Humanity's Space Program

It's been about half a century since humanity took it's first baby steps out of it's cradle on Earth. Everything was going great. We had launched satellites into space, built space stations, and landed a man on the Moon. There were even plans to have a base on the moon as well as to land a man on Mars before the millennium was over. What happened to that drive? We've spiraled down since then. If humanity were to die out in the next 5 years, would landing on the moon be the greatest thing we ever achieved? Even though we had the technology to do so much more...

What do you guys think about what we have done in space? Are we where we should be or have we fallen behind?

[size=6]I find it sad that no one made a thread about the Space Shuttle's retirement, but oh well.[/h]

As awesome as space exploration seems, to most people it seems to be of less importance.

And looking at how things are going, I doubt that we would attempt anything similar to the moon landing anytime soon.(well, at least here in the states)

What happened to the drive that space exploration had was the collapse of USSR. Without competition there is no need to hurry things up or showcase how industrious and successful one nation is compared to another.

It's about money and immediate profit. Most countries lack the funds to even have a space program let alone make technological advances. Also since space exploration is a program that doesn't make any intimidate benefit other then the pursuit of knowledge no one seems obliged to continue it. Apparently the rulers of the world are contempt with living on this small rock and poke at each other to death.

I hate the current American president. I hate him for lots of things. Taking away the space program is one of them.

I think it's fine if space travel "takes a break" for a couple of decades. Maybe I'm just biased towards my field (molecular biology), but I feel that Astronomy gets waaaaay too much attention given it's overall accomplishments.

I lean more towards applied than basic science than most, thus I feel that research should primarily be geared towards tackling the problems of the day, such as procuring more renewable energy, combating diseases (especially HIV and cancer), increasing global food supply/maintaining global food supply given the upcoming fresh water shortages, reducing human environmental impact (especially preventing further ozone damage, in light of this article http://www.earthtimes.org/climate/nasa-discovers-alarming-anomaly-ozone-depletion/1449/).

Of course, some funding should always be set aside for research that is seemingly useless, because history has shown that the random goofing around of one decade provides the crucial background information for a later decade's breakthrough. But, when it comes down to it, there's only so much money to go around for research (unlike the seemingly limitless war-chest...), so tough choices are necessary.

The many troubles of the current age can be in some way related to the over population of the planet. So wouldn't research into finding a new hospitable world be very keen to humanities survival? Something is only useless if you say it is so. Like saying that the person who goes to work everyday to earn money for his wife and children is useless because he might end up getting divorced and his children might end up hating him.

Its all about perception

word.
I remember hearing that the biggest problem about traveling to the mars is the amount of fuel it would take. The tanks would be so big that the rocket (or whatever) were too big and heavy. Therefore in my opinion, investigation in propellant techniques were necessary, from which society would gain benefits. But apparently noone has any good ideas right now. Maybe someone will discover something far more useful than gasoline and elecricity ?

I was very sad to see Project Constellation come to end due to finances, I guess making 5 less F-22s to keep NASA in space was a no no.
Yes, traveling in space wasn't cost productive and there's next to no impact our daily lives whether it is done or not.
BUT!
As humanity there are some things that we need to get done no matter the cost!
If you think different, you might as well go to Switzerland and dismantle Large Hadron Collider for scrap.

this, there's alot of problems today, and space exploration won't solve any of them. We could consider it once there's nothing else to research, but until then, no more space stuff

This thread is so chock full of ignorance!

What happened to manned Space Programs?

Computers. Why send a hairless ape, with a bulky, hard to maintain life support system to space and then another planet when you could send a robot that does the same job? You also have to make sure that the hairless monkey gets back sound and safe. The robot's fine just chilling out the rest of its life out there. You also get to keep your actual crew - made up of dozens of the best minds on the planet - in an air conditioned facility and at a fraction of the cost!

Oh no! The Shuttle's gone... and good riddance!

The Shuttle Program was a waste of money. It was too heavy, too complex and had some very idiotic trade-offs. The orbiter should've been on top of the rocket where it would've been more protected. It should've head air-breathing engines, so it could've made a powered landing and reduce oxidizer requirements on the first stage. It should've used a simpler, ablative heat shield. It should've ferried either freight or humans, carrying that damn big mission section everywhere greatly cost us in terms of load capacity. It should've been able to at least do a damn MEO orbit!

It was the damn elephant in the room. We need human spaceflight, because we need humans in space to.... uhh... let me get back to you! Meanwhile we will mandate human involvement on any mission that involves the Shuttle. This usually translated to an astronaut having to push a button. There! Human involvement!

...and when missions that *did* fit the Shuttle's profile crept up - life fixing Hubble's short sightedness - NASA was dragging its leg as they considered the mission too dangerous.

The gall of that, when they were operating a vehicle without any escape mechanism! When the Russians improve on your product by incorporating ejection seats (check out the specs of the Buran), you know something is wrong. (Granted these could only be used on the ascent phase of the mission, but it could've saved the life of the Challenger crew for instance).

It can't have been THAT bad! I mean how much did this thing cost?

MORE than HALF of NASA's budget. Meanwhile the real scientific findings, exploration of the solar system, GETTING SHIT DONE, was achieved through unmanned space flight.

OK, but this stuff never brought any good to mankind!

WRONG. The space programs lead to the rapid development of technologies that later on benefited all of mankind. Part of the reason that made the Shuttle program such a bummer was, that with all that money sunk into the vehicles a lot less was available for R&D.

Frankly we did *not* need a fleet of launch vehicles, our aerospace needs didn't warrant it. If fewer, disposable, cheaper vehicles had been used we could've had a part of the rapid development along that characterized the Gemini and Apollo programs.

Instead we couldn't incorporate even tech developed elsewhere, as NASA was busy supporting a 30 year old craft with absolutely outdated technology.

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If I managed to jar you out of your Clark-Heinlein inspired visions of the furute - just "50 years out of date" and GROSSLY optimistic - read more here:

http://www.idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm

The Rocketpunk manifesto is a good start to get your aerospace wings and realize how the media has been selling your short by dazzling you with swooshing ships and denied you the intricate splendor of a technological tightrope that balancing a space mission involves:

http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com

...Charlie Stross also has a few choice words. Mark them for they ring with truth:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html

His most important axiom: Space in not a Libertarian's friend should be engraved on a plaque and included in any space colonization's programs motto. Keeping humans alive in space is really hard, and takes regulation so stringent only madmen (and dreamers) willingly submit themselves to it.

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BONUS:

If you want to try your hand at rocketry, try out the Kerbal Space Program game:

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com

In my opinion, we have not fallen behind, we simply caught up with our own limitations as of the moment. Particularly technology. Not spiraled down, more like "slowed down".

Back in the days when our parents oohed and aahed over the sight of astronauts on the moon, little was mentioned beyond the usual scientific community about the geniuses that made it possible and the events that led to Apollo 11. How many years of research it must have been. How many centuries of human knowledge, culminating into one mission to land a man on the moon. The smart people who thought of what material to use for the astronauts' suits to the moon. The scientists and engineers who built the lunar module that landed on the moon. The geniuses who made the right mix of fuel to blast the spaceflight up out of Earth. The men who helped determine the possible atmosphere to be encountered on the moon. And so on, the countless scientists and engineers who transformed knowledge into "applicable technology".

The "applicable technology" USA had in 1969 was enough to successfully send Apollo 11, a manned space flight, to the moon and back.

Now, beyond that is still, beyond us. But certainly, we're not lacking in effort.

Space scientists all over the world are still laboring on how to travel faster through space. "Space tourism" keeps popping up in Technology news in major publications and magazines. We're still figuring out how to possibly create a structure on the moon that will withstand space, or if possible what to use to create it. Or how to keep men in space long enough without developing any sign of health problem - basically to live in space for a long period of time. Or, even harder, how to send spacecraft in space without being such a budget wreckingball and preventing it from consuming a shitload of fuel that costs so much.

These technologies are still beyond us.

Maybe the current generation is looking for its own Apollo 11 moment. Our parents certainly had it, and they're happy with it since they got to live in those magical moments seeing Neil Armstrong's moon walk transmitted on black and white TV.

What about us?

We are where we want us to be. There were plans, of course, back then when enthusiasm for space exploration exceeded what is possible within our grasp. You know, the usual stuff. Men to Mars. A NASA base on the moon. Stuff like that. But when the scientists calmed down and gathered the information and knowledge they had, the stuff cooled down, the dreams halted, not because of a lack of drive as many think, but more of a reality check, that simply we can't do those just yet.

Technology doesn't come out of thin air. People have labored for those, even died to have it known by their peers. Wishing for men on Mars or building bases on the moon is fanciful, but we have arrived at the point where we are now searching for the means to fulfill those dreams, and we have to accept it takes TIME and EFFORT. Yes, most of us can accept effort, but a lot of us take it hard that it takes TIME and fearing we might not live long enough to see the next big space moment. And USA certainly ain't the only space authority. China and Japan are already rolling the dice on their space dreams. Europe has ESA. Russia is still maintaining its space know-how. If "we had the technology to do so much more", we could have done it already years ago, or some other nation's space agency could have done it already. But we have to keep ourselves grounded in the reality, we are still gathering enough scientific knowledge to fulfill our dreams, and indeed it is taking time.

If "the next big space moment" happens within our lifetime, great. It's an added bonus to a good life we're having right here on Earth, our generation's own Apollo 11 moment. But if we don't live long enough for it, we should accept it, and just be proud that we paved the way for the next generation's hope to have that next big space moment for them.

jmason, you're fundamentally wrong. We could start a manned mission to Mars this moment and if we pulled out all the stops, gave all the funding, the astronauts would be on their way within 2 years.

Technological limitations have nothing to do with why our manned presence in space is so limited.

Economy does.

There's simply only so much that human beings can do in space. We've done all the medical checks, we've proven that humans can be sustained in micro-gravity, but that's it. There's no longer any scientific or commercial impetus to have a human around. As I wrote earlier, the need for humans in most experiments nowadays is a gimmick, used to justify and exorbitantly expensive program. The astronaut pushes a button and his involvement ends there. Everything else is already automated. The only reason the Space Shuttle can't be landed on autopilot is that the main landing gear was intentionally disconnected from the flight computer.

With the advent of microcomputers, tele-operation and robotics there's no longer a need for a human to carry out all the scientific experiments we want. In fact human presence would be detrimental to these efforts.

Take the Pioneer and Voyager missions for example. Thanks to them, we've learned more about the outer planets in a single decade then we've done in the entire history of mankind up to that point.

...or take the commercial space industry. It's so entwined with everyday life that you take it for granted, but it has really changed telecommunication and navigation. Today, there's no ocean going vessel or passenger plane that doesn't have GPS guidance. Our automated weather satellites have radically transformed how meteorology is handled and what it's capable of.

We didn't need space stations stuffed with scientist to take these reading. Back in the '60 the kind of processing power, sensor capability and telemetry reliance a modern satellite routinely processes was beyond even the wildest dreams of sci-fi writers.

Computer technology, the Internet has blindsided us and it has taken space industry in a very different direction from what Heinlein and Arthur C. Clark envisioned.

I don't think we fundamentally disagree with each other. I may have come off as a bit anti-Astonomy, but, like you, I'm really only opposed to the manned flights which have little benefit beyond good press. Many technological advances have come from the nitty-gritty engineering that few people seem to care about, and I fully support strong funding for such research.

Unfortunately the world revolves around money which the gov. doesn't have. Thats why the space exploration has slowed down. Luckily, we are starting to make a shift to privately funded space exploration and space tourism.

The trade off with the expense for manned missions is that you gain more knowledge from them. It doesn't take a person five hrs to recieve a signal on mars to pick up a rock and look at it. Anyways we humans are just wired to explore and eventually, it will become a necessity. One day, maybe 1000, maybe 100, or maybe 50 yrs down the road we humans will run out of resources and living space and will have to have a second planet/moon to live on.

I'm sorry, but nowadays science has long since passed the threshold of what the human senses are capable of. Granted there would be tons of things a geologist with a hammer and the freedom to explore could tell us about Mars, but when you add up the costs the robots are still leading. Sending better robots is still more sensible, as they could operate 24/7, have advanced instruments built in and can weather the hostile environment a lot easier than a human would.

Compare the extreme stuff we do in space, and such "mundane" things like exploring the depths of the ocean, the hottest desert or the coldest tundras are pedestrian by comparison... yet these are on the very edge of human endurance.

It's only after you've moved out as far as Jupiter that human presence would once again become an immense boon as the light-speed lag is just that great.



No it won't. Ditching the solar system is not an option and it won't be for a long, long while. Not until you have tech-levels, us rocketry affectionados call "magitech", from the Clark axiom that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Even if you had fusion torch ships an interstellar mission would still take stupendously long times and would cost just as much... now multiply that by a couple million-to-billion and you realize we'd need to requisition a sizable portion of the resources in the solar system to pull off the job.

Read the High Frontier Redux I posted earlier, Charlie Stross does a much better job of framing the scope of the problem and how, mind shatteringly, big and empty interstellar space is.

well yeah i think your right in machines being the best way to explore in the future, I meant at this point in time a human would be more effective at studying.
Spirit and Opportunity were lucky to last as long as they did/have but they can only travel so far each day. The whole problem now is how it cost like a million dollars per pound to put something in space, so yeah once there able to increas the delivery load cappacity and decrease the pay load weight machines will be our best bet.
On the other hand humans will naturaly want to seak out new worlds. Of coarse I read an arcticle somewhere saying the best way to spread the human species in space would be to send out machines with our DNA in them and once they arrive at there destination they would somehow make copies of us there. So i don't know maybe your right lol