RSS Feed
Twitter
1 Comment
Challenger Center Heads to Arizona for NASA Desert RATS, Challenger Center for Space Science Education
"For the next ten days Challenger Center will be reporting live from NASA's Desert RATS in Arizona as humans use robots and rovers to learn what it would be like to live and work on another world. This is the second year in a row for Challenger Center's participation in Desert RATS. Challenger Center's participation in this NASA activity is facilitated by a Space Act Agreement between the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, and NASA."
Keith's note: The first NASA Edge/Challenger Center live webcast from Desert RATS will be today at 10 am PDT at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nelivedrats2010. Guests: Keith Cowing and Jake Bleacher. We hope to be doing these live webcasts daily for the next week ago - plus some other things. You can follow us at http://onorbit.com/DesertRats
I am somewhat fascinated by the amount of time, energy, and apparently money that goes into staging this 'desert rats' exercise and I am trying to understand why it is of value.
I understand that maybe if robots were really going to work with people in the near future, and maybe if there was some real exploration going on, maybe in the antarctic, then perhaps there would be some minimal technical benefit. Or if real astronauts were practicing for a real mission. Or maybe if some genuine space hardware were being tested in a harsh environment in advance of a mission. However I know a couple people who have done real research in the antarctic and I don't recall them trying to make it a simulated planetary landing. It was challenging enough just being there and doing it for real.
Generally this seems to me more like a 'space camp' for the NASA people who participate. I wish I had the money and time to go to space camp. Since we aren't going to be doing the moon for real in this generation, we can just play like its real?
Why are my tax dollars being used to support it? Do many people outside of the participants find it interesting or of serious technical value? Why?
It seems to me kind of like an Ares-1X. It was expensive and difficult to design and build the real thing, so they just sort of simulated what the real thing might be like. The sim cost a lot of money. For 2 minutes it looked kind of neat. It provided some good video. Then a lot of people asked, what was it all about? It was kind of like the emperor's new clothes. Until some people pointed out that there was little they could see of serious value, everyone just sort of went along with what they presumed was a great achievement. I wish I had enough money to launch a 300 ft Estes rocket.
Maybe there is real value and I am just not seeing it. I'd just like to understand what it is.
Aside from a handful of people playing like they are working on the moon (or someplace), how much serious technical value is there to this?
Maybe someone could refer me to some technical papers that have come out about what has been learned?