So the public has to get behind NASA more than it has thus far in this century. Mr. Plait, you said you were in charge of developing some educational materials for NASA. What would you do to draw in not just the school children, but also the voting adults? Or has our nation devolved to such extreme ignorance regarding science that there is no hope? Remember, this is the so-called civilized nation in which a surprisingly large percentage of citizens do not find evolution or current climate change to be viable theories. How do we turn this around?

My father was only a high school graduate who worked as a Safeway store manager. But he was fascinated by science, read chemistry and physics textbooks in his spare time and had his “mad scientist’s shed” in which he performed experiments. As early as I can remember he taught us to look through the telescope and wonder at the stars and planets. How can we infuse that sort of enthusiam for science in the lay public?

What is wrong with the American people? We now have some decent science and space non-fiction shows on tv. We’ve had the incredible exeperience of the Mars rovers. We have probes bringing comet dust back to earth. The Kepler telescope has shown the commonality of planets beyond our solar system. From what I’ve read about astrobiology, within my lifetime (solidly middle-aged now) we may be able to read the chemical signature of life on a planet orbiting another star. Astounding!

Do we have to discuss the ultimate reason for exploring space, both man and unmanned? Like it or not, our biosphere is proving to be fragile. Do we want all of humanity’s eggs in one basket? Yes, establishing a colony on the Moon or Mars would be incredibly expensive now and not see any sort of payback for long decades. But, in the long run, aren’t we somewhat obligated to try to make self-sustaining footholds on other worlds, as we seem to be rushing head-long into making Earth tough for the continuance homo sapiens and many other species?

I’m not a scientist. But I am a working, tax-paying American who is excited by the findings of Kepler and the space probes sent to other worlds in our solar system. How do we inculcate this desire to continue to learn more about space in the average American, such as myself? Better science education, somehow. With learning comes the curiousity. I was lucky that I had my father to encourage me to read about science, to look through his telescope. Telescopes in all public schools with mandatory monthly rooftop viewings? Better pay for public school science teachers so the best are attracting to communicating the findings of science to all?

I don’t know, Phil Plait. I hope you have some ideas. And we have to win over the adults, not just the kids in the classrooms.

1. The original British interest in the Middle East of course was oil, which is the current US interest. If there were no oil, nobody would give a darn about the region and the Arab/Israeli dispute would have been solved a long time ago. As I stated previously, King Faisal and Prime Minister Nuri a Said were British puppets installed in Iraq by the British Government, as was the current ruling family in Jordan.

2. Mr. Depledge seems to have forgotten that Osama bin Laden had made his headquarters in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban government where he planned the events that took place on 9/11/2001. Actually, the big mistake made by the Bush Administration was the invasion of Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11. Had they put the same effort into Afghanistan that was put into Iraq, the war in the former would have been over a long time ago with the total defeat and annihilation of the Taliban. Instead, we were lied into the Iraq war by false accusations of complicity in 9/11 and non-existent WMDs there.

Are they being asked to explore space to the greatest extent possible? Or are they being asked to move money around America to keep various otherwise nonviable companies on life support? Because I thought it was the first.

If an architect is asked to build a house, and they spend ten years developing the concept of scaffolding to the point where they can actually reach the roof, this is fine an laudable. But when they spend the next 40 years fiddling about with the eves and shingles – it is reasonable to ask if it might not be more sensible to actually start on the foundations.

Trey made one attempt to reduce spaceflight costs in the early 70s (Phase A shuttle) but very quickly abandoned them, and instead whored themselves to the USAF which lead to the Phase C shuttle. Having made a half arsed attempt to reduce flight costs, and failed, they then concluded that it was completely impossible for anyone. This is not the act of a sane group of engineers. This is the act of a spoiled brat.

NASA gets 170 billion dollars a decade. Adjusting for inflation:
That would pay for R&D and launch of Saturn V more than four times over.
That would pay for the R&D and construction of all apollo spacecraft more than four times over.
That would pay for shuttle development more than four times over.

They have enough money. The only reason they can’t do everything they would like is that they blindly refuse to even attempt to lower launch costs, even though as I’ve shown they have more than enough money to develop systems that would allow them to do so.

What they lack is the ability to admit this to themselves. Or to anyone else.

Unless you want 100% of the budget, you’re always going to have to make choices about what to fund, so it doesn’t really speak volumes about where science and exploration stand as values

NASA is not strapped for cash. NASA has plenty of money.

Not when you consider what NASA has been asked to do.

3. The interference in Middle East affairs on the part of the US and Britain that Mr. Depledge decries was a response to the interference in the area by the Soviet Union (remember the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979). The former Soviet Union supported the dictatorships of Nasser in Egypt and Assad and his predecessors in Syria.

Oh, dear.

The UK had been interfering in the Middle East for far longer than the Soviet Union existed. IIUC, the USA was a relative latecomer, but what they lacked in timeliness they made up for in gumption.

The USSR was indeed doing what you claim, and the USA’s involvement was indeed on the pretext of countering the USSR’s manouevring – but the history of western interference in the Middle East is longer and deeper than you seem to suppose.

1. Apparently, Mr. Depledge is unaware of the fact that there was a world wide depression in the early 1930s. Unemployment in the USA was some 25% when Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933.

Hah. I, at least, am aware of the existence of the second-person voice, whereas you seem only to comment in the third.

But, if you bother to look into it, the Depression obviously did not help, but Germany was still being expected to pay the crippling reparations from WWI. Certainly it was this circumstance that gave the Nazi party plenty of political ammunition.

And none of your nitpicking even addresses my core point, which was that the USA has and had a choice over using force of arms in Afghanistan.

Sure, talking doesn’t always work, but if you don’t even try it it will never work.

Yeah…

But yet again, I prefer having JWST up than Mars missions. The amount of science that will come from JWST completely overshadows what we could do on Mars.

[...] When the current administration chose to retire the shuttle fleet

The decision to retire the Shuttles was made under the G.W. Bush administration, based on the recommendations from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

It was to be replaced by the Constellation program’s Orion and commercial providers, unfortunately the Constellation program predictably collapsed under its bad design decisions, and the commercial crew program was never properly funded.

And the unemployment came about how, exactly . . . ?

1. Apparently, Mr. Depledge is unaware of the fact that there was a world wide depression in the early 1930s. Unemployment in the USA was some 25% when Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933.

2. I would also point out that the German General Staff was not nearly so sanguine as Frankenberger about British intentions. They had, in fact, been planning a coup against him, which died aborning when Chamberlain caved in at Munich. In fact, by throwing Czechoslovakia under the bus, Chamberlain shot himself in the foot because the Czechs had the best arms manufacturing industry in Europe, namely the Skoda Works, which he handed over to Frankenberger without a peep. A sizable percentage of the tanks that won the Battle of France in 1940 were manufactured there.

3. The interference in Middle East affairs on the part of the US and Britain that Mr. Depledge decries was a response to the interference in the area by the Soviet Union (remember the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979). The former Soviet Union supported the dictatorships of Nasser in Egypt and Assad and his predecessors in Syria.

And let us all remember something Phil, that I think a lot of people forget:

SEVENTEEN BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR IS A LOT OF MONEY!

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS A DECADE IS REALLY A LOT OF MONEY!

NASA is not strapped for cash. NASA has plenty of money. The problem is it spends it unwisely and at the direct behest of the same same Congress and Senate that hates evlution and global warming. You would not trust these people to change a light bulb. What makes you think that not only the amount they spend, but they way they spend it is anything short of completely insane?

Look at the cost of any of the schemes for bring down the cost of launch and getting more stuff up there. Most cost $5B-$15B, with none reaching $50B. Even if they did, that’s less than 5 years budget. (More realistically, you could fund ten $5B projects, and at least one would work!) It makes complete sense to shut down all space science for 5 years if it meant you could suddenly dow 1000x more space science in year 6 AND year 7 AND year 8 AND forever afterwards.

Unfortunately NASA has and would have trouble doing this, even if they wanted to, because people like you Phil, and everyone just like you in either space exploration or human spaceflight, screams blue murder any time somone suggests a budget cut for any reason. And while I agree the current ecomonic problems are a rather stupid reason, everyone just like you have screamed just as loudly for the sensible ones too.

At the end of the day the reason why people at NASA scramble for money is because they’ve refused to do anything else, to the point of blindly denying any other way is possible. They’ve made their bed, now they can lie in it. I just hope SpaceX doesn’t make the same mistake.

No offense, but while our technology of escaping Earths atmosphere still relies on conventional fuel methods, we have no business in space.

This is a good point, and one that has perhaps received too little attention.

I recall an article in NewScientist from perhaps 10 years ago about new designs for rocket propulsion, but AFAICT none of the designs discussed in that article have become reality. But these were mostly incremental impriovements on what we have now.

One possibility that I find intriguing is the idea of a spaceplane that combines SCRAMjet* and rocket technology. The idea is that the plane flies like a normal supersonic jet up to, say 20 or 30 km, and then uses rockets to get from there into orbit. Thus, rather than bulling its way through the atmosphere like a Saturn rocket, the plane uses its engines to attain horizontal velocity and its wings do the lifting. It would not need to carry anywhere near as much oxidiser as existing rockets do because it uses oxygen from the atmosphere as far up as this is possible.

*SCRAMjet = Supersonic Combusion Ramjet.