Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Science Memories of the Space Age
Posted by Charles Mudede on Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 12:04 PM
In the GAO's list of pressing matters for Obama we find...
The Government Accountability Office has made "Surface Transportation" one of its 13 urgent issues for President-Elect Obama to address. Others include the financial crisis, the wars in the middle east, the digital TV transition, and the retirement of the Space Shuttle.
The death of the Space Shuttle.
I know that the Space Shuttle (Space Transportation System) did nothing but retard the American space program. While the Russians, Europeans, Indians and Japaneses were building better and more efficient rockets, the Americans were wasting money and intellectual resources on a bad idea. The shuttle was not a practical machine for human space missions. The Americans were paying only for the neat trick of a space ship landing on a strip like an regular plane. The Space Shuttle was NASA's costly attempt to civilianize a technology that operates at an inhuman scale, to make those monster boosters and monstrous blasts less terrifying to the public. But, still, despite its failure to do anything that an efficient space machine could do for far less money, it will be sad to see NASA's Space Shuttle go the way of all things—into the dark. So many promises (a brighter future, civilian space travel) were packed into that program.
And now for a dusky passage from J.G. Ballard's short story "The Dead Astronaut":
The relic hunters were at Cape Kennedy, scouring the burning saw grass for instrument panels and flying suits and — most valuable of all — the mummified corpses of the dead astronauts. These blackened fragments of collarbone and shin, kneecap and rib, were the unique relics of the Space Age, as treasured as the saintly bones of mediaeval shrines.
Finally, Ballard's passage recalls this one from Capital:
Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable... Not even the bones of saints [are able to resist this power.]
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3
Look on the bright side. Maybe the Museum of Flight will be gifted with one of the old shuttles. It will look great next to Air Force One.
5
@2, earlier this month, NASA put the likelihood of launching the Ares program on time in 2015 at about 65%, which would require an increase in funding. The Congressional Budget Office report estimated costs could rise by 50% and since NASA's budget has on average, only increased by 2%, it's likely that the Ares/Orion program could be delayed at least another couple of years. Also, the longer NASA feels compelled to continue shuttle flights to meet ISS commitments and so on, the longer it will take to fund and finish the Ares replacement.
The Ares has had proven to have some fairly serious oscillation problems lately as well.
Factor in that the US economy is in freefall, with the credit bailouts to date already eclipsing the cost of NASA's entire budget history, including the moon landing program, and it's easy to imagine the whole manned space program getting delayed and delayed for more pressing domestic matters until, you know, it's cancelled for good.
It makes little or no sense to put people in space anyway, but that's another discussion.
The Ares has had proven to have some fairly serious oscillation problems lately as well.
Factor in that the US economy is in freefall, with the credit bailouts to date already eclipsing the cost of NASA's entire budget history, including the moon landing program, and it's easy to imagine the whole manned space program getting delayed and delayed for more pressing domestic matters until, you know, it's cancelled for good.
It makes little or no sense to put people in space anyway, but that's another discussion.
6
Hopefully only for a couple of years, @1. Assuming Obama keeps his promise to maintain or even increase funding levels for NASA's manned space program, there's a possibility that STS operations could be extended through 2011 or even 2012, and Constellation/Orion could be operational as early as 2013.
And FWIW, yes STS, in the configuration that was eventually adopted turned out to be much more complex to maintain, and therefore more expensive to operate than anticipated - blame in part Nixon's general ambivalence toward NASA, and political "sticker shock" over the more ambitious, fully reusable configuration NASA originally proposed - with the result that cost-per-pound never came close to the ratios predicted, nor did the number of flights ever achieve the dozens per year originally envisioned.
But blaming the "retardation of the American Space Program" solely on STS indicates woeful naivete and ignorance of the socio-political pressures brought to bear on NASA in the post-Apollo period. Frankly, this retardation began long before STS, at about the same moment Armstrong was taking his first steps on the moon. The Space Race had been won, and public interest began to wane almost immediately thereafter. Without public support for continuation of NASA's mission, political interest evaporated, resulting not only in the cancellation of the last three Apollo lunar missions, but a drastic reassessment of long-range national goals in the arena of manned space exploration. And the result? Lunar base: gone. NERVA: scrapped. The US Air Force's "dyna-soar" reusable space vehicle: axed, along with the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.
While admittedly STS never fully fulfilled its original intent, it's disingenuous to say that it has been the cause for the general laggardness in the development of manned spacecraft technology and systems, when the truth is, the U.S. public had already lost interest in manned space exploration long before. In fact, it may well be that development of STS, at least initially prior to the Challenger explosion, actually made a significant contribution to a renewal of interest in space exploration.
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And FWIW, yes STS, in the configuration that was eventually adopted turned out to be much more complex to maintain, and therefore more expensive to operate than anticipated - blame in part Nixon's general ambivalence toward NASA, and political "sticker shock" over the more ambitious, fully reusable configuration NASA originally proposed - with the result that cost-per-pound never came close to the ratios predicted, nor did the number of flights ever achieve the dozens per year originally envisioned.
But blaming the "retardation of the American Space Program" solely on STS indicates woeful naivete and ignorance of the socio-political pressures brought to bear on NASA in the post-Apollo period. Frankly, this retardation began long before STS, at about the same moment Armstrong was taking his first steps on the moon. The Space Race had been won, and public interest began to wane almost immediately thereafter. Without public support for continuation of NASA's mission, political interest evaporated, resulting not only in the cancellation of the last three Apollo lunar missions, but a drastic reassessment of long-range national goals in the arena of manned space exploration. And the result? Lunar base: gone. NERVA: scrapped. The US Air Force's "dyna-soar" reusable space vehicle: axed, along with the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.
While admittedly STS never fully fulfilled its original intent, it's disingenuous to say that it has been the cause for the general laggardness in the development of manned spacecraft technology and systems, when the truth is, the U.S. public had already lost interest in manned space exploration long before. In fact, it may well be that development of STS, at least initially prior to the Challenger explosion, actually made a significant contribution to a renewal of interest in space exploration.
7
@5:
"It makes little or no sense to put people in space anyway"
Except of course, for the glaringly obvious fact that, if we continue to fuck up things down here on earth at the rate we're going, humanity's only chance for long-range survival is going to depend directly on our ability to live in outer space.
"It makes little or no sense to put people in space anyway"
Except of course, for the glaringly obvious fact that, if we continue to fuck up things down here on earth at the rate we're going, humanity's only chance for long-range survival is going to depend directly on our ability to live in outer space.
8
The International Space Station would never have been built without the shuttles, Charles, so how have they "retarded" space exploration? It's one thing to send up telecommunication satellites (Russia et. al) it's another to prepare humans for extended space travel, as the shuttles have done. Our ultimate destiny is Mars, and without the shuttles, that wouldn't be possible either.
9
@7, or, you know, it might make some sense to try to make Earth a better place for us, since it's the only place in the universe (that we know of) in which we can live. We are insanely fragile, ephemeral organisms that developed in what may yet turn out to be a unique sliver of environmental conditions.
We have to expend ridiculous amounts of energy to get clear of our gravity well, and to take the required mass and bulk of supplies we require to survive up there for short periods of time. Every resource we need to live has to be lifted at enormous enormous expense along with us, and even then, we are exposing ourselves to bombardment by huge amounts of lethal particles and radiations if we leave the safety of our planet's magnetosphere while also having our skeleton, circulatory system and musculature slowly atrophy.
We are not designed to survive in the extreme conditions outside our world, and if only from a cost/benefit analysis standpoint of lifting all that mass, it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. It would be like spending a ton of effort to try to build vehicles for soap bubbles to ride in, so that they could survive without popping in a hurricane. A pointless, doomed endeavor.
We have to expend ridiculous amounts of energy to get clear of our gravity well, and to take the required mass and bulk of supplies we require to survive up there for short periods of time. Every resource we need to live has to be lifted at enormous enormous expense along with us, and even then, we are exposing ourselves to bombardment by huge amounts of lethal particles and radiations if we leave the safety of our planet's magnetosphere while also having our skeleton, circulatory system and musculature slowly atrophy.
We are not designed to survive in the extreme conditions outside our world, and if only from a cost/benefit analysis standpoint of lifting all that mass, it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. It would be like spending a ton of effort to try to build vehicles for soap bubbles to ride in, so that they could survive without popping in a hurricane. A pointless, doomed endeavor.
10
"The Space Shuttle was NASA's costly attempt to civilianize a technology that operates at an inhuman scale, to make those monster boosters and monstrous blasts less terrifying to the public."
That's possibly the stupidest thing I've ever read.
That's possibly the stupidest thing I've ever read.
11
And that, @9, is the sort of defeatist "OHNOES! It'll never work! We're Doomed!" attitude that will pretty much guarantee us smart apes won't survive another handful of millenia, at most.
It's called EVOLUTION, and the overriding imperative is: "Adapt - or DIE". Sure, taking care of things down here sounds nice and all, but it's not like most of us are running out to do much in the way of anything practical in that regard - at least not sufficiently to have more than a marginal impact. And that doesn't even count the fact that, sooner or later we're going to face looking down the business end of a large chunk of space-rock capable of initiating another mass-extinction event.
Yes, short-term it costs a lot to climb up out of the gravity-well, but once accomplished, the cost diminishes almost logarythmically; and there are just oodles of natural resources out their waiting to be exploited, certainly far more than are available to us down here.
So, unless you want to argue in favor of reducing the human population by 60 or 70%, our current rate of consumption and resulting befouling of our own nest eventually is going to necessitate looking elsewhere for resources to sustain our existence - and "out there" is the only other where in the neighborhood.
It's called EVOLUTION, and the overriding imperative is: "Adapt - or DIE". Sure, taking care of things down here sounds nice and all, but it's not like most of us are running out to do much in the way of anything practical in that regard - at least not sufficiently to have more than a marginal impact. And that doesn't even count the fact that, sooner or later we're going to face looking down the business end of a large chunk of space-rock capable of initiating another mass-extinction event.
Yes, short-term it costs a lot to climb up out of the gravity-well, but once accomplished, the cost diminishes almost logarythmically; and there are just oodles of natural resources out their waiting to be exploited, certainly far more than are available to us down here.
So, unless you want to argue in favor of reducing the human population by 60 or 70%, our current rate of consumption and resulting befouling of our own nest eventually is going to necessitate looking elsewhere for resources to sustain our existence - and "out there" is the only other where in the neighborhood.
12
@11, I allow you that it may be technologically possible that we could someday construct an organism (or more likely, some kind of self-aware machine) capable of offplanet survival, but that organism wouldn't be human.
Two thirds of the earth is underwater -- why aren't we living there? Oh, right, enormous water pressures and unfeasible engineering requirements, the need to get supplies down to the seafloor constantly.
Hey, nearly an entire continent is empty of life at the southern pole -- why isn't it teeming with colonies? Oh, that's right, it's a blasted, icy Hellscape where we can't survive outside for more than short periods of time.
Fuck, I'd wager most SLOG posters wouldn't be able to eke out a living east of the Cascades, and would opt to give up instead.
I hate to spoil the ending, but the human race isn't relocating off world. Enjoy this time now; don't worry about WHEN our species WILL go extinct.
Two thirds of the earth is underwater -- why aren't we living there? Oh, right, enormous water pressures and unfeasible engineering requirements, the need to get supplies down to the seafloor constantly.
Hey, nearly an entire continent is empty of life at the southern pole -- why isn't it teeming with colonies? Oh, that's right, it's a blasted, icy Hellscape where we can't survive outside for more than short periods of time.
Fuck, I'd wager most SLOG posters wouldn't be able to eke out a living east of the Cascades, and would opt to give up instead.
I hate to spoil the ending, but the human race isn't relocating off world. Enjoy this time now; don't worry about WHEN our species WILL go extinct.
13
The Smithsonian has the STS Enterprise at the Udvar-Hazy Center outside DC. I reluctantly visited a couple of years ago, thinking, "space shuttle?...meh..." But when you actually stand next to it, the sheer scale of the thing is pretty awesome.
BTW, this has to rank as one of the least snarky retarded threads at the Slog in a while. WTF? Is everyone gone for the holidays already or something...
BTW, this has to rank as one of the least snarky retarded threads at the Slog in a while. WTF? Is everyone gone for the holidays already or something...
14
Seriously COMTE? You think we'll be able to biologically evolve our way out of the mess we've made?
Like how Kevin Costner grows gills in Waterworld, right?!
Our species takes way too long to evolve for that to be a solution to the problems of overpopulation and insufficient resources. Colonizing outer space is not a realistic option for survival. Sinking more money into such a program would be fucking stupid. Just give everyone comprehensive sex-ed & free birth control instead.
Like how Kevin Costner grows gills in Waterworld, right?!
Our species takes way too long to evolve for that to be a solution to the problems of overpopulation and insufficient resources. Colonizing outer space is not a realistic option for survival. Sinking more money into such a program would be fucking stupid. Just give everyone comprehensive sex-ed & free birth control instead.
15
Sure, we can justify leaving a dead hulk of an earth and embark on galactic manifest destiny.
Let's show off our evolutionary skills and take responsibility for our planet instead. For a worst case legacy, we can chisel space-visible words into our glassy crust: "DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME."
___
That said, let's chill out on the manned space program until we actually have useful things for people to do up there. We've been lofting people for 60 years, and we still don't have a better reason than PR to be launching them.
What we gotta do is push for more robust and cheaper launch vehicles, while better controlling our orbital waste. Right now launches are so expensive we can't afford to mass produce satellite technology. Thus, everything is over-engineered, costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and a single human error can still doom a 1-off mission.
Once launches are cheap and reliable enough that we can actually loft up-to-date critical infrastructure (our weather satellites are still 1980s tech) and do remote robotic repair...
... then I'd have no problem with sinking funds on manned space, just for the lark. Till then, it's a bloody waste.
Let's show off our evolutionary skills and take responsibility for our planet instead. For a worst case legacy, we can chisel space-visible words into our glassy crust: "DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME."
___
That said, let's chill out on the manned space program until we actually have useful things for people to do up there. We've been lofting people for 60 years, and we still don't have a better reason than PR to be launching them.
What we gotta do is push for more robust and cheaper launch vehicles, while better controlling our orbital waste. Right now launches are so expensive we can't afford to mass produce satellite technology. Thus, everything is over-engineered, costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and a single human error can still doom a 1-off mission.
Once launches are cheap and reliable enough that we can actually loft up-to-date critical infrastructure (our weather satellites are still 1980s tech) and do remote robotic repair...
... then I'd have no problem with sinking funds on manned space, just for the lark. Till then, it's a bloody waste.
16
@12:
That's a completely specious argument: we don't live at the bottom of the ocean, because for the moment at least - we don't HAVE to. I'm sure though, that if things topside get bad enough, that will become a viable option - in fact, a few intrepid folks are already giving it a go.
Antarctica is even more of a wasteland than outer space: aside from air and water, there's very little there in the way of exploitable resources - and it's all about the resources, baby, or haven't you been paying attention?
Yup, why don't you just lay down, curl up and die right now? Doesn't sound like you have much to look forward to, propagation-of-the-species-wise, anyway.
As for me, well, I'll stick with the forward-stepping crowd...
That's a completely specious argument: we don't live at the bottom of the ocean, because for the moment at least - we don't HAVE to. I'm sure though, that if things topside get bad enough, that will become a viable option - in fact, a few intrepid folks are already giving it a go.
Antarctica is even more of a wasteland than outer space: aside from air and water, there's very little there in the way of exploitable resources - and it's all about the resources, baby, or haven't you been paying attention?
Yup, why don't you just lay down, curl up and die right now? Doesn't sound like you have much to look forward to, propagation-of-the-species-wise, anyway.
As for me, well, I'll stick with the forward-stepping crowd...
19
@14:
Well, if you do evolution the old-fashioned way, and just sort of hang out waiting for natural selection to stumble onto some advantageous adaptations, then yeah, it's going to take a few million years.
But, we're pretty smart for apes - we don't have to wait for nature to take its course seeing as we already have ability to create the tools needed to survive in inhospitable environments that a few centuries ago would have been strictly off-limits to homo sapiens sapiens. Heck, give us a century or two and we'll probably be able to manufacture biological, or, cybernetic adaptations that will allow human beings (or more accurately, homo sapiens commodo to survive and thrive in these environments much more effectively than is currently the case.
Why wait for slow, old nature to randomly provide the gills, when you can have them surgically installed - or even grown in vitro? Sadly, we won't be around to see it happen, but unlike some of you, I have a lot more confidence in our ability to make it happen - if that's what's required to ensure our survival as a species.
The rest of you apparently, are quite content being space-wasting bags of meat. Good luck with that.
Well, if you do evolution the old-fashioned way, and just sort of hang out waiting for natural selection to stumble onto some advantageous adaptations, then yeah, it's going to take a few million years.
But, we're pretty smart for apes - we don't have to wait for nature to take its course seeing as we already have ability to create the tools needed to survive in inhospitable environments that a few centuries ago would have been strictly off-limits to homo sapiens sapiens. Heck, give us a century or two and we'll probably be able to manufacture biological, or, cybernetic adaptations that will allow human beings (or more accurately, homo sapiens commodo to survive and thrive in these environments much more effectively than is currently the case.
Why wait for slow, old nature to randomly provide the gills, when you can have them surgically installed - or even grown in vitro? Sadly, we won't be around to see it happen, but unlike some of you, I have a lot more confidence in our ability to make it happen - if that's what's required to ensure our survival as a species.
The rest of you apparently, are quite content being space-wasting bags of meat. Good luck with that.
20
@16, good luck in space.
You're going to need it, to find more resources than you figure are available in Antarctica. It's actually slightly less a wasteland than space, in the same way that the center of a nuclear explosion is a bit hotter than room temperature.
I'm not curling up and dying, thanks; I have two kids. I plan to live a nice, long life and hope to enjoy grandchildren and great grandchildren, the way my own grandparents did. I hope and would imagine that you can do the same. I don't see humanity going extinct any time soon.
Our species has only been around for an eyeblink -- the dinosaurs had the run of this planet for 160 million years before they were (presumably) wiped out by a space rock. Do you see humanity lasting that long?
We've been here only 6 million years, and you've written us all off unless we find a way to live in places that are utterly unlike anyplace that we are biologically designed to live in. I stand by my prediction that the entire concept of manned spaceflight becomes a wacky 20th century anachronism people will eventually look back on and laugh at.
On the other hand, I do in fact support 100% exploring space via robotic probe and would even say that our robotic and optical observation of other stars and worlds is one of the crowning achievements of our species, so go figure.
You're going to need it, to find more resources than you figure are available in Antarctica. It's actually slightly less a wasteland than space, in the same way that the center of a nuclear explosion is a bit hotter than room temperature.
I'm not curling up and dying, thanks; I have two kids. I plan to live a nice, long life and hope to enjoy grandchildren and great grandchildren, the way my own grandparents did. I hope and would imagine that you can do the same. I don't see humanity going extinct any time soon.
Our species has only been around for an eyeblink -- the dinosaurs had the run of this planet for 160 million years before they were (presumably) wiped out by a space rock. Do you see humanity lasting that long?
We've been here only 6 million years, and you've written us all off unless we find a way to live in places that are utterly unlike anyplace that we are biologically designed to live in. I stand by my prediction that the entire concept of manned spaceflight becomes a wacky 20th century anachronism people will eventually look back on and laugh at.
On the other hand, I do in fact support 100% exploring space via robotic probe and would even say that our robotic and optical observation of other stars and worlds is one of the crowning achievements of our species, so go figure.
22
Yeah, those poor unfortunate dinosaurs, who, even with all their amazing technology and culture and what-not, still couldn't save themselves from that big hunk o' asteroid, even though they had no doubt been observing it in their super-powerful telescopes for decades before-hand.
Stupid, stupid dinos.
As for Antarctica being the resource-rich cornucopia you imagine, well for one thing, aside from ice - and lots more ice, there's no hard evidence pointing to significant quantities of other exploitable resources, aside from a bit of coal, and any speculation as to the existence of such is just that - pure speculation.
There MIGHT be vast quantities of mineral resources hidden miles beneath the surface ice, but even IF it does exist, accessing it would require the utilization of technology for locating, extracting, and transporting it to somewhere it can be refined on an order that frankly, would make the space program look like child's play.
And even IF it were feasible from a technological and economic standpoint, we'd still eventually use it all up, leaving us back at Square One, at which point we'd have to turn to extraterrestrial resources again anyway, but in the meantime we'll have wasted a lot of time, money and energy that could have been used to develop technologies that would allow us to exploit the near limitless potential of asteroids, comets, and other resource-rich artifacts beyond earth.
And I'm NOT the one "writing us off", rather I'm the one arguing that, by expanding our reach, extending our habitable environment to include space, we in fact ENSURE our survival - and that we CAN do that, not by WAITING for evolution to catch up, but by directing our own evolution to include adapting to places where we are not, as you claim "currently biologically designed to live in".
That's what makes us different from those poor dinosaurs, you know - we have the capacity to change ourselves; they didn't. That's why, after 160 million years, they didn't survive the Big One, and why, regardless of how long it takes, we CAN survive the Next Big One.
We only have to decide to do so, is all.
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Stupid, stupid dinos.
As for Antarctica being the resource-rich cornucopia you imagine, well for one thing, aside from ice - and lots more ice, there's no hard evidence pointing to significant quantities of other exploitable resources, aside from a bit of coal, and any speculation as to the existence of such is just that - pure speculation.
There MIGHT be vast quantities of mineral resources hidden miles beneath the surface ice, but even IF it does exist, accessing it would require the utilization of technology for locating, extracting, and transporting it to somewhere it can be refined on an order that frankly, would make the space program look like child's play.
And even IF it were feasible from a technological and economic standpoint, we'd still eventually use it all up, leaving us back at Square One, at which point we'd have to turn to extraterrestrial resources again anyway, but in the meantime we'll have wasted a lot of time, money and energy that could have been used to develop technologies that would allow us to exploit the near limitless potential of asteroids, comets, and other resource-rich artifacts beyond earth.
And I'm NOT the one "writing us off", rather I'm the one arguing that, by expanding our reach, extending our habitable environment to include space, we in fact ENSURE our survival - and that we CAN do that, not by WAITING for evolution to catch up, but by directing our own evolution to include adapting to places where we are not, as you claim "currently biologically designed to live in".
That's what makes us different from those poor dinosaurs, you know - we have the capacity to change ourselves; they didn't. That's why, after 160 million years, they didn't survive the Big One, and why, regardless of how long it takes, we CAN survive the Next Big One.
We only have to decide to do so, is all.
23
Hey yup,
There was a time when experts thought anyone sailing beyond the horizon would fall off the earth. And going faster than 20 mph in a car would kill you. It doesn't make sense to predict the future based on current information. Just remember, every thing you think you know to be true is wrong. Life is more fun that way.
There was a time when experts thought anyone sailing beyond the horizon would fall off the earth. And going faster than 20 mph in a car would kill you. It doesn't make sense to predict the future based on current information. Just remember, every thing you think you know to be true is wrong. Life is more fun that way.
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