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While my note was only an attempt to suggest (as
humorously as possible) why public financing for space is stuck in a holding
pattern, Sean brings up a number of points in response.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing new in
what he proposes.
Paraphrasing:
"We need to colonize space for long-term human
survival." Even if long term ecological catastrophe were definitely in the
offing, selling space as a way to address it hasnt gotten us very far, and for
good reason. It's rather like pointing out that buses on steep, crumbling
Mexican mountain roads freqently suffer from lethal rollover accidents and
THEREFORE, each bus should be equipped with an untested fighter-jet ejection
seat. Well, the questions almost force themselves on you, don't
they? First, who gets to sit in the ejection seat? Second who would
WANT to sit in it? We simply don't know what kind of people will pay huge
amounts of money to go live in space in conditions of considerable
privation, at least initially. And we don't know what kind of message any
such immigration would send to the poor people here on earth, except this: "they
must be leaving because they are abandoning us to a fate even worse than
hermetically-sealed environments in a radiation-saturated vacuum."
"Government won't do it - therefore private industry
is the only way." I would agree with this except for one thing: you have
to prove a market that justifies the staggering expense. You have to
squeeze out almost all technical risk AND bring the costs down. Lower
costs and lower risks tend not to go hand in hand. Economies of scale
would come with a proven market. Nobody has proven a market.
"We need to reduce launch costs." Yes,
absolutely. However, sheer volume would help do this, but where's the
market big enough?
"We need to make use of asteroids." I agree,
but again, just bootstrapping space industrialization is a huge investment, with
huge technical risks, and uncertain payback.
Sean says: "In the
meantime, just about everything else space-related is a worthwhile
undertaking because it involves solving similar problems and hence making some
incremental technological progress."
Actually, in some
areas, incremental technological progress is the enemy. They can keep
making improvements to the Shuttle, for example. Liquid flyback boosters
to replace the solid-fuel rockets. Reducing its weight. Improving
the safety margins. But if you keep improving something whose basic design
is wrong, you're actually going backward in ways that matter - you're getting
ever more deeply committed to a non-solution.
There are days when I
honestly believe that governments should get out of the manned space travel
business entirely. And that may yet happen on its own. The current
spacefaring nations - China included - all face the same fiscal pressures in the
next few decades, most of them related to an aging population. Manned
space programs, even though they are a small sliver of the tax bite, are
conspicuous in their consumption of national wealth - wealth which is better
spent on supporting retirees (at least from the point of view of retirees, who
tend to vote more regularly.) In democracies, it's all a matter of voter
perceptions.
On the other hand,
some unusually well-heeled retirees may wish to go boldly where no retiree has
gone before. At least for a little while. And that might be
enough.
-michael
turner
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 12:24
AM
Subject: RE: SETI bioastro: SETI call
to arms, international debate
Michael,
I strongly suspect were not going to get
far enough, fast enough, depending on government funding. We need to
focus on making space colonization enormously profitable for private industry
and convincing private industry that the profit potential is worth the initial
investment. That's how it will really take off, if you'll pardon the
pun.
It seems to me that the most
important things to focus on to move in this direction are (1) reducing
the cost of lifting payloads into orbit, however we can do that, and (2)
developing the technologies necessary for moving and mining asteroids.
(The latter also has the side benefit of offering protection from
collisions.)
In the meantime, just about everything
else space-related is a worthwhile undertaking because it involves
solving similar problems and hence making some incremental technological
progress. Certain missions also have the potential to accelerate the
process by increasing public interest if they produce good results (especially
if we were to find life on Europa, for instance). Such missions are, of
course, also valuable for their own sake--but we should keep our vision fixed
on the long-term goal so as to keep our priorities straight. No amount
of pure science is more important than human survival, which for several
reasons greatly depends on us not having all our eggs in one ecological basket
for too much longer.
-Sean McCutcheon
Ron Sirull's either-or logic -- i.e., that
people shouldn't waste money on Martian microbe-hunting when we could
find intelligent life with SETI gear on the Lunar farside -- is a bit
regrettable. As he says
".... sustainability of funding has continually
been cited by the President's own Commission as the Moon, Mars, etc.
plan's greatest threat."
but the problem is that sustainability of funding
is mainly threatened by the American public's gross overestimate of how much
of the federal budget goes into the NASA. People think it's on the
order of 15-20% of discretionary spending, when it's actually far less than
that.
Actually, the problem is a little subtler than
this. Many years ago, in the early years of microcomputers, a
programmer friend of mine and his MD colleague put together a computer
system for hospitals. It was ridiculously cheap compared to systems of
comparable functionality. But they hardly sold any. Why
not? Because as a purchase, the price was too low. It
wasn't a big-ticket item, like a CAT scanner, or an
IBM 370 mainframe for billing. Awareness of the value of the
system didn't reach up to the level where hospital equipment procurement
people made decisions about anything strategic.
In a funny way, the American space program, as
wasteful as it is, is still just too cheap. Wanna see how this
works? No? Somewhat like the making of sausage, I agree.
But let's follow the fat and the gristle, the whole butchering and rendering
process ....
Let's say you're president. And you want to
get your space thang on. An advisor tells you that the American public
is lukewarm about it. Why? Some voters are just die-hard
stick-in-the-muds. But most voters are worried about the
added expense.
"OK", you say (remember, you're president), "I'll
just go up there with a pie-chart showing how little it will cost.
Just this thin little sliver of the pie...
"No no no!" cry your close advisors. "If you do a
whole speech, or even a major part of a speech, about such a tiny sliver of
the budget, it will make you look like you're micromanaging, not paying
attention to the bigger picture, the more important concerns - like Social
Security going bust. You'll be President Moonbeam. It's
political suicide."
"So what should I do?" you ask.
"Just offer to give NASA a cost-of-living
increase and call it a major boost in funding for a grand mission. If
Congress shoots it down, *then* you can talk about how the *increase* was
just a thin sliver of the overall pie, and how petty and
partisan your opponents are, how tired, how blinkered, how lacking in
vision."
"Where's that going to get us in
space?"
"Nowhere very fast, but over time
..."
"Look - give me a strategy that will really
get the ball rolling, will you?" you insist, "I want to see something happen
before I'm wearing diapers again!"
"OK," says your space advisor, seizing the
moment, "Well, if you'll remember my presentation last fall? You know,
the one we got a whole 3 minutes into before being
interrupted--"
"Mr. President!" says an aide, bursting into the
Oval Office holding a cordless phone. "It's Bremer! He's saying
Ahmad Chalabi has been spying for the Iranians all this time! You
gotta take this call ..."
You slump forward in defeat. You dismiss
your space advisor. You take the call.
-michael turner
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, June 07, 2004 1:51
AM
Subject: Fw: SETI bioastro: SETI
call to arms, international debate
----- Original Message
-----
Sent: Sunday, June 06, 2004 12:46 PM
Subject: SETI bioastro: SETI call to arms, international
debate
Very interesting proposal in SETI League
editorial: "Fellow SETI enthusiasts: We are missing the boat on
President Bush's new "Moon, Mars and Beyond" program! This
editorial is nothing less than a call to arms, metaphorically
speaking. Instead of using the Moon as just a "stepping stone to
Mars", as the US President's proposal has outlined, a lunar farside
SETI facility (radio astronomy dishes linked like the Allen-array
network, and an optical cluster there as well for the Laser SETI
Searchers) offers as its reward the possible detection of a Galactic
Internet, not merely the frozen/fossilized microbes likely to be found
on Mars." Moon Yes, Mars No! by Ron Sirull http://www.setileague.org/editor/moonyes.htmSee
also Astronomers plan telescope on Moon New Scientist interview
Claudio Maccone http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991735and EuroSETI04
Science and Technology Workshop http://www.setileague.org/photos/euro2004.htmComments? Clear
skies from NW Italy! ;-) Bruno Moretti Cicognola Astronomical
Observatory & IK2WQA Ham Radio Station 45°43'28"N 8°36'35"E QTH
Locator: JN45HR http://www.iaragroup.org/http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/ap/team_display.php?teamid=8http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_7422.html
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