Author Topic: Why manned spaceflight  (Read 121971 times)

Offline mmeijeri

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Why manned spaceflight
« on: 05/25/2009 01:00 am »
Trying again in a new thread.

The question I keep wondering is why are we sending people to the Moon?  If we had a clear answer, we'd know where they needed to go, how many there needed to be, how long they needed to be there, and what equipment they needed to have with them.

IMHO:

1) ISRU
2) science

Not two things you'd expect an astronaut to be particularly passionate about. Has Bolden publicly said anything about these topics in the past?
« Last Edit: 05/25/2009 02:50 am by Carl G »
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Offline kfsorensen

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #1 on: 05/25/2009 01:58 am »
I think that personally-funded human spaceflight is a great idea for whoever desires to do it.  Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Anousheh Ansari--rock on.  I hope more people want to go into space (on their own nickel) and stimulate the development of an industry.

Offline mmeijeri

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #2 on: 05/25/2009 02:01 am »
How about the government stimulating this by building (or better yet: renting) gateway stations, buying resupply and crew rotation transport services and generally acting as an anchor customer?
« Last Edit: 05/25/2009 02:09 am by mmeijeri »
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Offline kfsorensen

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #3 on: 05/25/2009 02:28 am »
How about the government stimulating this by building (or better yet: renting) gateway stations, buying resupply and crew rotation transport services and generally acting as an anchor customer?

Unless they are doing something that uniquely requires human presence and where human presence is justified on a value basis, I don't think that's a good idea.

That's why ISRU experiments, while good and desirable, do not need nor should include human "presence".

Offline Longhorn John

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #4 on: 05/25/2009 02:33 am »
Unmanned is for the Beagles of this world. Let those pressing for it pay for it, and free NASA to concentrate on what it's famous for, human space flight.

Offline mmeijeri

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #5 on: 05/25/2009 02:40 am »
Unless they are doing something that uniquely requires human presence and where human presence is justified on a value basis, I don't think that's a good idea.

Yes, that should be the key criterion. No permanently manned base where a man-tended outpost would do. No man-tended outpost where L1 telerobotics would suffice. No L1 telerobotics where Earth-based telerobotics would suffice.

Quote
That's why ISRU experiments, while good and desirable, do not need nor should include human "presence".

I mentioned ISRU and science (I was thinking specifically of geology) as applications that would benefit from manned presence, though they do not absolutely require it.

And another point: if there is going to be manned spaceflight anyway, shouldn't the government seek to maximise synergy buy acting as an anchor customer and choosing lunar activities that benefit most from human presence?
« Last Edit: 05/25/2009 02:47 am by mmeijeri »
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Offline Jim

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #6 on: 05/25/2009 02:47 am »
Unmanned is for the Beagles of this world. Let those pressing for it pay for it, and free NASA to concentrate on what it's famous for, human space flight.

That is asinine.
It is 180 the other way.  NASA may be "famous" for human spaceflight but it excels at unmanned. 

Manned is for New space, NASA doesn't need to be the one to do it.  Unmanned needs to be done by gov't.
« Last Edit: 05/25/2009 02:49 am by Jim »

Offline mmeijeri

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #7 on: 05/25/2009 02:50 am »
Manned is for new space

Meaning they should provide the launch vehicles and spacecraft or meaning there should be no government funding at all?
« Last Edit: 05/25/2009 02:51 am by mmeijeri »
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Offline Analyst

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #8 on: 05/25/2009 06:13 am »
Unmanned is for the Beagles of this world. Let those pressing for it pay for it, and free NASA to concentrate on what it's famous for, human space flight.

Manned is for the geeks of this world. Let those pressing for HSF pay for it, and free NASA to concentrate on what it's famous for, doing science in the solar system and beyond. This department is also more effective by any metric.

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Offline Kaputnik

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #9 on: 05/25/2009 11:02 am »
Can I be the first to say "no Buck Rogers, no bucks?"
Who really believes NASA would continue to get $17bn per year for unmanned activities only? The lay person is amazingly poorly informed about what NASA actually does. A couple of years ago my girlfriend asked me if anybody had landed on Mars yet! For some reason, much of the population assume that HSF is necessary.

IMO, for the cost of the STS/ISS programs, we could (should) have fielded a fleet of Hubble-2s, a lunar far-side radio telescope, a Mars sample return mission, a Titan blimp, and a Europa submarine. There is so much to discover out there yet we spend all our money circling the Earth.

Having said that, though, I do cling to a vision of a human outpost on Mars one day. It's not too hard to imagine a small base equipped with nuclear power and the ability to manufacture all of its own food, water, oxygen, and perhaps polymers for repairing greenhouses etc. Eventually the reactors will need refuelled, and complex systems will fall into disrepair, but for a few decades or even a century or two we could continue the human race indepedent from Earth- and that is a wonderful vision.
"I don't care what anything was DESIGNED to do, I care about what it CAN do"- Gene Kranz

Offline Analyst

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #10 on: 05/25/2009 11:17 am »
1) Can I be the first to say "no Buck Rogers, no bucks?" Who really believes NASA would continue to get $17bn per year for unmanned activities only?
2) The lay person is amazingly poorly informed about what NASA actually does. A couple of years ago my girlfriend asked me if anybody had landed on Mars yet!
3) For some reason, much of the population assume that HSF is necessary.

1) Nor would NASA need $17b per year. Substract SSP, CxP and ISS and you end up with arround $7b. Still more than ESA has. You can do quite a lot with $7b. And even if this drops to $5b, it is still more than SMD has today. It is a myth HSF "generates" money for unmanned activities. To the contrary: HSF takes money away from SMD. ESA and JAXA are perfect examples of space agancies with only a limited HSF branch, today a little less limited than in the past, but still true. Science without HSF is possible and cost effective.

2) Correct.

3) No they don't. Not the majority. Most of the ones who thinks so would think otherwise if confronted with facts. Only passionate folks and people with a business interest (NASA workers, contractors ...) would remain.

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Offline kfsorensen

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #11 on: 05/25/2009 01:09 pm »
Can I be the first to say "no Buck Rogers, no bucks?"
Who really believes NASA would continue to get $17bn per year for unmanned activities only?

NASA's not going to keep getting that much money anyway.  Nor should it if it can't return real value to the taxpayer.  What's so special about making sure NASA gets that much money unless you happen to live in Brevard County, Houston, or Huntsville?

No Buck Rogers, no bucks is anachronistic garbage.

Offline William Barton

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #12 on: 05/25/2009 01:26 pm »
This thread asks the wrong question. The right question is, "Why spaceflight?" Space probes to other planets have a "coolness factor" analogous to manned spacelfight, but like manned spaceflight, they return nothing of tangible value to the taxpayer. Metsats, comsats, and spysats do return tangible value, but they are gradually becoming obsolete, as other technologies move up to take their place. What else is left? I'll tell you: the content of old fantasy stories, and a manifest destiny credo that boils down to, "because it's there."

Offline marsavian

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #13 on: 05/25/2009 01:31 pm »
Long-term species survival.

Offline dcoolbro

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #14 on: 05/25/2009 01:44 pm »
sending a bunch of probes through space only keeps so much interest. heck we sent man to the moon four decades ago, and NASA in some respects is still riding off that. could you imagine if we sent man to mars? interest in NASA would increase exponentially. is it necessary to have manned spaceflight?  we won't die tomorrow without manned spaceflight. but is unmanned spaceflight necessary? maybe we should scrap the whole shabang then. i think the public would be dissappointed if we just decided to scrub manned spaceflight. so NASA goes from 0.7% of the total federal budget to 0.3% by getting rid of it. whoopdy doo. there is something to say about human achievement if you're able to send a person to another planet. I don't think you get that same affect with only robots and probes.

Offline William Barton

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #15 on: 05/25/2009 01:49 pm »
Long-term species survival.

Science fiction.

Offline kfsorensen

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #16 on: 05/25/2009 01:54 pm »
Long-term species survival.

Science fiction.
Your specialty, right?

Offline mmeijeri

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #17 on: 05/25/2009 01:57 pm »
Government doesn't need to do "anchor tenant" anything unless it has a real need to put people in space.  NASA does it, but that doesn't mean it "needs" to.  No other branch of US government has any interest in manned flight, and I think that's rather indicative of its real value.

I agree. It's one thing to say they must do this if they are going to send people into space anyway and another to say they should be sending people into space at all. There may be a case for it, but I don't think I've seen it.

But what if making our civilisation spacefaring allows us to tap the wealth of the asteroids and planets as Dennis Wingo argues? Is enabling that a valid government function? I'm not convinced it is, but it does sound like one of the better arguments for manned spaceflight, if true.
« Last Edit: 05/25/2009 02:06 pm by mmeijeri »
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Offline gospacex

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #18 on: 05/25/2009 02:05 pm »
Trying again in a new thread.

The question I keep wondering is why are we sending people to the Moon?  If we had a clear answer, we'd know where they needed to go, how many there needed to be, how long they needed to be there, and what equipment they needed to have with them.

IMHO:
1) ISRU
2) science

IMHO: We plan to eventually colonize space, which by definition requires humans.

If we do not plan to colonize space (or more precisely: "if we make a conscious decision to never colonize space"), then there is no point in sending humans. Increasingly clever robots eventually can tell us anything we want to know about the rest of the Universe.

Another question can be "Why *NASA* manned spaceflight?". I think NASA's execution of manned spaceflight development is far from satisfactory.

Offline Ben the Space Brit

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Re: Why manned spaceflight
« Reply #19 on: 05/25/2009 02:10 pm »
To me, the most important justification for human spaceflight is that it is a progressive and upward-looking objective.  Broadening human reach and boundaries are not just survival objectives in the long-term.  So long as we can keep our species' collective eye focussed on the infinate, we encourage an optimistic mindset that is the prerequisite for technological development and social progress.  As soon as we become obessed with return on investment and the 'bottom line', then we become a downward- and inward-looking species in decline.  This is a firm fact that is supported by the history of every empire in human history.  When the civilisation stopped looking at expanding and broadening its reach, it immediately began to decay.

I'm sure that I will be flamed for saying this but, IMHO, reality TV, the purile obsession with celebrity scandal, wide-scale corruption and graft, anti-scientific sentiment and the starvation of funds for human spaceflight are all symptomatic of the same cultural decay.  Without any outward movement to impel us and absorb our energies, we are collapsing inwards, focussing on our own, frankly self-destructive, appetities (specifically: food and shelter for no cost and sex).  Notice the recent change in emphasis of technological development away from 'blue sky' R&D that could solve our problems and towards fine-tuning existing technologies for greater convenience, comfort and labour-saving, which save nothing except the problem of having to get out of one's recliner.

It is a slight over-simplification but you could summarise that there are ultimately only two states for a culture: Expanding, optimistic and healthy or contracting, pessimistic and decaying.  IMHO, we are currently seeing all the symptoms of our culture being in the latter camp.  However, all is not lost and a sufficiently progressive and outward-looking program could restore optimism and the willingness to expend effort on the greater good.
« Last Edit: 05/25/2009 02:12 pm by Ben the Space Brit »
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