How secure is our space project future?

[charles brough]

It looks increasingly precarious to me!

 

I would say the standard of living of Americans has declined in the last ten years and people are too worried about it to focus any longer on space exploration. The desire to catch up with Sputnik and get into space has long since died; it is dead, dead! I have talked with people who resent spending the money on the Space Program.

 

Funding for NASA is relatively unchanged. The Mars project is projected so far out into the future because funds are low. NASA has even had to hire a public relations firm in order to try to get some enthusiasm restored in the general public.

 

So, the project drifts along on momentum, but that could change suddenly. Just one more space accident in which astronauts are killed and the whole space effort would be set back and forgotten.

 

"What is going on?," one might ask. Why this lassitude when we are clearly running out of room here on Earth. Anyone interested in the long term future of the human race can clearly see that outer space is where our future lies. We have the whole universe in front of us to learn about and colonize. Otherwise, we are a doomed species here in the long---perhaps even intermediate---term.

 

If the goal of "God's Kingdom on Earth" can shape three mainstream religions into building civilizations, we need one with "space colonizing" as its goal, a goal that is actually achievable! Our present goal is "the pursuit of happiness." That, instead, is a goal one cannot achieve by looking for it---certainly not just by accumulating "stuff!" . . .and goals at what we human work for and towards. Otherwise, we drift and get nowhere.

[Eclogite]

The problem with your thesis Charles, if I may be so bold, lies in everything that is implicit in the words 'we'. 'Our' space program, if I may reciprocate the egocentric approach, is quite healthy, here in Europe. It has built steadily and progressively, without any of the razmatazz and chest beating which accompanied the US program. Because it has been constructed prudently I am not aware that it is not under particular threat.

 

The Chinese and Indian programs are also proceeding apace. We may even see a space race between these two along the lines of the US/USSR event.

 

I share your belief that we should set as our destiny the goal of beginning the colonisation of the rest of the galaxy, subject to prior ownership, of course. What I do not share is your belief that 'our' space project is doomed, unless you mean the NASA venture. And even there I would point to the likes of Bert Rotan (spelling?) to save 'you'.

[Moontanman]

I think there is some reason to think the US space program is in trouble. The US seems to be infatuated with spreading our culture around the world, by force if necessary (no cracks about us not having a culture please) This absolute stupidity is sucking money away from many things and very few seen to be worried about the cost.

 

If we were to invest 10% of this money into an active and aggressive space program the US would own the inner solar system in just a few decades. No one else could possible keep up and we would (for those hawks) effectively own the highest of all high grounds. In warfare who ever owns the high ground has always be thought of as having a tremendous advantage.

 

So far our military seems to have missed this point. Once we are active and installed in force in places like the asteroids, Jupiter's Lagrange points and even further out the moons of Saturn we (or who ever has the will and drive to do this) will be completely in control of the high ground.

 

Why would this be advantageous? Even if you dismiss the tremendous amounts of easily accessible raw materials and the ability to make things in zero gee that cannot be made on the earth, imagine if a county attacked us and a few days later their major military bases were to disappear in a multimegaton explosion with no radioactivity involved! Just the threat of such a thing would be sobering to most if not all countries.

 

Countries that support terrorism could draw retribution for any attacks by weapons of mass destruction without endangering nearby cities and people with radioactive fall out. The high ground is where we need to be, if not the US then it will be someone else, eventually. B):evil::hyper:

[charles brough]

The problem with your thesis Charles, if I may be so bold, lies in everything that is implicit in the words 'we'. 'Our' space program, if I may reciprocate the egocentric approach, is quite healthy, here in Europe. It has built steadily and progressively, without any of the razmatazz and chest beating which accompanied the US program. Because it has been constructed prudently I am not aware that it is not under particular threat.

 

The Chinese and Indian programs are also proceeding apace. We may even see a space race between these two along the lines of the US/USSR event.

 

I share your belief that we should set as our destiny the goal of beginning the colonisation of the rest of the galaxy, subject to prior ownership, of course. What I do not share is your belief that 'our' space project is doomed, unless you mean the NASA venture. And even there I would point to the likes of Bert Rotan (spelling?) to save 'you'.

 

For a "citizen-of-the-world," I sure messed up there! I have been blinded by "our" US chauvenistic, chest-beating media treatment! My impression is that the other programs are far behind, but I suspect "they" are catching up fast.

 

"We" and "they" are very important words. I often use the word "we" for "the West," that which was once Christendom but is now the heart of Secular Humanism. Also, I use "we" being the US as the "leader" of the "free world" as they say.

 

I am curious as to what you believe would happen to the European space effort if the US had another failure of a space launch filled with people? I doubt that it would slow the Asian effort, but it seems to me it would have a major, negative effect on the European progrem you mention.

[charles brough]

If we were to invest 10% of this money into an active and aggressive space program the US would own the inner solar system in just a few decades. No one else could possible keep up and we would (for those hawks) effectively own the highest of all high grounds. In warfare who ever owns the high ground has always be thought of as having a tremendous advantage.

 

So far our military seems to have missed this point. Once we are active and installed in force in places like the asteroids, Jupiter's Lagrange points and even further out the moons of Saturn we (or who ever has the will and drive to do this) will be completely in control of the high ground.

 

Makes sense to me except that it cannot, I think, happen. I think the whole world will have to become united into a new society, and that colonizing space cannot occur in our now religiously divided world. The real expansion of humanity out into space colonies may well take more time than our present civilization will last. The competition going on between our societies not just for space exploration but more important for space here and natural resources because of different religions and our numbers crowding the Earth mean, to me, world economic and political problems will proliferate. Compound that with fifteen to twenty thousand nuclear bombs and missiles. I think conditions will have to get much worse. Only after conditions become so desperate that we are forced to adopt a new and more advanced world-belief system can it improve. It will take that to bind the whole world into a single society and new civilization dedicated to space travel, environmental care, population control. and the end of racism.

[Eclogite]

My impression is that the other programs are far behind, but I suspect "they" are catching up fast.........I am curious as to what you believe would happen to the European space effort if the US had another failure of a space launch filled with people? I doubt that it would slow the Asian effort, but it seems to me it would have a major, negative effect on the European progrem you mention.

The European programs have always been much more modest in comparison and much more oriented towards the science. The US program grew out of cold war tensions and always had a strong military context. The science kind of bolted on, almost as an afterthought and only because of the dedicated efforts of those who wanted to make it happen.

The Europeans have placed their program within a broader approach to science in general. Because they have focused on the science their involvement in manned flight has been incidental and inconsequential. Therefore, I believe a further Challenger/Columbia type tragedy would have no effect on the European program at all, because it is primarily - at this stage - an unmanned, scientific effort. I believe and hope it will continue to grow at a sensible pace until the technology allows for an affordable manned presence in space, separate from our involvement with the ISS. The latter I consider to be a marvellous symbol that should never have been built - much like the shuttle.

 

This all sounds very negative about the NASA and the US program, so for balance I should say that I spent the sixties waiting patiently from JFKs announcement till Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the moon. I was enthused by the imagination of the goal and in awe of its achievement.

Then somehow, perhaps because of Vietnam, or Tricky Dicky, the US seemed to lose its way and the I think the grander space program became lost at that point. The unmanned program continues to be brilliant - apart from the odd units conversion error in the vicintiy of Mars.

 

This is not a very cohesive post, but I trust you get my drift.

[charles brough]

....very coherent and well balanced. Thanks.

 

In the US, the over-humanism takes strange shapes and causes strange results. It is growing, also. Now, it is a question how long families that cannot provide for another child and do not want it will not be able to get an abortion and more unwanted children and bleeding, self-mutilated pregnant women will appear again. They fight stem-cell research. This large minority in the US also promotes Intelligent Design and opposes evolution.

 

You don't find this problem perhaps in any other Christian nation other than here in the US so it is hard for others to believe it is going on here. Another such loss of life in a space flight could indeed reduce it almost to a garage project again.

 

It is reassuring to know that it carries on in Europe and the Far East.

[hiddenlodge]

How secure is our space project

as secure as your internet network WWW

If the goal of "God's Kingdom on Earth" can shape three mainstream religions into building civilizations, we need one with "space colonizing" as its goal

the egocentric goal of mankind has nothing to do with GOD's plan, well who am I to speak in his name anyway

I have to agree with some of you Europe is doing a great job with the hundred of satellites

[Moontanman]

as secure as your internet network WWW

 

the egocentric goal of mankind has nothing to do with GOD's plan, well who am I to speak in his name anyway

I have to agree with some of you Europe is doing a great job with the hundred of satellites

 

There is no God's plan, if we could use the concept of religion to further the goal of space colonization I would be all for it. But religion is more than willing to kill in Gods name to prevent another religion from monopolizing "God's" plan or at least their version of it.

[Theory5]

Another problem is that American intellegence levels are declining.

I go to a voc. tech. school and people here dont even know basic physics. At the begining of the year my Physics teacher held up two objects and asked if they would fall at the same rate! (Basic physics you learn in elemetary school, right?) Practically everyone said "No". My sister goes to the town high school and she is doing physics in 9th grade. They take the physics MCAS in 9th grade! Appearently cities like brockton have a lower average intellegence level than a pre-school.

I bet most kids in this school would be willing to kill for shoes (again, thank you brockton). Appearently science is non-existant in most American minds. Thats why NASA's budget is so low. And since we are so far in debt I doubt we will make it to mars before the sun goes nova. Other countries probably will have colonies on the moon and mars soon enough.

The only thing that we have done that has any significance is launching New Horizons which was last year(?)

I wish Americans would actually start learning again so in a few years we have better technology, and arn't sitting around trying to figure out if rocks are edible, and fighting wars to get better shoes from other people ( "For nike!").

And about the whole "intellegent" design thing, I am just going to say, I doubt god threw dinosaur bones in just to confuse the heck out of us.

[enorbet2]

Oh Man! Does this thread ever hit on subjects that tighten my jaw and raise my blood pressure! 1......2......3.....>..10

 

OK. Calm now. First off, it isn't that intelligence is dropping off. It's education, and the desire to be educated that has dropped off. I have met people who actually think The Flintstones is representative of the past and fundamentalist religion is the worst offender since not only does it teach that Science can't be trusted, even while it clamors for scientific respecaiblity, on it's most basic level it teaches people they are too stupid to figure anything out for themselves and are better off accepting "higher authority" and any critical thought is demonized. For example, a common "argument" against both Evolution and the non-biblical age of the Earth is that "Carbon 14 dating isn't that accurate". If one asks just how inaccurate do you suppose it must be to be off by a factor of almost a billion to one and who in their right mind would even use a yardstick with a 10% error margin, they are speechless because they've never even bothered to ask such a question. Try explaining that gravity is a theory in the scientific sense. If one asks fundamental questions such as "Is the Universe knowable?" and applies it as in "If the fossil record actually reflects reality how can the Earth only be 6000 years old?" I have often gotten the answer "God can make the world in any way he chooses so he could make the fossil record appear to say something it doesn't" never mind that The Trickster role is supposed to be reserved for Satan and Man! will you get accused of Blasphemy and Heresy then! Faith is not subject to Reason so it is beyond me why they aren't kept separate

 

The above issue isn't the one that upsets me most since I accept that some people may choose Faith alone and others can keep their religious faith separate from this dimension and somehow remain essentially balanced. However the typical usage of Space Exploration funding as being wasteful in the same breath as "If we can put a man on the moon why can't we...?" insert favorite cause. These same people have no concept of the percentage of their tax dollar that goes to Space Exploration. In the US in 1969 the culmination of the Appolo Project took the largest bite our of the GDP and that was barely One Percent (0.01) of GDP or 2.1% of federal budget. In 2006 it had dropped to 0.0017 GDP or 5.6% of federal budget. However you cut it, it just isn't even a reasonably large percentage for research. It barely compares to actual waste from any point of view.

 

That was what it costs and a percentage that few detractors bother to know. The upside is equally ignored. Without the dedication to the Apollo program alone none of us dare imagine how different this world would be. There exists not only the direct technological spinoffs in literally every field including electronics and miniaturization, textiles, computers - hardware and software, biology and medicine (even in Sports medicine), chemistry, building materials, insulation and power conservation, solar power, fuel cells, and on and on (some are here NASA spin-off - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) but even that makes no mention of the incredible effect on processes, how business works together, how things are shipped, how radically new products can be developed. Whether you think about people who would not be alive, serices you would not have, or economic advantages your country wouldn't have enjoyed (how might The Cold War turned out?) or even international cooperation, the return on investment is almost beyond calculation and that is not even bothering to consider the increase in the body of knowledge of the world in which we live. We just take it all for granted.

 

The worst part is that we, the US, dropped the ball. All that networked cooperation just died on the vine and horses were changed in midstream if the return to a capsule-like craft and the scrapping of the shuttle are any indication. That's what was wasted. If you weren't alive then or have forgotten, it wasn't the money, that relative miserable pittance, that was lost. What was a crime to lose was the impetus and noble goals and so much of the reason why was that lousy war, the assassinations and political shenanigans that made the populace wonder if anything really mattered with a world spinning out of control approaching the brink of nuclear-tipped missiles raining self-destruction. What an unutterable shame.

 

Space exploration won't likely die out but it has been already set back far and for no good reason. Von Braun's plan to put Man on Mars before 2000 was abandoned to rust out just like the beautiful Saturn V which I heard doesn't even have blueprints left in existence. What a waste.

 

If NASA has setup funding for public relations I think that is a good thing. However since broadcasting is supposed to donate a certain amout of time to Public Service Announcements I can think of few nobler services than to communicate to the populace what we gained, what it actually cost relative to less positive pursuits, and what we lost, if only in the aspirations of our children.

[charles brough]

I think most of us here in the forum would agree with you. The long term further of the human race depends upon space exploration and colonizing. We are running out of territory and, hence, the resources we need. Even if we do manage to control our population growth, we still cannot forever exist here alone on this one small planet. We have the whole universe out there. In some twenty to thirty years from now, we could be developing full fusion, gravity and/or magnetic power and be able to REALLY explore the universe.

 

What you describe is a breakdown in public goals and the will to achieve them---also in cooperation. What you need is an explanation of why that breakdown. What is causing it? It does no good to just lament. There is no cure until the cause is found. You say we need better education. We've been saying that for the last half century or more.

 

Our educational system is based on our secular ideals. Unfortunately, those ideals are not working any more. They do not inspire students. The old religions are now obsolete. We need a whole new ideological system.

[enorbet2]

I am going to attempt to keep this brief so as not to drift into a social sciences off topic thread even though I have a lot to say on this subject. Let me start by saying that whatever one's opinion may have been about Alvin Tofler's book, "Third Wave" published in 1980, the basic premise that human civilization has gone through "waves" of fundamental change as from Hunter-Gatherer to Agricultural through Industrial to The Information Age is a pretty safe bet. Further recognizing that such fundamental change has always been met with trauma and upheaval and would likely again is not exactly stepping out on a limb either, particularly now that we are in the middle of it.

 

The major question facing us at this point has been asked by Hawking and Sagan and many others and it can be posed many ways. "Is intelligence an evolutionary advantage?" or "Does intelligence, possibly compromised by the slow rate of changes in instinct, once it achieves this level of technology ie: splitting of the atom and genetic modification of viruses to name a few, always self-destruct?" So far SETI and others have failed to find any evidence that anyone else has ever made it, possibly the most pressing reason to continue the exploration of Space if only to find that answer.

 

While there are times I have grave doubts, in general I am optimistic, hopefully because it's the only way to live a positive life and not from rose-colored glasses. Numerous philosophers, thinkers, and political activists have in the past reasoned that it is to everyone's advantage, including the rich, at the very least in the quality of life in the world in which we and our children live to eliminate poverty. This isn't hard to reason since so much conflict from petty crime to war is between perceived Haves and Have Nots. However recently I read in a Science magazine in an article about budding geniuses who are expected to have a great impact on our futures, that at least one man heads a team who has employed a super computer to model civilization based somewhat on the idea of so-called "God Games" that can adjust and progress through algorithms changes in society's variables. Apparently in every instance if one arbitrarily eliminates poverty the results exceed all other variables. That super computers can now be put together for under $4000 US is just another reason for confidence in the triumph of Reason.

 

Additionally recent trends in Science to study systems in terms of networking seem to show that it may not have to be arbitrary or even all that difficult given the understanding and the will and that it may even be essential, especially if one considers the need for Hope among human individuals. It's not that every person that grows up in an oppressive situation that renders constant negative reinforcement, feedback that there are no readily available avenues to realize one's potential, an utter lack of hope, will turn to evil, or crime or even just against society in general, but enough of the smarter, more industrious ones that could be a positive force will to negate the good will and quality of life of many. This is partly why frontiers have been so valuable in the past as an outlet for the restless and ambitious who felt constrained within a society closed to upward mobility through clearly defined paths. This is even an accepted business model for maximizing productivity. I attribute the rise in anti-science and fundamentalist religions as well to the lack of such hope.

 

It seems to me we either must become aware and supportive of a scientifically derived social contract that practices what it preaches or else have frontiers available for the "misfits" who won't be held down. Better, why not have both and actually try to achieve an open society envisioned by such as Gene Rodenberry? It is quite possible that the only alternative is massive reduction in world population by either plague or war and who knows how many Einsteins in so many fields have already been lost to such?

[Moontanman]

Great post dude, I'd rep you if I could.