Stephen Smith has some for the presidential candidates:
U.S. Census statistics show that more people alive now were born after Apollo (185 million) than before (123 million). For the majority of the population, the 1960s Space Age is a page in a history book, and has little personal emotional resonance.
So do yourself and the nation a favor. Don’t invoke Kennedy.
As your campaign staff develops its space policy white paper, begin with a fundamental question — why should people be in space?
Yes.
Any word of advice that begins with a rant about why Apollo was evil is a sure way to get the proposal trashed and the author pegged as a nut.
I see your reading comprehension is as terrible as usual.
Rand. And your sense of humor is as flat as always. My point was that you are not going to impress any potential President by coming across as a lunatic. Trashing the moon landings is a sure way to get pegged as one.
And you continue to demonstrate your inability to read plain English if you think he was “trashing the moon landing.”
How else can one interpret the characterization of “perverted?”
“Perverted” as in transform it away from its original purpose and charter.
Apollo was an amazing achievement and it is something for our country to be proud of but the important questions are what justifies the ideological importance of spending other people’s money in space when there are so many worthy causes for other people’s money and how best to spend that limited amount of money that the taxpayers think you deserve so that we can get to a point where economic, scientific, and personal activity in space doesn’t depend on whether or not space is more important than food stamps, Obamacare, fighting AIDS, helping veterans, or any of the other causes that people think are important.
The beautiful thing about our country, and capitalism in general, is that it allows people to pursue their own interests and the amazing technological and social progress we have seen as a country has sprung forth from this unshackling of the human spirit. You can’t predict what people are going to create or what ills they will cure when you set their human spirits free.
Space is a harsh environment but while you can take humans out of nature, you can’t take nature out of humans. Government is necessary in space, as it is everywhere, but the government gets its power from the people.
It comes down to this: A government operating in space requires a society of free people creating the capability and wealth that allows the government to exist. In order to have a government that can do big things, you need to have a populace that can enable it.
The role of government in space, just as it should be on Earth, is to help the governed thrive.
Even if you disagree with my views of what the government’s role in space should be, the spending of government money must always be ideologically justified. Advocates must continually provide reason that the expense is worth it.
The author of the article is saying you can’t rest on your laurels. The younger folk don’t have any personal connection to Apollo and think you are too old to understand technology anyway. So regardless of what you want the government to do,
how do you convince them space is worth the other people’s money?
Its tough because for many people, it will never be worth even other people’s money. Which is why if you really care about people living in space and the innovations and inventions that will come from it, your goal should be to get to the point where government involvement is not required to participate in the industry otherwise you are only one election away from everything crumbling down, as the Israelites just learned.
Well put Wodun, it’a a pity that it’s too long for Mark R. Whittington to read, let alone comprehend.
Did you even try to read the linked article? Your comments are completely nonsensical to what the author is suggesting.
He probably tried, but again, reading for comprehension has never been Mark’s strong suit.
AoS ONT noted that it was 66 years from Kitty Hawk to Apollo. It’s been 53 years since, and if NASA is to be believed, 60 years in total until we might get back.
Wodun many of the points in your post are valid. However Smith came across as a conspiracy nut job. I think you will find that even people who came of age after Apollo believe that it was a good thing and are rather wistful that we are not doing such things now.
Your point would be that people not well informed on space are likely to believe that Apollo was The Way To Do Things In Space? And viewpoints to the contrary are dismissed out of hand?
“I think you will find that even people who came of age after Apollo believe that it was a good thing”
I don’t think anyone thinks Apollo sucked or was a bad thing but that doesn’t mean we should romanticize it to the point of trying to copy it either.
The Apollo program was the right thing at the right time. Things are different now. We know more. We want people to live in space. The main problem with Apollo was, what was next? The challenge of getting there was so great we didn’t worry about what we would do after. But now, getting there is well understood and you need to convince people that we have a purpose, or purposes, in going there in the present/future.
“and are rather wistful that we are not doing such things now.”
Who is this we? Is we NASA or is we the American people? We, the American people, should be doing great things with the help of our government and this will allow the government to do great things in space as well.
Space has been all about gaining the higher ground.
It seems the challenge of our age, is to transform space environment into being more than merely the higher ground.
As far as presidential campaigns, it seems it depends upon the candidate.
Space is 200 billion global commercial market and it’s market tied to the future of all countries, it has been a rapidly growing market, it seems very unlikely that it will not continue to be so in the future, but this market based upon having the higher ground. And space could involve more than this and this aspect can be more fully utilized.
One aspect regarding space has been it’s allowed nations to gain information about another nations- spying. This is extended to allowing people to have information about what governments are doing- and this tends favor free people more than despotic rule. So that’s one aspect of higher ground of space.
Another aspect about the space environment could involve sub-orbital travel. And this will begin as sub-orbital “joyrides” just air travel began as related to flying airplane for joyrides. So that not so much about the higher ground, as much using vacuum of space for fast travel- and that could change space from a hundred billion dollar market into a trillions of dollar market- in terms of decades in the future.
And further into the future but possibly within a century, we could harvest solar energy from space to provide electrical power for people living on Earth.
The path towards this future, is starting markets in space for electrical power in space for space use. Which would be related to starting a market in space for rocket fuel- or stored chemical energy. So electrical power can make the chemical energy, and the chemical energy can also to be converted into electrical energy. And a path to making chemical energy is mining water in space.
But before mining water in space, one start by making a market for rocket fuel in space. So rocket fuel shipped from Earth and sold to customers in the space environment.
So need to develop the technology related to the use of rocket fuel depots in space, and need to explore space to find minable water in space. So NASA can make a rocket fuel depot in LEO, and use the depot for the exploration of the Moon to determine if and where there is minable lunar water. NASA can also use these depots to explore Mars.
If NASA finds minable lunar water, then interested parties can invest the money to mine this water. And if lunar water can be profitably mined and rocket fuel made from it, then the Moon becomes a gateway to the rest of solar systems. And if Mars is explored, then lunar gateway will enable future settlements on Mars.
The problem with starting a market of rocket fuel made in space [rather than shipping it from Earth] is the current lack of any market for rocket fuel in space, were this to be created by shipping rocket fuel from Earth to depots, the next problem is the lack of demand for the rocket fuel.
And the small market for rocket fuel in space makes starting making rocket fuel at the Moon, as most viable. Because the moon is near Earth, and because the lunar surface could have market for rocket fuel.
Or a current problem with going to the moon is lack of rocket fuel at lunar surface in order to return to Earth. And if one had rocket fuel on lunar surface one can export stuff from the Moon to lunar orbit or Earth. And once one creates a market for rocket fuel made in space, it allows water to mined elsewhere in space- this easier if there existing and growing market of rocket fuel.
The Moon could many commercial markets other lunar water, and lunar water would lower costs of establishing and operating lunar bases, which related researching lunar manufacturing- such making solar panels or other means of harvesting solar energy- which could then allow within a century, solar energy harvested from Earth orbit and transmitted to people on Earth. But is future in which instead of couple hundred billion space market, the space market is trillions of dollars and this require many years to build this economy. And would reality of a time after NASA has explored Mars, and a time of when possibly there settlements on Mars [and elsewhere in space]- so many decades into the future. Predicting it is impossible, but it seems, it starts with exploration. And depends leadership which allows a growing and competitive economy in space.
“The problem with starting a market of rocket fuel made in space [rather than shipping it from Earth] is the current lack of any market for rocket fuel in space, were this to be created by shipping rocket fuel from Earth to depots, the next problem is the lack of demand for the rocket fuel.”
Consider this: Lockheed has proposed a space tug. This tug could refuel satellites. They would just need buy in from satellite manufacturers. There is demand and a market. The tug could receive fuel from Earth but later it could get it from anywhere as the tug never returns to Earth. Then as that market matures, someone will put a depot in space to make the process more efficient.
Also, they are running experiments on the ISS to refuel satellites that were not designed to be refueled. The refueling market could begin even sooner.
“One aspect regarding space has been it’s allowed nations to gain information about another nations- spying. ”
Spying is such a loaded term, let’s call it market research 🙂
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/22/how-outer-space-is-becoming-the-next-internet.html
Space is fundamentally no different from any other human endeavor. Two aspects that are important are risk and reward along with barrier to entry. Entry is not just cost, but more important about mindset.
Risk and reward has nothing to do with achievement, SLS being a prime example. SLS is being pushed by those rewarded by a system that will have almost no achievement.
Overcoming barrier to entry IS NOT ABOUT COST. Focusing on cost has made people stupid, blinding them to ways to quickly move forward.
Competition naturally brings down costs and obviously should be encouraged but there is an even more rapid way to bring down costs. Distribute those cost by giving more people skin in the game.
It really doesn’t matter how you do it and I’m all for hearing other ideas but I know and have expressed one that absolutely works.
There is absolutely no reason we can’t sell the damned things to pay for transportation of colonists except for mindset. None! A penny per square meter is more than enough. Zubrin talked about land patents that were sold more than 100 years before possession. We don’t even have to speculate that far down the road.
Why is there such a low interest in space? Would that change if regular people could own and speculate using an electronic exchange the same as they do with stocks and commodities?
The only thing preventing us is mindset (and graft.)
It certainly isn’t about technology. It’s only about costs because we refuse to distribute them.