Space program ennui...
Steve Andrews
jor...@teleport.com writes:
> I will be the first to admit I don't understand the fascination
> with the space program. Oh sure I read all the history of Apollo and
> Mercury when I was a kid, but come on! I was born August 21 1969, 1
month
> and 1 day after men walked on the moon and a couple of days after
> Woodstock, the space program was a fact of life when I was growing up
and
> about as exciting as the concorde.
In a way, it should be so routine that it bores most people. We don't
get too excited when an airplane takes off, for example.
> When the shuttle blew up every body freaked out while my reaction
> was (and still is) do you know how lucky they are they didn't have an
> accident before now? Nobody remembers the Mercury astronauts who were
> burned alive when their oxygen atmosphere ignited, but the shuttle
blows
> and it's a national tragedy?
It was three Apollo astonauts (proving your own point, maybe?). It did
shut down manned spaceflight for a while, and probably was considered a
national tragedy at the time (I was too young to remember any of it). I
think the difference is that the shuttle was sold as an operational, safe
launch vehicle. The Challenger made news the same way an airplane crash
makes news, especially with the "Teacher in Space" program generating all
kinds of media attention.
> I look at the shuttle missions nowadays ("yet another batch of mice,
> green algae and oysters were shot into space today...") and think "Hey,
> didn't they already DO that one?" The space program has become as
> stagnant as standing water and I think we should either start doing
> something INTERESTING with it and our tax money (Mars anyone?) or scrap
> it all together.
>
> - Jordan
> jor...@teleport.com
In some ways, yeah, we have already done that. But some sort of basic
research on long-duration human spaceflight is needed before we go to
Mars. Perhaps the question isn't necessarily what we're doing, but the
way we're doing it (too slow, too expensive, etc.). I'd still rather
spend money on our space program than on some entitlement sinkhole.
Steve A.
Micky DuPree
>In article <30dqrb$h...@elaine.teleport.com> Jordan C. Lund,
>jor...@teleport.com writes:
>> I will be the first to admit I don't understand the fascination
>> with the space program. Oh sure I read all the history of Apollo and
>> Mercury when I was a kid, but come on! I was born August 21 1969, 1
>month
>> and 1 day after men walked on the moon and a couple of days after
>> Woodstock, the space program was a fact of life when I was growing up
>and
>> about as exciting as the concorde.
>In a way, it should be so routine that it bores most people. We don't
>get too excited when an airplane takes off, for example.
I find myself agreeing with you a lot. As I recall it (my memory may
be fuzzy here), the shuttle missions were promoted mostly on the basis
of basic research and development as a forerunner to commercial
exploitation of the space environment. That's not really a "sexy"
media story, so they kept gimmicking it up. Why should NASA *have* to
turn basic research into a hot drama? It's really not everyone's cup
of tea.
>> When the shuttle blew up every body freaked out while my reaction
>> was (and still is) do you know how lucky they are they didn't have an
>> accident before now? Nobody remembers the Mercury astronauts who were
>> burned alive when their oxygen atmosphere ignited, but the shuttle
>blows
>> and it's a national tragedy?
>It was three Apollo astonauts (proving your own point, maybe?). It did
>shut down manned spaceflight for a while, and probably was considered a
>national tragedy at the time (I was too young to remember any of it).
Yes, Apollo One was considered a national tragedy at the time, to a
certain extent, although the masses and the media alike were still
focused enough and unquestioning enough that it didn't create the
same kind of scandal about mismanagement and bad engineering that the
Challenger explosion did. I remember the mood of the time as one of
redoubling efforts, not canceling the space program. This mood,
obviously, has changed.
>I
>think the difference is that the shuttle was sold as an operational, safe
>launch vehicle. The Challenger made news the same way an airplane crash
>makes news, especially with the "Teacher in Space" program generating all
>kinds of media attention.
Right, except that it wasn't a passenger flight, and any feeling that it
was strikes me as misguided NASA PR coming back to haunt them. I don't
think most Americans identified with the three Apollo One astronauts who
died. They were promoted as members of an elite group flying dangerous
missions. By contrast, the "Teacher in Space" was supposed to be just
like the "rest of us."
I remember feeling down about Challenger, but I regarded it as NASA's
equivalent of an industrial accident. You don't shut down whole
industries after a disaster. You get to the heart of the problem and
fix it. But no, what a technophobic backwash there was in those days.
>> I look at the shuttle missions nowadays ("yet another batch of mice,
>> green algae and oysters were shot into space today...") and think "Hey,
>> didn't they already DO that one?" The space program has become as
>> stagnant as standing water and I think we should either start doing
>> something INTERESTING with it and our tax money (Mars anyone?) or scrap
>> it all together.
That's what I meant about basic research not being "sexy." The
American public has come to feel that the space program exists as
a grand form of entertainment, and NASA has therefore become
fixated on its ratings above all else.
-Micky
Peter Dubuque
>I find myself agreeing with you a lot. As I recall it (my memory may
>be fuzzy here), the shuttle missions were promoted mostly on the basis
>of basic research and development as a forerunner to commercial
>exploitation of the space environment. That's not really a "sexy"
>media story, so they kept gimmicking it up. Why should NASA *have* to
>turn basic research into a hot drama? It's really not everyone's cup
>of tea.
Simple. Big Science is very very expensive, and the voters get agitated
if they don't think they're getting anything out of it. Heck, I know
that back when the shuttle mission to repair the Hubble telescope took
place, I was *furious* when I kept reading newspaper articles about how
much clearer everything looked, and they didn't even show a single
photograph. "Well, they're not that impressive unless you know what
you're looking at" seemed to be the response. Fine. But if my tax
dollars are going to fund research like this, I *want* to be impressed.
>That's what I meant about basic research not being "sexy." The
>American public has come to feel that the space program exists as
>a grand form of entertainment, and NASA has therefore become
>fixated on its ratings above all else.
But if people are paying tens of billions of dollars in taxes every year
to fund that research, at some point there should be some tangible benefit
commensurate with that.
Entertainment value *is* important, and can help offset a
lack of economic improvement as a direct result of the research. The
Apollo missions to the moon really *didn't* produce all that many
economic benefits in terms of new commercial products or methods of
production, considering the cost the project incurred--but they *did*
provide the moral benefit of a common national purpose, a feeling of
shared discovery.
This is lacking from most of today's big science projects. Look at the late
SSC project, for example. Despite Tribe's musical attempt to glamorize it,
the average person would view it as extremely un-sexy. I freely admit
that I'm hardly an expert in quantum mechanics, but it seems to me that
it is of very little significance to our daily lives what conditions in the
universe were like 1x10^(-40) seconds after the Big Bang. I could
certainly be wrong about this, and if scientists think it would provide
important insight into developing things like relatively high-temperature
superconductivity or workable fusion reactors, then the research would
clearly be of benefit to all humanity. But if the only outcome is merely
validating a small group of scientists' theories about top quarks or
proton decay or whatnot--theories the average person doesn't have a hope of
comprehending--then the value of the research is *not* commensurate with
the cost. The project was axed (and IMHO rightly so) because those
lobbying for it couldn't make a good enough case to indicate that the
former would be true rather than the latter. Pure research & discovery
may have some intrinsic value, but that value is not infinite...and when
you've accumulated a $5 trillion dollar debt, it's all the more important
for you to show some financial return on your investment.
BTW, what ever happened to Apollo 2-7 and 9?
--
/=/ Peter F. Dubuque \=\
\=\ dub...@husc.harvard.edu \=\
\=\ self-proclaimed enemy of reason /=/
Michael Robert Williams
Timothy J. Kordas <t...@nostromo.eeap.cwru.edu> wrote:
>Jordan C. Lund (jor...@teleport.com) wrote:
>
>:
>: When the shuttle blew up every body freaked out while my reaction
>: accident before now? Nobody remembers the Mercury astronauts who were
Apollo 1
They were Virgil Grissom, Edward White and
Roger Chaffee
>: burned alive when their oxygen atmosphere ignited, but the shuttle blows
>
>7 people...
>
>...doesn't the figure go something like "every second 2 people die"
>something like that ?...so that means that in the time it took to
>read this post nearly 5 TIMES the number of people that were killed
>by the Challenger have died somewhere.
The reason that "so much" was made if the deaths of the Challenger
astronauts was the fact that they *WERE* astronauts (plus a teacher).
Astronaust are national heros, get ticker-tape parades, are interviewed
in TIME, et cetera. Test pilots flew the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft,
and, as we all know, test pilots are expendable. Someone (can't remember
who) said that the difference between astronauts and test pilots is that
if an astronaut is killed, there's a national day of mourning and the
space program grinds to a halt. If a test pilot is killed, you name a
street after him at Edwards Airforce Base and keep flying. Cynical I know,
but it's pretty much true.
--
In Real Life: Mike Williams | Aerospace Engineer--
e-mail : mr...@virginia.edu| Will build space station for food.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If you ever have a world of your own, plan ahead-- don't eat it." ST:TNG
Christopher Story
Whoa, whoa!
Sorry ... I don't get the distinction between 'astronauts' and
'test pilots'. Right up until now, at least as far as the
shuttle commander and pilot are concerned, nearly every
astronaut has been a test pilot. It's only been with the advent
of the shuttle that the Mission and Payload specialist has really
come into existence.
Test pilots are expendable? Sorry, don't get that either. True .. Test pilots
are highly trained, highly disiplined people who are used to taking risks.
Does this make them expendable? Not to me, anyway.
Regardless of whaterver criticism one wishes to level at NASA, the
astronauts remain (for myself, anyway) a source of admiration and respect.
They are intelligent, skilled pilots and scientists doing difficult and
risky jobs.
BTW, in both accidents involving the American space program (Apollo 1, and
Challenger), the flights were suspended not because of a sudden
wave of technophobia and paralysis - but because the post-accident
investigation revealed serious and flaws in the design and safety
of the spacecraft which needed to be fixed before flights could
safely resume. Not at all unlike the grounding of DC-10s following
the Chicago O'Hare crash several years ago.
-------
Chris Story
email : cst...@bnr.ca
Disclaimer : I speak for myself, not for BNR. I also dress myself, comb
my own hair and brush my own teeth. The folks are so proud!