[Apologies for the outage over the weekend: the site was offline because of a technical issue with the server that has been rectified for now, although there may be briefer outages in the near future for server or other upgrades.]
As promised, in The Space Review on Monday I provided a more thorough review of the space “debate” among representatives of the Clinton, McCain, and Obama campaigns held on Friday at the ISDC. One area I focused on was a discussion between Steve Robinson, the Obama representative, and moderator Miles O’Brien about what is inspiring to the public, particularly youth: human or robotic exploration, particularly in the context of Mars exploration:
Robinson, a high school teacher before coming to Washington to work for Obama, argued that, for students and young adults, robotic exploration might be more interesting and inspiring than for older generations. Students are using advanced technology, like robots and the Internet, “in such a way that people of our generation maybe discount because we don’t understand it as much as the next generation does.”
Wouldn’t be more inspiring, though, O’Brien continued, to send humans to Mars than just robots? “To me, yes; to some of my high school students, I’m not sure,” Robinson said. “To some of my high school students, it might be more inspiring if we built ways for them to connect to probes on Mars that they could actually interact with in real time… I think we shouldn’t limit our view of inspiration to what inspires us. I think other people may be inspired, and other generations may be inspired, in other ways. I’m not inspired by Second Life, but a lot of kids are.”
Also in Monday’s issue, Greg Zsidisin argues that a presidential candidate could win support by promising to be a “reformer” of NASA, keeping the exploration policy but reforming how it’s done:
Enter the presidential hero. A candidate or new president-elect could score some quick political points not only by making an eloquent case for returning to exploration, and keeping America the leader in something it does best, but taking NASA to task on its VSE implementation, and setting it straight.
That last point doesn’t have to be a negative, either. A newly-inaugurated President Clinton, McCain, or Obama could give NASA a big public challenge to do better, while instructing the agency to do no damage or modification to the nation’s precious STS infrastructure. Let him or her challenge NASA to come up with a better plan to get its new launcher online sooner, and cheaper.
[…] last week’s ISDC panel proved, getting the presidential campaigns to talk about space in any detail is difficult: policy comes […]
I mentioned this in the other thread but I think its worth saying again: I got the distinct impression that Lori had almost carte blanche to make any space policy statement Lori wanted, knowing that Clinton would accept Lori’s policy’s as stated. The other two were stuck trying to channel their candidate without any real guidance. So I’m willing to give Robinson and des Champs a pass. Its easy to perform as well as Lori did when you don’t feel constrained by your candidate. Lori’s background makes her the number one space policy expert in the Democratic camp. Whichever Democratic candidate got her support was going to end up with the most well defined space policy.
I’ve meet Lori several times and while I’m sure we would disagree on a whole host of things politically, she does seem to have a reasonable set of space policy principles as long as you accept that NASA and space exploration are proper functions of government. I personally don’t think it is but I’ve learned to live with all of you crazy gummit-loving hippie types out there who do.
Robinson: other generations may be inspired, in other ways. I’m not inspired by Second Life, but a lot of kids are
Well, it happens to be my generation in charge right now, and I for one am far more inspired by human exploration like the Apollo expiditions than by throwing clockwork robots at the planets. When these “kids” are adults and in charge, than they can establish their own priorities. I don’t see any responsibility to bow to their priorities at this point in time.
— Donald
“I got the distinct impression that Lori had almost carte blanche to make any space policy statement Lori wanted, knowing that Clinton would accept Lori’s policy’s as stated. The other two were stuck trying to channel their candidate without any real guidance.”
I think this is pretty accurate. Clearly she was the most knowledgeable space policy person on the podium. But it’s also clear that, at least for now, the Clinton campaign has given her much leeway to state space policy positions for the candidate. The other two were there primarily to speak in general ideological terms, not specifics. Miles O’Brien probably understood this well, but he did a good job of trying to press the panelists to be more specific and commit to things. That created a greater contrast.
I’m pretty sure our robots are run using digital software, not clockwork.
More seriously, these “kids” will be taxpayers in a mere 4-10 years. You want to ignore the trends? Go right ahead, but don’t whine if they cut your Apollo like project just as you thought it was getting into high gear.
I’m pretty sure our robots are run using digital software, not clockwork.
And, you might recall that we almost last one of the MERs during a re-set of overly complex software. That software controls the clockwork mechanisms, true, but it remains the mechanical interface with the real world (i.e., “hands”) where robotics is, and is likely to remain, the weakest. It is no accident that computers can win at chest and observe Saturn from a distance or trundle around on Mars with sensors, but cannot even begin to, say, cook a meal or build a house in a known environment with known interfaces. To expect them to do serious fieldwork (e.g., find a fossil except through chance or to date and understand the detailed history of a series of volcanic flows) on the unknown and random surface of Mars is, and is likely to remain, absurd, whatever “kids†think.
The people or nations that settle for watching the world from a distance, rather than exploring it in person, most likely will be quickly overtaken in both knowledge and commerce by those who are willing to do (and pay for) the latter.
— Donald
The people or nations that settle for watching the world from a distance, rather than exploring it in person, most likely will be quickly overtaken in both knowledge and commerce by those who are willing to do (and pay for) the latter.
It’s not clear how sending a handful of high-paid civil servants on multi-billion dollar joy rides to the Moon is going to bolster our ability to understand the universe and control its resources. I’ll put my money on the nation that can develop robotic technology. Coupled with computers, this technology has revolutionized our ability to produce and manufacture products. Through the NASA science program, it has revolutionized our understanding of the universe.
The problem, GRS, is that most of the real ground-truth science that has been accomplished in the Solar System was accomplished by these Apollo joy rides. The Apollo Astronauts, using first generation equipment and techniques, were able to conduct real field work that has not been duplicated by all the robots since, in spite of the expendature of billions of dollars in space robotics. The later Apollo missions conducted detailed geologic surveys over wide areas in only three days. To this date, the only absolute dating of any in-place surface in the Solar System is that for Earth’s moon. Every other date from Mercury to Pluto is little more than an educated guess based on the Apollo cratering record — and, thus, not likely to be terribly accurate.
It’s time to go back and read The Apollo Expeditions: exploring the moon by David Harland, which has just been re-released in a new edition and which revisits in detail what was actually accomlished scientifically by Apollo. Even if you want to argue that robots are better, if only to put your own arguments into perspective, it is essential to understand the generally forgotten history of what was actually done almost forty years ago, and I believe this is the best book on the subject.
My take on these questions is here,
A Scientific Justification for Human Space Eploration.
— Donald
GRS :
I’m a little unclear on the concepts here. Robots are are going to let me “understand the universe and control its resources”? The whole friggin’ universe, from here to 14 billion light years out? And me personally (or at least my descendents), not some giant corporation?
Maybe your rhetoric is a bit overstated? Personally, I think the great issue for the future — starting in this century — is whether human beings ever get off this planet and start living on others, not for days at a time but for their entire lives, from birth to death. And the second great issue is whether people settle for Mars or the Moon or go for broke reaching the stars. People, not robots.
To me those “high-paid civil servants on multi-billion dollar joy rides” have a quality of germaneness that robots lack. YMMV.
I’m not disagreeing that human spaceflight has a useful role. I’m especially excited about the prospects for space tourism and other private ventures.
My beef is with the role of government in human spaceflight. Unless you work at NASA, you do not realize how unbelievably risk-adverse the culture has become. The Gene Kranz mantra, “Failure is not an Option,” has been contorted from a Limbardiesque rallying cry to a paralyzing influence on all aspects of human spaceflight design.
Let’s face it, the ultimate goal of all NASA human spaceflight missions is to bring the astronauts safely back to Earth. All other goals are secondary and tertiary. For this reason, the costs are exorbitant, and always will be.
Apollo had the luxury of being conducted in an environment that wasn’t nearly as irrationally risk-averse. We were at war or an episode of intense competition with the Soviets. Any fear of losing astronauts was superseded by the fear of losing our Battle for the Moon with the Ruskies.
I also disagree with Mr. Robertson’s claim that most of our understanding of the universe came from Apollo. I’m sure that Ed Weiler and the folks working on Hubble would challenge that.
A good recent book that addresses the whole human versus robot in space debate is “Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel” by Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy.
I think the comment about kids being inspired by robots vs. inspiration from human missions is a little misleading.
Activities like the Google Lunar X Prize, which will be awarded to the first team to land and operate a robotic mission on the moon, have a huge potential to inspire younger people. The fact that the XPF is developing a heavy web presence through weblogs, twitter, Youtube, and other online resources will help to bring in the younger generation that spends all its time on the web. The Mars Phoenix twitter demonstrates the same: that there is significant interest in space activities but that these activities need to be communicated using the media most appropriate to the target market.
That said, human exploration and development of space *must* be one of our priorities, and as a young person I believe human exploration has far more potential for inspiration.
Robinson’s comments on robotic vs. human missions are misleading and present a false choice: that robotic missions are somehow “interactive” whereas human missions are not. Human missions could easily incorporate just as much (if not more) interactive elements for mass markets on Earth, since human explorers are inherently more adaptable and more responsive, and provide a human aspect to the story of exploration that robots simply cannot.
To me, Robinson’s comments just look like another attempt to slip in the old “robots vs. humans” debate (and it’s not particularly surprising that his comments seem to strongly favor the robotic side, given Obama’s statements regarding human spaceflight).
“robot…cannot even begin to, say, cook a meal or build a house in a known environment with known interfaces.”
Robot cooks: http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14677724
and
http://www.robotster.org/entry/can-ai-cook-better-food-than-its-human-counterpart/
Robots building houses: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/18/house-building-robot-in-action-not-as-exciting-as-it-sounds/
and
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/15/rival-robots-prepping-to-automate-home-building/
Maybe 40 years ago during Apollo, what you say was true. Today and in the near future? Why can’t a robot find a fossil? Sure an individual robot can’t do as much as a person, but can’t we send many more robots for the same amount of money? A failure to sucessfully land a robot on Mars sucks. A failure to land a team of experts sucessfully on Mars would set back science how long?
“The people or nations that settle for watching the world from a distance, rather than exploring it in person, most likely will be quickly overtaken in both knowledge and commerce by those who are willing to do (and pay for) the latter.
Please list countries or individuals with the active interest, plans, and/or money to do so in the foreseeable future.
What is NOT inspiring about sending humans to the Moon and Mars? Humans are tactile creatures, and there is no substitute for a “real” human presence on another world. Robots can only do what they are programmed to do. For people to say that it is not inspiring is disingenuous. The Apollo 11 landing was the most amazing feat of the entire human race.
What is NOT inspiring about sending humans to the Moon and Mars?
The fact that I am not there, and that I have to get excited about someone else doing it. Worse yet, I have to hold them in awe, and treat them like they were God’s gift to humankind.
At least a robot is egalitarian and devoid of egotistical tendencies.
That said, I have no problem with egotists going into space. Some of my best friends ascribe to this view of life. However, I’d expect them to do it on their own nickel.
GRS: the ultimate goal of all NASA human spaceflight missions is to bring the astronauts safely back to Earth
In this, I completely agree with you. And, until it changes, we have no human future in space, particularly an affordable one. Space is a dangerous place, and exploring, let alone colonizing, any part of the Solar System will cost many, many human lives — or it won’t be done.
I also disagree with Mr. Robertson’s claim that most of our understanding of the universe came from Apollo.
I did not say that. What I did say (or intend to say) is that the majority of our real-world, ground-truth data about the Solar System came from the Apollo project. A quick look at the history of science should show that any conclusion drawn solely from remote observation is almost certainly wrong, or at least very narrow and limited. Surely you remember from secondary school that science consists of observation and experiment. There are places in the universe where we can experiment and do scientific field work in the near future (Earth’s moon, near Earth asteroids, possibly the Martian moons. Until we have done field work on representative bodies, any conclusions drawn from our observations must be considered preliminary, at best, and are almost certainly largely wrong. Specifically, until we have real dates from many locations on all of the terrestrial planets, and detailed stratographic knowledge related to those dates, we know far less than planetary scientists pretend they do.
Chance: Maybe 40 years ago during Apollo, what you say was true. Today and in the near future?
Well, the operative words are “coming soon.” More seriously, your first three links prove nothing — in all cases, the recipies and ingredients, or materials, were carefully pre-positioned. That would leave little room for recovery if anything went wrong. Also, Chinese and Indian food are both stired and quickly heated mixes of ingredients, not requiring much care beyond the selection of the ingredients and their quantities. In other words, the recipies were carefully chosen to be easy to automate. Even on apparently simple tasks, success seems remarkably difficult — when was the last time you got a decent cup of coffee from a vending machine?
Your fourth case is very interesting, and I’ll buy that it might work. But, by using a glorified printer using a limited set of “inks,” you’re removing all the randomness from the equation. Maybe you can do that printing a house, but you can’t do that on the moon or Mars.
I stand by my case. When you show me a robot that executes all the tasks necessary to find a fossil on a terrestrial desert known to contain fossils, then I’ll accept that maybe we don’t need human scientists except in the vitally important role of artist which requires direct experience.
Please list countries or individuals with the active interest, plans, and/or money to do so in the foreseeable future.
Right now, the nations doing or seriously planning their own human space programs include the United States, Russia, China, India, probably the collective nations of the Eurpean Space Agency, and possibly Japan. It’s quite a list compared to what it was even a decade ago, and as the world gets richer and spaceflight gets slowly easier, we can expect that list to continue to grow.
Mr. Zsaz has it right.
— Donald
“Maybe 40 years ago during Apollo, what you say was true. Today and in the near future? Why can’t a robot find a fossil? Sure an individual robot can’t do as much as a person, but can’t we send many more robots for the same amount of money?”
Well then we should fire all human cooks, fire all human house builders, hell lets build robots to mow the lawn, clean the house, drive the car .. well why not just get rid of humans altogether, as you say, robots are cheaper and better AND wont die like a human.
I do not care about if a robot is cheaper to send to the moon, a machine can not appreaciate a earth rise from the moon, a machine can not feel the pride of accomplishment from a job well done, machines will not record their feelings or insights from going to mars. I do not care what machines can do, I am more interested in what humans do and the feelings they had from that experience.
Vladislaw, well said. I agree that there are many, many reasons for sending humans to explore the planets, not least the emotional ones you list. I’m just not prepared to conceed the scientific justification, especially since I think those who claim science, as opposed to reconnaissance, can be automated are quite wrong.
— Donald
Supporters of both human spacefaring and a mixed approach need to take this fight into the pro-bots corner: enough with only “pure science” robots we need robots dedicated to preparing and easing the arrival of humans.
Let’s say one or more GLXP teams achieve their aims, at such a point the time would be ripe to push for just that and not just by NASA or the US. It could be a relatively easy and rewarding way to increase international participation (including commercial participation) in the return to Luna.
As a citizen of an ESA member nation I think ESA should promise buying or significantly subsidizing a minimum of five payloads from one or several successful GLXP contestants to get the ball rolling.
A word dropped out there somehow (I blame the summer heat ^_^), I mean “payloads delivered” as in transportation and not the creation of the actual payloads themselves, ESA and whoever they deem fit would be responsible for that part.
Well then we should fire all human cooks, fire all human house builders, hell lets build robots to mow the lawn, clean the house, drive the car .. well why not just get rid of humans altogether, as you say, robots are cheaper and better AND wont die like a human.
Actually industry around the world has been doing this for the last 30 years. Robots are employed whenever it makes economic sense, and are used in almost all aspects of heavy industry.
Until we develop true artificial intelligence, humans will always be in control.
I do not care about if a robot is cheaper to send to the moon, a machine can not appreaciate a earth rise from the moon, a machine can not feel the pride of accomplishment from a job well done, machines will not record their feelings or insights from going to mars. I do not care what machines can do, I am more interested in what humans do and the feelings they had from that experience.
Good luck selling this as a justification to 99.99% of the American public.
GRS: Good luck selling this as a justification to 99.99% of the American public.
Actually, I think this is exactly the way to sell it to the American public. The American public is interested in the romance of spaceflight — which explains the enduring popularity of Star Trek, the new Battlestar Galactica, et al. The unfortunate fact is that the robotic people, by appropriating the term exploration and providing the only pictures of the landscapes of the final frontier in the past few decades, have captured that romance far better than the human side. Nonetheless, these remain pictures. The public is likely to identify with, and be interested in, watching people explore these landscapes far more than robots — expecially if they can ultimately participate through lunar tourist flights or virtual reality projected from an astronaut’s helmet.
I think it is a shame that NASA doesn’t do as good a job of distributing the helmet-camera images from astronauts building the ISS as JPL does the images from Mars. That said, when measuring a comparable endeavor, it’s a lot easier to find pictures of ISS construction by astronauts than it is images of attempts to automate docking or satellite repair. People have a lot more interest in the former than the latter. The same will be true on Earth’s moon or Mars.
— Donald
The American public likes Star Trek and other science fiction fare for various reasons. One aspect that draws many to science fiction is the application of new, advanced technology. Apollo was a real-life science fiction adventure. Sadly, ESAS is not by a long shot.
This is an aspect of ESAS that is sorely missing. A modest research and technology investment in truly revolutionary technologies would go far to kindle the public’s interest. And I’m not talking about LOX/LH2 propulsion. Ultimately VSE needs to show a road paved with real work leading to the far future. Right now all we have is words.
I don’t buy the Administrator’s statements that we can’t afford this now. Adding a few $10M to the Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP) on very low TRL work would be a drop in the bucket, and would greatly increase excitement for ESAS and VSE. It would certainly connect more with the future portrayed by Star Trek et al.
What is NOT inspiring about sending humans to the Moon and Mars?
It’s a great inspiration for government gigantism. “If we can land a man on the moon, why can’t we…?”
I’d like to propose an alternative as to the real problem with how we’ve been doing manned spaceflight – its that not everyone can really take part – with the robotic probes, everyone can look at the data or pictures, but with manned flight, only a select few can (or rather have) been able to take part.
If the average person could actually take part in manned spaceflight, or had the potential to take part, then it would be a different ball game. But without that, its seen as something for a select few.
If the average person could actually take part in manned spaceflight, or had the potential to take part, then it would be a different ball game. But without that, its seen as something for a select few.
Having an advanced technology component of VSE allows the public to identify with the ultimate goal of VSE, expansion of major portions of the human species into space and onto new worlds. Focusing all the resources on near-term development, no matter how appealing this may be to the pragmatists, dilutes the impact of this unifying message.
Dang, I didn’t do the block quotes right. I hate html tags.
Ferris. Huh? Why is it that people can “take part” in pictures taken by automated probes, but can’t in pictures taken by astronauts, especially since the latter, taken by a real person on site, should have greater human interest? The real question for us — and it may well argue against my position — is why people watch (“participate” in) pictures taken by robots and not those taken by people.
I would guess the subject has a lot to do with it. We are the species that colonized an entire world in only a few tens of thousands of years, after all. People are more interested in exploring new landscapes than they are building giant spacecraft in orbit. (How many 17th and 18th Century people watched ship construction? yet building ships was a key prerequisit to visiting another continent.)
This, of course, beggs the question of why the Apollo explorations were so comprehensively ignored. I would have two tentative answers. First, we were focussed on getting there, and once that was achieved, the job was seen as done. This was encouraged because both scientists and NASA did a very poor job of advertising the exploration aspects of Apollo. Secondly, the nation had a lot on its collective plate at the moment, and Viet Nam had created a political backlash against both high technology and the very idea of “expansion,” which involves inevitable military overtones.
These are only thoughts, and I’d love to hear other people’s ideas regarding these questions — as long as they are a little more complex “robots are better than people.”
— Donald
Chance: I’m saying that we are nowhere near reaching the point where automated probes have reached their useful limits,
On certain jobs, no. On others, yes.
Robots are great for initial reconnaissance, but terrible for field work. I have discussed here and elsewhere why field work cannot effectively be automated and I won’t repeat it now; a Google search should easily find them. But, don’t take my word for it. Ask any experienced paleontologist or archaeologist (my training is in the latter).
Note in proof: When I first published my argument as an Op Ed in Space News (http://www.donaldfrobertson.com/reality_check_v2.html), the then manager of the automated Mars program quickly responded to the Mars part of my editorial. His response to almost every one of my arguments boiled down to “Mr. Robertson is correct, but, . . . ” with the “but” usually involving money — even the experts admit that you cannot effectively automate finding fossils.
While it is remotely possible that remote observation or automated probes could find extant life by being lucky or by measuring chemical disequalibrium, it is unlikely in extreme that they could locate past microfossils, and flat out impossible that they could learn anything about the distribution, history, and evolution of any life. (Once you’ve finally done the near-impossible by finding one fossil, then you have to find the second, and third, and so on. There are few if any efficiencies or economies of scale in this process.)
If you want to find out about life on another world — which is the advertized purpose of our Mars program — you have to send scientists, and probably a lot of them. Robots are not going to cut it.
— Donald
If you want to find out about life on another world — which is the advertized purpose of our Mars program — you have to send scientists, and probably a lot of them. Robots are not going to cut it.
This all depends on the level of autonomy and decision-making sophistication of the robot. For the highly autonomous systems we are currently using, we are indeed limited to chemical assays and electromagnetic measurements of discrete targeted locations. However, shifting the sophistication from autonomy to mechanical systems (i.e., move in the direction of telerobots) increases the amount of required human control, and the level of human-like observation and response in the operations.
Obviously this is ridiculous to consider if the telerobots are deployed on Mars and the humans remain on Earth, due to the 6 to 40 minute delay in communications. However with humans in Mars orbit, these becomes very realistic.
I suspect that this type of approach, which more readily models the approach we use for oceanography, would be much more affordable since you wouldn’t have to develop the human-support infrastructure on the Mars surface. Plus, almost half of the non-ETO energy expenditures for the missions are incurred from transporting crew to and from the surface.
I’m not saying that this would be the final solution. Ultimately, you’d want to have people on the planet. However, it would be much easier to sustain an exploration program that extends human operations into Mars orbit, while expanding telerobotic presence on the planet.
Another benefit of this near-term goal is that it develops a human in-space transportation capability that can be used to visit NEO asteroids, and perhaps apply the same telerobotic exploration on the surface of Venus and Mercury, other very rich scientific targets.
“I am paying them to do a job, not “feel proud†Because I am paying them, ”
So let me understand you, you would not want your employees to take pride in the work they do for you? If you had 10 carpenters you would not care if they were a bunch of wood butchers or master craftsmen, just as long as they churned out some kind of product like mindless drones?
You wouldnt want your employees bragging to friends about their accommplishments THROUGH your employment? I would imagine the employee’s job satisfaction would be even less important, fulfilling or not, just hook em up to the plow and get em going.
Donald,
Whats usually the first question that gets asked of astronauts? Its usually something like “What is space like?” You can’t really understand space unless you’ve been there. Yes, people can watch a spacewalk, and say isn’t that cool, but unlikely other large scale activities, like watching the Olympics, only when we are talking about space, can the average person not directly participate (if I love basketball, its not difficult for me to go out and shoot hoops – If I watch professional poker, I can call up friends, and play a game). But with space, unless I am actually there to experince it, in the space enviroment, there is no way I can truly take part, and thus far access to space has been rather limited.
Robotic probes, on the other hand, allow everyone equal access to the pictures, and data – no one has more access than anyone else. Anybody can sit down, and be an active part of process. But with manned spaceflight, there are only a few active participates.
Its the difference between (if you’ll allow for some crude remarks) a bunch of guys looking at a naked girl, and imagining having sex with her, and her boyfriend who tells them “I do get to have sex with her, every night”
GRS, while not conceding that telerobotics could help you much in the fossil search (the key problem, far more than automation per se, is efficient and rapid manipulation of a vast number of delicate and complexly shaped objects – most probably sedimentary-type rocks – from which the far more delicate and probably extremely small objects of your affection must be reliably separated without so much damage you can no longer recognize them, the sizes and shapes of which objects by definition cannot be understood or predicted in advance; altogether involving a large set of tasks in all of which robotics has made remarkably little progress but graduate students can do casually), I like the PhD approach for other reasons. Phobos and Deimos are amongst the easiest places to get to from Earth orbit (far easier than the Martian surface), they may well have resources usable to sustain a human presence, you avoid the political problems of contaminating a potentially habitable environment with terrestrial chemicals or organisms, you learn something about asteroids as well as Mars, you get deep space experience, and, in the unlikely event you are correct regarding telerobotics, you get better Mars science — all before (and far cheaper than) a Mars surface mission could realistically be attempted. So, let us agree on a destination, albeit for not entirely synonymous reasons — a type of agreement the space community needs a lot more of!
— Donald
Vladislaw: So let me understand you, you would not want your employees to take pride in the work they do for you? If you had 10 carpenters you would not care if they were a bunch of wood butchers or master craftsmen, just as long as they churned out some kind of product like mindless drones?
Excellent point. When we replaced the roof on my house, my partner chose the contractor partly by how happy his employees seemed to be at another job site. Her argument was that well-treated, happy emplyees do better work.
Ferris: to continue your crud analogy, the real choice we observers have today is, watching static pictures or watching pictures of the boyfriend in action. It is not clear to me that the latter is less valuable than the former.
— Donald
Donald,
)
(this has got to be the raciest discussion ever had at Space Politics – I wonder how it would stack up in other space forums
I don’t believe it necessarily is less valuable – I am not at all convinced that robotic exploration can match human exploration. But for a long time, especially during Apollo, there were promises of “everyone will have their turn” which has not happened, and is why people have lost interest, by quite a bit. That said, I do think its a mistake to think that the public doesn’t like manned spaceflight – look at the response during Columbia, or all the people that went to see SpaceShipOne fly. But we’ve (the space activist community) early on promised that everyone would be involved by now, and its not happened – that hurt us, big time, and is why we’ve seen a dis-interest set in – the average person has no real way to directly interact.
Ferris: But we’ve (the space activist community) early on promised that everyone would be involved by now, and its not happened – that hurt us, big time,
I fully agree that over-promising has been a consistant problem for the space advocacy community (although I also recognize that is not the way you meant the above quoted statement!). It took more than ten thousand years to colonize large parts of what is after all our own planet. Were we really going to “storm the Solar System” with all it’s myriad of truly alien worlds in decades?
— Donald
One element of this thread that jumped out at me (even as it delved unnecessarily into the entertainment value of pornography) was Ferris’s suggestion that unless somebody can do something themselves (e.g., play poker) they can’t connect with or feel like they can participate in the activity and therefore won’t pay attention.
I had a similar discussion with my brother-in-law once when trying to assess the relative merits of watching spaceflight on TV vs watching football. What was it about football, I asked, that was so appealing that spaceflight didn’t have? He indicated that he had played football back in high school and so could relate to football on TV, but he couldn’t relate to spaceflight since it wasn’t something he had ever participated in himself.
So I asked him if he enjoyed watching Star Wars. Of course he did…but how many light-saber duels had he participated in back in high school?
He (and all of us) enjoyed Star Wars because he/we got caught up with the characters in a good story. NASA (as I’ve tried to say before: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/802/1) has lost the public’s interest because they don’t employ effective story-telling techniques in their communication with the public. THAT was the point of that essay, NOT that NASA TV sucked.
We all know that spaceflight is exciting and interesting, some of us especially so because we’ve had the opportunity to participate in it up close. The way to connect to the public with it is to convey the drama to them through the stories of the people that are doing it…whether it’s the astronauts on top of the rockets (or digging in the dirt) or the folks back on the ground who are figuring out which rocks to go dig up or working out how to fix the broken hardware.
The reason the JPL (and other robotic) folks do a better job with the pictures from the probes than the Houston crowd does dealing with ISS construction is that the robotic folks are still riding on the high, they still sense the drama, that first-time exploration brings, whereas the guys in Houston have been programmed by their management (especially the PAO folks) to PRESENT it all as ho-hum “we’ve got it all under control” day-to-day-job mundane, instead of conveying any of the hundreds of real, human stories that unfold every week across dozens of disciplines that are necessary to make it work at all.
Unless we engage the public with better story-telling using real spaceflight as subject matter, space will remain a marginal issue and will not impact political campaigns in any meaningful way.
Story-telling is a key element, but please don’t ladle us the human interest stuff you see on the Olympics coverage or American Idol.
A good reference for story telling is the Disney IMAX production, “Roving Mars.” This is a fabulous film, and captures the excitement noted by Bob Mahoney. The Although Disney produced the film, all of the footage, interviews and content came from JPL and NASA.
All the other NASA-oriented IMAX films, except perhaps “The Dream is Alive,” have been stale, directionless and presumptive of audience support.
The idea of Disney being intimately tied with NASA story telling has a historical precedent with Von Braun and the early space program. Renewing this relationship would be something that a new Administrator should seriously consider when he/she takes the helm in 2009.
BTW, don’t look to Griffin to do this. As Donald Robertson and others have pointed out many times, robots are incapable of vision and innovative thought.
“We all know that spaceflight is exciting and interesting, some of us especially so because we’ve had the opportunity to participate in it up close. The way to connect to the public with it is to convey the drama to them through the stories of the people that are doing it…whether it’s the astronauts on top of the rockets (or digging in the dirt) or the folks back on the ground who are figuring out which rocks to go dig up or working out how to fix the broken hardware.”
I agree with you there.
I want to hear, see and feel I am a part of the trials and tribulations, the sweat equity earned and the feeling of accomplishment of a job well done.
I like what robots can do, but the humanist in me would rather see accomplishments in space attributed to the human explorerers.
Should robots lead the way and do most of the exploration to make it easier for astronauts to stay at home on the ground until humans are REALLY needed, or should astronauts do the heavy lifting and let robots AUGMENT human eplorations.
Personally, I perfer earning our way there with boots on the ground sweat equity. More human insights are gained, more human experience is gained, more human emotional attachment is gained. I do not recall any ticket tape parades for the lunar landers that went to the moon. How do you get emotionally attached to your toaster?
Bob: The reason the JPL (and other robotic) folks do a better job with the pictures from the probes than the Houston crowd does dealing with ISS construction is that the robotic folks are still riding on the high, they still sense the drama, that first-time exploration brings, whereas the guys in Houston have been programmed by their management (especially the PAO folks) to PRESENT it all as ho-hum “we’ve got it all under control†day-to-day-job mundane, instead of conveying any of the hundreds of real, human stories that unfold every week across dozens of disciplines that are necessary to make it work at all.
This is a very interesting turn to the discussion, and I think you have hit the nail on the head. Far too many years ago when I worked for Jane’s Information Group, I did a lot of interviews on both the automated and human sides. Interviewing someone at JPL was almost always a joy: they loved their jobs and their work and their voices dripped with the romance of it all. Interviewing someone in Houston too often was a drudge: someone who had little care or understanding of the romance of what they were doing.
What better story could there be than Apollo-17 astronauts exploring an entire alpine valley with truly dramatic scenery? Complete with that all-American icon, an open-topped automobile. How is this story less exciting than an automated rover exploring a comparable area inar less dramatic scenery in mkore than four excruciatingly long years? How could the Houston folks possibly screw their story up?
The tallest residential tower west of the Mississippi was just built in San Francisco. The Chronicle provided regular interviews with construction engineers, construction workers high in the sky, describing how it was all done and with a great sense of excitement. How is this story more exciting than building the first large structure in the microgravity environment that dominates the Universe, away from Earth’s special case environment? How can Houston possibly screw up that story?
I wish I had answers to these questions.
— Donald
Donald et al:
I tried to provide some answers to “how” they (and not just Houston, mind you) have been screwing it up (in perhaps, I admit,excruciatingly excessive detail) in my TSR essay back in Feb 2006…which is the link I provided above. Then, in the second portion the following week (link listed below in Jeff’s original thread addressing this ISDC political discussion), I offered up some very specific ideas (not all mine, and, again, in perhaps too much detail) on how to fix it…with the intention/hope of precipitating more ideas from others more creative than I.
Sadly, while I have seen the slighted wisps of change on NASA’s shuttle/ISS mission coverage with a few public affairs officers (mostly in their tone more than anything), the main presentation of spaceflight across all media (TV, web, etc) remains mind-numbingly bland and un-engaging. Amazing, considering the subject matter. [I know that our society’s long-engendered negative attitudes toward tech & science (or at least engineers & scientists) aren’t helping.]
Perhaps (to move back toward the original thread) with the winds of change coming next year to Washington (no matter who wins, change will come), some of those ideas will find fertile ground in a few critical places.
Quote by GRS:
“What is NOT inspiring about sending humans to the Moon and Mars?
The fact that I am not there, and that I have to get excited about someone else doing it. Worse yet, I have to hold them in awe, and treat them like they were God’s gift to humankind.
At least a robot is egalitarian and devoid of egotistical tendencies.
That said, I have no problem with egotists going into space. Some of my best friends ascribe to this view of life. However, I’d expect them to do it on their own nickel.”
First of all, nobody said anything about holding these people in deity-like fashion, you assumed that incorrectly. I don’t get where your “egotists” comment makes any sense at all. By your definition, we should not send astronauts to the Moon or Mars because you cannot go? Since you can’t share the cool toys nobody can have them? If that is your opinion, it’s laughable at best.
Exploration works best when manned and unmanned missions work in conjunction as part of a larger scope to further understanding.