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Yes. Why not start with NASA?
NASA is barely scraping by with what it has...
Yes. Why not start with NASA?
And 1% of that federal spending could be spent on stuff oh so much more useful.
Lay the foundations and ensure the freedom and survival of the human race? Really? Freedom? Freedom from what? :dry:
A brighter future? How? More economically advanced future? In an unlivable hyperdesert?
Can't we build a brighter future and ensure our survival on Earth? :dry:
Space exploration is a good idea... eventually. But there is no immediate need for space colonisation, and no driving factor for it. Earth is where humanity is located, and our primary efforts must be to ensuring the existence of the best possible civilisation on the surface of the Earth.
There's never going to be an eventually if the technologies aren't there....Space exploration is a good idea... eventually....
Firstly, the space age was not the major driver of technological development during the 20th century... war was. The 20th century was pretty much defined by wide ranging and deeply impacting wars: the first world war, the second world war, and the threat of a third world war.
War was what made the space age possible. The essential knowledge for the manned space program(s) was gained via the development of ballistic missiles from WWII and onward. The first human spacecraft were converted ballistic missiles. A ballistic missile derivative- the Soyuz rocket- is very reliable and still in service today.
The massive industrialisation after the war was what enabled the space program. Some of these facilities were used in war efforts, for example. Many of the astronauts had served in the military.
The whole reason for the space program in the first place, was an international prestige battle between the superpowers. If it was not for that prestige battle, space travel would either have been a minor issue considered by scientific entities, or by the military (or both together).
Now, in no way whatsoever am I suggesting that war is a good thing, or that we need war to further our civilisation. But I think it is pretty important in understanding a lot of the driving factors during the 20th century. War has been far more important technologically, than spaceflight. It has far more spinoffs.
Spaceflight itself is a spinoff of war...
Secondly we need spaceflight for 'freedom'? Huh? To escape governments? To prevent dictatorships?
Sorry, but that's not how it works. The glorious future we should all be working hard to achieve, is one with strong democracy, strong education, and strong human development.
Not one with a population eagerly waiting for the life support system of some cold, lonely 'brave explorers' to cut out and leave them dead among the sands of Mars.
Except: we are different, very different. We are industrialised, we are modernised, and we have a wealth of information at our fingertips. This already makes the dynamics of our civilisation far removed from that of people in years past.
Maybe it is still similar in underdeveloped and developing nations, but we can pretty much see the result of those conditions.
And if you really want to be cynical: our civilisation has not failed yet. Manned spaceflight has.
Manned spaceflight has failed at 'easy' Moon and Mars missions. It has failed at regular and 'safe' access to space. It has failed at being cheap enough to permit its wide scale proliferation. It has failed to provide useful applications in and of itself (useful applications in space are done by unmanned vehicles now).
I think that in a way, a lot of space enthusiasm is still thinking in the 1950s. We should know better by now.
- Solar panels with far higher efficiency exist.
- Fusion? Yeah... very far away, has applications far more useful than spaceflight (power generation!) and won't solve everything- comes with a lot of problems.
- There is no more economically efficient way to reach LEO than chemical rocket engines. Physically more efficient, yes. But these schemes make things worse economically.
Sorry, but there are so many other things that you could do... that are far more useful.
How about ending reliance on fossil fuels?
Or how about an efficient global transit network?
A means of meeting the basic needs of people in underdeveloped nations?
All of these are far more helpful than sending a bunch of people to freeze on Mars.
There's never going to be an eventually if the technologies aren't there.
But technological development kept on going after WWII ended, and after the Soviet Union collapsed it kept on going. It's because there are people getting high-level education, and then entering the workforce. Manned spaceflight boosts the number of people that do this, so it is responsible for some level of the technological development at the time.
Once again, it very well may have been the New World that brought Europe out of the middle ages, for the exact same reasons.
And yes, the reason for the space race was a battle of prestiege. And so was the colonization of the New World. But now, 300 years later, was it a good idea? Yes, but not for the reasons it was done at the time. The course of human history shows it was a very good idea.
And yes, freedom from dictatorships. The only thing that really keeps the 'states free is the Constitution, which is constantly attacked in one way or another, by people stretching it's meaning or passing unconstitutional laws. It is the nature of any government ran by men to only grow in power with time, at the expense of the liberty of the people. One country that particularly gets my attention in this respect is England. The right to bear arms is sacred to myself and most Americans in this region...
Anyways, the point is that a Mars society would, in fact, help the cause of liberty, in the same way that the New World colonies did so for the rest of the world. They showed the world that it could be done, and the constitution was the beginning of the end for the era of monarchy.
Humans always think the same. It's rather amazing how much people can ignore history and repeat the same mistakes. Moral decadence, anti-militarism, and anti-nationalism have been the signs of a nation about to fail, for the Roman Empire and at other times in history, yet nobody even notices, or really cares. All three of those things are becoming popular in the country I'm in.
The information is there, but nobody cares enough to find out. And they still think the same.
The technologies are still being developed, it's open-ended. It's not over yet. And I think Falcon 9/Dragon by SpaceX might live up on their promise to half Soyuz's prices, and be an even safer rocket. They're on-schedule and on-budget. The big advances will probably be made in the much more efficient private sector, which has only just started.
The shuttle may be retiring, but I'd call this the beginning of a new era of manned spaceflight, not the end.
1. What is it? 16%? I know it's not significant, I remember that being a big issue with solar power.
2. Look, you can't keep pointing at things and saying "comes with a lot of problems". That's very loose. I could say anything comes with a lot of problems. Sure it has some issues, but they really aren't major. Use a small powerplant and you can easily have radiators big enough.
3. That's just being close-minded. What if a physically more efficient engine could be flown many times with little maintenance work? What if they find a way to fabricate Carbon Nanotubes in length, and make an orbital elevator? What about new engine schemes that haven't been discovered yet?
One interesting idea I remember was very new: use a heat-absorbent undersurface of the vehicle, hit it with microwaves, and let the heat transfer to a network of small tubes running with hydrogen. Smaller-scale experiments have shown an ISP up to 8,000, with significant thrust
My point is that there's still ideas that nobody's thought of yet. You can't say that chemical rockets are the best there is.
Technology marches on.
Can you do any of those things on a budget of only $16 bil. a year?
No. You can't even come close. Those things require hundreds of times as much. You can easily do those and run a manned space program. NASA isn't strangling the U.S. budget. NASA gets nothing, almost. If you took all of NASA's budget and added it to one department, I doubt anybody would even notice. $16 bil. is a big number, but it's absolutely nothing compared to the trillions flowing through Congress.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with 1% for space, or 2% for space. Or even 5% for space. I'm saying it is wrong- very wrong- to put the fantastical vision of a niche group, that has already failed and flopped over itself, in a position of priority over many of the very real problems facing our civilisation today.
:facepalm:
You... you want to go to Mars... to protect... your right to bear arms? :rofl:
Now don't get me wrong here, I have nothing against guns or the right to bear arms whatsoever. I really, don't like people banning guns for ignorant 'NIMBY' reasons.
But seriously, the people in the UK are not oppressed. Their lives are not overpowered by the government, just because of UK gun laws. They do not die in droves because of UK gun laws.
Then why are we debating at all if you agree? We're not demanding 20% spending in space! I'd be totally satisfied with 5%! That would be an increase by an entire order of magnitude!
No, I don't want to go to Mars to protect gun rights. In that specific paragraph I was discussing liberties and the tendency of governments to grow in power at the expense of the rights and freedoms of the people.
If I say again how this connects, then that will be 3 times I've explained it, it's there if you want to read it, I don't need to say it again.
Because I'm annoyed by people putting the importance of a "glorious future" in an extremely deficient environment above real needs and requirements in our immediate world.
I think I'll just ignore the whole thread because it feels like playing Unreal Tournament against a lone, unmoving bot that does not interact with the environment at all...
I'm not putting it above other more pressing needs. I suggested a budget of 5%. How the heck is that putting spaceflight above other needs?
I think we're all saying that the current world is not spending enough in manned spaceflight.
We're not saying it's the only thing that matters. We're just saying it matters more than how it's being valued.
What everyone doesn't know is that manned spaceflight is important.
But you're advocating things that the world's already doing, and always has been doing. They don't need an advocate, they're already doing fine.
But as of right now, there's only one freaking rocket, among all of human civilization, that is capable of (legally) taking people to space. A rocket that's 40+ years old, at that. And right now all worldwide spending on manned spaceflight probably takes less than 1% of the annual spending of my home country alone.
You should advocate how things need to change, not how things are. You said manned spaceflght could/should take 5% of spending. So really, you should be advocating it instead of arguing against it, because according to that you agree with me and everyone else here. Of course it's not going to solve all of mankind's problems. They won't magically vanish. They'll never go away. But it will help to fight them. And in terms of effectiveness per dollar, so far manned spaceflight and exploration have been the most successful things ever done to improve mankind, specifically exploration and expansion.
And finally, they're extremely deficient environments, yes, but the key point is that these "hyperdeserts" (which I still believe is an incorrect term, and should only apply to vacuum-environments with no rescources. You can live off the land on Mars.) are very far away. And that's significant. That's very, very significant. That's how they're different than Antarctica or the Sahara. The dynamics are totally different because of that, making them an analogue to the "New World". Antarctica and the Sahara don't fit that, they aren't the "exploration" that has benefited mankind so greatly in the past.
1.A barren area of land or desolate terrain, especially one with little water or vegetation; a wasteland.
To sum up the whole point here, we aren't "putting the importance of a 'glorious future' in an extremely deficient environment above real needs and requirements in our immediate world.". We're not putting manned spaceflight above education, foreign aid, or whatever. We're just saying not nearly enough is being put into manned spaceflight. We're not saying drop other programs for manned spaceflight, we're saying do both, 5% for manned spaceflight is perfectly acceptable, while other programs that have been going on and not doing anything new for the past century can continue to consume a monsterous 30% of the budget in their own waste.
5% is a bit excessive, no? You seriously don't need to spend that much on spaceflight. 1% or even 2% is more reasonable.
I'm not arguing with that, my point is that some things take priority over others, and right now manned spaceflight has extremely low priority compared to many other things.
I don’t think anyone here – me included – is trying to argue that spaceflight is the most important issue facing mankind right now. Rather, we are merely saying that it is one of the important issues, that warrants at least a small effort and funding – which it gets. Sorry, but the 0.5% of funding that US spaceflight gets isn’t going to end all wars, or end all poverty. If the US spent 50% on spaceflight, you would have an argument, but it just doesn’t stand up in the face of a budget of 0.5%, because you can’t argue that spaceflight gets too much priority with a budget like that.
Why ? You just put statements without justifying them. It's too easy. It's like everything you say has to be the truth. Things don't work like that, you can be wrong as often as other people can be. To throw statements you have to build a serious demonstration, use facts and figures (with references). Then an argumentation is possible.
Actually, my beliefs are not equal to Joe Sixpack at all. Joe Sixpack hears space and thinks "aw dat useless stuff!". I hear about space and I think about a very adverse environment and a field of exploration that has massively failed in many respects.
I can't help but be pessimistic about space. I'd love not to be, but my views are shaped by what I observe in history and in the present day
5% is a bit excessive, no? You seriously don't need to spend that much on spaceflight. 1% or even 2% is more reasonable.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with 1% for space, or 2% for space. Or even 5% for space. [...]
I think we are not spending money in the right places in spaceflight. We're operating a gigantic spacecraft in low Earth orbit that has only the goal of fuzzy "scientific research", we have had programs that are intent only on building shiny rockets and recreating Apollo, and currently our requirements are driven by the political pork-trough rather than engineers or mission planners or anyone of that sort.
I think that's the crux of the issue. You think manned spaceflight should get more attention, I think it gets enough attention, even if it is maybe devalued in the global consciousness.
And I'm saying that it isn't. Not that it isn't important at all, but that it isn't majorly, hugely important. Which it isn't.
Heh. No they're not. No, the people in Afghanistan and Zimbabwe aren't doing fine... :dry:
No, our current consumption of fossil fuels isn't doing fine. No, our population growth isn't doing fine.
Say what you want about these things, but they are not 'doing fine'.
Exploration and expansion into what? Into nothing. That is what space is. Literally what it is.
Effectiveness per dollar of doing what, exactly? Furthering an interesting activity, nothing more.
I would really like to know what useful discovery for people on Earth, has been made in space on a manned spacecraft by humans.
Of course places like the Sahara or Antarctica did not become the "new world". Why? Because they were poor environments, that's why. And even then they were/are easier to get to than Mars or the Moon.
There is no pressure drawing people towards a deficient environment. Ever.
But look exactly at what you are saying: "consume a monsterous 30% of the budget in their own waste". You philosophically put your 5% above any of the real funding to real applications.
And to increase the funding for spaceflight to 5%, you will have to take money from somewhere else. Granted, you can take it from the military, but not all countries have the gigantic military spending that the US does.
In short, even if you don't believe that spaceflight is more important than other issues, you believe that it is radically more important than it really is, which is where the problem lies.
Yes, very, very little hope for space. But that doesn't mean we should ignore it totally. Maybe somewhere there is something useful in space, but it probably isn't very similar to the wild ideas that a lot of advocates seem to have, just as our space program is a radical failure compared to the visions from before the space age.