Space exploration

[struggle4progress]

[Maple]

1. More political bias than science

but I marked it anyway.

[The Traveler]

2. I remember back in 1980

just before Carter left office that OMB could no longer reliably track the return on investment from the Apollo program. The results of the research had become so ubiquitous to the structure of the economy such a measurement was no longer meaningful. And that was just before the advent of the personal computer. (Yes, the IC was developed to address NASA requirements ... and that lead to the PC and the rupture of several paradigms.)

So now we find ourselves in this bind. Earth's resources are insufficient to support its population, and the ecosystem is more than creaking a little bit under the load while we randomly destroy ecological niches in the name of "progress".

Progress is NOT doing the same thing we did last year in a different and previously unsullied place. Nor is it about engineering "Apollo on steroids." It is doing something new, and something better. The resources of the solar system are (barely) within our grasp.

I can see how we can stabilize the situation by expanding our resource base ... but I cannot see how we can stabilize the situation without condemning billions to death unless we do so. To put it simply, we need more power ... and beyond the earth's atmosphere there is a lot of it.

My problem with the Bush plan is that for the same kind of money, we can develop the means to begin exploiting the resources of the earth-moon system, and that includes a LOT of solar power. There is no advantage to going to Mars at this point in time, though I personally would love to take the ride.

My perspective on these matters is driven largely by a realization that the consequences of global warming are already upon us, and are accelerating at a dramatic rate we have yet to be able to quantify. The good old profit motive is crap when you are in struggle to survive. My point is, as a people, a culture, a civilization, a species .... that is exactly where we are. The earth will endure. It is unclear to me that it will long continue to endure our presence.

[LunaSea]

3. seen the new Popular Science cover story?

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/

Can a SmallStart-up Build America’s Next Spaceship?
New technology. New methodology. T/Space has a plan for getting to space that’s so crazy it just might work

[montegutdude]

4. What about an option...

that reads "We've already spent billions of taxpayer dollars on Space Station construction. Can we at least finish it before we spend billions more on a new project that likely won't be completed?"

It would have had my vote. As it stands, I'm more inclined to vote for Tang. I've always disliked the fact that the current administration's "bold, new vision" did not involve completion of the last project already in orbit not being utilized.

[politicat]

5. The problem is *wants NEW toys.

(C'mon, can't you see it?)

Sure, I'd like ISS finished. I also want the Superconducting Supercollider finished. And the replacement for the SST.

But with this admin? We have to cut off his toy store account. He's already broken a lot of them.

(Don't get me wrong - I want space so bad I can taste it. I just don't want Halliburton to get the advertising rights to the Moon.)