Yes, that was essentially what I meant to say.

Just kiddin’ ….

Monte, I understand what you mean’t now and I agree, when it comes to spending a buck, doesn’t matter what party you are in or organization, from the military to education, adminstrators and statesmen will try and exploit ANY rational to justify spending the money.

I said the same thing about the picture of the chinese “space bomber” how it was a red herring to get funding. Sometimes I think the military boys talk to the other countries military to drum up spending by saber rattling.

I think a military system like the blackhorse, inflight refueled vehicle, is technologically doable, I dont know about funding or the weapons in space issue. I still believe that the sudden interest in suborbital space tourism is somehow tied to what the military wants in suborbital. After being denied airspace by Turkey during Iraq it has REALLY bothered the military.

Of course, but my point is, that wasn’t what we got for our billion dollars. What we got was the result I stated. If scientists were fully honest about what a billion-plus dollar mission could realistically achieve, and the Mars program were not seen as part of a wider, only partially scientific objective, they would get a little (or a lot) less money.

The thing you’re ignoring is the reason that people justify doing something, and the reason that they are really doing it, are often very different, and that’s as true of nations as it is of individuals. Sure, people want to discover life elsewhere in the Solar System, but any understanding beyond the bare discovery (and probably not even that) is not going to happen they way we are going about it today. Scientists are using all sorts of arguments in an attempt to justify what they want the nation to pay for, just as us advocates for human spaceflight do. But the cost of the real results we are getting is far beyond their worth compared to what other sciences could get for similar funds, especially outside of the space community, and if the nation did not see these projects as leading toward something grander, we wouldn’t be finding it to the tune that we are.

— Donald

I never said that the Mars Program is only about dating past water on Mars. And I never said that decision makers signed up only for dating past water on Mars. Those are your words, not mine.

(As an aside, even if that was my position, I’d note that your past arguments for a human presence on the Moon revolve around an equally narrow accurate scientific dating of the solar system.)

From NASA’s FY 2008 budget justification, here in black and white is what decision makers have signed up for in the Mars Program:

“Mars is the most Earth-like planet in our solar system, with land mass approximately equivalent to the Earth’s and what appear to be familiar features such as riverbeds, past river deltas, and volcanoes. Mars holds valuable scientific clues to the development of the solar system, planets, and maybe life itself. The Mars Program has been developed to conduct a rigorous, incremental, discovery-driven exploration of Mars to determine the planet’s physical, dynamic, and geological characteristics.”

I’d note that it’s a little bit broader than dating water on Mars.

“Policy makers signed on to the untruth that these kinds of missions might determine anything about any life on Mars”

I don’t mean to be mean, but you really need to do some reading on the potential of Mars sample return missions before making a blanket statement like this.

“and the truth that they are part of a larger effot to open the space frontier.”

Preparation for human space exploration does make an appearance in the last of the three outcomes for the Mars Program in the budget justification. Here’s all three:

“3C.2: Progress in understanding the processes that determine the history and future of habitability in the solar system, including the origin and evolution of Earth’s biosphere and the character and extent of prebiotic chemistry on Mars and other worlds.

3C.3: Progress in identifying and investigating past or present habitable environments on Mars and other worlds, and determining if there is or ever has been life elsewhere in the solar system.

3C.4: Progress in exploring the space environment to discover potential hazards to humans and to search for resources that would enable human presence.”

But it’s only one of three outcomes, and human hazards and resources are certainly not the only reason or the driving reason that the Mars Program is funded.

FWIW…

There is not shortage of papers and quotes, by scientists and politicians, in support of the “new frontier” of space. I am aware of few, if any, arguing directly that it is worth spending more than a billion dollars to find standing water on Mars, without application to the wider issues that I have brought up.

Let me conclude simply by stating that there is an easy way to find out who is correct in this debate. Gut the human space program, as many scientists would like to do, put anyand see where automated space science is a decade or two down the road. I believe it would be a disaster for space science if that were to actually happen, but, for better or worse, because of the wider issues that I have brought up, there is no political chance of that actually happening (as Mr Obama has just demonstred!).

— Donald

Yes, of course: satellite surveillance, communications, and GPS do correspond to some of the roles of high ground in traditional warfare. They provide inarguable “bang for the buck” in military terms, just as their civilian counterparts do.

What I was trying (ineptly) to say was that over the years, people with ambitions for military astronautics and for weapons platforms in orbit have repeatedly exploited other associations of high ground: the castle on a hilltop that commands the countryside, bombing and strafing by aircraft overhead, all the SF tropes of space navies and space dogfights, LEO populated with terawatt lasers and “rods from god” — as justifications. It’s those associations that I consider bogus.

They could become meaningful when access to space becomes much cheaper — when there’s no longer such a profound asymmetry between (1) the cost of acquiring and relaying massless data and (2) the cost of orbiting large masses, large power supplies, life support and re-entry systems for people, propulsion for orbital maneuvers, armor and other defensive capabilities, etc. But touting them today as if that asymmetry didn’t exist is misleading, just as it was misleading in November 1957 to talk about Sputnik as if it were a super-Tupolev bomber zooming high over the DEW Line.

My coattails trope does indeed risk the “genetic fallacy” – i.e., assuming that because space science historically became Big Science at a time when over-all space budgets were expanding primarily for manned spaceflight, that relationship still holds.

Or does it make more sense that space science and the answers it provides have value to our society independent of human space flight?

I’ve tried to make it clear that I couldn’t agree more with this. Again, I myself would value planetary probes, space astronomy, etc. just as much even if some hyper-Van Allen belt 50 miles up had ruled out manned spaceflight forever. I am aware that some m.s. advocates use the “bucks follow Buck Rogers” argument tactically and instrumentally — as it were, to put space science in its place — but please don’t lump me with them.

FWIW, my true preference would be to see the entire manned vs science “debate” (mostly a ritual dance by now) become a historical curiosity through CATS that would permit an abundance of both. If I thought we could declare a 20-year moratorium on all manned and scientific missions, redirect the money from both to R&D and flight testing with no payload but cinder blocks, and lower $/kg to LEO in 2028 by 90%, I’d go for it in a heartbeat.

You left out GPS, which I would argue has revolutionized warfare. This corresponds to the corresponds on the “high ground” directing his forces.