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Another reminder of the importance (or lack thereof) of space

This blog has noted on a number of occasions, to the consternation of hardcore space advocates, that space ranks pretty low on the list of priorities of the general public (and, thus, fairly high on the list of government programs they would be willing to cut). Another reminder of this came out earlier this month, when the Fairfax County (Virginia) Economic Development Authority released a poll ranking the top priorities for “technological breakthroughs” as perceived by the American public. “Fuel efficiency and alternative fuels” and “Medical” ranked at the top of the list, with two-thirds of the respondents selecting one or the other as their highest priority. “Space exploration” made the list, but only barely: just three percent ranked it as their highest technological priority, ahead of only “Telecommunications and media” and “Don’t know/not sure”.

The same poll was also performed in the UK at the same time, with similar results. While medical and fuel efficiency/alternative fuels flipped-flopped at the top, space exploration remained near the bottom, getting selected by only one percent of the public, tied for last with telecommunications and media.

51 comments to Another reminder of the importance (or lack thereof) of space

  • […] the previous post noted, space exploration isn’t a high priority among the British public. Yet, they certainly like […]

  • JM

    This can’t be true. We at NASA are told that this is a top priority for the nation and the future of humankind. Our leaders have told us so many times.

    I know deep down that people feel that space is a top priority. After all, our civilization can’t possibly survive without all that bountiful oxygen and helium-3 from the Moon.

  • Ray

    This isn’t all that surprising. Energy obviously has even more current-event appeal to the public, as does the environment. Even 10 years ago I’m sure they would have done far better than space. Medical is obvious -you can’t enjoy space advances if you’re too sick or dead. Everyone wants medical advances for themselves and their loved ones. What is surprising to me is how low security and defense, telecommunications, and transportation are, given their, to me, obvious importance.

    The lesson I think space advocates should take is: make sure your space program has obvious applicability that the general public understands to these areas. Also, find out what areas they’re actually willing to spend their own money on, and address those, too.

  • Chance

    A few posts back, a commentor gave the opinion that space based solar power should be emphasized more in policy. This would seemingly support that opinion. After all, both sides get what they want.

  • Jerry in Baltimore

    I agree with Ray, actually NASA has many energy alternatives because of space research they should show more of their energy work. A national mandate of 3kw solar panels on all single family homes, 16kw on commercial buildings, and 25w on industrial facilities that the gov subsidies thru low interest loans for middle class, and a 2/3 cost tax break for all. This may seem radical but, it pays for it’s self with oil at $115/barrel. Mandate that all federal vehicles be hybrids. This would send a real message to the world energy market. I think that would cause the price of oil to drop.

    Now if the gov just mopes around and passes a windfall profits tax on the energy companies all their going to do is pass it on to us. Is that what we want?

  • Allen Thomson

    > The lesson I think space advocates should take is: make sure your space program has obvious applicability that the general public understands to these areas.

    It’s been tried:

    http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=40187


    I’m talking about opening space up to business, to private enterprise; opening space up to commerce and experimentation and development. Why? To improve the quality of life on Earth. We’ve learned in the past few years that in the zero gravity of space it’s possible to manufacture drugs and pharmaceuticals of a purity much greater than is possible on Earth—and in much greater quantities.

    The zero gravity of space is allowing us in the space shuttle and soon in a manned space station to experiment with new drugs and new cures for diseases. Do you have a friend or relative with diabetes? Some scientists believe that in space it’s possible they may be able to produce a cure for diabetes within the next decade.

    In space we also find new opportunities for important breakthroughs in cancer research. Now, cancer research is one of those phrases that to some people means we’re still thinking and getting nowhere. But a number of scientists now believe that a cure for some types of cancer might be produced in space sometime in the not-too-distant future.

    That’s not all. In space we can manufacture crystals that have many times the yield and purity of those made on Earth. These will help maintain America’s leadership in the computer industry. We can also develop new metals that are lighter and stronger than any we’ve ever known.

  • Chance

    “It’s been tried: ”

    A: And it apparently worked. What was one of the big promises for the ISS? Material and medical science advances, exactly like those outlined in the speech. Regardless of the lack of actual results, the strategy itself seems to have worked just fine for scaring up funds.

  • One of the problems is that when something is discovered in space that benefits mankind, it is often an incremental improvement, and not an evolutionary improvement. For example, if they discover something about combustion in micro gravity that makes cars burn .5% more efficiently, thats billions and billions of dollars in savings that pays for the experiment. But no one gets excited about .5%.

    NASA makes the “Spinoff” magazine that they will mail to anyone for free that talks about the latest spinoffs. Perhaps a magazine isn’t the best format to get the information out. I ordered mine for the first time and it should get to my house soon.

  • Regardless of the lack of actual results, the strategy itself seems to have worked just fine for scaring up funds.

    No, the funds were (more literally) “scared up” by bringing the Russians into the program and making it a midnight basketball program for them by the Clinton administration. Had this not occurred the program would have died in 1993, regardless of “scares” about material and medical science advances.

  • JM

    No, the funds were (more literally) “scared up” by bringing the Russians into the program and making it a midnight basketball program for them by the Clinton administration. Had this not occurred the program would have died in 1993, regardless of “scares” about material and medical science advances.

    That’s right. NASA will likely attempt something like this after the election in a last ditch effort to keep ESAS going. I don’t think it will be successful. Griffin himself has said that you don’t need Ares if you take return to the Moon off the table.

  • JM: if you take return to the Moon off the table.

    The particulars of the ESAS strategy aside, is that really what you want?

    — Donald

  • The particulars of the ESAS strategy aside, is that really what you want?

    What does it matter what we want? It’s the almost inevitable result of NASA’s decisions, at this point, and was quite predictable. So much so, that in fact several people predicted it…

  • Al Fansome

    RAY: The lesson I think space advocates should take is: make sure your space program has obvious applicability that the general public understands to these areas.

    THOMPSON: It’s been tried:

    :::: LONG QUOTE :::: including many references to Earthside benefits, including cancer research

    CHANCE: A: And it apparently worked. What was one of the big promises for the ISS? Material and medical science advances, exactly like those outlined in the speech. Regardless of the lack of actual results, the strategy itself seems to have worked just fine for scaring up funds.

    RAND: No, the funds were (more literally) “scared up” by bringing the Russians into the program

    Rand,

    Although I agree with you that bringing the Russians were critical to saving NASA’s station program, I think you are missing the larger point.

    The decision to bring the Russians into the ISS partnership, soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was an Earth-side benefit that the average Member of Congress, and U.S. citizen, could understand. This meets the larger strategic criteria originally suggested by Ray at the start of this thread for how you sell a program.

    Second, at least a few important Members of Congress — who were influential on both sides of the aisle — truly believed it when NASA told them the purpose of ISS was to cure cancer, and other medical problems. Like Congressman Ralph Hall of Texas, who was a key supporter.

    I could not find any of Ralph Hall’s speeches on the subject, but I did find a copy of the story by Dr. Roger Launius (“Space Times, March 2006) that referenced Hall’s speech to the Goddard Symposium in 2001.

    “The expectation of path-breaking research on-orbit continues to abound. In 2001 Representative Ralph M. Hall (then Democrat-Texas), speaking at the AAS’s Goddard Memorial Symposium, commented that while elements of ISS had been launched and crews placed aboard, he questioned NASA’s resolve to utilize this new capability. He challenged NASA, “After all of the taxpayer dollars that have been invested in the Space Station, we will need to ensure that we wind up with the world-class research facility that we have been promised.” As an aside to his prepared remarks, Hall added that NASA had better find a way to use the ISS effectively. He said that some astounding scientific discovery should be forthcoming—he specifically mentioned a cure for cancer—or the program could rapidly lose political support.

    What Hall did not understand is that he got fed a line of BS in the early 90s when the station program was threatened with extinction. That sad part is that he still had not figured it out as late as 2001.

    FWIW,

    – Al

  • JM

    Donald: The particulars of the ESAS strategy aside, is that really what you want?

    I don’t think it’s a matter of personal preference. It’s a likely outcome from current fiscal, economic and social exigencies. As the report cites, the public support for space exploration is tepid, at best. Once one of the candidates realizes that they can cash in the NASA budget for a more popular cause, all within the context of being fiscally responsible, then that’s it. Game over, man.

    I was hoping that there would at least be support for continuation or slight expansion of robotic exploration, but now I am not so sure.

  • Vladislaw

    space based solar is a great idea that should really excite the public, both their imaginations and willingness to invest. Like when SCE announced it was spending 875 million to construct a new solar facility, the largest in the USA. There was parties in bars, parades, the media jumped all over it and that is all we saw on the news for weeks. Nothing excites the public to action more then when they get their utility bill and their utility announces they are building a new production plant.

    I just wonder what the tree huggers and eco terrorists will say when they learn that energy will be beamed down to earth with giant microwaves. I am sure they wont think it is a military plot to have space based microwave cannons or some other nonsense.

  • JM

    Vladislaw: Space based solar is a great idea that should really excite the public, both their imaginations and willingness to invest.

    And I bet that this will be an area into which NASA attempts to move, once ESAS disappears. Only problem is that it really doesn’t look economically viable, even with generous assumptions for launch and development costs. Some claim that the military applications will provide an entry for first generation use.

    Besides you bring up the good point about microwaves. I think that even the non-tree hugging citizenry would be concerned with that.

  • Vladislaw

    “You want to build a microwave receiver WHERE? Why you cant possibly build that in our backyard, that is the home of the rare spiked backed beetle bug!”

  • Vladislaw

    DEBEER’S commerical:

    “some men will goto the ends of the earth to show her he really cares,”

    Fade in on planet earth……
    (show a man pulling a diamond from the ground and holding it up)

    …….fade out of earth and fade over to the moon and zoom in to an astronaut holding a moon diamond

    “And some men will go to the moon.”

    I can just see how mad billionarires would be over this!

    “You don’t love me anymore! Mrs Gates and Mrs Allen have lunar diamonds!”

  • James

    Those who support the current lunar program often forget the opportunity costs. There are better ways to spend the same money on developing space. I’m 24 – with the current Constellation program plan, I’ll be in my mid 30s by the time we get back to the moon. If we operate the system for a decade or two after that, as is likely, all I can expect in my career is to see 4 people land on the moon twice a year. That is not exciting – nor is it worth the money. Maybe by the time I retire we’ll be looking at another “next generation system”.

    What’s the point of any of this for someone my age?

  • Hames:

    What’s the point of any of this for someone my age?

    A casual glance at history and / or the architecture and geology of the Solar System, and a little thought, should demonstrate that “storming the Solar System” is a project for centuries, not decades. Humanity did not “storm the terrestrial continents” in even centuries. One of our greatest problems as space advocates, I think, is that we expect this to happen in decades, and when it doesn’t, we get frustrated and give up and / or leap onto the next new thing. I mean no disrespect by stating that humanity will not explore, let alone colonize, any part of the Solar System, either with human beings or robots, with a “what’s in it for me” attude.

    The answer to your question is, most likely nothing is in it for you except the knowledge that it is happening. Besides the possibility of a few orbital or suborbital tourist flights and / or, just possibly if everything goes right, a visit to the moon, most likely nothing is or can be in it for you.

    I am well over twice your age, yet I find it within myself to advocate substantial (though modest in context) expendature, at what is likely to be my personal expense (what we spend on space exploration is not available for supporting baby boomers in retirement), for what I believe to be the right strategy to give my species (and terrestrial life in general) a long and exciting future.

    There was a time when many American’s thought that way. My city (San Francisco), and the rail roads that supported her during her youth, was and were built for naked greed, yes, but the people doing the building were also planning and building for the ages. Victorian and later California spent a vast percentage of its budget on education and infrastructure and exploration (e.g., the California Academy of Sciences with her vast Victorian collections in Golden Gate Park) that had little immediate benefit, but together turned remote and mostly semi-desert California into one of the major states of the Union. If we cannot recover some of that “greater good” attitude, to supplement the “what’s in it for me” that I believe has come to be too dominant in today’s thinking, humanity has no future, in the Solar System or anywhere else.

    — Donald

  • Habitat Hermit

    Let’s backtrack a bit there; this poll is about highest priority. You’re given a list of categories and you can choose one.

    “If you had to choose from the following categories, what do you believe should be the highest priority, in terms of investing money and resources, in order to achieve a meaningful technological advancement in the next 10 years?”

    (Sorry if I messed up the blockquote).

    Why should space be the highest priority? For a meaningful technological advancement during the next decade? I wouldn’t choose “Space Exploration” at all with that question but that doesn’t mean I think space is unimportant, far from it.

  • The answer to your question is, most likely nothing is in it for you except the knowledge that it is happening. Besides the possibility of a few orbital or suborbital tourist flights and / or, just possibly if everything goes right, a visit to the moon, most likely nothing is or can be in it for you.

    I don’t know whether it was Asimov, or Clarke, who pointed out that we’re always overoptimistic in the short term, and overpessimistic in the long term. This is a consequence of the exponential nature of technological advance. Humans tend to think in linear terms.

  • Dennis Wingo

    A national mandate of 3kw solar panels on all single family homes,

    Simplistic and unworkable. The vast majority of single family homes in the U.S. are shaded by trees, making the use of the panels mostly useless.

    I have proposed in other venues to increase the solar ITC to 50% for American sourced panels, silicon, and ancillary gear.

    That will do what you want and the government stays out of the game.

  • Dennis Wingo

    space based solar is a great idea that should really excite the public, both their imaginations and willingness to invest. Like when SCE announced it was spending 875 million to construct a new solar facility, the largest in the USA. There was parties in bars, parades, the media jumped all over it and that is all we saw on the news for weeks. Nothing excites the public to action more then when they get their utility bill and their utility announces they are building a new production plant.

    Yea and SCE customers are even more excited this week when the California Public Utilities Comission was asked by them for a 20% rate increase to pay for infrastructure improvements.

  • Rand: I have always agreed with the comment (it was Sir. Clarke). However, everything we’re talking about falls at the near future bottom of the curve, as I believe Sir. Clarke saw it. Hense my belief that one of space advocate’s key problems is over-promising that near-term strategy.

    This is pure speculation, but I would guess anything up to and including the first Mars missions falls under the over-optimistic near term. This is the era with linear extrapolation of well-established technological and social capabilities. Once we get out beyond quick-and-dirty visits to Mars, and tackle permanent stays and more alien worlds that are harder to get to, and once the environment in the Solar System begins to force significant changes on human culture and even biology, we’re getting beyond anything that can be predicted or even guessed at.

    — Donald

  • Z-Bob

    Donald F Robertson, your reply to James was right on.

    To James: I feel sorry for you in ways I can’t even express right now. The moon is a WORLD, with roughly the land area of Africa. It has all the elements we need to build anything we choose to build there, and unlimited energy available to do whatever we wish to do. It appears dead but who knows what may be lurking there to be discovered? A crashed alien probe? Compounds that we had no idea could exist? There is a lot of lunar ground that needs to be walked on and driven on.
    This is not about being entertained. The idea is to convince our government to step up the exploration of our solar system, not just sit around and see what becomes of Constellation. Societies that don’t explore and grow eventually shrivel and die.

    You know, just screw it. Just contemplating the existence of people with your attitude, esp. at your age, takes the wind right out of my sails. Pretty soon virtual reality technology will reach the point where you can immerse yourself in a pretend voyage to the moon-or even Tatooine! I guess there will be more of a point to that. Have fun.

  • CDNinVA

    A timely poll… Over beer yesterday, our small aero business said energy and better health care management are the top 2 issues the U.S. faces; and if we don’t, this country is going down. He’s sick of Washington and what he perceives as the American entreprenurial spirit – the one that brought him from India and helped him make his bones here – either lacking or being stepped on when it’s inconvenient for some.

    I can agree with both Donald and James. Exploration and research aren’t results-now professions in any field. You may see the incredible, or be a crucial stepping stone but never know it in this lifetime. (‘Brings to mind the guy who gave two kids his rubber-powered ‘copter toy; if not for that, the Wrights might well have stuck with bicycles.)

    Yet James is not psyched about the costs of the VSE, and neither am I. Public and fiscal reality dictate Donald’s steady-as-we-go approach. Bush had to make it a senseless now-mandate, regardless of future backing. Sen. Mikulsi feels NASA got “set up,” and perhaps she’s right. Reagan and Bush I pushed for globalization, but it was Clinton who campaigned against NAFTA then signed it, before ex-presidents from both parties. ‘Makes one wonder if the VSE is a closet attempt to finish Clinton’s mission of gutting NASA.

    Even if not, VSE is gutting the more earthly research projects NASA is well suited for. Bush may have given me a job at LarC, even kept the place open, but our wind tunnels guys aren’t optimistic. If Orion goes down, so much for job security.

    – CDN

  • Robert Horning

    I think there is a missing perception here about “space science” and its relationship with ordinary folks.

    One of the things that got people so fired up about the astronauts in the 1950’s and 1960’s was the attitude of literally doing things that had never been done before. Now, 50 years later, we can’t say that NASA is achieving any firsts besides some very esoteric “firsts” that are more fit for a bar room argument than anything worthy of real note.

    Another aspect of the hype that got Apollo funded to more than 10% of the U.S. federal budget (yes, it was that high once upon a time) was the idea that once all of the kinks were worked out of the system, that nearly everybody could get “up there” and become an astronaut in their own way. Increasingly NASA seems to suggest that only “professional astronauts” even have the chance to go up, and the relationship between ordinary citizens and the astronauts is lost in terms of “I want to grow up and be an astronaut”. It still happens, but now it is not something that a mere mortal can even aspire to become.

    Even the early supporters of the Space Shuttle were trying hard, real hard, to convince America that it was money well spent because significantly more people would be able to “go up there” and be astronauts. In a way, NASA succeeded as the astronaut corps did significantly enlarge over the years from the 1960’s level, but at the same time the John Glenn feel of a boy next door who did well and succeeded got lost as well.

    If you want to see spaceflight and exploration of the solar system become a higher priority, you need to convince those footing the bill that either they, their children, or perhaps great-grand children will actually have a very realistic chance of “getting there” someday. With the elitist attitude coming from NASA and even the alt.space groups currently being perceived as permitting spaceflight only for the ultra-wealthy, there certainly isn’t any motivation to helping a few wealthy people do things that us mere mortals can’t ever have the resource to do, or to see some government employee (aka a NASA astronaut) go and spend billions of dollars on what appears at the surface to be a waste of money… like the International Space Station certainly seems to be when people look at what it is doing in spite of decades of development and construction.

    Why then is anything new coming from NASA… especially something like Ares/Orion which seems to be a throwback to something Von Braun could have developed with 1960’s technology… treated with either ambivalence or even visceral hatred by ordinary taxpayers. The best that NASA can do is to say “we need to have something to put us up there.” That is hardly something inspiring, much less something that shows real progress to getting ordinary people into space.

  • James

    Donald, I think your reply regarding the long-term nature of exploration was quite interesting. It’s a point that probably needs to be repeated more often to younger folks. It’s also touches on the question of what an appropriate amount to spend is, given the immediate opportunity costs, such as health care or whatever.

    Rand, your comment is also interesting. I also agree with the quote from Clarke. However, it seems to me that within the realm of large government space programs, the curve is logarithmic rather than exponential. This is one of the reasons I can’t get excited about ESAS. Hopefully increased private space development will shift the curve back in the right direction and we can see more space-related technological breakthroughs on the list above.

  • Robert: NASA spending peaked at ~4.5% of federal spending in 1965-66; it was between 2% and 2.5% for the span 1961-1969.

    Your post slides from (apparently) stressing the value of “firsts” to stressing the value of “getting ordinary people into space.” It shows no awareness that those are two profoundly different things: that “firsts” tend to involve $mall amount$ of very highly $pecialized and optimized hardware flown a few times… while affordable large-scale access demands lots of well-tested hardware well short of the bleeding edge, operated routinely.

    If you want to have NASA push the envelope while private enterprise figures out how to “routinize” space access, fine. But it makes no sense to flail NASA for not doing both, even if a lot of space fans are in the habit of doing just that.

  • Ray

    Allen Thomson: “It’s been tried:” (+quote selling the Space Station on drug and disease research).

    As Chance noted, this approach did work for what’s now the ISS. However, aligning NASA’s efforts with, say, the top 4 areas in the poll (energy, medicine, environment, and security – combined for 91% of the total) in itself isn’t enough – it’s just 1 useful strategy to encourage the public to want the agency to succeed. The ISS was very expensive, and took a long time to get even close to completion. Even with the ISS’s association with the popular area of medical research, it needed other extrodinary measures to keep going (as Rand noted) because the public eventually wants results. Not only that, but I suspect the media (and hence to some extent the public) is more wise to and suspicious of the “giant expensive multi-decade to payoff” approach exemplified by Shuttle, ISS, and ESAS.

    So, in addition to recommending space goals that are helpful to some or all of those top 4 popular research areas (energy, medicine, environment, and security), I’d also recommend efforts that are more likely to pay off (at least partially) in shorter timeframes, and smaller, cheaper (but perhaps more numerous) efforts.

    Fortunately, for the example Allen mentioned, the ISS is now close to the point where it has a chance to try for those long-promised medical advances, with more power and labs, and possibly enough astronauts to manage the experiments soon. Certainly during the ISS construction decades, some ISS research opportunities have “left the station” (if I can mix a traditional train station metaphor with the ISS). However, emphasizing ISS medical research potential is still 1 possible way to take advantage of the public priorities demonstrated by the poll.

  • Ray

    Here are some ideas on potential NASA efforts aligned with those 1 of those priority areas as indicated by the poll (medical, energy, environment, and security). In this case I’m just covering medicine. Some would be new; others would be similar to (although possibly more intense than) current efforts. I don’t necessarily mean the NASA “business lines” would be managed in this structure. It could just be a way to organize PR documentation letting the public know the space program is focused on its needs. Hopefully the suggested efforts, while addressing the public priorities shown in the poll, also address the goals of space advocates.

    Medicine and Biology Mission Directorate

    1. Expanded ISS medicine and biology research (pharmaceuticals, effects of microgravity, etc) – The priority of this effort should be to encourage non-NASA use of the ISS (for example, commercial, university, and other government agency use). It could include adding to ISS capabilities, for example with new commercial modules or lab hardware.

    2. Use of commercial space stations (for example, Bigelow stations) for medicine and biology work – NASA researchers would also be eligible for this route. This could also include “man-tended” stations and unmanned commercial satellites.

    3. NASA infrastructure demonstration work that is useful to non-NASA space medicine/biology research or industry – The NASA proposal for a Micro Reentry Vehicle Centennial Challenge comes to mind. The goal in this case is routine transportation of small research samples or industrial products from space to Earth.

    4. Use of commercial suborbital flights and parabolic flights for pharmaceutical and medical work – The idea here is to encourage routine and repeated access to these platforms.

    5. Astrobiology – This effort would include the searches for life in our Solar System like the robotic efforts at Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. It would also include study of life in extreme environments on Earth, and the search for Earth-like extra-solar planets.

    6. Telerobotic Medicine – This would involve medical monitoring and treatment of astronauts from the Earth. Application to remote medicine on Earth is obvious. Other space medicine areas could also be covered, like sending robotic experiments to the Moon or Mars to test radiation, dust, or other hazards to astronauts there, as well as ways to address those hazards. Any Moon/Mars effort would be intended to lay the groundwork for eventual human missions, whether NASA, commercial, or other — I’m assuming here that the current ESAS effort is not going to happen because it doesn’t address those top 4 public priorities.

    7. Space Agriculture Research – This involves biotechnology to enable healthy farming on the Moon, Mars, etc. It could involve robotic experiments on-site.

    8. etc …?

    Similar “lines” could be made for the NASA “Energy Mission Directorate”, “Environment Mission Directorate”, and “Security Mission Directorate”. The challenge is to come up with such “lines” that appeal in an obvious way to the non-space priorities of the general public, but that also allow us to make progress in space. The progress would not be as direct and blunt as building a NASA Moon base, but hopefully it would make up for that in sustainability, public support, quicker results, fault tolerance (through multiple independent smaller efforts), and affordability.

  • Kevin Parkin

    As a 30 year-old I agree with James and reject the “hold your breath” school of spaceflight.

    And as someone who works in the space program, I know first hand that the slowing rate of exploration has nothing to do with engineering. I am happy to be patient, and I believe in trying to fix the problem…

    But, in my own personal opinion, based on observation and experience, the administrative side of NASA is staffed by the lowest quality personnel from the prior 3 generations. They are ageist (I am known as one of “the kids”), they have no sense of urgency, and they don’t have the competency to put in place systems and policies that are workable in practise.

    The engineers and scientists on the other hand are exellent, but they very rarely get the chance to excercise their professions any more after the cumulative effect of decades of mismanagement. I don’t believe that NASA deserves my patience, but I don’t believe that will always be the case.

  • Bill White

    Has anyone from the big drug companies offered to pay money to facilitate on-orbit medical research or drug development?

    If there are useful discoveries to be made in medical research in LEO, I am confident the medical industry will figure out how to leverage Bigelow habs and either Russian or NewSpace lift to get the ball rolling and thereafter retain the patent rights.

    If Big Pharma chooses not to invest in such research that suggests to me that such research would not be a productive use of my taxpayer money.

  • Donald, Z-Bob,
    I think James had a good point that both of you missed out on. If our current approach to space development was actually putting in place the technology and infrastructure needed to make our civilization a spacefaring one, I’d be a lot more willing to support it. Wise investments in the future are a good thing, but NASA’s current approach is not a wise investment in the future. It’s aging hipsters trying to relive the glory days of their youth at my generation’s expense.

    Patience is only a virtue when you’re headed in the right direction and doing the right thing. If Constellation was truly (as Marburger put it) making future operations cheaper, safer, and more capable, then I’d be all for patiently seeing it out.

    While Constellation might possibly put some people on the moon, it won’t actually put us any closer to routine, affordable, and sustainable exploration and development. I have no problem with a long hard road, just so long as its the right one.

    ~Jon

  • Vladislaw

    “I mean no disrespect by stating that humanity will not explore, let alone colonize, any part of the Solar System, either with human beings or robots, with a “what’s in it for me” attude.”

    That is the ONLY way it WILL get explored. That is the history of humanity’s exploration. What’s in it for me and mine. What new food sources are there, what new flint deposits are there, what new tin deposits are there, what new timber is there, what new gold deposits are there, what new copper deposits are there, what new lands to conquer are there.

    The idea that we are not going there to make a buck is silly. And with that attitude it will ALWAYS be limited to a couple astronauts and some photo ops. Every british sea captain that could get letter of mark wanted to go and get plunder, the vikings explored for plundering of resources. Lets not forget we are smart little monkeys that want and need resources. Luxery goods or neccesities.

    Humanities first foray into geology and mining was not for any practical reason or for a neccesity. We mined red ochre, a luxery good.

    The reason I believe the apollo was so successful was because american audiences had been watching science fiction on television and man’s outward reach into space. The moon landing was nothing more then a confimation that america would be having nuclear powered space ships right around the corner and EVERYONE would be going into space. The longer civilians were kept out of it, the more interest waned and when NASA switched from exploration of space bodies and focused on just manned LEO travel and no civilian input at all. Interest colapsed because everyone was left with the question of “what’s in it for me?” and the answer was NOTHING! You could NOT EVEN buy a shiney rock from the moon as a trinket. Now how sad is that!

    “The idea is to convince our government to step up the exploration of our solar system, not just sit around and see what becomes of Constellation. ”

    I believe it would be better to convince our government to settle the property rights issue for space bodies and let individuals and private enterprise step of THEIR exploration of the solar system and not just sit around so NASA can design the next photo op system for astronauts.

    “you need to convince those footing the bill that either they, their children, or perhaps great-grand children will actually have a very realistic chance of “getting there” someday. With the elitist attitude coming from NASA and even the alt.space groups currently being perceived as permitting spaceflight only for the ultra-wealthy, there certainly isn’t any motivation to helping a few wealthy people do things that us mere mortals can’t ever have the resource to do, or to see some government employee (aka a NASA astronaut) go and spend billions of dollars on what appears at the surface to be a waste of money… like the International Space Station certainly seems to be when people look at what it is doing in spite of decades of development and construction.”

    Remember when only the very rich could drive a car, have a telephone, a refridgerator, electricity et cetera. Remember when a cell phone was the size of a brick and only the rich could have them? I WANT the very rich going to space, that is the only way I can get to space. Businesses charge EXTRA NORMAL profits for those goods in the beginning. It does several things, it allows the business to build the production lines so they can start achiving economies of scale bringing the prices down so I can afford them. It does another thing as well, EXTRA NORMAL profits AUTOMATICALLY draws in capital as other competing firms try and cash in too. This brings MORE production facilities online lower prices even more.

    Will I beable to afford one some of the first LUNAR BLING? No, that will be billionaire bling. Lunar gemstones prices, because you will have to factor in TODAY’S transportation costs will be out of my price range, but they will be in the price range of millionaires and billionaires.

  • Eric Collins

    The results of the survey are not that surprising when you consider the fact that those topics that were ranked near the top are those which are in fact the most urgent and pressing problems facing our society. Space exploration related technologies cannot be expected to compete with more the immediate energy, health and environmental crises.

    However, if one takes away (or dramatically increases) the ten year time frame mentioned in the survey question, I think space exploration would fare significantly better. The reason for this is simply a matter of what people perceive as problems which a) need to be addressed in the very near future, b) have the possibility of measurable progress being made in such a short time frame, and c) could conceivably provide significant lifestyle improvements for a greater portion of the population. If the respondents were asked to take a longer view on these same problems, I think that space exploration would do better because people want to believe that we will overcome these more immediate problems in the near term, thus freeing us to raise our sights to the much more far-reaching and inspiring goals.

    Now, when it comes down to brass tacks, one cannot take the results of this survey as an indictment of NASA, RSA, ESA, et.al. or of the research conducted by these agencies. As many in this community are already well aware, the scientific and technological breakthroughs which have resulted from the efforts of our nations’ space programs have lead to hundreds, if not thousands, of new and unique innovations which have directly benefited countless individuals and society as a whole. With their relatively minor portion of the taxpayers’ burden, these space agencies have made significant contributions to the areas of
    – alternative energy sources, alternative fuels, energy storage,
    energy efficiency, …
    – human physiology, diagnostic devices, prosthetics, …
    – remote sensing, environmental monitoring, climate modeling, …
    – international cooperation, operational capabilities, …
    – commercial and general aviation, air traffic control, avionics,
    advanced materials, navigation, …
    – advanced propulsion, (nearly) closed life support systems, planetary
    science, astronomy/astrophysics/cosmology, ..
    – robust and efficient data transmission through noisy channels and
    dangerous operating environments, …
    – and many other areas that I don’t know/am not sure of
    (or decided not list here due to space considerations).

    This may be the crucial piece of information that most people just don’t seem to get: In pursuit of the space exploration objective, engineers and scientists at the nations’ space agencies and in the commercial sector have proven time and time again that they are capable of innovating in a wide variety of disciplines. I think that one would be hard pressed to point to any one other government agency or field of endeavor and say that they have accomplished as much for the greater good in as many diverse areas.

    emc

  • Ray

    Eric: I think part of the problem is that the general public isn’t aware of a lot of the space agency contributions in those areas you mentioned, many of which directly pertain to the top (and other) entries in this particular survey. To some extent that may be a PR type of issue, which is why I think an agency like NASA might do better if it presented itself to the public as having divisions like “biology/medical”, “energy”, “environment”, “security”, and so on.

    Another part of the problem is that NASA’s planned efforts for the forseeable future are more and more centered around building another rocket, and building it in a way that tries to break as little new ground as possible. The types of benefits you listed will be few and far between in such a program. I think a better approach might involve skipping that rocket and pushing the existing infrastructure (ISS), satellites/robotics, and commercial manned/unmanned opportunities in such a way that gives the public these benefits, while still advancing space goals.

  • This may be the crucial piece of information that most people just don’t seem to get…

    Or, in some cases, believe. For those who actually watch how innovations get from brain to widespread use in most of the domains you cite — rather than gazing at them through the prism of space fandom — the “spin-off” rationale simply isn’t credible.

  • Chance

    What’s the point of any of this for someone my age?

    A casual glance at history and / or the architecture and geology of the Solar System, and a little thought, should demonstrate that “storming the Solar System” is a project for centuries, not decades. Humanity did not “storm the terrestrial continents” in even centuries.

    The storming of the continents wasn’t a project though. Whether in ancient times for immediate caloric needs or for economic reasons in more recent centuries, there always has been “something in it for me”. Sure, a voyage might last several years, but in the end I or my immediate offspring got a share. If exploration had instead followed some kind of organized blueprint, with short term benefits being downplayed, I don’t think it could have been nearly as sucessful. Just my 2 cents.

    P.S.
    Is it really true that most american homes are shaded by trees, making solar panels useless? I’d never heard that before. It isn’t true of my neighborhood.

  • There are a few things that I do that others can perhaps learn. First, when I discuss space spending, I put it into context. You’d be surprised at how few people realize, for example, that we spend 100 times as much on health care as on all of NASA. Complete canceling NASA — including global warming research — and transferring the funds to health care would not result in any recognizable improvement in health care. I then point out some good things that may come out of current research. This kind of thing does get people to think about NASA in new ways. It also helps to be friendly. When discussing NASA shortcomings — management comes to mind — I also try to put it into context. The simple fact that Mike Griffin urges people to read the Columbia accident report says volumes. I tell people that NASA isn’t unique in this regard. I do have my own sets of criticisms. I try to explain them calmly. Yes, there are times when that is difficult.

  • Jon: It’s aging hipsters trying to relive the glory days of their youth at my generation’s expense.

    Unfortunately, I somewhat agree with this, and I also agree with those who see the ESAS strategy as a mistaken corruption of the (correct strategy), the VSE. However, politics is never pretty. If “ageing hipsters” successfully achieve a base in orbit that provides the political and (to a lessor degree) economic market to develop COTS, and that ends up producing a more commercial space launch industry, than that is a step toward achieving our goals. Likewise, if NASA somehow manages to get people who need supplies on the moon and some future COTS happens, that is a step in the right direction. If nobody does anything because they will not personally benefit from it, or because it involves the “wrong” political or economic ideology, we are not closer to our goals.

    Chance: The storming of the continents wasn’t a project though.

    Agreed. At least the bit about travelling over the oceans was a ten thousand year set of projects (usually military) and economic self-interest, both working together, to produce the result we see today. I did not argue that we should support NASA, or any individual project; I did say we should be realistic about the difficulty of the project we have undertaken and accept our friends where we can get them.

    How long did it take to develop the sailing ships that enabled colonizing Americas (for better or worse) and who did the developing?

    The Solar System will not be “stormed” in any one project, or with any one technology, or by any single people or generation, or probably by any single civilization. It will be “stormed” slowly and incrementally, one politically-achievable step at a time, and many of those steps (e.g. ESAS) will appear to be, and may actually be, steps backward. But, if this is to happen, we have to use our partial failures to achieve partial successes (e.g. Space Shuttle into ISS into COTS). As I argued many months ago with Anonymous, I think that rather than trying to kill ESAS, we need to figure out some way to make the money that has been spent, and what political momentum there may be, work for us. I grant that it is getting harder to imagine how that might happen, but it’s a lot more imaginable than starting from scratch in the economic environment the next Administration is going to face or that somehow purely private efforts will suddenly sprout from the desert. I hope that happens, and someday it probably will, but I’m not prepared to bet on it at this point in time.

    — Donald

  • Vladislaw

    Donald, if not kill ESAS, what elements could or should be trimmed from the current ESAS that would still allow a progressive plan forward that would still include the “moon mars and beyond” of the vision and not go back to exploring just LEO?

  • Hi All, as host of The Space Show (www.thespaceshow.com), I wish I had a list of all the reasons given by guests, listeners, and space enthusiasts/advocates over the years for why we should develop space, go to the Moon, visit a NEO, go to Mars, have space tourism, etc. If one wonders why we are not further along in space development and could read or listen to the list of reasons being read to them, I think you would see a trend and you would likely not care that much about spending public money on the list of reasons let alone make a for profit investment in the reasons being given.

    There are numerous reasons for doing things in space, developing it, going places, but for about 1,000 shows and 7 years, I have to tell you very few people ever articulate a reason for doing anything in space that makes sense beyond a personal dream or wish list item. Almost all of the reasons that I would put on such a list would not certainly not resonate with the public and probably would not resonate well with the American congress.

    I believe what would help would be a larger picture view, how does space fit in to the forward advancement of society and solving some of our major problems. Now I am talking real space, that which is plausible, not that which might be a hundred years or 5 decades off in to the future. Its fine to talk up SSP for example, plan for it, do the homework, but don’t expect it to rise to a priority level because as of today, no part of it is real. Its all a 3D drawing or worse, a Power Point. Obviously, this has to change but change normally happens slow. Too slow for most of us space cadets. Is it ripe for prime time financial support? Maybe, in a small way, but there is always that damn opportunity cost to consider and if its not considered, the SSP expenditure (for example) would be even more costly to those putting up the funding.

    The other day I had an exchange with someone, a former guest on the show and a friend, a brilliant woman who I have great respect for. We are planning a congressional visit together down the road. While I did not agree with many of her ideas, I understood that what she was saying would resonate with the member of congress we want to visit but her last few lines really took me in. Here was a cause that would get people to see the why of space. Let me extrapolate from the letter and you will get an idea of what I mean.

    “Detractors of space expenditures will argue: What is returning to the Moon and the other things, if, alongside those accomplishments, the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the sick, and the incarcerated are left in extreme circumstances, the last to receive relief, many to die as they did in New Orleans? I say to these detractors that returning to the Moon directly bears on such concerns. Because the Earth is becoming more extreme, space-based systems are not frivolities. Somehow, Americans need to be made to understand this, and the old baseless argument that wrongfully pits space expenditures against social investments swept away for good. An increased social investment of Americans into the challenges of the Anthropocene Epoch would solve the problem of educating the public about space-based systems. As our ancestors who made it past the Pleistocene-Holocene bottleneck proved, the process of expanding the human ecology into increasingly hostile regions is essential to our survival and vitality as a species. It would be a mistake to attempt to tease apart an engagement with space from social investment. They are two sides of the same coin.”

    There is much more in this specific paper, but this small quote will suffice for the point I want to make. This explanation of why space can and will resonate with people though this quote is from a reviewed space conference paper and did not go to the public. Contrast this with the usual reasons we give for going to space or where ever. We as informed space advocates need to do a much better job than what we do in telling the real space story if we want it to be more accepted by the publics of the world. We can still hold dear our personal reason, but realize what we think is often of no interest or simply not relevant to others. When explained the way this author explained it, we have the opportunity to reach lots of new minds and energies. We have the opportunity to make serious difference in the support for space development. But alas, as I said, this is a rare explanation.

    Here is another example, this time just the opposite. The other day on the show, a very qualified and well-known guest was asked to justify spending money on a Mars mission, now or in the future. The answer was to defer to what can be read on a pro-Mars website. Well, if the pro-Mars website was reaching millions of new people and bringing them along for the ride, that would be one thing. We would see and experience the success of that website effort. The track record and the experience say it all, right?

    So I urge a big picture look at space, not just a focus on our own view. How can we fit space into solving the problems we face, how can space science help and what can humans in space do to help? Answer these questions with plausible scenarios, not science fiction scenarios, and we will find new energy and I bet new funding for space development. And millions more that support our efforts.

    David Livingston, Host
    The Space Show
    http://www.thespaceshow.com
    (Drspace)

  • Vadislaw: what elements could or should be trimmed from the current ESAS that would still allow a progressive plan forward that would still include the “moon mars and beyond” of the vision

    Scale down the crew and capsule, and launch it on an EELV or already-existing equivallent. In the mean time, launch some automated demos of O2 extraction and processing to produce some early useful resaults. Use assembly in orbit (a la ISS) to get EELV launched payloads to the moon.

    This gets you early results plus low development costs, at the price of a probably somewhat greater development cost . . . and the political cost of disbanding the Shuttle infrastructure.

    — Donald

  • Oops, that should be “at the price of a probably somewhat greater operations cost.

  • Vladislaw

    Donald, in that example, The US would still be providing the main elements to the manned aspect, would you want to increase international participation, lower it, or leave it the way they already worked it out?

    The experience with russia for critical elements leaves me a bit worried if we should do it alone or bring as many foreign dollars and experience in as possible at the very earliest stages.

  • Vladislaw: I’m relatively agnostic on this question. I think the strategy I outlined above could have low enough a cost that international cooperation would not be required, and it inevitably increases political and technical complexity.

    On the other hand, it probably does promote better international relations to at least some degree — scientists and politicians having to work together — and it adds to political inertia. It can be harder to kill an international mission like the ISS, which, for better or worse, probably would not have survived had not Mr. Clinton brought in the Russians. The same may be true of any international lunar endeavor.

    — Donald

  • Vladislaw

    “It can be harder to kill an international mission like the ISS, which, for better or worse, probably would not have survived had not Mr. Clinton brought in the Russians. The same may be true of any international lunar endeavor.”

    I was thinking along the same lines, I recall when the President outlined the vision and said we would meet our international obligations to the ISS, it ALMOST sounded like if there WASN’T that international component we WOULDN”T complete it. I would hate to think that no matter what configuration does ultimately win out on a return to the moon, a new adminstration wouldnt come in and kill it just because they are from the opposite party and feel the need to offer up the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political payback.

  • While it was undoubtedly not the sole reason, it is easy to forget that, at the time, Apollo was closely identified with a Democratic Administration. When it lost its popularity, along with an Administration tied down in Viet Nam, it became easy to kill. As you state, when Mr. Bush wanted a new direction for the space program, for better or worse he could not easily kill the ISS (even though Mr. Bush is hardly known as an internationalist!) because our allys had too much invested in it.

    The lessons seem to me to be, if you want a project to last, avoid close party affiliation (which the VSE seems largely to have done), and make it international.(which the VSE is not).

    — Donald

  • As with all such polls, as with particle physics, the context of the experiment can’t be separated from the observer, in this case a combination of the Sponsor, the polling outfit, and the respondants. Polling by the Fairfax County Development Agency about these sorts of things can’t be of much more use as a gauge of issue priorities for Americans than if a similar poll done in Houston. Perception is all-important in politics, of course – and this says more about a lack of perception in the framing of the questions than it does about the result.

    At the least, it fairly shows the highest priorities among a majority of respondents. However, it does not reflect the understanding on the part of the poll’s sponsor of the undeniable link between advances in these other fields and “space exploration.” The latter can and does mean too many different things in the minds of just about everyone, with more than a few immediately picturing the Starship Enterprise.

    Wouldn’t it be interesting if such a poll were done ranking the top four or five most important priorities, framed in the manner of pollsters, including a push-statement, asking if the respondent were aware of these links, touching each of their lives in for more so today than when similar questions were asked thirty years ago?

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