Human Spaceflight: No Single Rationale Justifies it, NRC Report

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/135055-Human-Spaceflight-No-Single-Rationale-Justifies-it-NRC-Report

SPACE FLAME WAR!!!

 

No _single_ rationale. There are many.

 

I can't come up with a single rationale for the European colonization of the Americas, either.

 

Other than the sats we send up for communications, weather and other observations, why send anything else into space?

Basically because we're curious, we can, and we want to. We didn't have to send people to the moon.

Why send people into space? Because it's there.

 

^ Harry Mudd had Stella urging him into outer space!

 

You know they might be right No single rationale justifies it, but we would go to Mars because of a single rationale, surely rationales for it would be

Technologcal advancement

A man mission to Mars would likel be an International effort so you have international relations

Because it's there.

 

These would be by-products of a manned mission to Mars, not reasons for going in the first place. And both could be had without going to Mars.

Ah-nold went because a video recording told him to go.
"Git you ahs to Mahs...Git you ahs to Mahs..." Hmmm, I wonder if Austrian Death Machine ever used that line?

 

Well I guess those Soviet roving robots were so much more effective than a human geologist.....

 

We shouldn't have all of our eggs in one basket. At any time, a comet could wipe out life on earth, and our civilization would be over.

There's a single rationale: preservation of species

 

Send me.

 

There you go, J.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkj2lR9CT08[/yt]

 

At least we know where Mars is. Columbus went on a wild-goose chase following a fringe theory on what the size of the Earth was, with no information of an actual land where he was going. He was lucky he wasn't in space, because I doubt he'd have the luck Starbuck had with her coordinates.

And long before that, we had no good rationale for leaving the well-trodden ground of Africa – let alone travelling to the Americas and Australia, we had no good rationale for sacrificing precious time hunting to experiment with the world in the event we found something like metalworking, we had no good rationale for wasting time with theoretical mathematics or studying the motion of stars, we had no good rationale a great many of the things that in hindsight lead to the biggest steps of mankind.

Unlike them, human spaceflight has numerous predictable benefits, even if they are questionable and lie in the very distant future. People in the past did things with no particular assurance or even knowledge of potential gains. So we shouldn't stop pursuing something like this just because we aren't certain the benefits will be materialised.

 

The bomb-disposal robots on Mars don't impress me.

If robotics are so successful, then how many geologists have been replaced by them down here?

Zero.

The problem is that we spend so much money on things like manned fighters (the 1.5 trillion life-cycle cost of F-35 say) that all we have money for are unmanned craft.

An unmanned drone can out-turn any plane with meat in its cockpit--but driving is much harder than flying.

We have had cruise missiles and autopilots for decades, but are still working on driverless cars.

A human in the field is worth more than JPL's bomb-disposal robot/ science by committee. Lewis and Clark covered more ground in the first few days than all the rovers put together.

Human spaceflight also acted as a force driver--pushing up LV size to where larger probes could benefit. Proton put up ISS modules, or unmanned craft/sats higher up and farther out.

 

The brief summary of the report is observant and pretty accurate. Human space travel beyond Earth orbit right now is a ludicrously expensive exercise in emotionalism.

 

The future is in observation. Huge leaps in observational technology is what human deep space travel in the future will be all about

 

I see a lot of emotionalism in the anti-human spaceflight crowd. Same with folks who hate college football. It can actually make money for a school...and that's a good thing.

We just had a lot of planetary scientists crying that Dan Golden isn't around handing Delta II missions out like lollypops. JPL has been chain smoking delta IIs for so long than anything like Orion SLS, etc. is going to be attacked.

 

Eh?

 

I'd think it would be more prudent to stay at home and push the technological envelope before we even contemplate setting out from the crib.

 

Some improvements only come from use. How advanced would the motor car be today if back at the turn of the last century all the manufacturers decided to develop the perfect product first?

 

I don't know how to break it to everyone, but we need to get the hell off of this planet, ASAP.