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MasterCaneman -> RE: NASA... why? (12/23/2013 5:29:52 PM)
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ORIGINAL: sweetgirlserves
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ORIGINAL: MasterCaneman
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ORIGINAL: sweetgirlserves
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ORIGINAL: MasterCaneman
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ORIGINAL: FelineRanger
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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
I watched Spaceship One claim the X-Prize from my front yard. I've watched the space shuttle coming in to land from my deck, and saw the final arrival of Endeavor in California from 150 feet off the runway.
My feeling is that commercial/private space is going to fuel a renewed interest. Maybe we'll get a reality show about tourists getting ready for their ride, and that will do the trick.
Sadly, I think there was a series planned about civilians preparing for a trip as space tourists that was canceled due to lack of interest. I think DarkLyDesires is right about interest in space exploration of any kind vs. basic survival.
I think it will be the realization that the Chinese are getting ready to start developing the lunar surface, and that is what's going to kick the next phase of the space age into gear. Even back in the heady days of the early program, they all knew that it wasn't really going to happen until someone figures out how to turn a buck on it. We are now standing near the point.
As for why most people aren't more enthused, most people have the attention span of gnats I've found. That's why the Duck Dynasty guy gets more airplay that what's happening on the next frontier. And ironically enough, it revolves around money. Another reason is that people have been spoiled by the SFX and CGI of movies and TV shows, and when they're faced with the real hardware and people, they universally go "meh", and proceed to bitch about their tax dollars being better spent on other things.
Space, in the terms being used here, isn't sexy. It's a hard, dangerous place that most people don't fully understand, and those three things tend to spook people off of things. It's easier to worry about what some pop singer is doing with who, what reality show team is going to win, or some other inane shit like that. But once someone figures out how to really start making it rain, so to speak, and it'll get sexier. That's the hope, anyway.
MasterCaneman,
No disrespect intended, and I'm sure I don't know enough, but I know enough to know, right now, I am more worried about what's going on on on the earth than what will be the next step on the moon.
What's that song, "One step, one step leads to an o o ther".
Sincerely,
~sgs
Consider this. Picture an infant in a crib. Over time, the infant grows up some, but never leaves it for one reason or another. As long as someone cares for the infant, it lives. If something happens to that someone, or the crib starts falling apart, the infant may die.
Humanity is that infant. Everything we are now and have been is located in one place. If something happens to that one place, cosmic or mundane, we stand to lose it all. A normal infant starts to try to walk at a certain time in its life, and using that as an example, we are at the 'pre-toddler' stage. We need to begin to spread out in order to assure our survival as a species. Only now are we learning just how dangerous our neighborhood is, and if we wish a meaningful future, our best chance is to become a multi-planet species, or at least one that knows how to create off-planet habitats.
And by all means, we should work on fixing up the crib, as it were. It makes sense, and can be done at the same time as we start to extend our reach. But it's imperative that we begin expanding outward as soon as we can, if only at first for economic reasons, then for nobler ones. NASA's budget is tiny compared to what we've wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan and the hundred other fires we've been pissing on for the last half-century. It's not a matter of it 'costs too much', it's that as a nation (and to an extent, the world), we're too focused on short-term goals.
Now is the time we should be putting on our walking shoes, in a manner of speaking, and start to explore the neighborhood. There is so much out there that needs learning, and still a lot here as well. What I'm trying to say is, we (as a species), need to take a serious look at what could be our possible future. Right now as it stands, we could manage to make ourselves extinct in several ways, we could meet our ends like the dinosaurs, or how the Great Die Off (the Permian Extinction event) occurred, which is believed to have been from a nearby gamma-ray burst. Boom-90% of all species on Earth died off overnight.
We need to spread out, scatter, and continue on and the only way to do that is to really learn how to cross that immense gulf of hazardous territory we call "Space". There are things out there that can benefit those on Earth as well. Orbital power generation is one concrete item I can mention at the moment, but there are also other benefits to be gained by undertaking this task. Spin-off products (like the computer or smart phone you're using to read this), medicine, materials science, even agriculture all benefited from the space program in the past.
By all means, we need to fix up the crib to ensure the infant is safe and healthy, but the time draws near that it has to begin to make plans to at least learn what the rest of the house is like. Hopefully, this wasn't too vague.
Master Caneman,
Oh, I just remembered the Cane. Anyways...
I agree Master. I am not saying that you are wrong. My first question is, what does that mean, 'developing the lunar surface'? And why are the Chinese doing it alone?
And, what is going on, here on earth, to allow that to happen?
Sincerely,
~sgs
"Developing the lunar surface" in this context can mean anything from establishing a manned research station to extraction of lunar helium-3 (deuterium) for fusion reactors. Now, a "manned research station" in Chinese will mean an armed outpost in violation of the Space Treaty of 1967, as well as the fact that they will make territorial claims on that body using one of the loopholes in that document.
Why is this bad? China is making its play for superpower status, and thus far, the definition of 'superpower' is: blue-water navy, defense spending in excess of 10% GDP, and a space program. While depositing unmanned scientific rovers isn't threatening, and indeed commendable, the PRC has clearly planned for a greater role in developing lunar resources as part of its economic plans.
If the US (and by extension the rest of the West) wish to avoid ending up like Portugal in the Age of Discovery, we had better remove our myopic glasses and pay attention. To clarify, Portugal in the 1400s began the oceanic expansion of Western civilization, first down the east coast of Africa, then across the Atlantic. During this time, they vastly improved navigation and seafaring techniques only to throw it all away for a very short-sighted domestic focus. While England, France, Spain, and Holland spread out around the world, Portugal's expansion was checked and ultimately reversed.
And it has little to do with "national pride" in that I say we (the US and the West) need to focus more on the expansion of economic activity in space, its imperative. We are literally preparing to walk away from the gold mine only a few feet away from the face after having expending so much effort and treasure to get where we are. At the moment, the world GDP is wallowing in what some call 'fantasy speculation', and heading for yet another fatal crash. The opportunity presented by the new frontier could be what makes the difference between humanity taking the next steps into the future or returning to the nineteenth-century in both technology and economy.
Now, I'm not saying that we have to go up there to deny them the opportunity to develop, indeed, I would heartily encourage them to do so because the competition would reap tremendous benefits for all parties. The reason I say we need to return to the forefront of this race is to provide the necessary checks and balances on what goes on "up there". In simple terms, it's a very complex, expensive, and dangerous game of "King of The Hill", where he who holds the high ground holds the power.
While a missile base on the moon is a distant threat (minimum transfer time from the body is about twenty-four hours at best), but the fact that there exists a martial force on a body that technically belongs to everybody on Earth is problematic. The only way to do that is to have our own (or international) outpost there. I don't foresee colonies, as per se, because of the biological and logistical issues I mentioned before, but a McMurdo-style research station would derive enormous benefits for the long run. Research, surveying, proto-mining, processing, and extraction of this material, along with the innumerable other advances that have to come about to achieve this may be what saves our collective bacon some day.
And having exclusive access to the mining, processing, and transportation of what could be next "crude oil" would give China an enormous advantage over the rest of the planet (which includes us). They have no problems with running a monopoly on this scale, and they could eclipse the West in the near-future with this. By having a countering presence there, we prevent that monopoly from occurring, maintain healthy competition, and prevent the rise of another hegemony. This will happen if we don't stop thinking only two to four years in the future as we do now.
"But," you say, "What does this have to do with 'saving the human race' by scattering out throughout space?" Well, without launching into a true wall o' text describing why, it's because the goal should be to do so for the mutual benefit of all of Earth, not just one nation. If that happens, other peoples will get jealous, and when you have national entities coveting what other national entities possess, there's usually just one solution...And given our mutual advanced weapons technology, it might end up with humanity clawing its way out of another "stone age", so to speak.
I have no problem whatsoever with teaming up the Chinese and Russians or any other nation with a space program in order to create "insurance packages" out there. Indeed, it would be refreshing to give the human race something more exciting that war to concentrate on for a change. If just the U.S. alone redirected another fraction of its defense budget back to NASA, we could conceivably be starting on the initial projects within the decade. Just the 2011 DoD budget, for example, is larger than the entire budget for NASA from 1958-2011.
Okay, rant over, before this thread ends up in P&R. We need to stop thinking about it and start doing it. Just trying to fix things here won't work in the long run. Earth has been nice to us this last 10 millenia or so, but ask a geologist or archaeologist about what kind of cataclysms have happened here in the past. Toba. Yellowstone. The Deccan Traps. Chixculub. Future events like that are not a case of 'if they happen' but more 'when they will happen'. Add in our clever selves with nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry capable of wiping out most terrestrial life as we know it.
It's all well and good to stop trashing the crib as we've been doing, and I'm not for a moment saying it's not important. What I am saying is, there are things beneath our feet and over our heads that can do more damage to our environment in a few hours than we've done since the 1850s. In Basic training, recruits are taught to never bunch up in a group to prevent one explosive device from taking out more than one or two. A simpler metaphor would be "all your eggs in one basket". By having enough representative populations scattered throughout the Solar System, we could not only ensure the genetic continuance of our species, but also the highest social, technical, and intellectual achievements as well.
In what would the grimmest Plan "B" ever, it would those people who would be the ones to return to rebuild after the fact, plain and simple. I may have spared you some reading by just posting that, but I like typing and sometimes 'stream of consciousness' writing comes over me.
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