It is also interesting that at after an initial goal directed period (getting to the moon), at some point one of the main missions of NASA seemed to become avoiding killing anyone.
If some science could be done, that is a bonus of minor consequence. (Can someone point me to the landmark papers that were produced as a result of experiments that took place on the space station? http://phys.org/news/2014-01-critics-international-space-station-science.html ) Private industry could get thousands of volunteers for a one way mission to Mars, whereas that was the sort of thing that NASA could not even publicly contemplate. http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0910/More-than-200-000-people-apply-for-a-one-way-trip-to-Mars Sometimes, avoiding risk of doing damage means avoiding doing something good. _______________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 [email protected] http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira Assistant: Dawn Ross <[email protected]> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Stephen Romaniello <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi All, > > I'm new to this list, but I find Andrew's comment provocative and > interesting. I share Andrew's frustration but also feel for people insulted > by Andrew's impatience with the pace of discussion. > > I would point to the recent evolution of private manned space flight as a > case study. One could imagine the years of discussions that could going > into drafting the rules governing private manned space programs and space > ports--indeed, they've been simmering in the background for several > decades. However, it was amazing how quickly all that fell into place once > SpaceX had a vehicle ready to launch. Soon, an absurd number of local > municipalities throughout the southwest US were struggling to license and > build "spaceports" as fast as possible. The overall narrative is relevant > for geoengineering. > > I agree with Andrew's assessment that little serious progress, or at least > rapid breakthroughs, will be made in the governance of geoengineering until > someone commits to building serious hardware. It will take a private > benefactor, ambitious cooperation, or the leader of a major country to > stand up and say, "OK, we're building this." Only then will real discussion > occur and decisions have to be made. I appreciate the role of policy pieces > in orientating that discussion and paving the road for this to happen. > However, the way this usually works is that someone invents and builds a > brand new piece of controversial new technology, and once introduced, we > struggle to come up with regulations for it. While the scale of > geoengineering is vastly different, I anticipate the narrative will be > largely the same. > > I think we're waiting for the breakthrough moment when someone decides to > move ahead. Maybe Andrew and I are longing for the good ole' days in 1859 > Pennsylvania when you could just drill the world's first commercial oil > well--no environmental analysis required. We survived that, didn't we? > > Cheers, > > Steve Romaniello > > Research Scientist > School of Earth Space Exploration > Arizona State University > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "geoengineering" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
