More tax money went missing in Iraq than NASA has in its budget. Didn’t see those tax hawks squawking about that too much.

It’s just maddeningly nearsighted for everyone to rail against manned missions to space. It’s exactly like Lord Kelvin’s position on radio. Now, granted, a return to the Moon is a bit to the left of insane. There’s very little incentive for returning there. But Mars? That’s our second home, and it happens to have an embarrassment of riches (deuterium, etc.) just waiting for the first pioneer. It’s New World 2.0 and the next great step for humanity. Go Mars

Love this quote regarding that ponce Sen Nelson-

“According to administration officials, Nelson even went so far as to tell the White House recently that if Bolden were not nominated soon, the White House could no longer count on his support for the president’s initiatives in the Senate”

I really hope Senator Mikulski can prevail in this and get a director that favors science over over sending humans into to space for the sake of….sending humans into space. She is completely right and Nelson, Bolden, and Obama are just wrong. What a buzz kill…..

I knew I should’ve put a winking smiley on my post!

Being compared to an antivaxxer is still not funny. No people died because of my mistakes.

But neither I am an antivaxxer and I neither think that private is by definition evil as Todd tried to put in my mouth.

I knew I should’ve put a winking smiley on my post!

saying I don’t think the moon landings occurred?

I am simply makin up stuff and putting it in your mouth. I don’t think you are a moon hoaxer. But neither I am an antivaxxer and I neither think that private is by definition evil as Todd tried to put in my mouth.

“Yeah. You love us saying something, that you consider obviously insane. Because you think that we discredit ourselves that way. You know, Just everyone else knows that nothing beyond LEO is possible even in principle. We know that since NASA had to fake lunar landings because of this impossibility.

( now, do you still like that style of ‘humor’ even if your ox is getting gored ? )”

First of all I’m not entirely sure that I understand what you are trying to say to be honest. Are you saying I don’t think the moon landings occurred? Is that your, um, comeback?

I think you slightly do discredit yourself when you propose to do things in space that are more in the realm of science fiction than fact. Your Mars colonization ship that is constructed next to an L4 orbiting ISS is, sorry, really and truly impossible for a long time to come.

I think you discredit yourself much more when you write “More like pathological suicidal self-hatred.”

and the delays and budget overruns ? Unmanned spacecraft are delayed too. The problem is more evident in manned spaceflight because it is more pushed to the edge than unmanned missions

One set of missions works fantastically well and has a historical track record of giving a huge return on investment.

Penny wise and pound stupid. Manned and unmanned space flight have different goals. You can not quite substitute lack of food with more bottled water.
And their funding is semi- independent because if one was canceled congresscritters would not give the money to the other one, but keep it.

“What is the problem with ares rocket anyway?” – I don’t know. You tell me why it’s billions of dollars over budget in just its development stage. All manned missions go way over budget and long past the claimed expected launch dates (and deliver far less than promised).

Look – it’s a relatively fixed budget. One set of missions works fantastically well and has a historical track record of giving a huge return on investment. The other set of missions does, well, a whole lot less. The first set runs on the virtual scraps because the second one gets the meat and potatoes. You have to make a choice here – there is no way around it. The manned mission money grab chokes the unmanned missions (although damn they have done some amazing things regardless! They could do so much more though).

I say let’s make the proven winner the one that gets the most money.

Everybody always thinks I hate NASA since I argue for a change in the way they prioritize their budget. Curious thing really.

Because human spaceflight just cant’ go anywhere with funding barely covering the cost of staying where we are. That is the problem.

And. What is the problem with ares rocket anyway ? you could build Saturn V and now, you can’t build things like that anymore. Let’s try to figure out where the problem is.

Manned spaceflight isn’t really defensible in this day (and the next few tomorrow’s) on its own merits (yes I know in a couple billion years we’re all doomed and need to go to Zorcan Nine and terraform it – can we just hit the pause button for a couple of decades on this plan?). But rather the manned supporters think they need to be for it just because they are scared that putting science missions ahead of manned missions will lead to cut backs.

You know what will actually lead to cutbacks? Plans like Ares that have eaten up $6.9 billion in development costs and might still get canceled because the program doesn’t really work and has no good future use. Do you know what won’t lead to cutbacks? Missions that produce, do actual work, explore new worlds, and lead to scientific discovery – and do it in a realistic time frame. Mars rovers, telescopes, and all the other robotic missions fulfill these requirements.

So can I ask you as a manned spaceflight supporter – why do you think we should continue to spend $8 to $9 of every $10 on manned missions and not re-prioritize that to focus on the missions that actually do the real work and exploration in space? Can you spare a couple quarters brother?

The manned program killed our ability to have launched much more powerful ones sooner

Bull. NASA funding is not fixed. If you would abandon human spaceflight, NASA funding would just decrease by that amount ( more likely by twice that amount)

Answers to your questions -
1- Yes

2- Yes

3- Yes

4- Um, kinda. You mean basically the “giant impact” theory?

5- OK I will wait (as will we all- for a long time to come). I’ve been waiting for the ISS to do anything other than just marginal advances in science for many years. The “diplomacy” part I find especially funny since the ISS is going to be a diplomatic time-bomb when the US access to it is lost and the Russians become the gatekeepers of it. Next thing you know we’ll be squabbling over who can use what bathroom and when (no I’m just kidding, if that ever became true it would be the perfect metaphor for how pathetic the ISS is- oh wait….click my name).

6- I know what you would “like” to see. This will probably surprise somebody like you but I would like to have cheap, safe, and universal access to space as well. The problem is we have to live in reality. So if we turn off the Star Trek and try to look at what we are doing with realistic eyes we can then look at what our constraints are and what the actual opportunities are.

And regarding the Hubble space telescope (that you think you are zinging me with) – everybody here loves the thing and so do I. But it would be totally sophomoric to ever think that its design, launch, and maintenance were done in the best way. We’ll never have a telescope like that again because obviously we shouldn’t. We’ll make them disposable, factors of ten cheaper, way more advanced and powerful and farther out in orbit (Hubble would have worked much better farther away).

The manned program killed our ability to have launched much more powerful ones sooner (and many, many other programs). The US should have done a Herschel and Plank 15 years ago. Webb should have been up already. We should have a sample return from Mars already launched as just a couple of examples.

Okay, how about manned space opponent Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winning physicist?

The Everests one of – “…because its there!”

Seriously I do think there is an innate human desire to explore, to find out and go beyond where people have gone before.

There is certainly for some people this burning driving curiousity that motivates then to do extraordinary things and put their lives at risk seeking bold adventures and exotic new places and esoteric new knowledge.

We explore in part because we are human. We do (someof us anyhow) have a pyschological geas forcing us on, compelling us towards both exploration and science.

Mr. StevoR cites the Hubble space telescope as a triumph for manned space flight. If we had not wasted so much money on manned space flight, we could have launched many Hubbles with far more capability. Attached is a commentary by Bob Park showing how the Hubble telescope was greatly diminished in its capabilities because of the insistence of NASA on coupling it with the shuttle. But of course, according so some on this blog, Prof. Park doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Well *I* don’t think Bob Park knows what he’s talking about either!

SLC, you’re going to need to back up your extraordinary claim there with a bit more than just Bob Park (& who’s he again?) says so …

The last two lines in the post above aren’t meant to be italicised and are mine.

The rest are italicised to signify that I’m quoting Christopher Petroni’s post.

I’ve never been impressed by this argument. As bastions against extinction go, space travel is a pretty overpriced and ineffective one.

Currently. We’re working on changing that.

Don’t assume that just because space travel is expensive and ineffective now that that will always be the case.

Our existence on the planet on which we evolved is tenuous enough.

Is it? Really?

How are we supposed to survive on more hostile worlds?

Technology dude! Plus maybe some terraforming!

Have you forgotten much of Earth was hostile & hard tosurvive in befroe we cahnge dthimgs and did lilttle things like build houses and air-conditioners and heaters and killoff allthe deadlliestpredators like sabre toothed tigers and asiatic lions & so forth ..

Saying that space travel is a means of survival is like saying that starving people should plant crops.

Well, yes, starving people who want to stop starving long-term do indeed need to plant crops. Many starving people are already trying to do so. Its one of many strategies to get out of circumstances of starvation – international aid and relocation are other temporary ones to tide them over but they do need to (and do) plan for the longer term future as well.

A far better means of avoiding extinction is to stop causing irreparable damage to the ecological mechanisms on which we depend on this planet.

Which will save us from being wiped out by an asteroid impact, supernova or gamma ray burst how exactly?

Don’t get me wrong, we need to be environmentally conscious and stop harming the environment and all that too – but the choice isn’t a simple either /or. We can & should do both!

I’m not saying humans shouldn’t try to colonize other worlds, by the way, and I’m certainly not attacking the scientific achievements space travel has allowed.

Good. You really don’t want to do that – here especially!

I’m saying that we should be honest about the purpose of human expansion into space. It’s the same purpose with which Europeans colonized North America: simple expansion, nothing more.

But I’ve covered that last “just simple expansion – er.. NOT!” bit first.

Mr. StevoR cites the Hubble space telescope as a triumph for manned space flight. If we had not wasted so much money on manned space flight, we could have launched many Hubbles with far more capability. Attached is a commentary by Bob Park showing how the Hubble telescope was greatly diminished in its capabilities because of the insistence of NASA on coupling it with the shuttle. But of course, according so some on this blog, Prof. Park doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

2. PEOPLE: THE AMERICAN PUBLIC CAST A VOTE FOR HUBBLE.
Because of the risk, the final Hubble repair mission was initially scratched by NASA. The American public wouldn’t hear of it. I was the recipient of some of the public irritation after WN was quoted in some newspapers this week saying the shuttle was “at the root of Hubble’s problems.” How could I say such a thing? Without repairs by shuttle astronauts Hubble would have been abandoned at birth as a nearsighted failure. Let me explain: the hero’s welcome given the Apollo astronauts persuaded NASA that there should be astronauts on every mission. It was decreed that nothing was to go into space except by means of the shuttle. That included Hubble, which had to be designed to fit in the cargo bay, and worst of all, it had to go into an orbit the shuttle could reach. That ruled out the L2 point, which by every measure is the ideal place to locate a telescope. That is, unless you want to look at Earth; then you need the L1 point on the side toward the Sun.

It’s the same purpose with which Europeans colonized North America: simple expansion, nothing more.

I’m not sure you are correct either about the European colonisation of the new world or space exploration.

I don’t think either can be simplisticallyexplained as simple expansionism.

A range of motivations including, dare I say it both the religious and the scientific are /were involved.

There are economic motives. (Eg. gold and silver in the 1600′s, helium-three and possible energy and technology developing now for a space.)

There are reasons of military and national prestiege and competition. (England Vs Spain & Portugal, later England vs France & Holland back in the 1600-1800′s, USA vs USSR and now maybe – hopefully? USA vs ESA & China. Possibly co-operation between these and friendlier rivalry rather than more hostile “space-racing.”)

There are religious and political reasons. (Eg. thepilgrimfathers and Puritans fleeing European persecutionfor freedom intheir new colony, less pleasantly Catholic desire to converty the heathen Aztecs, Inca, Chinese etc .. & also to find aroute to Jerusalem and find themythical Prester John Christain kingdom back in the 1600-1800s..Today, well ther arestill persecuted religiosu groups seeking freedom, whetherany will resort toLunaror martian colonisationas an escape and new land of our making building remains tobe seen but certain mystical ideas seem toexist on bringinglife toMars and spreading lifeand humanity into the wider cosmos. )

There are social and environmental reasons. (Eg. Colonisation of Australia by convicts to reduce the number of criminals in English society, today we maywant tochange our energy production by basing say the dirty industries in space or some such.)

Its not simple expansion really I don’t think.

For one thing if it were then you’d think the nations most in need of expanding – those with the largest populations – like China and India would be those doing mostof the expanding which historically just isn’t the case.

So long as humans and our support species are limited to one planet to live and grow, just so long will we and they, be vulnerable to extinction. Humanity in space isn’t about excitement: it’s about survival.

I’ve never been impressed by this argument. As bastions against extinction go, space travel is a pretty overpriced and ineffective one. Our existence on the planet on which we evolved is tenuous enough. How are we supposed to survive on more hostile worlds? Saying that space travel is a means of survival is like saying that starving people should plant crops.

A far better means of avoiding extinction is to stop causing irreparable damage to the ecological mechanisms on which we depend on this planet.

I’m not saying humans shouldn’t try to colonize other worlds, by the way, and I’m certainly not attacking the scientific achievements space travel has allowed. I’m saying that we should be honest about the purpose of human expansion into space. It’s the same purpose with which Europeans colonized North America: simple expansion, nothing more.