September 1st, 2006
NASA needs astronauts - apply here
Thought I’d take a detour from discussions about god to Space exploration, just because I’m enjoying staying (mostly) off-topic this week. It wasn’t my intention that the talkbacks to my last post would take such a theological bent, but so what? The discussion was interesting, and special thanks to P. Douglas for single-handedly fending off hordes of godless geeks.
Lockheed Martin recently won in its bid to create a replacement for the aging space shuttle. This is probably a good thing, because of the handful of space shuttles created for NASA’s use, two have been destroyed - with all hands lost - in frightening mishaps. The Shuttles are error-prone, expensive to fly, and barely qualify as "reusable vehicles" by which to carry astronauts into Space.
But, Space exploration is incomprehensibly cool, so says any self-respecting geek, and therefore, I should be giving a hearty "two thumbs up" to the future of NASA?
Actually, no, and not because I don’t think NASA serves a useful purpose. NASA does a great job when it pursues scientific goals. The Mars landers are generating stacks of useful scientific information. The missions to Saturn, to Jupiter, or any of the other robot ships we send into Space provide us lots of information that will help mankind as we reach beyond our watery world "into the beyond" (wherever that is).
Robots, however, are different than the glamour-fest that is a NASA-funded manned mission into Outer Space.
Don’t get me wrong. I WANT humans to go into Space. If there were an orbiting space hotel that cost $10,000 a night per room, I would spend the next ten years saving up 10,000 dollars a year so that I could spend 10 days gazing out on the blue orb that is the planet Earth and glorying in the sheer inconsequentiality of my existence given the scale of this Big Bad Universe we live in.
I desperately want to go into Space. NASA, however, isn’t going to be the one to help me do it. That honor falls to companies like Mojave Aerospace Ventures, maker of Space Ship One and winner of the Ansari X-Prize as the developer of the first private manned spacecraft to exceed an altitude of 328,000 feet, or Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s joint venture with Mojave Aerospace Ventures to create a fleet of ships that can take passengers into low-earth orbit, and eventually, beyond.
Granted, not a lot of science will come from a bunch of guys going for one hell of a bachelor party, but that’s the point. We no longer get any real scientific value from putting people into Space.
The Apollo Space Program was useful. There was lots of scientific inquiry associated with figuring out how to get people to escape the earth’s gravity, survive in a vacuum and avoid burning up on re-entry, science that will be useful to companies such as Mojave Aerospace Ventures. That science, however, is largely complete. Time to let free industry figure out the rest and do what it does best, which is find ways to cost effectively send people into Outer Space (well, that’s not the ONLY thing it does…but you know what I mean).
NASA would get a lot more bang for our tax dollars if it concentrated on sending more robots to explore our solar system (and beyond), or created new telescopes so we can gaze with ever more clarity at our incredible universe. Basically, NASA should concentrate on the useful things private industry is not likely to spend the money to do.
NASA sending people into outer space is highly expensive fluff. That article on MSNBC noted that some outside observers estimate that the cost of the development of the Shuttle replacement could balloon to $18 billion, a figure probably based on our government’s past success at controlling cost overruns. That money could build a heck of a lot of exploration robots, or a super-telescope capable of providing details of planets around other stars. Granted, it doesn’t make for the same kind of photo opportunities, but that shouldn’t be NASA’s goal.
John Carroll has delivered his opinion on ZDNet since the last millennium. Since May 2008, he is no longer a Microsoft employee. He is currently working at a unified messaging-related startup. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 09/01/06
