I thought we were talking about lunar missions, not the Shuttle. However,

canttellya: That $5B mission to Saturn was 15-20 years in development. . . . plus a share in the development costs of the Titan IVB-33 and its infrastructure, plus the development cost of deep-space spacecraft technology, etc., etc. If you are going to bill the development cost of the Ares infrastructure to human lunar missions, you also have to bill these costs to Cassini; if you want a fair comparison of the value and costs of each approach, you need to compare the full costs, or the incremental costs. You can’t compare the full costs of human spaceflight to the incremental costs of an automated planetary probe and come up with a meaningful comparison of their relative value.

Once the Ares infrastructure (or whatever gets developed instead) is paid for, the true costs of human missions to the moon are the incremental costs of one flight. It is very likely that, measured this way, the cost of one mission to place geologists on Earth’s moon will be a good deal less than one automated mission to Saturn. It will also accomplish a lot more exploration, albeit different exploration.

It is true that, today, the infrastructure required for automated planetary exploration is a sunk costs, but someday the same will be true of the infrastructure to take geologists to the moon. (If we hadn’t abandoned the Apollo spacecraft, that would be so today, and it is a safe bet that automated exploration would not look quite as financially attractive as it does now.)

What if we had said, gee, it’s cheaper just to build terrestrial telescopes, so why waste all this money adapting Titan’s to send spacecraft to Saturn when we could be spending it building gigantic telescopes on Earth, which is far better science anyway than wasting our money actually going to Saturn. . . ? We didn’t say that, fortunately, and we should not be saying the equivalent today.

— Donald

I think Texas Space is right in general. In response to your point about where to spend pork, I think what I was trying to say is that there are ways of spending money on Earth that are generally seen as benefiting more people and in more practical ways.

– Donald”

Quite true about an unmanned mission, but there isn’t much opposition to unmanned flights. Why you ask? Because the missions are actually exploring! Missions to the Moon, Mars and other Solar System locales will be seen in a better light than the Shuttle and ISS programs since they will be doing something beyond doing laps around the block. Exploration is something that governments can and should do on behalf of their peoples that is unlikely to be done by private interests.

As far as the “spend it here on Earth” argument goes, why spend it on Earth? If space is seen as political pork, then why is pork on Earth any better? At least space has the potential to advance the human race as a species.

The ironic thing is that every one of these points is just as true as, say, a $5 billion automated mission to Saturn. Yet, somehow, many people, both scientists and the public, see that as valuable and a human base on the moon capable of survey geology as a waste. In reality, if all this is true to one endeavor, it is just as true of the other.

— Donald

There are a lot of things that NASA and other agencies do that benefit us day-to-day in terms of the non-human spaceflight. These aren’t very controversial. It’s also ironic that NASA satellites have been instrumental in measuring global change. Although this hasn’t generated a whole lot of progress in addressing it in the U.S., with the exception of lots of money thrown at new technology research. Useful, yes, but the minimum we need to do.

In a broader sense, I think there is truth to the charge that our concern for the planet is selective. Spend a half trillion (and rising) on overthrowing Saddam. Sure, Chuck and the neo-con crew are all for it. As for Darfur, there’s less interest it (for a whole variety of economic, social and political reasons).

No, if I want to remain anonymous, I’m obviously not going to release my name in the Post. Also, as my posts here will testify, I’m way too verbose to pull off such a short, well-worded letter.

It seems to me that a better use of our energies is:
that the brillant space community spend a reasonable portion of its time figuring out solutions from space to earthly concerns-concurrent with exploration efforts. In fact,

Doesn’t it then follow that the case against exploration is harder to make if in fact the public sector investment mission is willingly and actively returning benefits to humanity, as a function of exploration?

Kathleen

While reading Jeff’s excerpt from the letter, I found myself wondering if you had written it!

— Donald

“… under Administrator Michael D. Griffin’s plan, NASA will not begin to build actual lunar hardware in earnest until 2011 at the earliest.

Instead, Mr. Griffin is wasting precious time and tax dollars on the boondoggle of NASA’s Ares I rocket, which can barely reach Earth orbit and needlessly duplicates the capabilities of existing Air Force and commercial rockets.

If Mr. Krauthammer wants to see another human landing on the moon in his lifetime, he should encourage NASA to take advantage of its limited window of political opportunity under the Bush administration.”

I could not have summed up the problem and situation more succinctly myself. Here’s hoping that someone in the NASA leadership takes notice.

I wouldn’t worry about the other letter to the editor. Not to ignore the dismal situation in Darfur, but these kinds of objections to the space program have always been with us.

There’s another opinion piece here:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/159434/toward_the_third_space_age.html

Although Mr. Whittington get some numbers wrong (NASA has only provided about $10 million to prizes over the past several years, not $30 million) and some of his lengthy proposals are a bit uncoordinated or unrealistic, it’s certainly another push in the right direction.