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Reader note:
"For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be."
-Tennyson "
The visions we offer our children shape the future.
It matters what those visions are.
Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Dreams are maps."
-Carl Sagan
If that gets you going, great, but I like things that could happen before I'm dust: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOSBzFSZUx4
Interesting how a random video I pulled up exactly describes the new NASA plan. It too must have been made behind closed doors by an elite few.
Amazing changes.....President Obama is just fullfiling his promise of CHANGE and HOPE.....he has re-directed US Manned Space Program......it needed to be killed....it needed to be re-directed......hail SpaceX....hail Bigelow Space....enough federal dollars on a Federal death-supported system architecture....ie Challeger...Columbia...finally there is HOPE for a sensible SPACE program........GO ROBOTIC!!!
In this day and age where it's become facile and fashionable to pick easy battles and proclaim easy victories. But our hopes and dreams were founded by those who looked upward, and set the bar high, knowing that both the goals and the costs would be the same. We have been shaped not so much by the stuff of today, as by the glimmer of tomorrow we see in every sunset, filled with dusty stars and man made moons that bear our hopes. I stand, always in awe, ever looking upward. my dreams spread upon the sky in hope and remembrance.I quest to make them real not for mine own sake, nor for the vainglory of history, but because my dreams are within my friends, on whose shoulders I shall stand again as we reach together for a better, kinder destiny for those who will remember us, and write our names in the cosmic dust.
Keith couldn't be more correct: the goal which unites us, to extend human presence beyond this planet, is far greater, far more important, than our difference about how to achieve it.
What vision do you suppose is already operating on the Children of America today such that they lack interest in mathematically oriented technical fields and compared to the rest of the world's children place, what, 25th, in mathematics?
Anyone who reads about such things know's that is technological advancement that fuels a rise in the quality and standards of living.
I'd love to know what contributors think the aims of space exploration in say the next 30 to 50 years should be.
Not so far off as to be science fiction, close enough to impact FY11 direction, realistic but beyond current capability, astounding perhaps, if you think NASA can still astound (I do).
1. Dozens of people in space, hundreds, thousands, millions?
2. Day trippers, explorers or natives?
3. Independent of Earth for what? Energy, propellant, air and water probably but what else? Certain foods, some materials, some fabrication abilities?
4. Doing what for whom? It has to be productive - if you're not self sufficient, someone has to want to pay.
We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started,
and to know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate,
when the last of the earth left to discover
is that which was the beginning;
From T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding, Four Quartets
I loved the Star Trek clip. Right on Capt Kirk!
As Mike Rowe would say, "Safety Third"
Thanks, Keith, for the sentiment. We all may need to step back and take a deep breath; there's a lot of room for disagreement but the community has forgotten that disagreement gets unhealthy when we start taking things personally.
It's OK to disagree with our peers, especially on big issues. Nothing that we do in space (or to get to space) is trivial, and there are a lot of paths to get to our goals - and there are even a lot of goals.
When we bicker amongst ourselves about the proper timetable and methodology for getting to space, the winners are those who would have us leave space entirely. The positive outcomes of our successes and progress soundly refute the arguments that space exploration is not worth pursuing. When we fight with each other, we stop making discoveries, spinoffs, and inspiration.
Let's all remember that this isn't supposed to be a personal fight or a political fight - not a fight at all! I'd say that the majority of people who read nasawatch are in favor of some kind of space exploration - and that's great! Space exploration has become more popular with "ordinary people" in the last few years than it was in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s - let's show them our good side, rather than acting like a bunch of 5th graders on a playground.
I've said this before, but I think it bears mention again: going to space is a big deal, for robotic missions or crewed missions. There are a lot of very complex problems to be solved and it takes a lot of smart people to solve those problems. When you get a lot of smart people working on a complex problem, there's bound to be disagreement, because there's never just one solution.
Should we bother with space at all? We obviously have problems here on Earth; why not focus on them? That's a question that has dogged the space program since its inception. What we learned from the Apollo missions is that in addition to technology spinoffs, the spirit of exploration and discovery is contagious and the 1960s spawned a whole generation of engineers that have enabled us to live in a mind-boggling future.
If we choose to explore space: robotic missions or crewed missions? Both have their place. Robotic explorers have told us a great deal about our solar system. From the Mars rovers to the Voyager probes these things that we created have taught us more than we could ever hope to learn from peering through telescopes, and have gone farther than our technology can take such a fragile being as a person. But we're only able to live vicariously through these machines, and everyone knows that getting a postcard from Mars is not the same as being there. There's no technology yet that can mimic human judgment or perspective, and as we look farther and farther from home, the time it takes to communicate with our probes makes exploration cumbersome and problematic. There's no replacement yet for a human being. If we choose to explore, we must send people to do the exploring.
If we choose to send humans and machines into space: how should we get there? When? Who should it be, and what should they do when they get there? Which president is "right" about space, and which is "wrong?" What country is more deserving to reach Mars first, or colonize the moon, or go farther? If the last two sentences didn't strike you as petty and small-minded, you're thinking about this the wrong way. Space isn't a battleground or a sports arena. There are no "winners" and "losers" - other than humanity. If the reason you choose to explore is to establish dominion or supremacy over others - you are doing this for the wrong reasons.
If your reason to explore is to discover, learn, and advance human civilization, then the first step is to acknowledge that never in the history of human exploration has the path forward been easy or obvious - it has always required research, planning, trust in others, and leaps of faith, and the companion to marvelous success has always been disastrous failure.
The Constellation program was one way of getting to space. Was it the best approach? Clearly, smart people disagree on this point. Is it the only approach? Clearly not.
Do we have to do something a certain way because we've already started? On the one hand, it seems like a waste to go through all of this effort and then quit working on it. On the other hand - we learn a lot from experience, and a "do-over" lets us apply those lessons learned and we may end up with better products. When confronted with hugely complex problems, we can become prone to ballistic behavior - continuing down a path because it's the path that we started on. This may be a good way to get to the finish line first, or it may lead us down a path to a less-than-optimal result. Presumably what we want isn't to be first, but to be best: if that's the case, we need to take the time to inspect our progress, re-evaluate our goals, and change course if necessary - not ballistic behavior for sure.
Are we throwing away our country's technological prowess if we spend billions of dollars on the sort of basic research that results in technology spinoffs? Or are we cementing it? I think one of the lessons learned from the recent NRC report is that focusing too hard on mission operations is the main cause of the "brain drain" at NASA - focusing on the path forward gives us tunnel vision, and we lose sight of the reasons we work.
I'm not suggesting that we all light a big campfire and sit around it singing "Kum Ba Yah." I'm not suggesting that we should all agree on how to get to space, or what we should do when we get there. I'm saying that there are a lot of ways to get to space, and a lot of things to do when we get there. One method may excite you more than others, and that's fine, but please don't be closed-minded about it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that has been going back through the old Star Trek series for inspiration!
It's very interesting to go back and see the kinds of things they dealt with as Apollo was developing.
I think we all agree that exploration is important, the question is our methods.
The government path means our adventure only stops when we tell it to stop. Difficulty is no issue if we put in treasure, effort, and time.
The Commercial path is prone to stop whenever the weather changes. Its exposed to private sector risks while, at the moment, its only supported only by the government.
Risk is what exploration is about, but building ships is what we're stuck on.
I much prefer the next stanza from that part of Locksley Hall:
"For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;"
Heavens filled with commerce? I'm so on board with that.
replied to comment from eep
| May 15, 2010 12:29 AM
| Reply
Where were the pleas for unity when Constellation was the in vogue plan? It was ok back then to bash away because those who did it believed it was necssary to save NASA. Now when others bash the Obama plan for the same reasons they are told they should be silent because they are hurting the future of HSF. I hope the critics of the Obama plan ignore the double standard and keep bashing away. It's only fair.
Audentes Fortuna Juvat
One of the most beautiful intros I have ever seen made better.......
Whilst we are sharing Keith:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C-wCq7zSLE
"All the Universe or Nothing!"
What is the "ultimate goal"? Whatever hardware you champion, whatever destination you think NASA should shoot for, I believe almost everyone interested in human spaceflight can agree on one ultimate goal -- and yet we never make it explicit. We never say it, and it is unfortunate that the President's new human spaceflight policy did not embrace it.
The ultimate goal almost all of us would agree to is a human presence in space that is sustainable. Whether you think we should go to the Moon, Mars, NEOs or Lagrange Points, whether you think we should go there with Constellation, the private sector and/or a new heavy lift launcher, what's really behing your choice is the means and destination YOU think is most likely to get us a sustainable human presence, ideally in your lifetime.
The Augustine Commission got it almost right. They said the ultimate goal is "human expansion into the solar system." But that goal is still contingent on the one I propose: susainability. And by sustainability, I mean both physical and economic sustainability.
If we could all agree on this goal, then our arguments over strategy would start to make more sense. Clearly, we need more R&D to develop closed-loop life support systems and in situ resource utilization, plus better propulsion to get us wherever we're going faster. Clearly, we also need research in search of a "value proposition." Is it helium-3, KREEP deposits on the Moon, siderophilic elements from the asteroids, space-based solar power, or something we haven't thought of yet? [NOTE: None of the investors who backed Jamestown 400 years ago ever anticipated what would eventually make the colony profitable, and thereby sustainable: tobacco.]
The Augustine Commission did get it right when they wrote that the destination should derive from the goal and not the other way round.
And now, a final word from the dark side, ending in an eerily appropriate summary of the current impass.
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
From East Coker, T. S. Eliot
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"For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be." -Tennyson
"The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps." -Carl Sagan