Space versus politics

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Space travel, even in the 1960's and 70's where most new things in manned spaceflight were done (e.g. orbiting the moon, landing on the moon, etc), has invariably been called a mere "stunt" by extremely myopic people. Why is it that some people tend to think that political perfection is required prior to taking on new challenges, such as developing colonies with greenhouses and power plants on the moon, sending humans to mars, making space stations to be shipyards rather than just laboratories, making other stations with centrifugal gravity for habitats or for pre-landing muscle tone adjustment at least, making some space stations (also centrifugal) as greenhouses for farming in space, why does any of this require a political utopia on Earth? It doesn't, and in fact I would consider such a political situation to be disadvantageous to a space program anyhow at the very least in consideration of the circumstances of most of our advances in spaceflight being done in competition rather than, as nowadays, barely done at all.

Arthur C. Clarke (now gone from us) pointed out the utility of orbiting communication sats back in 1945.

Occupying the Moon may be a military necessity. He who occupies the moon can throw rocks down on the earth. When they land they will have the energy of nuclear weapons, but without the fall out. R.A. Heinlein pointed this out in his novel -The Moon is a Harsh Mistress-.

The Moon is also a great place to build astronomical observatories. The dark side (the side not pointing toward earth) will give us the best view we could possibly have of our own galaxy.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 21 Jan 2011, 10:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

Quite so. Can you imagine the sheer detail and resolution available from a telescope, such as the one at Palomar, without an atmosphere to distort the image? Certainly it would be just as possible to build more telescopes like the Hubble, but being in a low earth orbit the life of the Hubble is limited due to its inevitable atmospheric reentry. An observatory on the moon would have all the benefits of the Hubble along with the added benefits of being on a celestial body with a stable orbit and possibly having more ability to be maintained if human technicians are available.

I don't think it's a matter of political perfection. I think it's just a matter of funding.

There is no purpose to having grandiose dreams of space exploitation if the funding isnt there. The past 40 years have shown us that the funding isnt there. NASA is about to take another funding hit this year.

The absolute best case scenario today is if we get a heavy lift rocket by 2020 and a mission beyond earth orbit by the middle 2020s. And that plan has yet to collide with the reality of future budgets, cost over-runs and technical issues.

Funding is certainly a major part of it on the government level, however on the citizenry level it seems more a matter of people generally saying "we'll never be able to do anything", "it's just a money wasting stunt", and such other underwhelming perspectives which generally would be fitting to hear from a depressed robot named Marvin.

One thing about space if an industry is ever built to be self sustaining, then many people could have jobs again and earn their living, being farmers, miners, technicians, etc. If space were to be utilized to build useful stations and develop useful colonies, then it eventually be able to pay for the initial investment. However, if we continue to be merely futzing around in near earth orbit until the end of the universe then of course they will never be any return on investment. With the utilization of space it ought to be that we go for building massive stations and massive colonies, because the current operation of using surface to low earth orbit craft to constantly replenish the food and other supplies is going to remain incredibly expensive and hazardous. Having hydroponic stations to grow food in space and having station to station logistic units (for which the Soyuz crafts could easily be used) transport the supplies would be far less expensive. Having mining, ore processing, and manufacturing performed on the moon would be far less expensive than shipping ore or products or spacecraft from the Earth since the escape velocity of the moon is 21.4% of that of the Earth's and the energy from fuel required to reach that velocity increases by the velocity squared.

The U.S. is not serious about manned space programs.

Perhaps the best use that can be made of the money are unmanned projects which have an observable payoff.

ruveyn

Space is too hostile an environment for organic living Earth creatures. That people do still spend time in space and have been on the Moon is more of a stunt than a real invasion of such a dangerous environment. The real space invasion, which has already deep roots in many projects, is the creation of intelligent self acting robots which may, in the decades ahead, be able to set up habitable environments for humans on the Moon and Mars and satellite structures. Robots are still too primitive to be really independently effective at the moment but rapid progress is being made.

Enter the notions of improperly designed spacecraft without radiation shielding and stations without rotational gravity substitution and you'll be right about space being too hostile. Of course "just a stunt", I thought I'd hear that from you in particular. Oh, terraforming robots; enter the X universe in which the robots rebel and all such other background for an offline version of E.V.E.

There was an effort this year to launch a new NASA technology drive to develop better crew systems like radiation protection, closed cycle life support, etc. But it's basically died the funding death as space state congressmen insisted on building an HLV rocket now. There will be another reason to defer fundamental research down the line, as always.

That's the real problem with space policy. It's not rational. The people driving it only care about federal dollars being sent to their district. There are way too many cooks in the kitchen and that's just not going to change.

Your repeated adulation of adolescent nonsense such as Star Trek or Star Wars is straight out of the comic books where terraforming is a mere slight advance in current technologies. That humanity is quailing under its inability to control the major threatening changes in its home planet to the point of denial that those changes are taking place is evidence of the incompetence of our control of vital planetary forces. It would be refreshing for you to take a look at reality once in a while.

I have doubts on how necessary this is. If a person already HAS WMDs, then what does another WMD mean? And the moon would have very high upkeep, unlike the colony that Heinlein envisioned, which was useful for raw supplies.

Good grief. It's bad enough to have a myriad of bosses, but it's worse when each of them wishes to micromanage in a fiefdom style.

Reality according to who? Thomas Malthus and his modern day fearmongering prophets of doom who are always pressing for some form of eugenics? Forget that, I'd rather look outside occasionally and see the real world rather than become myopic according to the visions of death loving ecofreaks.

The type of WMD actually has a lot of impact upon whether or not the area affected will be usable within a few years or a few millennia. Nuclear weaponry tends to make their area of effect uninhabitable for a might longer than artificial meteorites would.

Why must a lunar colony have a high upkeep? So as to force dependency by not allowing structures like photovoltaic arrays be built around the poles for a power source, greenhouses for food with grow lights, mines, refineries, factories, etc? I suppose a case could be made that as long as there is a bureaucratic form of government in control of the space program that such will never be done though.

If the military is so fascinated with maintaining livability in a bombed out area they can always return to the development and storage of neutron bombs which cause no property damage and total life destruction. That's a hell of a lot more practical and cheaper than screwing around with Moon bases.

I have seen your various versions of accepted reality and, of course, they are highly amusing but there are more things to consider aside from comedy.