Space-mad businessman announces manned trip to Mars
http://www.tgdaily.com/space-brief/69814-space-mad-businessman-announces-manned-trip-to-mars
I complain about what I feel are idiotic efforts to do space exploration (for example) because I feel it does a gross disservice to those who are seriously interested. When people announce such things they get lots of free press, yes, but that press causes a lot of people to firm up opinions. Any rational person (yes, I know that those people are in short supply) would immediately ask what value spending all that money just to get a flyby. Irrational people might get all excited about the prospects and develop unrealistic ideas about the cost and value of human space travel, or conversely, sour on the whole idea because of the fantastic risk and miniscule reward.
I agree that a permanent manned (or womanned) colony on the moon or mars is a valuable learning step that will likely have dramatic scientific impacts (much like the lunar landings) because humans can quickly create/modify tools to do things that would likely take yet another probe to find out, all potentially in as little as minutes. Such a colony would have to have way more than a couple of people to be viable (dozens, likely, possibly even hundreds, not to mention completely self sufficient) and would represent a huge investment that would likely not be paid back for decades, likely longer. Naturally such a long-term investment is out of the question when it comes to the US govt, it can’t even agree on something that is critical to our economy and just days away. Other governments (China leaps to mind) might see the long-term value and cover the expense. However, I am not a fan of governments paying for such things. I have talked a bit about private funding and would love to see that gain some momentum, but I fear that a few individuals with an agenda will pollute such an effort. I think that there is a huge untapped set of resources available to whoever is smart enough to use it, I just don’t feel I have the charisma to do so myself or I might pursue it (I am also a control freak so am not sure I could manage it for the greatest good).
As you know, I am not a fan of short-term GGGN. Space exploration is long-term and fills my bill. Stopping after the moon shots is one of the dumbest things we ever did (in my book the space station doesn’t really count for much).
Now we are educating our kids so that the capability is disappearing. The first casualty is the U.S. as a power and the second is the world, as a whole.
I suspect that the China and India will pick up the slack. The US is due for a long slide into oblivion unless radical changes are made (indeed, I am firmly convinced we started that slide decades ago but the speed is increasing at an increasing rate).
I agree that stopping after the moon shot was a big mistake. However, we got really _really_ lucky that we had so few disasters in that program (imagine if the capsule fire had happened on the moon!). Had we continued apace we would have had a lot more Challenger and Columbia disasters. The raw economics make human space exploration a bad deal, but then again, bailing out Wall Street after destroying our economy probably would have paid for several trips too and from Mars and at least society would have something to show for it.
We need to make space exploration more democratic and make room for entrepreneurs, but I am not sure how to do so when there is little besides telecommunications to pay for the work. I would love to see an open, public process where the inventive ideas of anyone could be considered for funding and not always the same old gray gatekeepers. Perhaps in China it will happen, I just don’t see it happening here any longer.
Consider the deaths due to any exploration: Antarctica, test pilots, undersea, you name it. Compare it to the deaths due to, say, rampant stupidity. It is the nature of the beast.
_I_ don’t have any problems with people dying, but humans as a group tend to get hot and bothered by it. What I object to is the ‘tossing away’ of a $4 billion shuttle because engineers can’t convince management that just because something worked last time doesn’t mean it will work this time. In all cases I prefer something simple, cheap and disposable (people or not) so that _when_ there is a failure the economic cost doesn’t kill the program (as almost happened each time a shuttle was lost).
Besides, many of these sorts of explorers attach essentially no cost to their life risk. I expect that in many cases it is that risk which is attracting them! We need a program that allows them to risk their lives more often, but for a whole lot less money.
Humans as a group get hot and bothered about all the wrong things, like little boys roughhousing or playing cowboys and aborigines or other people using the wrong synonym instead of an euphemism. Maybe I’ll croak before we get all the way down the toilet, maybe not.