There are some videos over at Next Big Future. I have no comments on them, because I haven’t taken the time to watch them yet, but some of my readers may be interested. It will be nice when it gets cheap to transcribe things like this.
I will say, though (as I often think) that it would be nice to banish the word “exploration” from the discussion. Brin appears to be talking about a lot more than that. That was a perhaps fatal flaw with the Bush plan — calling it the Vision for Space Exploration. As long as we think that we’re doing “exploration,” it opens up a hole big enough to fly a shuttle through for opponents to say, “let’s do it with robots.” What we needed was a vision for space development and a vision for space settlement. Once you get buy-in for that, the notion of doing it without people becomes instantly absurd.
He could have said “Vision for Space Exploitation” and not even need to change the acronym…
Yes, but unfortunately, that word (like colonization) has some negative connotations, justified or not.
I never quite understood the robots versus human argument when it came to state sponsored space exploration anyway. Yes I know that robots can do the job (up to a point) cheaper. I also understand though that public financing for such things is largely dictated by how much the public is interested in such things. Without the human element, the public tends to be less interested, which makes canceling such projects easier. To me, robot exploration rode on the goodwill that human exploration generated.
Calling it the “Vision for Space Settlement” doesn’t fix anything. The very next question then becomes “why are we settling space?” Certainly the most hostile and life-threatening, expensive, and difficult environment we could ever possibly consider settling. My response would be let anyone who wants to “settle space” do so on their own dime, not on billions of mine.
Traditionally and historically, the term “exploration” was understood to include both wealth creation and settlement. It’s only since the beginning of the 20th century that the meaning of the word “exploration” has been corrupted and restricted to mean science and national competition. This new meaning leads to absurdities such as “exploration without science is tourism,” consigning the famous explorers of history such as Columbus and Balboa as “tourists.”
Calling it the “Vision for Space Settlement” doesn’t fix anything.
Kirk, at least acknowledge Rand’s point, exploration can be argued to be exclusively robotic. Settlement implies a balance which is the right approach.
The very next question then becomes “why are we settling space?”
Yes. This is a great question to put on peoples minds that otherwise are not much engaged.
let anyone who wants to “settle space” do so on their own dime
Agreed. Do you really believe by any stretch of the imagination that NASA is able to settle space? Of course not, settlement will happen by private people and groups. The only question is, does NASA have any future in manned space? I personally would like NASA to limit itself to the research that is difficult for small companies to do and make it available to small companies.
I watched the “asteroid mining” video and even chatted (very VERY briefly) with David Brin over at Daily Kos. Unfortunately Brin rejects the idea that we might be able to harvest reasonably intact asteroid fragments lying on or just under the lunar surface and thereby achieve many of the benefits of NEO mining at lower risk and cost.
It seems well worth the effort to seek out asteroid fragments on the lunar surface before undertaking genuine NEO mining, after all NEOs will be far away in term in terms of delta t; will likely be spinning on multiple axes; working in microgravity will be far more challenging than 1/6th gee; the lunar surface does offer radiation protection (sleeping underground will reduce lifetime exposure); and lunar ISRU can leverage the program.
David Brin needs to chat with Dennis Wingo. At least IMHO.
Once you get buy-in for that, the notion of doing it without people becomes instantly absurd.
Getting the buy-in for that might be more difficult though.
Ken, I don’t think NASA is going to settle space, nor I do I think they are particularly well-suited to pursuing research that is “too difficult” for others. You’ll have to explain to me how the brainpower at NASA is superior to the brainpower at SpaceX, or Northrop Grumman, or Masten, or XCOR for solving these hard problems. Because I work at NASA and know it fairly well, and I’ve visited all four of those companies in the last two weeks and seen them doing from work that ranges from very good to absolutely extraordinary. I certainly put flight to the notion in my mind that there’s anything special about NASA for pursuing and solving “hard problems”.
But the basic problem that all of them face is that NASA and military is funding nearly all of the research and development that I saw. There is very little commercial justification going on outside of those sugar daddies. And space will never be “explored”, “settled”, or “exploited” until someone figures out how to make serious money. Name changes don’t fix that.
Sometimes I think I’d rather have a team of aerospace engineers and business school grads locked together for a few weeks chasing that problem than the continual wheel-spinning we see now.
BW: Without a sufficient buy-in from enough people, we can’t achieve a sustainable program. I also agree with ken anthony, NASA isn’t the proper agency to take the lead on this.
I also agree with ken anthony, NASA isn’t the proper agency to take the lead on this.
It’s not clear that NASA is the proper agency to take the lead on anything, at this point. In addition to expunging the word “exploration” (which, as Paul notes, has been rendered useless), I’d also like to firmly separate federal space policy from NASA. As I’ve often said over the last six years, if the administration had been serious about this policy, they wouldn’t have put NASA in charge of it. They’d have created a new entity (Space Development Initiative Organization) just as occurred with missile defense in the eighties. That organization would have drawn on other parts of the government, including NASA, as well as industry, to accomplish the goals.
But that was certainly politically infeasible. Because space isn’t important — jobs are, and particularly NASA/contractor jobs.
Don’t waste your time watching the videos. I just watched one and a half and had to stop. He rambling, incoherent at times, switching topics … and in the end, not saying anything worth listening to.
I think Rand is right. We should have a vision for Space Settlement. Yea, people might question the settlement part but at least we’d be talking about settlements and not robotic exploration. After all, that was the goal of the VSE wasn’t it? To get permanent outposts on the Moon and Mars. So let’s call it was it should have been … a Vision for Space Settlement.
I watched all the videos and Brin (for the most part) seems to agree with much of what has been said here. I was interested to hear him talk about the potential reuse (not an option now of course) of shuttle tanks. IIRC, that was a major part of O’Neill’s High Frontier concept. I haven’t heard it mentioned though in a long time. I always wondered if it was because the concept wasn’t workable on an engineering level, or because it just didn’t fit with what NASA was doing at the time.
The videos were quite interesting I felt.. not because the content was particularly new, but because Brin is one of those “creative” types who can talk to the public.
Rand, the humans vs robots argument has polarized so much that a lot of the pro-human crowd are unable to see a use for robotics in blazing the trail. ISRU, for example, is a technology that is screaming out to be both demonstrated and operated by robotics, and completely changes the architecture for transport of humans.
It may be that it will take remarkable advances in self-assembly to settle space. For example when colonization was done in deserted islands, centuries ago, it was common to leave foraging animals in an island so passers by in the future would have a food source.
We would want something that could grow in the vacuum of space and would collect water and energy. Then when you actually went there, most of the work would already be done. You could actually survive without bringing consumables from Earth.
I hope it will not take that much.
If you don’t believe that human space settlement will ever be pursued (for either economic or religious reasons) and you yield that robots are far better space explorers than humans will ever be (for a given price point) then it’s hard to figure out any other reason for putting humans in space other than tourism. That’s the state I’ve pretty much gotten to.
And I say that as a former committed O’Neillian, who used to write his congressman long letters describing why the space settlement/space solar power viewpoint was going to save us all someday.
it’s hard to figure out any other reason for putting humans in space other than tourism. That’s the state I’ve pretty much gotten to.
Same here. Fortunately that’s a pretty darn good reason!
…it’s hard to figure out any other reason for putting humans in space other than tourism.
I’m not sure that’s the right word, unless by it you mean generally “people who want to go for their own purposes.” Because I wouldn’t think of space settlers as “tourists.”
You’ll have to explain to me how the brainpower at NASA is superior to the brainpower at…
Excuse me, I didn’t say it nor believe it. Your observation of extraordinary work done elsewhere agrees with my observation. NASA is public money and it’s results should be freely shared. That’s all I meant.
NASA and military is funding nearly all of the research and development that I saw. There is very little commercial justification going on outside of those…
I think we’d both like to see that change, but acknowledge that the effect can often be part of a bootstrap to others.
…space will never be “explored”, “settled”, or “exploited” until someone figures out how to make serious money.
Absolutely, but profit comes at the end, not the beginning. You usually have to engage in a lot of unprofitable activities before profits happen (in any business, not just space.)
Name changes don’t fix that.
Words have power if only in changing a focus.
To make serious money you need a dynamic economy that is not centered on Earth. That’s what settlement gets you. It is by definition economic activity not on Earth. It’s a lot more subtle than selling unobtainium to a huge Earth market. Tourism is just a small part of it, but one that can happen sooner rather than later.
It’s really a moot point now. I think that US-led HSF beyond LEO is pretty much dead. After the passage of the health care bill, the money just dried up.
Launching astronauts today won’t make real self-sufficient space settlement (“backing up Earth”) happen a nanosecond sooner. We will simply see euphemism inflation with things like ISS or a completely dependent lunar base being called “settlements.” The make-work job programs people can play this game of euphemism shuffling far better than those of us (me included) who would very much like to see real space settlement somebody happen.
Considering that all real commercial space development to date has been unmanned, changing the vision to “development” isn’t really going to help astronaut fans make their argument with rational people.
Why do you have such a problem with unmanned machines when they are almost always the only affordable way to do space development? Being against robots in space is basically equivalent to being against space development.
Errata: “somebody happen” should be “someday happen”, not “somebody make it happen!” 🙂
If you don’t believe that human space settlement will ever be pursued (for either economic or religious reasons) and you yield that robots are far better space explorers than humans will ever be (for a given price point) then it’s hard to figure out any other reason for putting humans in space other than tourism. That’s the state I’ve pretty much gotten to.
IF. And why will robots be “far better” space explorers? At the current price point, which is barely enough for minimal space exploration, of course robots are better (simply because they are possible at the price point). Once you put in enough ante to pay for a long term human presence, then I don’t see the argument for robots working better.
Once you put in enough ante to pay for a long term human presence
WTF is this supposed to mean?
I love how astronaut fans invent their own unique economics.
Yeah, Karl that makes no sense. Even if you had a robust human presence, it would still be cheaper to send something out that eats electricity (from nuclear or solar) and doesn’t get homesick rather than sending a person that does.
I don’t care what they call it, so long as there is a genuine effort to start opening space for settlement. There is a core government mission to that end, and that is the initial, swift and inexpensive survey of territory to be settled. Be nice if we actually reconciled our space program to meet that objective.