First comment ever? We'll see. Got you bookmarked my friend and we'll be checking back often. Always enjoyed you at the "Captain" and look forward to reding more. Good luck!

Welcome to the blogosphere! That was a nice launch they gave you at Powerline. Hope you have fun with the new blog!

Your post echoes my reaction as well. I also find it hard to believe NASA will really re-use any old technology since most of the materials used in it's construction - e.g. asbestos - are considered too toxic by today's new "enlightened" environmental standards.

Maybe it will take 13 years because NASA will have to retrofit all the old parts with the new brittle heat shields and will end re-engineering every thing any way. It took me 20 years to build my submarine with just Leggos.

Our Friend the Gravity Well...

Work efficiency increases dramatically in a stable, conventional gravity well. If you do not believe me, get on a ship, find a decent sized storm, and try to work in an unstable, unconventional gravity well. The clockwork universe vision of accomplishing great things in microgravity is largely espoused by people who have not had to do hard work in a storm off Cape Hatteras.

If you want to bemoan the presence of a gravity well, feel free to do so...after you have spent a few days trying to get something important done while passing your entire alimentary canal through your lips. Energy efficiency is not the only efficiency, except to people who believe that the only adjustment that ever needs to be made is the rewinding of a clock. For those of us who live in an OODA loop where unforseen things happen, the ability to stand, think, and adjust is improved by having something solid on which to rest.

A gravity well is your friend when you are trying to get something done. Although to be fair, micro-gravity is probably your friend when you are an engineer who wants to be on a massive project team until you retire with a government pension...

The original Apollo project had the advantage of working without computers or calculators. The prevalence of slide rules at mission control is evidence of the suprior human intelligence available in that time period. Retrogression in the American educational system coinciding with the commercial introduction of color television is responsible for this decline.

The bureaucracy has grown at a tumor-like rate since the 60's, which trumps any and all leaps forward in science and technology. The more bureaucrats, the less will and drive. I'd be surprised if our current structure could put us back on the moon in 20 years.

PS-Congrats on your new blog! Every new responsible blog is one more nail in the MSM coffin.

Ddd writes: does anyone else find it sardonically amusing ...

I am not amused at all. The entire history of space exploration points to one inevitable fact: Escapism is for SF writers. Real people belong on Earth.

We should compare NASA's Shuttle and ISS, to JPL's robotic missions. Except we can't. Human space flight is so dangerous and expensive, it can never have a sustainable basis. Contrarily, our robotic spacecraft are doing real science and real exploration.

Imagine how far we could leap into the future if we were not committed to human flights to the Moon and Mars. Imagine how much we could benefit on Earth, if we pushed our technology to send a repair robot to HST. Look at what our robot spacecraft have delivered just this year--from the outer planets to hurricane preparedness--with tiny costs and risks.

Human space flight does not amuse me.

Human spaceflight doesn't amuse me either; it is essential for the future of our species. With 99% of the raw material and energy in our system not on Earth, we face severe constraints as long as we remain planetbound. Someone will get out there and start doing things, or we regress into a Dark Age such as the Islamists wish on us.

I think you are being defeatist HelenW.
I would like to compare manned space flight to (don't laugh!) learning to juggle.

I learned to juggle about ten years ago. I'm not the best at ball games and it took me a lot of effort. There were two stages:
1. I would manage 4-10 throws before the errors accumulated. This was most dispiriting. For me, my hands drifting ever further apart was the main problem.
2. With practice I learned how to correct my slight errors as I went along, so they were not amplified, but dampened. Now I could keep going almost indefinitely, and the added practice from juggling rather than picking the balls up off the floor made me even better.

I think with manned space flight, we haven't had much practice and we're at stage 1, where a small problem often gets magnified to catastrophe.
We have to persevere, and eventually it'll become child's play.

Thank you for the replies, gentlemen. I'm certain our host won't mind a few side discussions.

Stewart, to say that our species is doomed on Earth, is to deny all rational thought on the matter since Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. The answer is not in fleeing from a planet overrun by Jihadists. We simply need to kill them faster.

Justin, you can call me Helen or Helly, at least until another Helen shows up.

The fallacy I see behind your juggling metaphor (I didn't laught) is that anything is possible in the future. Looking at the miracle of evolution, who could ever deny anything is possible over vast amounts of time?

However, when I say "Imagine how far we could leap into the future ...", I'm not trying to be a Defeatist. I'm looking for the best alternatives at this point in time. For example, who would advise basing our future energy supplies on fusion, when we have vast amounts of coal and oil shale readily at hand?

My point is that SciFi fixation with human space flight is hobbling space exploration. Our robots deliver 3 or 4 orders of magnitude more product/expense with no risk. If you subscribe to Stewart's vision of raw material depletion on Earth, let us send our machines to do the digging on other worlds. Then we would have some chance of surviving.

Excellent site, Dafydd, and excellent post. I am sorry that you won't be guesting on my site (as least as frequently) but thrilled to have this excellent new blog on my favorites.

As to your post -- is this a sign that being Americans isn't what it used to be? I hate to think that, but the declining support for the war has me concerned that we're no longer a people with the same will we once had. Please tell me I'm being too pessimistic.

Also, when we first developed the space program, we didn't yet have the fully developed welfare state. I think maybe you gotta choose -- and we have chosen.

Somebody is going to be on the Moon. It may as well be the US.

From:
China Wants Manned Base On The Moon
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com Pacific Rim Bureau Chief
May 22, 2002
http://tinyurl.com/dog2v

Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - China hopes to become the world's third nation to put astronauts in space in the next few years, to land them on the moon by 2010, and eventually to establish a moonbase to exploit natural resources there. The ambitious agenda has emerged at an exhibition on space technology, where scientists in charge of the country's space program have been speaking in uncharacteristically open terms about the plans. "China is expected to complete its first exploration of the moon in 2010, and will establish a base on the moon as we did in the South Pole and the North Pole," said the program's chief scientist, Ouyang Ziyuan, according to the official People's Daily. Beijing Morning Post quoted him as elaborating that the base would be used to "mine [the moon's] riches for the benefit of humanity." Resources believed to be on the moon include iron, titanium, helium-3 and water-ice, Ouyang said. Helium-3, an isotope of the helium gas used in blimps, is seen by some scientists as the perfect energy source for the future. Hard to find on earth, it is plentiful on the moon. Water ice is important because the presence of water could provide invaluable local sources of oxygen and hydrogen -- used for rocket fuel -- as well as doing away with the need for expensive shipping of water supplies from earth for any future manned lunar operation.

[...]

In Fisher's view, it was unlikely Beijing would used its manned space program for military missions. But China was pursuing an ambitious program of military satellites, which could be used to provide support for future aggression against Taiwan, he noted. Fisher said many may welcome China's space program as an opportunity to engage with Beijing in a non-military field, especially considering the potential scale of its future contribution to space exploration. But while China's program has a largely military character, he said, it would be "better to seek a greater foundation for peace on earth with China - such as on the Taiwan Strait - before engaging a Chinese space program so closely bound to China's military goals."

From:
The moon's the limit for China
By Antoine Blua
Asia Times
Aug 17, 2005
http://atimes.com/atimes/China/GH17Ad03.html

Space missions have become a focus for boosting national prestige and a showcase for China's technological capabilities, according to David Baker, editor of the annual reference book Jane's Space Directory in Britain. "China has realized that in order to be a major player on the world stage it has to demonstrate that it has a sound and strong technical base," Baker told RFE/RL. "And the desire to explore the moon is a part of China's movement forward to demonstrate to nations that they are capable of matching the achievements of those nations that have always been considered to be the dominant countries."

[...]

Last year, China launched an unmanned moon-exploration project, which includes putting a satellite in orbit around the moon before 2007, landing before 2010, and collecting lunar soil samples before 2020. Craig Covault, senior editor for the US magazine Aviation Week And Space Technology, told RFE/RL that the moon project was one of the many fronts where China's space technology program was making rapid progress. "It is developing a whole new range of large, modern rockets - boosters. It is developing manned spacecraft for use in Earth orbit to a small Chinese space laboratory that will be operational in the next 10 years or so," he said. "And between now and then, [China is planning] individual flights of the Shenzhou spacecraft of a week or so in length. It is also looking at developing a wide range of satellites for Earth orbit."

well...y'know, dafydd...TANSTAAFL.
;-)

Helen,
Ever consider the thought that without human beings the robots would be without value? Space exploration is useful only to the extent that it is a prelude to space colonization. Without that the robots are nothing more than tinkertoys for Mundanes. :P

As for who would advise basing our energy on fission plants and fusion research when coal and oil shale are available count on me as one who would do so without a moment's hesitation. Nuclear energy is proven and reliable and allows us cleaner air than coal would. ^_~

Hi TB, I'm glad yur interested.

Addressing your points in reverse order, I was talking about fusion, not fission. My argument would have been made more clearly if I took your advice. Rewrite: Who would advise basing our future energy on nuclear fusion when proven fission processes are readily at hand?

Let's project this reasoning onto our current state of space exploration: Why would we transport humans into space with equipment that has proven to be unreliable, when we have robotics in hand that can do the work 1000's of times faster, better, and cheaper? You can bet that if life is ever found on Mars, a machine will find it.

A more tangible tradeoff is coming with HST. We are going to lose the most important scientific device every built, because we have committed to a scientifically useless human space flight policy. Imagine the spinoff technology if we would commit a fraction of that expense to a robotic rescue mission.

Now you say that space colonization is the *only* reason for space exploration. You have to be careful with that word. Planetary science, terrestrial communications and weather forcasting, energy collection, mineral extraction, and observatory platforms are just a few of the non-colonization applications that our mechanical presence in space could provide.

And, as a reality-based conservationist, I worry about the psychological effects of escapism. I think it is important to realize that Canticle for Lieborwitz can't work. There is no option to making human life work on Earth.

And finally, if this is all we get from robotic space exploration, it would be enough for me.

And I'm all for returning to the Moon before venturing on to Mars (the closest planet, not counting the Moon) or beyond.

Typically sexist posting one might expect from a reptile. It just happens that today, Mars is closer than Venus. But the planet women come from is, on average, just a tad nearer to us than is Mars (where a tad equals about 20 million miles).

Nice site. I've put it on my list.

-- Hank

Another cool reason for going back to the moon: there are craters near the pole that get essentially no sunlight at all. With 1/6th of the gravity, no atmosphere, plenty of free silica, and lots of power to smelt it, you could make a 100m diameter telescope mirror without the need for adaptive optics. You could get integration times of days or weeks. An astronomer's dream. Or put a VLBI radio telescope on the dark side, with the bulk of the Moon blocking RFI from Earth.

"And, as a reality-based conservationist, I worry about the psychological effects of escapism. I think it is important to realize that Canticle for Lieborwitz can't work. There is no option to making human life work on Earth."

As a what? It is difficult to parse that statement without entering into the realm of personal attack, so instead let us consider the limitations of assigning permanent values to variable technologies.

The key problem with committed conservation is that it must at its core deny the value of expanded energy use. The problem with that as a core value is that expanded energy use is the most liberating behavior in human existence. More people are living longer, better, and more educated lives because there is energy available for them to do so. There exists a fundamental conflict between dedicated conservationism and freedom. Placing your context as you did Helen, you established yourself very strongly opposed to many imporant kinds of freedom. Bringing psychology into the mix was arguably the most terrifying thing I've read from an intellectual this year. The kinds of behavior that combination brings into play is abhorrent in the extreme. Feeling justified in controlling others thoughts because you understand reality better than they do is a path to really ugly absolutism.

You have not made your case that robots are thousands of times more efficient at space ventures because you deny two critical features: unmanned spacecraft routinely fail and manned spacecraft hold together much longer than unmanned craft. The number of failed missions runs to the dozens, whereas the number of fatal manned missions can be counted on one hand. Mir held together as long as it did because it had people innovating new solutions as it ran.

When NASA next lands on the moon, it'll be getting there by renting a ride on a SpaceX/t/Space vehicle, and it'll be met by a concerige from Bigelow.

Those are three private space companies, by the by.

NASA's planned "New" space program? Apollo 2.0? It's "Forward Into The Past! Look, I have *proof* i've been to the moon; just look at this PowerPoint handout!"

And by the way, hey there! I found your blog!

Yah, well, this all well and good, I like Heinlein too, and also cannot understand why it's taking 50 years to return to the moon. I think we should have had a permanent base there by 1990 at the latest, and for the life of me can't see why the US military did not do that. Or, maybe they did - do you know? I don't. :-)

Anyway, all these things are great, I'd like to see them too, but where's the money? We BROKE, folks! This country is so far in debt that I can't count that high, couldn't if I did ten numbers a second for a thousand years, the dollar is propped up artificially, and if any oil producer starts selling oil in Euros or Renmimbi or Rubles or dill pickles, the dollar will droop like the daisies in my Alaskan back yard. How in the hell can we pay for all these other (really neat) things, when - te mention only one - the DDX (just one of many heart-stoppingly expensive weapons systems) is proving to be unaffordable? Or, at least, unaffordable in numbers sufficient to fight a war. And don't kid your selves: numbers count. The Russians proved that in WWII. The best gizmos in the world are of no account if you can't afford to buy them. And we BROKE, folks! Just don't know it yet. So, how in the hell do we buy these things? I think it's all a nice dream, one of which I approve, but a dream naetheless.

We're broke. No dough. Do 'ya understand that? Printing presses don't make money, they print trust - a social agreement - and we're broke, or damned near.

So sez Kenny. :-)

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