The biggest problem with this piece (by a professor of journalism) is its fundamental false premise — that the purpose of human spaceflight is science.
8 thoughts on “Is NASA Going Extinct?”
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The biggest problem with this piece (by a professor of journalism) is its fundamental false premise — that the purpose of human spaceflight is science.
Comments are closed.
The purpose of human spaceflight at NASA is still an open question, however. Many people have opinions, but there is no general agreement.
One of the senior scientists on JWST just wrote a piece on Space Review saying NASA should have a Decadal Survey of researchers to decide goals for human spaceflight. Space scientists think they are “the customer,” rather than the employee. (I have heard them use that term to describe themselves.)
“that the purpose of human spaceflight is science.”
Arguing for a robotic science only approach is a contradiction of the panda analogy, ” it turned out to be a poor choice in the long term. In short, the panda overspecialized, and ever since then, it’s been trying to survive.” A focus solely on robotic science is overspecialization.
Not too many people argue for a “robotic only” approach anymore. At least, not openly.
The argument today is a bit more sophisticated. It says, we need *both* manned and unmanned missions — but they have to be the right *kind* of manned missions: sending a few scientists on a field trip to some interesting location, not as a means to any particular end (like settlement) but as an end in itself.
Carl Sagan created the archetype in the 1980’s. After trashing human spaceflight for years, he allowed that manned missions might be okay, as long as they were limited to “interesting” places that he would like to visit, like Mars. Today, Neil Tyson follows in his footsteps, trashing near-Earth space exploration while saying he would like to walk on Europa.
It’s like arguing that the only reason for developing airplanes is to carry scientists to McMurdo Station at the South Pole. And then they wonder why the public doesn’t think it’s worth the money.
“he allowed that manned missions might be okay, as long as they were limited to “interesting” places that he would like to visit, like Mars.”
And they don’t think far enough ahead to figure out where will gain the skills to send humans to Mars and Europa.
I agree that the best way is with both humans and robots but the robotic missions have to be in support of manned missions or the other way around. The point is they have to take place in the same location not on different planets/moons. Right now that limits using robotics from their full potential but it doesn’t make the strategy unsound.
Well purpose of human spaceflight is exploration. And without exploration you get no or least, less science. The purpose exploration is related to science, but also related to economics or added opportunity. Or basic survival, since Panda bears are analogous to NASA. Which I think is pretty good analogy as NASA is also kept in a zoo.
The idea of associating science journals with science is about the same comparing porn with fertility of population. Or it really has little to do with science. Or one can say they are same thing.
The amount science related to Apollo is staggering- and Apollo wasn’t really that much about science or exploration. Without lunar exploration we would still not know that dinosaur went extinct
from a impactor and that impacting event were current events. Impact events may be confused to
nuclear attacks, and who knows what silliness may have resulted from such stupidity.
That is a good point. Science is more than publishing journal articles.
I think NASA can avoid extinction as long as they maintain at least half a dozen breeding pairs of bureaucrats.
Bureaucrats don’t reproduce through sex, they reproduce through spontaneous generation whenever there’s available space – and there’s a lot of space in NASA’s areas of operation.