I interviewed Steven Weinberg who has replaced James Van Allen as the most prestigious and eloquent direct critic of human spaceflight (unlike Barack Obama who may be the most effective passive-aggressive de-funder of space activities since Nixon).

I faced a fundamental media ethics issue. Weinberg's opinion on the likelihood of nuclear war with Russia in the next twenty years ("more likely than not") puts him in a tiny minority. By publicizing his view on this, it delegitimizes him as a spokesman against human spaceflight without discrediting directly his arguments against human spaceflight on the merits. I chose to carefully transcribe his words on this point, confirm that he stood by them, then released them.

What would you have done?

I certainly owe society a warning if he is correct. Twenty years ago, I would certainly have joined Weinberg in agreeing we are on a nuclear precipice and the facts certainly have not migrated all that much since then, just our interpretation of them. Like the national intelligence estimate of Iran; they are enriching uranium, but maybe they're not trying to build a bomb just today. We compartmentalize and convince ourselves that we're OK.

I'm not sure that a person whose sole argument against human space flight is that "it's infantile" actually has an argument against human space flight. Weinberg also seems to be uncomfortable with private wealth, at least in the multiple of billions of dollars. That view would tend to make most people skeptical of anything the man has to say.

BTW, in an otherwise excellent interview, one would have wished you could have brought up the Royal Astromical Society study on Human Space Exploration which seems to have come to a different conclusion on the subject than Weinberg, Park, et al. Weinberg's reaction might have proven illuminating.

Mark, I saw your comment at your site. Thanks for the cite to the RAS site. Weinberg's argument boils down to robots are cheaper than people in doing science and science is all that truly matters. I think it's bankrupt, but the only effective way to discredit the argument is to rebut it point by point.

Sam,

I would not left it in. You didn't go digging through old statements of his on off-topic material in order to discredit him; he brought it up. What to make of it then is left to the reader.

Sam, the RAS study (and I think just common sense) is that while robots are cheaper, they are hardly--well--better. Paul Spudis and, of course, Zubrin have made the same kind of arguments demolishing the robots uber alles position.

The arguments continue to have currency. Don't tell me why they are bad, tell me why they continue to be repeated and get press. They are not yet discredited. How can they be stamped out?

The problem is that one some PHD like Weinberg (or Park, or Van Allen) makes the robots uber alles argument, it doesn't get answered as quickly and as forefully as it should. And, in any case, the views of a person like Weiberg tend to match the biases of the main stream media which would just as soon see human space flight ended and the money siphoned off to social programs.

BTW, Clark Lindsey has an insightfull post about Weinberg (who apparently was on the losing side of his own big science project--the super collider) and the physics community in general. If you thought space activism was fractuous, apparently it's nothing compared to the fighting among physicists, with materials scientists and partical physicists with daggers drawn at one another, over grants and other issues.

Sam,

A very revealing interview. Well done.

I have posted some thoughts on Weinberg's flawed thinking, based on your interview, at spacepolitics.com.

CONCLUSION: Weinberg is no Dick Feynman.

- Al

The arguments continue to have currency. Don't tell me why they are bad, tell me why they continue to be repeated and get press. They are not yet discredited. How can they be stamped out?

Why bother? The difference between "unmanned spaceflight" and "manned spaceflight" as defined by NASA is trivial: A tiny handful of NASA astronauts planting a few flags and bringing back a few handfuls of rock.

If you limit the debate to those two choices, then Weinberg is right and Whittington is wrong. Spending $100 billion so another dozen or so people can walk on the Moon cannot be justified on scientific, economic, military, social, or even political grounds.

Rather than engaging in pointless arguments about whether there should be four astronauts on the Moon or zero, you should just say "a pox on both your houses." Four astronauts is not a space program, it's a rounding error. The real choice is between the trivial space programs of the past and a future with affordable spaceflight for everyone.

I agree with Edward Wright on this point:

Four astronauts is not a space program, it's a rounding error.

However, given the nature of Washington politics, I see little hope that Uncle Sam will be writing the checks needed put far more than four people in space nor will Washington end American humans in space.

I predict more of the same from NASA, no matter who is elected.

Those who desire to see lots and lots of people in space simply need to locate a revenue stream that does not pass through Uncle Sugar's digestive system first.

What is that revenue stream? Frankly, I dunno. But fighting over tax dollar expenditures does little to help find it.

However, given the nature of Washington politics, I see little hope that Uncle Sam will be writing the checks needed put far more than four people in space

We've been through this before, Bill. Uncle Sam could put far more people into space while writing smaller checks.

I predict more of the same from NASA, no matter who is elected.

NASA is not the whole of the United States, Bill, or even the whole US government.

If Fred Thompson's elected, I expect Military Space Plane would finally get the greenlight. It might even happen under a Democrat. In some ways that's easier, because the pacifists will scream less if a Democrat does it. Remember that it was Clinton who finally got national missile defense through Congress.

With the Chinese building Divine Dragon, I think it's only a matter of time before US politicians are forced to react.

(And isn't it amusing that Mark Whittington, who constantly invokes the Yellow Peril to justify Apollo on Steroids, hasn't even mentioned the fact that China has military spaceplane hardware on the runway? :-)

"(And isn't it amusing that Mark Whittington, who constantly invokes the Yellow Peril to justify Apollo on Steroids, hasn't even mentioned the fact that China has military spaceplane hardware on the runway? :-)"

Edward, I'll be worried when China's space plane is actually flying.

So, when did Fred Thompson endorse building a Military Space Plane? This would be big news.

Weinberg is a briliant Astrophysicist, which is clear if you read his seminal work _The First Three Minutes_. From his standpoint, it is irrifutable that robots and radio telescopes are better than flying people into space, because that is all he cares about, the science.

That does not mean however, that Weinberg knows a thing about the Human condition.

So, he doesn't want the government to spend money on human spaceflight, and he doesn't want anyone else to have enough money to be able to do so. Did I get that right?

Reminds me a bit of what Josephine Tey said in "The Daughter of Time." Alan Grant, the character speaking, is a police investigator. (I have also known a few Great Minds that were wholly naive about everything outside their arena of study. Embarrassingly so. The problem is because they are a Great Mind in one area they think that they are omniscient, and so does -- with a few notable exceptions -- an uneducated, uncritical and innumerate press.)

"He, Alan Grant, had known Great Minds so uncritical that they would believe a story that would make a con man blush for shame. He had known a great scientist who was convinced that a piece of butter muslin was his great-aunt Sophia because an illiterate medium from the back streets of Plymouth told him so. He had known a great authority of the Human Mind and Its Evolution who had been taken for all he had by an incurable knave because he 'judged for himself and not on police stories.' As far as he, Alan Grant, was concerned there was nothing so uncritical or so damn-silly as your Great Mind."

The ideas have currency because many people want to know things about the Universe, but they don't want to go there, or have the ability to imagine why anyone else would. As long as that's true, they'll send robots.

Edward, I'll be worried when China's space plane is actually flying.

So, when a Chinese newspaper says China may land a man on the Moon, someday, you wet your pants and say we need a $100 billion NASA program to counter them.

But when the Chinese government rolls out a military spaceplane, you still don't think the Air Force should get any funding until the Chinese vehicle is actually flying?

That's some double standard, Mark. "Hundreds of billions for bread and circuses but not one penny for defense"?

So, when did Fred Thompson endorse building a Military Space Plane? This would be big news.

Right on his website, Mark: "Ensure tactical and strategic air/space superiority over every battlefield and the U.S."

Yes, I know you think NASA's Orion capsule is somehow going to ensure space superiority but Fred is smarter than that. :-)

"Weinberg is a briliant Astrophysicist, which is clear if you read his seminal work _The First Three Minutes_. From his standpoint, it is irrifutable that robots and radio telescopes are better than flying people into space, because that is all he cares about, the science."

If your only tool is a hammer, all problems tend to look like nails. All other problems are ignored as being unworthy of the hammer's blow.

Perhaps this is a symptom of academic overspecialization. Professors are indulged screwy views on subjects far out of their fields, especially if they are prominent within their fields.

Examples: Gould playing at psychology, Dawkins playing at philosophy and history, Weinberg and any number of physicists playing at strategy.

I think a lot of this can be explained through self-interest. Mr. Weinberg and his company benefit when money is shifted from manned to unmanned space activities (and currently there is some funding competition between the two). If somehow it were to transpire that manned space required a greater unmanned commitment than present, I imagine he'd become much more respectful of manned space activities. Say, for example, that certain parties ponied up both for studies of gamma ray bursts (which can be strong enough to harm humans) or a detailed public survey of all asteroids greater than 100 meters in diameter.

Great interview Sam, you did the right thing about leaving it in when he mentions it (and if we're unlucky he could be right, 20 years is plenty of time for an awful lot of mistakes --still I don't really share the specific worry).

I think too many readers overemphasize the negatives in the interview (as I pointed out over at Space Politics).

Thanks for the kudos. I just linked Clark's article in a new post and here's the Space Politics link that a couple of commenters have been talking about.

Rand: you got it right. This from a man who can tell you at least three or four ways the world can end in the next 100 years. I admire his ability to compartmentalize to stay sane, but his thoughts about de-funding human spaceflight don't match his thoughts about the risk to the species and apply equally well to de-funding the AMS and the rest of NASA space science.

FC wrote: "...playing at strategy."

It is precisely this business of being stuck on strategy that has afflicted spaceflight for the last 50 years. There's a reason the professional soldiers focus on logistics, like Jon Goff has been doing lately.