Human Spaceflight: No Single Rationale Justifies it, NRC Report

[YellowSubmarine]

I don't think you understand how odds work.

Well, it is still wise to choose distant locations for your baskets to avoid the chance of correlated accidents. Although if you're going to run from a gamma-ray event like this, you probably need to go to another galaxy, or at least far enough in our own. On the bright side, don't these things sterilize only half the planet?

It's somewhat depressing though. Our solution to the inevitable and gruesome end of the human civilization is... To ensure there are multiple inevitable and gruesome ends of many human civilizations. One might say we are dooming others to save ourselves. Unless we learn to predict the end of the world well enough. Then the dying worlds might be able to elevate themselves to cult status among the rest, and ship themselves across the other colonies using sperm, egg and DVD banks, giving themselves immortality – and peaceful end of days in which they avoid local procreation.

That's really what the universe needs. Billions of digital recordings of desperate Earth parents telling their future non-Earth children to never take the vaccines the liberal off-worlders are trying to give them autism with. Of course the ultimate prize is for the children watching a video of their biological parents from 600000 years ago telling them the universe is only 6000.

 

[publiusr]

I see a lot of emotionalism in the anti-human spaceflight crowd.

Seems to me the emotionalism lies with those who have romantic notions about human space travel.

No romance here.

Spaceflight is very tough, never said it wasn't. My point is this. How many scientists in the field here have been replaced by rovers?
I can't think of too many.

And the anti-human spaceflight folks just refuse to acknowledge the growth in LV size--pushed by human spaceflight--allows unmanned systems to go even farther. That is an unassailable fact.

The problem is that many planetary scientists just want to raid this or that LV budget, just to go back to the bad old days of nickel and diming NASA to death with endless Delta II launches.

Let's take a look at J.I.M.O.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2983100.stm
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/32/1
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacetravel-04zr.html

"Still, just getting JiMO aloft will be difficult for NASA."

"Prometheus will be a challenge, said Mike Lembeck, in charge of requirements for NASA's Exploration System Directorate. When completely deployed in space, JiMO and its Prometheus power and propulsion system will be more than 100 feet long. Currently, Lembeck said, there are no existing space boosters capable of lifting the JiMO package into space as a complete unit -- NASA's preferred plan."

That is changing.

Also note what Alan Stern said about Falcon Heavy:
http://thespacereview.com/article/1846/1

"The rocket offers so much lift capacity relative to its competitors that it also will be able to enable co-manifesting of science missions with commercial satellites and remove the tight launch mass constraints on science satellites and planetary probes that often drive development costs."

Now, had planetary scientists had to help fund its development, they might have wanted to kill it. But since Musk footed the bill, Stern was finally able to tell the truth--that LV growth is a good thing for science missions.

Still, Falcon has about the same shroud diameter as EELVs and it does have some of the same limits http://www.americaspace.com/?p=34964

Look again here--
http://www.wired.com/2014/02/mars-roversample-return-pre-phase-1988/

--And note what was said by Donna Pivirotto, MRSR Rover manager at JPL, and how she "lamented that “large ‘Godzilla’ rovers which simply roll over all obstacles would be precluded by launch vehicle mass and volume constraints.”

That is no longer an issue with SLS, which has no such limitations. But since folks have to compete for funds, planetary scientists cut their noses off to spite their faces. What MSFC does is just as necessary as JPL.

Now, personally, I don't care whether humans go BEO ever again. I want to see LV growth for its own sake--in that we have gone as far as we can go with these bomb-disposal robot toys we have now.

The LV growth demanded by human spaceflight will also help planetary scientists.

Unhelpful value judgments disguised as "studies" published for no other reason than to kill off competing programs--those are the real problems.

Imagine you have a group of Vikings each with his own log he uses to travel down small streams, to do small missions. Now Leif Griffin wants all those logs so he can build a long ship that can carry all of them.

But each Viking holds on to his log for dear life, yelling "Mine! Mine!"

So much for crossing the Atlantic.

The current field of space scientists are doing the very same thing, and are equally short-sighted.

O/T Asteroid mining candidates http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.5027

 

[Deckerd]

It's very easy to say nobody's doing anything meaningful if you ignore how cripplingly expensive even getting a new telescope up there is going to be.

 

[ngc7293]

I think we should go back to the moon and stay there for a while. It's not the "popular" and "political" choice, but it is the better choice. We learn what it's like to live on another planet while we are near home just in case something goes wrong.

If we do the same thing all the way out on Mars, everyone is on their own. Also, like the first moon landings, Mars will be a One Shot just to say, "Hey, look what the U.S.A can do!"

If we go back to the moon and stay we get to prove again and again just how good we are.

 

[Deckerd]

The USA are never going to do anything again without international cooperation. That's the truth of space.

 

[varek]

What do you expect landlubbers to say?

Shame on you, Mitch Daniels! As a president of a scientific university, you should use your influence to push the space race, for all the benefits the research brings all of us humans.

 

[Dryson]

There can never be a single determining factor for exploring and establishing human colonies in space as someone's ideology on Earth for the reason's that they do things either as job or a hobby.

Exploring and establishing human colonies in space would create a 20 point system of Market Feasibility for growth of a new market plus continuing to maintain the old markets on Earth.

Market Feasibility Growth Point System

The following programs listed below have been taken directly from a Bachelors Degree program from one of most well known colleges in America history. The Market Feasibility Points not underlined are part of the Point System but are not present at this college but would none the less important for the Space Exploration Aspirant. All of these Points when taken into consideration with their approaches and practical use and applications on Earth when applied to the human expansion into space would create new add-ons for these Earth based Points to continue to increase the knowledge of the Knowledge Base system itself as well as ensuring humanity has a purpose in order to develop a new level of ingenuity from a creative spark which the history of the human race has shown me to be the number one factor for the reason humans still exist on Earth.

Basically : Caveman a few billion years ago - "See how I turned this wood branch into a hunting spear?
Caveman in 2014 - "See how I turned your wooden branch from a hunting spear into a rocket ship?"

Biology

• Business Management
• Communication Studies
  • Applied Communication concentration
  • Interpersonal Communication concentration
  • Organizational Communication concentration
• Computer Design, Animation & Game Design
• Criminology & Justice Studies
• Engineering - Includes all science dedicated to engineering of craft, modules and habits and their sciences
• English - Changed to International Studies on Language
• Fine Arts
• History
• Human Development & Family Studies
  • Family Life Education concentration
• Integrative Studies
• Marketing
• Mathematics
• Middle Childhood Education
• Music Technology
• Nursing
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Technical & Applied Studies
  • Computer Technology - 5 concentrations
  • Technical & Applied Studies - general major
• Theology - The study of new emotionally charged thoughts brought on by the human expansion into space
• Veterinarian and Animal Sustainability - Program designed to raise and treat new species of animals brought from Earth and raised in space.

If there are any programs that have been left out from the 20 Point Market Feasibility Program that you can think of post it and then give your reason for its addition. The more modules the better.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

What do you expect landlubbers to say?

Shame on you, Mitch Daniels! As a president of a scientific university, you should use your influence to push the space race, for all the benefits the research brings all of us humans.

I'm not a huge fan of Mitch Daniels, but what's your problem with what he said? From the OP's article:

"Human space exploration remains vital to the national interest for inspirational and aspirational reasons that appeal to a broad range of U.S. citizens. But given the expense of any human spaceflight program and the significant risk to the crews involved, in our view the only pathways that fit these criteria are those that ultimately place humans on other worlds."

...

"Our committee concluded that any human exploration program will only succeed if it is appropriately funded and receives a sustained commitment on the part of those who govern our nation. That commitment cannot change direction election after election. Our elected leaders are the critical enablers of the nation's investment in human spaceflight, and only they can assure that the leadership, personnel, governance, and resources are in place in our human exploration program."

So, uh, what are you criticizing here? His position sounds eminently reasonable (I find myself surprised saying that.)

 

[StarMan]

We're not "getting off this planet." There's nowhere to go that we can get to.

Human spaceflight was inspired - and inspiring - propaganda. Let the scientists do their work.

Exactly. The technologies that would greatly benefit human spaceflight... off the top of my head - energy systems, computing, propulsion, nano-tech and materials - can probably be advanced from their present state to spectacular degrees, all without venturing off the planet.

Somewhere along the line we may find ourselves with an impressive toolkit with which to employ in this endeavor. Right now, developing the technologies to support human spaceflight - on Earth - is more efficient than flinging ourselves out into the void.

 

[Spider]

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

We do have to get off this planet, but perhaps not ASAP. Ignoring the issue will do us no good though. As the sun gets hotter in it's old age, the habitability zone moves further out. In about a billion years, Earth will be another Venus. The Earth is not a permanent home, and neither is any other planet in our solar system.

We either will learn to live in space ships or find a planet in another solar system. Either way, we have to move. Putting it off just because we do have the luxury of time probably isn't a very good idea.

 

[T'Girl]

Human spaceflight was inspired - and inspiring - propaganda. Let the scientists do their work.

Why stop at no Human spaceflight?

How much of current scientific spaceflight is non-time sensitive, we could just a well do it in a century or more? How much of it is (in all honesty) ridiculously esoteric?

If we don't scrape a few grams of material from a comet and return it to Earth, really whose it going to hurt other than a scientist's career? In the grand scheme of things, do we really need to send a probe to Pluto?

Study the sun, yes. Communication, resource, weather sats, yes.

If you're going to advocate the elimination of Human spaceflight, why not continue the process to include all the other spaceflight that we actually don't need?

We might want it, but we don't need it.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I do hope we shutdown the cosmetics industry as well, because it is worth 10 manned Mars missions annually, at €170 billion a year – €43 billion in the US alone. And that's without Elon Musk's attempts to increase the price of lipstick drastically by introducing launcher re-usability. Now, I am not saying that looking and smelling magnificent is worth less than being inspired, confident in our abilities to cross across new boundaries, or having the knowledge to survive in the harshest holes of our cosmos (I mean – do you know how they smell?), but we can surely wait a few centuries until genetic engineering solves the problem at a much lower price by discovering the Barbie gene?

 

[Metryq]

How much of it is (in all honesty) ridiculously esoteric?

This sounds like the "science by agenda" argument. Time tables and deadlines for set goals are fine for engineering, but it's not the way science works.

You say study only the Sun and Earth—how do you know the various other bodies in the Solar system do not contain critical data for solving the puzzles?

KIRK: Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. Did Einstein, Kazanga, or Sitar of Vulcan produce new and revolutionary theories on a regular schedule? You can't simply say, today I will be brilliant.
—"The Ultimate Computer"

Or is your argument about using tax dollars for robot probes and other science programs? I can think of plenty of other programs that should be axed—programs whose budgets dwarf that of robot probes. The government tinkering makes the problems worse, yet that doesn't stop the bureaucracy from wanting to throw more and more money at them.

 

[Metryq]

I do hope we shutdown the cosmetics industry as well, because it is worth 10 manned Mars missions annually

+1

until genetic engineering solves the problem at a much lower price by discovering the Barbie gene?

Egads, no! Have you seen Moldavian-Ukrainian model Valeria Lukyanova? Very creepy. (Warning: eye bleach alert)

 

[Deckerd]

I do hope we shutdown the cosmetics industry as well, because it is worth 10 manned Mars missions annually, at €170 billion a year – €43 billion in the US alone. And that's without Elon Musk's attempts to increase the price of lipstick drastically by introducing launcher re-usability. Now, I am not saying that looking and smelling magnificent is worth less than being inspired, confident in our abilities to cross across new boundaries, or having the knowledge to survive in the harshest holes of our cosmos (I mean – do you know how they smell?), but we can surely wait a few centuries until genetic engineering solves the problem at a much lower price by discovering the Barbie gene?

You seem to be oblivious to the fact that the cosmetics industry is huge because it generates a huge revenue. The reason the space programme will never generate that amount of money is because 100 million women and men are not interested in putting any of their limited resources into it. They'd rather look good and go out for the night.

 

[publiusr]

Doesn't that just make you sick...NASCAR, Football (any variety). Ugh.

 

[T'Girl]

You seem to be oblivious to the fact that the cosmetics industry is huge because it generates a huge revenue.

Which is the key to advancement in space, both manned and unmanned, figure out a way to generate healthy revenue from what you're doing.

Humanity will colonize Mars just after someone works out a way to get rich in the process.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Doesn't that just make you sick...NASCAR, Football (any variety). Ugh.

What, that people want to enjoy their lives now rather than think about a hundred or a thousand or a million years into the future?

 

[Dryson]

The number reason for human space flight is to leave Earth and settle a new planet so that humans will be to escape the constant onslaught of violence through religion that the Middle East has placed on the rest of planet as those religions expand outwards from the Middle East forcing their religion on the rest of the planet through corrupt political affiliations who make laws saying that we have to believe the religions of the Middle East or otherwise fear being murdered.

That should be a good enough reason if any.

 

[sojourner]