460_ITM
Yeah, and now if the alternative source would be opened on an asteroid, NEO or moon, i dont think it would be generally good news if China for instance would control that.
Are we trying to find that compelling reason? or is it better to come to terms with the fact that until nationalism (a space race) gets started there is not and will not be a compelling reason. The second rock heading our way after we perhaps survive being hit by the first one will seem compelling but has some obvious drawbacks.
As an individual, I’m going to invest in private companies that I believe are going to successfully attempt to backup humanity by creating self sufficient colonies beyond Earth orbit (the Moon being in Earth orbit does not count.)
I have no faith nor do I want the government doing it.
PGMs is a reason for Anglo American to go to the Asteroids, not NASA. NASA responds to Congress, and Congress responds to campaign contributors and (to a lesser extent) voters. Those people don’t care about PGMs.
If you want a reason for NASA to go you’ll need a reason for voters to support it. And they respond to basic emotions, like the Space Race vs. the USSR. The problem is that those can be good for sprints, but they’re not good for the long haul careful investment in future abilities (that’s a private sector thing). The fact that the Army can do that even “not terribly” is amazing, and only driven by the fear of death in war to better armed foes.
I think Space will get along without a space policy. The DOD will invest in COTS-like programs enough to keep SpaceX and similar firms going, plus there’s the tourism thing, and that will bring costs down to the point where Anglo American and ExxonMobil start looking at profit-making opportunities in mining and energy. NASA has been a distraction since Apollo.
When I was a kid, back in the 1980’s, I remember reading about a contest. The purpose of the contest was to come up with the best reasons for having a space program.
The winner was (from rusty memory): “If we do not explore space we shall remain a tiny people on a tiny planet.”
Dennis Wingo says that we need a compelling reason for a space program
How about the need for a means of escape from the Obama administration?
Hmmm, lot of soul searching for a space policy in the past few weeks. I hope something rubs off on the actual space policy.
Jerry Pournelle said it thirty years ago: what we need to do is figure out some way of becoming filthy rich by going into space. Then have NASA get out of the way.
what do VSE and LEO abbreviate?
LEO == Low Earth Orbit
I for one do not feel compelled to continue even the LEO program.
It’s a luxury, our deficit is out of control, our government is in the hands of profligates and … on and on.
Just cut my freakin’ taxes already. Kill the program and give me back my money.
VSE == Vision for Space Exploration
I hope something rubs off on the actual space policy.
I hope so, too, but I wouldn’t make book on it.
In high school, my sliderule case had the motto “Ad Astra per Aspera” tooled on it -seemed sufficient at the time.
While you are wringing your hands China is sending people into space. By the time they had suceeded with the first person, many had died but you don’t see the fuss. So go right ahead and be cry babies. Go right ahead and wring your hands about whats important and whats not. Eventually the people who liev among the stars will speak Chinese.
Ever since I was a child, space enthusiasts have been searching for a reason to justify human space travel. They needed to show some payback that would justify massive expenditure of technological resources. In that time, we have seen a massive expenditure of technological resources, in computers and related technology. This expenditure has achieved payback, resulting in greatly improved standards of living. There are good reasons to believe there are at least two and possibly three other opportunities for similar expenditures of technological resources to have similar payoffs, in genomics, nano-scale materials, and possibly advanced power systems. These opportunities all look scalable, requiring nation-scale wealth only in the research phase and then being passable to merely commercial entities for exploitation. To add insult to injury, all of these opportunities reduce the possible justifications for human space exploration, by undercutting the space-based resources and space-based energy rationales.
If you’re looking for wealth or power from technological advances, space is the wrong place to look. If you want to see how many stars you can see lying on your back on the dark side of the moon, go fund yourself
Isn’t using the same ol’ NASA model, but at an even slower pace? And they are going to inherit the Universe?
Okay. Whatever.
D’Oh!
Isn’t China using …
What I would like is for all space enthusiasts to look themselves in the mirror and ask, “How important a factor in my motivation is national prestige?” There are good reasons for wanting a space program, but the good reasons are being crowded out by short term national prestige considerations. There is a paradox here: it doesn’t look good to admit that the reason you’re doing something is in order to look good. So people tend to lie about their motivations where prestige is concerned (which it almost always is). This makes it very difficult for participants in space programs, political parties, and churches to carry on intelligent conversations about their organizations’ purposes.
We may need a lot of orbital mirrors to warm up the Northern hemisphere or else the coming Ice Age will kill any civilization that depends on agriculture and technology.
Compelling VSE?
There is the “all eggs on one basket” idea that we need residential redundancy on a planetary scale in order assure the very long term survival of our species (or at least the survival of the only known complex sentience in the Universe).
I feel however the “all eggs” argument is a weaker one then politics and even religion. Why did the Mormons colonize Salt Lake City? Why do Jews live in Israel? Why did the Pilgrims come to North America? The only way to escape many large scale, multi-generational political systems is to move. As the globalized world becomes more and more homogeneous in terms of its political landscape, where on Earth would there be left to move to in order to live the way one wishes?
We will migrate to destinations far beyond Earth for the usual reasons we always have–to escape our fellows in order to live the way we want without fear of intrusion. Keep in mind that this is a long term proposition, and it always has been, the progress of which will perhaps be measured in generations or perhaps even tens of generations (sans the accelerating effects of a Kurzweilian Singularity). In terms of any impatience you are feeling now–tough. Human life just isn’t long enough to experience the progress of human migration into space in a first hand, visceral manner (again, sans the effects of a Kurzweilian Singularity).
It’s easy.
Just convince folks that we are going to use space for alternative energy and to deport the evil CO2.
After all, that’s how a whole ot of science is being funded these days.
Sigh.
“For an eloquent re-iteration of Brock’s aspiration (and, to a great extent, mine as well), see Robert Heinlein’s short story ‘Requiem’, about D.D. Harriman getting his last wish.”
Brock spent his own money to go to DC. In “Requiem”, Harriman was privately wealthy and just wanted to spend his own money to go into space.
NASA is a government bureaucracy, funded by tax money. To make those earlier analogies fit, we need to modify them a bit. In the new version, Brock starts his DC trip by mugging his neighbors for gas money. And Harriman has no resources of his own, so he hijacks a spaceship and forces the pilots to fly him to the moon at gunpoint.
Achieving your dreams isn’t quite so romantic when you do it with other people’s money and they have no choice about whether they give it to you. That’s what NASA is.
“While you are wringing your hands China is sending people into space.”
Good for them. What’s your point?
The best reason for going into space is the one that Jerry Pournelle gave, but the difficulty is that the real riches are beyond LEO (I will ignore geostationary orbit, where we have communication satellites, weather satellites, and other things that are ALREADY making people filthy rich). For example, a single nickel-iron asteroid of the proper size could supply enough iron for centuries at the current rate of use of the stuff, but we would have to go get it, and we simply don’t have the capacity now, and aren’t likely to as long as the government controls space access. NASA is like any other government agency; when it began it had a clearly-defined goal, but it has become a big bureaucracy with no clear mission anymore, and is mostly interested in preserving, if not enlarging, its turf. Frontiers are not expanded by bureaucracies; they are expanded by people willing to take risks for gain.
Nicole, the thing is this need not change. There are other ways to deal with people who want to escape. You could kill or imprison them, for example. Europe would have turned out a lot different, I think, if the people who wanted to escape (or were exiled) couldn’t do so.
We’re in a good situation where the governments of the world are amenable to private, relatively uncontrolled activities in space. These circumstances can change however. I think some impatience is called for.
Easy as 1 2 3:
1. Space-Based solar power is a solved problem. It is
environmentally benign, financially productive, and
politically useful: Play Nice, or we turn off your power.
2. A moon base is the ultimate military High Ground;
Who else would you trust _not_ to use it to throw rocks
at US ?
3. NASA is a four letter word; They risked, and lost, the
lives of two shuttle crews, acting in violation of their
own safety rules, for political and publicity reasons.
Brock starts his DC trip by mugging his neighbors for gas money. …..Achieving your dreams isn’t quite so romantic when you do it with other people’s money and they have no choice about whether they give it to you. That’s what NASA is.
You forgot the fact that for his trip to DC Brock was driving on a road built and maintained with public money and in his car he has lots and lots of technologies that are a result of decades worth of basic science funded with public money ( yes car companies do the implementation of tech and improvements, but not the fundamentals ), built for safety standards established and enforced with public money and perhaps even having a GPS in his car .. again, system that was put up there with public money.
Its all called infrastructure, you know.
Nicole, I’ve been living human migration in a visceral manner for forty years now (if only in my head) but otherwise, I do like what you said. I share Karl’s concern that government interference could be a killer. I never believed a smooth talking Marxist could become president. I’m hoping our founding fathers can check and balance him long enough for private citizens to gain a foothold in space before they’re turned on by government ‘help.’
I’ll never make it 62 miles up, but I have hope that others will go much farther and I will give them whatever little support I can, but altruism isn’t the powerful force that self interest is. We are not going to see the stars until people are living, working and making huge profits off this planet.
To live people need energy, raw materials, tools and the knowledge to use them. Water seems to be everywhere, except in vacuum, and gravity (artificial or otherwise) is needed for the human body. The belt has the raw materials and is perhaps easier and safer to get to (no dangerous high gravity landings involved) but requires something more than solar energy. Solar can supplement a Mars colony but nuclear makes things a lot easier.
Access to space will get incrementally cheaper, but at about $15 million per person (using dragon as an estimate) it isn’t so high that migration is prevented now (well, near future.) Using government tax money (stolen from it’s citizens in an unethical manner for some of us dreamers) may be nice, but it really isn’t required, nor is anything else NASA may do. COTS and ISS resupply could go away and it would slow but not stop private activities (my hope anyway.)
My conclusion is that while providing a compelling ‘why’ could benefit short term; long term we need people to support a colonization effort which would harness the power of self interest. It’s not my self interest or yours, its the colonies (and perhaps humanities.)
We dreamers already know why… we just need to realize we don’t need tax money (no matter how nice a few extra billion here and there might be) to accomplish it. If SpaceX ever goes public I guarantee they’ll have all the money they need to retrieve some trillion dollar rock to finance all the other activities they can imagine.
We can argue about focus… flight rates are important. Have a destination with needs and you will get higher flight rates. Have needs and you’ll get bigger throw weights too. I am helplessly left with the need to argue that getting a colony going (one way trips included) using whatever we’ve got now or in the pipeline without adding anything not necessary that would cause a wrench in the works, should be our objective.
I am dumbstruck by the opportunity cost paid in the last forty years.
colony’s and humanity’s… got to remember to use those possessive pronouns.
Memories:
Canaveral, freeze dried ice cream, liftoff thunder, Flash Gordon, model rockets, Star Trek, Battlestar Gallactica, Buck Rogers, Erwin Allen, telescope in the back yard, cold winter nights, shooting stars, “Dad, can I
be an astronaut?” “Sure son, you can be anything you want to be”, Star Wars, 2001, black holes, worm holes, gateways to another universe, comets, “Zur and the Kodan Armada”, countless books, “Hey, put the highbeams on, then the snow looks like Warp Speed!”, Robotech, Star Blazers, “It would be an awful waste of space…”, Skylab, Apollo, Gemini, Mercury, “one giant
leap” – John F. Kennedy: “We choose to go to the moon…We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do all the other things, not because they are
easy, but because they are hard.”
Optimism.
And now…:
Over budget, “cheaper to send probes”, unaware public, unsupportive public majority, humankind left the moon at 22:54:37 GMT on December 14, 1972 and
did not return. Thirty seven years. Rusting launch pads, rundown towns from the space age, all our eggs in one Shuttle, the vision seems to be gone.
If we don’t get off this planet we’re going to use it up.
“We have stopped looking for tomorrow’s scientists. We have stopped listening to tomorrow’s dreamers.”
Stagnation.
Dreams for the future:
“Second star to the right and straight on till morning”, freefall, flying, mankind among the stars, to expand our mind, to expand our knowledge, to go where no one has gone before. To stand on the moon and
look back at the Earth and say “This is where I come from.” Then, to turn around and face the galaxy and say, “This is where I’m going.” To get back the dream.
PGMs is a reason for Anglo American to go to the Asteroids, not NASA. NASA responds to Congress, and Congress responds to campaign contributors and (to a lesser extent) voters. Those people don’t care about PGMs.
150 years ago that company would have been the Central Pacific Railroad or the Union Pacific. The fact is that to do a major infrastructure project that is beyond the timeline of capitalist (5-10 years), government must be involved. This was true of the Erie Canal and the Panama Canal as well. Move into the 20th century and it is the Interstate highway system.
Anglo American can surfboard on the infrastructure investment but to say that they would do it is to not understand how large leaps in infrastructure capability have happened for thousands of years.
Anglo American can surfboard on the infrastructure investment but to say that they would do it is to not understand how large leaps in infrastructure capability have happened for thousands of years.
Top down or bottom up. Top down gets the better press but bottom up does 99% of the work.
I respect your opinion and understand how government can focus spending. You look at the highways and I’ll look at the gas stations. Oh, but many of those gas stations existed before the current highways; on roads locally built.
It not only doesn’t take government to build infrastructure; it’s preferable that they don’t (except with the consent of those paying for it. Which implies local spending usually.) Standards are useful, but they don’t require government either, just a committee that some people agree with. What we need are more billionaires with vision, not a government that want to tax them gone.
Obama thinks stealing taxpayer money can provide a stimulus. Government can focus money, it doesn’t create more of it (printing is taxing.) But it can drive our economy into the ground.
Fundamentally, government spending is the definition of wasted opportunity cost. I remember the FAA spending $25k for $2.5k of computer equipment. Others can provide better examples. We need more Musks, not more NASAs. Private companies have the problem of company towns, but if enough of them compete, that’s not too much of a worry. Yes, I like the fact that SpaceX gets a $1.6 billion kick in the pants. I’d prefer they sold stock.
Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you’ll get ten different answers, but there’s one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won’t just take us. It’ll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and – all of this – all of this – was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars.
We need a space program for the same reason that Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to the West.
As a species, it is our fundamental instinct to be curious, adventurous, and explore new places.
As a Libertarian, I believe that the government should only do what the private sector can’t or won’t do. Most LEO activities (satellite delivery, space tourism, etc.) have profit written all over them.
So let us leave NASA with a new mission – to concentrate on scientific discovery and exploration. Make American industry the benefactor to results, based on their contribution.
Let’s get out of this funk and get to Mars ASAP. We’re too great of a species – and a country – to not take that first step out the door.
We need to explore space because we are biologically hardwired to do so. I personally think we are being called to take life forth into the universe. I also think we serve as the conscience and memory of the universe and the universe experiences itself through us. We are sensory organs of god so to speak. Back to the Moon, then on to Mars, and so on. If you don’t want to go that’s fine, you can stay here, but let’s not hold up life’s from reaching it’s destiny because a few of us are to short sighted to understand life must reach another oasis like Earth before Earth runs out it’s ability to sustain life.
Paul A. said: “It’s a luxury, our deficit is out of control, our government is in the hands of profligates…”
Yes, let’s cut $17 billion of scientific research so that we save 2% of the $800 billion bailout money to wealthy Wall Street bankers. As Ford Prefect queried, why not, go insane?
This is a big problem. The public thinks NASA gets a huge chunk of government spending, instead of the pittance it gets in reality. If you told the average Joe his share of NASA is less than $10 per year, actually far less if he is in a lower tax bracket, he would be astounded.
China’s reason is extracting Helium 3 from the moon for energy.
The fact is that to do a major infrastructure project that is beyond the timeline of capitalist (5-10 years), government must be involved.
Dennis, this statement requires a better response than I gave (or probably could give.)
First, it’s not a fact. It may be true for the majority of business people, but not all of them. Those exceptions are the guys we call visionaries. Some people, strange as it seems, look beyond themselves. They finance public libraries. They finance free operating systems. They want to back up humanity. Most people, if they consider them at all, think they’re nuts. We haven’t been hit by a planet killer yet, why worry about it? Yeah, the sun’s going to die and the earth turn to ash, but not in my lifetime. We’ve always extorted the public for infrastructure, how could we possibly do it any other way?
We can. We’d have to do something we’d never tried, called free enterprise. I haven’t completely bought into Rand’s suggestion that capitalism is only a marxist term (even given it’s source. I think free enterprise can own the term.) But I do know that most business people tend toward monopoly rather than free enterprise because of a short sighted view of things.
Antitrust is something government can do to benefit mankind. Government should be able to do infrastructure for the benefit of it’s citizens, but the reality is they waste so much that it’s ridiculous… NASA being a good example.
Perhaps I should add something more. Like a good economist it’s important to look at the unseen. Suppose we never had a NASA or a space race and Apollo never went to the Moon. What would our alternate reality have been?
No one can say of course, but I believe that eventually we would still have gone to the Moon and may have been better for it today. The main thing Apollo did in my mind is prove what could be done rather than how it should be done.
Would we have satellites today? Of course, there’s profit in those birds, but without NASA we’d have many more dozens of companies launching them. With NASA… ‘failure is not an option’ but with dozens of companies, failure is a strength. The companies that succeed are better for it.
With dozens of companies, you’d have dozens of different ideas about how orbit should be achieved. We wouldn’t have to guess what the best way was, somebody would end up doing it and others would copy. That’s the real history. Yes, government has financed some good projects… Lewis and Clark, Columbus, etc. but do you really think the new world would never have been found without Isabella’s gold? The trail west would always remain a mystery?
Al Gore invented the internet and only government can do infrastructure…
We need ma bell to be a monopoly or the poor farmers will never have phones…
I am very thankful for the Louisiana purchase and buying Alaska, but I’m not so keen on the rest.
If the entire moon were made of platinum, that still might not justify developing an infrastructure for delivering any. Transportation prices would need to be less than $15,000/lb before we could earn a single dollar of gross profit. Demand is only 200 tons at that price so we have demand of only $6 billion per year. It might only be $12 billion per year at a price of $7500/lb. That would be $6B/year revenues for a 400 ton return from the moon infrastructure. If it costs $50B to develop the technology with a 10 year lead time at a 25% interest rate, the return would be insufficient to pay for the investment even if the operating cost were 0.
Economics isn’t the why unless we can point to a market that’s sufficiently large and is not better served closer to home.
What we need is a categorical imperative to become a biplanetary civilization to justify the why.