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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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