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The Urge to Explore



 
 
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  #11  
Old June 9th 05, 02:31 PM
William December Starr
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In article .com,
" said:

Incidentally, what-iffers may not be the only people interested in
BBC 7 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/drama/7thdimension.shtml -
re-running the radio serial dramatisation of Stephen Baxter's
_Voyage_ (again), next Mon-Fri. This is the one where a nuclear
Mars rocket programme is launched after President Kennedy opens
his damfool mouth during TV coverage of Apollo 11 and says they
should do that.


Robert or Edward? Or was John defeated in 1964, and then elected
again in 1968?

--
William December Starr

  #12  
Old June 9th 05, 02:33 PM
Mark Fergerson
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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.


Kindly keep your personal problems to yourself.

Psychologists agree that the drive to explore is a quintessential human
need.


That's part of your problem, listening to psychologists. The
drive to explore is a need common to _all_ life, as you cite below.

Most
adult explorers throughout time -- including many famous ones like
Meriwether Lewis and Marco Polo -- were motivated substantially by
these urges. Like Holocaust Denial, to deny these truths is not
"revisionism" -- it is outright Denial.


Careful, you're skirting Godwin's Law here.

The following is a great article from great minds -- real explorers. It
affirms the truths that the bigoted Dietzes and Cloughs of the world so
hatefully deny.

"Living systems cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They
explore or expire. The inner experience of this drive is curiosity and
awe-the sense of wonder. Exploration, evolution, and
self-transcendence are only different perspectives on the same
process."


First two sentences, fine. Remainder, philosophical beard-mumbling.

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.

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_.

There's an old SF short story along these lines; _The Cold
Equations_. Read it.

If you don't like that, fine, neither do I, but what I like and
don't like doesn't affect reality. But whining about being denied a
"sense of wonder" changes nothing until the technology advances.


Mark L. Fergerson

  #13  
Old June 9th 05, 02:43 PM
Andrew Gray
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On 2005-06-09, William December Starr wrote:
In article .com,
" said:

Incidentally, what-iffers may not be the only people interested in
BBC 7 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/drama/7thdimension.shtml -
re-running the radio serial dramatisation of Stephen Baxter's
_Voyage_ (again), next Mon-Fri. This is the one where a nuclear
Mars rocket programme is launched after President Kennedy opens
his damfool mouth during TV coverage of Apollo 11 and says they
should do that.


Robert or Edward? Or was John defeated in 1964, and then elected
again in 1968?


(Former) President John F. Kennedy, if my memory serves. Crippled but
not killed in Dallas, and presumably stands down in favour of Johnson;
the politics here aren't made clear. Regardless, by '69 he's in a
wheelchair and annoying the hell out of Nixon by stealing all the
reflected glory from Apollo...

--
-Andrew Gray

  #14  
Old June 9th 05, 02:53 PM
Werner Arend
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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.



Kindly keep your personal problems to yourself.

Psychologists agree that the drive to explore is a quintessential human
need.



That's part of your problem, listening to psychologists. The drive to
explore is a need common to _all_ life, as you cite below.

Most
adult explorers throughout time -- including many famous ones like
Meriwether Lewis and Marco Polo -- were motivated substantially by
these urges. Like Holocaust Denial, to deny these truths is not
"revisionism" -- it is outright Denial.



Careful, you're skirting Godwin's Law here.

The following is a great article from great minds -- real explorers. It
affirms the truths that the bigoted Dietzes and Cloughs of the world so
hatefully deny.

"Living systems cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They
explore or expire. The inner experience of this drive is curiosity and
awe-the sense of wonder. Exploration, evolution, and
self-transcendence are only different perspectives on the same
process."



First two sentences, fine. Remainder, philosophical beard-mumbling.

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.

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_.

There's an old SF short story along these lines; _The Cold Equations_.
Read it.

If you don't like that, fine, neither do I, but what I like and don't
like doesn't affect reality. But whining about being denied a "sense of
wonder" changes nothing until the technology advances.


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.

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.
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.
But I'm not convinced it will happen in my lifetime.

Werner




Mark L. Fergerson

  #15  
Old June 9th 05, 04:20 PM
Joe Strout
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Thanks for posting this, L. A great essay by a great explorer.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'
  #16  
Old June 9th 05, 04:28 PM
Robert Kolker
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L. Merk wrote:

ocean of light, to those worlds within worlds where the star-children
wait.


We can't get there from here. It is too far.

By the way the landings on the Moon have nore more long range import
than Lief Ericksohn making landfall in Newfoundland. What counts is long
term settlement, not leaving foot prints in a desolation.

The true frontier is not Out There but In Here. Finding out how are
brains really work so we can produce something that is -really-
intelligen. Our three pound globs of goo living between our ears have
limitations which we must overcome. If we do, then getting Out There
will be a side effect.

Bob Kolker

  #17  
Old June 9th 05, 04:33 PM
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You are missing the point.

Even if we stipulate that a manned mission to Mars is so cool that
cost is irrelevant, and that anyone who would disagree with you on
this point is mentally ill--

You're not going to convince anyone to fund such a venture by
insulting them. "Give me many trillions of dollars or you're an
autistic, defective, subhuman!" usually doesn't work, for some
reason.

PS 1: The stipulations are BIG assumptions. In particular, the
idea that only a mentally ill person could be deterred by the
high cost of a manned Mars expedition is...dubious.

PS 2: If you really feel this way, quit denouncing people as
mentally ill on Usenet, and go out and find some way to earn
the umpteen trillion dollars it'd take to get to Mars. IE, get
off your lazy butt and explore, instead of whining at people
on Usenet. (Yeah, cost suddenly becomes relevant when
you're thinking of spending your OWN money, doesn't it?)

  #18  
Old June 9th 05, 07:53 PM
Jeff Findley
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"Mark Fergerson" wrote in message
news:hyXpe.5626$6s.252@fed1read02...

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.

What's needed are new vehicles that bring launch costs down to a reasonable
multiple of the cost of fuel. We're a long way from that. Hopefully small
companies like Space-X will help the situation, because EELV's and shuttle
derived launch vehicles aren't going to lower launch costs.

There's an old SF short story along these lines; _The Cold
Equations_. Read it.


You're not doing much better than the original poster. Old sci-fi isn't
usually the best place to look for an explanation of why spaceflight is so
expensive.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.


  #19  
Old June 9th 05, 09:03 PM
Mark Fergerson
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Jeff Findley wrote:


"Mark Fergerson" wrote in message
news:hyXpe.5626$6s.252@fed1read02...

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.


I just love it when critics contradict themselves:

What's needed are new vehicles...


Did you not read what I wrote? Did you miss the part about "our
current level of technology"?

There's an old SF short story along these lines; _The Cold
Equations_. Read it.


You're not doing much better than the original poster. Old sci-fi isn't
usually the best place to look for an explanation of why spaceflight is so
expensive.


Ever actually read _The Cold Equations_?

Mark L. Fergerson

  #20  
Old June 9th 05, 10:37 PM
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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.

But the point about the fragility of human life and the "added extras"
necessary to keep a human alive in space for any length of time as
opposed to a robot probe is well-taken.

What's needed are new vehicles that bring launch costs down to a reasonable

multiple of the cost of fuel. We're a long way from that. Hopefully
small
companies like Space-X will help the situation, because EELV's and
shuttle
derived launch vehicles aren't going to lower launch costs.

True, but it will -always- be more expensive to keep humans alive in
space than to send robots - drop the price to orbit, you make robots
cheaper to send too. There would have to be a profitable reason that
humans -have- to be there to make it worth sending humans up. Can't
think off hand of anything humans can do in space that a probe can't do
better, and at -zero- risk to human life.

For example, think of how many times more expensive it would have been
to send a manned probe to Titan as opposed to what we did do, send an
unmanned probe. That multiplier effect is going to stay in place no
matter how low you get the price-to-space.

 




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