Got doubts about Curiosity surviving Mars landing

[sophiecentaur]

I know it's only a matter of taste whether or not we like manned space flight. We all have our different opinions. But I have to take issue with your statement that it yields more bucks. The ISS is up there with experiments going on all the time but even they are very expensive compared with unmanned alternatives. Apart from that, what 'actual bucks' have manned missions yielded? (Apart from political ones) Your assertion involves a lot of faith in the future.

You seem to dismiss the potential human cost rather lightly, too. There's surely more to it than just having to notify next of kin when there's a failure.

 

[twofish-quant]

But I have to take issue with your statement that it yields more bucks. The ISS is up there with experiments going on all the time but even they are very expensive compared with unmanned alternatives. Apart from that, what 'actual bucks' have manned missions yielded? (Apart from political ones)

I'm talking politics (i.e. government pork). Once you have a situation in which people's jobs depend on space exploration, it becomes harder to kill. The problem is that if you try to do space on the cheap, there is less pork to spread around, and when the ax comes down, the whole thing is going to get cut.

Your assertion involves a lot of faith in the future.

No, just political cynicism. I'm very cynical about about the political system works. If you try to be too efficient and save people too much money, your reward is to get axed.

That's why you want to avoid government spending if you can, but I don't think that purely private efforts to get us into space are going to work. SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace are doing some very interesting things, but they all depend on government money. SpaceX depends on resupply contracts to the ISS. No ISS, no resupply contracts.

One thing that is interesting about the colonization of the New World is that most of the economic justifications for it turned out to be disasters. The problem with using immediate economic justifications for space exploration is that there aren't likely to be any. It's like when Columbus tried to convince Isabella to finance his expedition. The economic justification he used was just wrong.

Now I happen to think that there are huge long term benefits for moving into space, but that involves getting over the initial "bump."

Human colonization of space makes absolutely no sense if you look at a three year or maybe even thirty year perspective. But I'm looking at things here from a 300 year perspective. The closest historical analogy I can think of is the decision of the Ming dynasty to stop sending treasure ships across the Indian Ocean. From a budgetary standpoint it was a perfectly rational decision, but from a macro-history perspective, it was the wrong one.

You seem to dismiss the potential human cost rather lightly, too. There's surely more to it than just having to notify next of kin when there's a failure.

No. It's just that the internet makes things sound more light than they are. The thing about manned space flight is that there is a limit to the amount of risk that you can allow.

 

[sophiecentaur]

It's interesting that we have two different takes on this yet I think we would conclude the same thing about the final result.
Whatever is going to happen, it's going to be very long term if humans are to be up there in any significant numbers and at significant distances. My problem is that I see the journey time factor as being the limit. You can't go anywhere or do anything 'interesting' within the period of time that politics operates. When ruling 'dynasties' or religious organisations operated on non-limited time scales, they could commit to very long term projects without needing to justify the expense to the general public. People (investors / tax payers) need some sort of return on their money much quicker than it would take to develop an 'industry' anywhere significant, even within the Solar System.
Space-borne scientific experiments will always be cheaper with unmanned operation, for the (horribly cynical but relevant) reasons you gave.
The only commercial reason for going out there would be for materials. We don't need to go anywhere else for Energy. Asteroids could be an attractive source and could be 'mined' robotically and 'risk free'. It may only be a matter of decades before we have the technology to protect Earth from 'rogue asteroids' and the same technology could allow them to be 'captured' for their contents. A good value project, I think, and all robotic.
The 'Star Ship' scenario is not really attractive - except in a Sci Fi world. Whoever would invest all their wealth in a bunch of total strangers (future generations) who would leave their lives forever and not even be able to communicate with base - let alone send anything useful back.

 

[twofish-quant]

It's interesting that we have two different takes on this yet I think we would conclude the same thing about the final result.

One reason that I'm wondering if "pork barrel" is the way to go is looking at what happened with the auto and banking industries. There are so many people employed by auto and banking that in a crisis, the government did everything it could to prop up those industries. Also what annoys me is that the amount of money to have a gold-plated space program is *tiny* in comparison to say the banking or auto bailouts.

If we could have millions of people employed by space exploration, then this would provide a buffer against getting things cut before we get off the planet. I realize this is a controversial idea since most space enthusiasts are people that are "anti-political" in the sense that they want things done more cheaply and efficiently, and distrust "political" decisions, but frankly, things are so bad that it's a desperate idea.

My problem is that I see the journey time factor as being the limit. You can't go anywhere or do anything 'interesting' within the period of time that politics operates.

What you really need (and what Apollo failed to provide) was a long term goal that is independent of politics. During the Cold War the goal was "beat the Russians."

One thing that I'm hoping is that China tries to send people to the moon (just because), and this forces the US to send people to the moon (just because).

One of the fun thing is to just read Kennedy's moon speech, and you see how Cold War driven it was.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Speeches/Special-Message-to-the-Congress-on-Urgent-National-Needs-May-25-1961.aspx

People (investors / tax payers) need some sort of return on their money much quicker than it would take to develop an 'industry' anywhere significant, even within the Solar System.

There are motivations other than greed. Revenge/justice. The US spent $1+ trillion dollars to get bin-Laden. If there was credible reason to think that bin-Laden was on Mars, no one would have blinked at spending any amount of money to get him.

The big motivation to get to the Moon wasn't greed. It was fear, there was this fear that if a Soviet flag ended up there that we'd be speaking Russian on earth. This is also the reason that the new world was colonized. The Spanish went to beat the Portuguese. The French went to beat the Spanish. The English went to beat the French. China's wasn't afraid of invasion by sea, so it spend it's money in inner Asia and along the Great Wall. The one example in which China did colonize (Taiwan) was because it was being used as a base first by the Dutch and then by Ming loyalists.

Some of this sounds sinister, and that's because it's going to take an strong basic emotional reason to colonize the solar system and strong basic emotions are dangerous. I think in order to colonize space we need some sort of "race". I'm not too particular if it gets done by a national government or which national government or by corporations.

 

[Chronos]

Economics are always an issue. The US was certain they could beat the russians to the moon because they could afford it, and expected to profit from the political fallout. While it is hard to quantify that kind of benefit, the US has undeniably enjoyed an enormous brain trade surplus over the years as a consequence. The benefits of a manned mission to Mars are less certain, and far pricier. Erecting a permanent moon base would easily be the most logical first step. Asteroid mining from a moon base could actually be profitable.

 

[sophiecentaur]

The US spent $1+ trillion dollars to get bin-Laden. If there was credible reason to think that bin-Laden was on Mars, no one would have blinked at spending any amount of money to get him.

Unfortunately, that involved a hideous war against Iraq, which guaranteed (as I see it) that the Republicans would be out in the cold for some while. If it hadn't been for the triumph of faith over sense (Bush's, that is) and for Tony Blair's joining in with unwarranted support the war wouldn't have taken place. And, any way, the timescale was very short compared with what would be required for major space projects. I can't see popular support having enough momentum to sustain the sort of expenditure (orders of magnitude more than BL cost) that major manned space exploration would involve.

I have to agree that space exploration pipe dreams are great fun - as with any proposal that starts with "imagine you had as much money as you needed". . . .. One could envisage a sufficient non-political incentive, I suppose. If SETI produced some positive results it could change the whole perspective. Shame of it would be that third world people would get an even smaller share of the pie. But that's a separate issue which weighs differently for different people.

 

[twofish-quant]

Erecting a permanent moon base would easily be the most logical first step. Asteroid mining from a moon base could actually be profitable.

The problem with mining asteroids isn't the cost but the risk. Oil and mining companies routinely spend several billion dollars in oil wells and mines. The numbers I've seen for robotic mining of asteroids (i.e. tens of billions) are things that you could get private investment for *if* those numbers were firm. The problem with asteroid mining is that there isn't the track record that oil wells or chip factories have, so you can't even give investors firm numbers.

The other problem is that you not only have to be profitable, you have to show a higher profit/risk than the other alternatives. There's also the problem that you have a moving target. Suppose we develop the ability to robotically mine asteroids making it profitable. It's likely that you can use that technology to mine stuff on Earth much more cheaply. Once you do that then the Earth gets flooded with cheap robot mined materials and then this causes commodity prices to drop making your venture.

 

[Chronos]

A permanent moon base would require large amounts of raw materials. The cost of importing them from Earth would make harvesting asteroids a logical option.