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Werner Arend wrote:
Mark Fergerson wrote: L. Merk wrote: Paul Dietz, John Ordover, Brenda Clough and other Exploration Deniers claim that humanity has no urge to explore. However, they are insular nobodies attempting to project their own inner death upon humankind. larger snip What you absolutely refuse to accept is that for the exploring organism to continue to survive, there must be a return on the effort invested in the exploration _greater than the investment_. Exploration occurs to acquire resources. If an organism expends more resources than it gets back in any situation including exploration, the organism dies. There's another factor, too - not cost compared with return, but cost compared to collective income. If it cost $1000, almost every space enthusiast could and probably would finance an expedition. If it cost $1000000, a few wealthy idealists would do it. If it cost 100 million, there might be a mad billionaire with more money than sense who does it - but since it costs many billions, it would need a collective effort. And collective efforts only happen if there is some hope of a nice return. That return need not be money, but the public must be convinced it's worth it. Sure. In a shirtsleeve environment like Earth's surface (for sufficient values of "shirtsleeve") you can slap together a coracle of plant and animal parts and discover an entire continent if you're lucky. The ROI exceeds mere exponentiality. OTOH getting to NEO costs considerably more than just getting sixty-some miles up and back. There have been idealists, dreamers, enthusiasts of any kind in the past who followed their curiosity to unknown places, although most expeditions in the age of exploration were motivated by a desire for gold that was quite unhealthy in its obsessiveness, and not at all spiritual or even revitalizing. Well, let's discuss what we mean by "revitalizing". The OP appears to use it to mean a pushing back of perceived boundaries, i. e. expanding the available "shirtsleeve" environment which still has practical "leibensraum" connotations. But the kind of enterprise you describe has historically meant revitalizing an entire economy by exploiting new resource bases on the behalf of the "parent" economy at the expense of the colony planted for the purpose of extracting the new resources; but the colony is not expected to become a thriving economy on its own hook, and if it shows signs of doing so, the "parent" sends soldiers to keep the resources flowing despite the fact that that strategy never works. But that's a peculiarly human thing; other lifeforms spread their progeny with no expectation of return beyond perpetuating their genes. In the age of exploration, idealism might have been enough. These days, it's not. Things are, as yet, too expensive. Kepler was one of the first who proposed building spaceships - that was in the late 16th century. 400+x years later we still can't live in space for extended periods of time, or even travel about it with a reasonable level of discomfort, which would be a prerequisite for the drive to explore to take hold. I'm convinced it will happen, eventually, if humanity survives - there's no other chance for long-term survival IMO. Well, perhaps in the "eggs in one basket" sense. But I'm not convinced it will happen in my lifetime. Sadly, I concur. Mark L. Fergerson |
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#33
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By the time it's affordable to go, we won't need to. That's the
optimistic outlook. The pessimistic one is: by the time we need to go, we won't be able to afford it. Doug |
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David Johnston wrote: On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 14:53:44 -0400, "Jeff Findley" wrote: At our current level of technology, any conceivable effort expended in human-presence space exploration simply won't return more than the investment because humans have to carry along with them bulky, complex, _expensive_ life-support hardware. Meanwhile, we look through bigger and better telescopes, send robotic avatars, etc. _because they don't need life-support hardware_. This is wrong. What's holding us back isn't the "mass of the life support hardware", but the high cost of launching *anything* into space. When costs are in the $10,000 per lb to LEO range, *everything* you launch costs a lot of money. So...how is it wrong? Well, we can send human crew and life-support into the deep ocean, although I think extended missions are military secrets or Irwin Allen movies or both... We should have been launching lighter astronauts to save money; women, midgets, amputees. People with slower metabolism. That's if we wanted a workforce up there rather than human political symbols. |
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wrote in message ups.com... We should have been launching lighter astronauts to save money; women, midgets, amputees. People with slower metabolism. That's if we wanted a workforce up there rather than human political symbols. You're not basing this argument on actual experience in space. Legs are useful things to have in zero gravity, as are arms. Women most certainly are astronauts today, so we've already crossed that bridge. As for people with slower metabolism being better, take a look at actual mass requirements for life support systems (food, water, O2, etc) and you'll be surprised at how little it really takes to keep someone alive. Again, the mass of life support equipment and consumables isn't the real problem. The high cost of getting anything into LEO is the real problem. Jeff -- Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address. |
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"Derek Lyons" wrote in message ... "Jeff Findley" wrote: The fact is that on exploration missions like Apollo, people did far more exploration and sample return than all of the unmanned missions combined. Which handwaves away the inconvenient fact that there isn't a real, organized, focused unmanned program to actually honestly compare Apollo to. At least on the American side of the house, the unmanned side existed almost solely as a support function of the manned program, any science produced was incidental and distinctly secondary. If unmanned vehicles really are cheaper and more capable, why don't we see the US Navy building unmanned submarines to replace existing submarines? An unmanned submarine could solve the "crush depth" problem by using nitrogen gas to pressurize the vehicle to a pressure equal to the water outside. I wonder what the endurance would be of an unmanned nuclear submarine, since you wouldn't have to surface to obtain consumables for the crew. Jeff -- Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address. |
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"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message ... Jeff Findley wrote: While this is true, the benefits of sending humans are far greater than sending "robots". Look at the lunar missions to date. We got back more and better scientific samples from the manned missions than all of the unmanned missions combined. However, the most important scientific data from the moon were isotope results, and that could have been obtained with sample return. Indeed, it could have been obtained with that samples that *were* returned by the Soviets. This is true, but it doesn't negate my point that it's hard to place an actual value on the more massive and varied sample returns we got from manned missions compared to the limited returns we got from the Soviet landers. This is one of the biggest reasons that the manned versus unmanned debate is a debate in the first place. You can't point to one as a clear winner in terms of the cost/benefit ratio. Jeff -- Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address. |
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Jeff Findley wrote:
"Derek Lyons" wrote in message ... "Jeff Findley" wrote: The fact is that on exploration missions like Apollo, people did far more exploration and sample return than all of the unmanned missions combined. Which handwaves away the inconvenient fact that there isn't a real, organized, focused unmanned program to actually honestly compare Apollo to. At least on the American side of the house, the unmanned side existed almost solely as a support function of the manned program, any science produced was incidental and distinctly secondary. If unmanned vehicles really are cheaper and more capable, why don't we see the US Navy building unmanned submarines to replace existing submarines? Because of the chain of responsibility involved in handling nuclear materials like reactors and bombs. That's why military pilots are always officers. An unmanned submarine could solve the "crush depth" problem by using nitrogen gas to pressurize the vehicle to a pressure equal to the water outside. I wonder what the endurance would be of an unmanned nuclear submarine, since you wouldn't have to surface to obtain consumables for the crew. Sure, but if the thing screws up, who's responsible; the officer who ordered the thing deployed, the techs who maintained it, the strategic think-tank that told the DOD it was a good idea, or all the above? How about the civilian contractors who built it and wrote its software (please, no M$oft jokes; it'd probably run on fifty-year-old FORTRAN)? Is the President ultimately responsible? If you were President, would _you_ sign off on an autonomous boomer? I sure as hell wouldn't. But this has nothing to do with humans in space (except for unmanned military missions, which the DOD constantly sweats about). For me, it still comes down to whether the return is worth the cost and so far it basically isn't. Mind you in theory I agree that humans are better at handling unforeseen problems than machines are or ever will be. Forty years ago I sorta daydreamed that today, I'd be retiring from a mining career on Mars. Then the US manned space program basically stopped, and I keep thinking I'm in some sort of awful alternate reality. I feel vaguely cheated, but I now have a better grasp of harsh realities than I did forty years ago. Mark L. Fergerson |
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"Mark Fergerson" wrote in message news:ecire.7$yW.5@fed1read02... Jeff Findley wrote: "Derek Lyons" wrote in message ... "Jeff Findley" wrote: The fact is that on exploration missions like Apollo, people did far more exploration and sample return than all of the unmanned missions combined. Which handwaves away the inconvenient fact that there isn't a real, organized, focused unmanned program to actually honestly compare Apollo to. At least on the American side of the house, the unmanned side existed almost solely as a support function of the manned program, any science produced was incidental and distinctly secondary. If unmanned vehicles really are cheaper and more capable, why don't we see the US Navy building unmanned submarines to replace existing submarines? Because of the chain of responsibility involved in handling nuclear materials like reactors and bombs. That's why military pilots are always officers. When we get to the point of building vehicles with big nuclear reactors and/or nuclear rocket engines to really explore the outer planets, we'll have the same issue with spacecraft. For me, it still comes down to whether the return is worth the cost and so far it basically isn't. Mind you in theory I agree that humans are better at handling unforeseen problems than machines are or ever will be. Forty years ago I sorta daydreamed that today, I'd be retiring from a mining career on Mars. Then the US manned space program basically stopped, and I keep thinking I'm in some sort of awful alternate reality. I feel vaguely cheated, but I now have a better grasp of harsh realities than I did forty years ago. Unfortunately the blank check funding for the US manned space program stopped a few years before the first moon landing and has never returned. Unfortunately, NASA has never seemed to realize that they must make due with less. Griffin seems to be making the same mistake. His vision for the US space program isn't going to be sustainable without large increases in funding, which I doubt NASA will ever get. The biggest problem facing NASA today isn't lack of "vision", it's the high cost of putting a pound of anything into LEO. NASA specific, shuttle derived, heavy lift launch vehicles aren't going to solve that problem anymore than the shuttle itself. Jeff -- Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address. |
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