[village-discuss] Obama and NASA

[Ora Uzel]

Many of you may have noticed that Obama yesterday was at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to pitch his new space plan.

The thing that strikes me the most is how American news outlets are portraying this solely in the light of jobs losses/creation, costs, and budgeted spending, often in a very negative light.  This is as opposed to European outlets, like BBC, that covered this talk in a more straightforward, unbiased, or slightly positive light.

Many opponents of his space plan are people who have been working for decades in what is now beginning to be an outdated spaceflight system.  I love the shuttles, and I'm against having gotten rid of them before implementing a new reusable vehicle program in place first, BUT they ARE very outdated.

Human spaceflight needs to go in new directions.  And I definitely think a huge amount of increased spending is due to NASA (there's plenty to take from DoD if you ask me), and at the same time, some aspects could be left to private companies which NASA would then contract when/if needed.

I also don't like the connotation that one worker who is about to loose his job of 38 years building solid rocket boosters in Utah that for some reason America needs to be a "leader" in space.  Space should be a human venture, not a national/international venture.  It's not about America leading the way.  But as one of the richer nations in the world, with a space program already in place, it behooves us to put spending that way.

I hate to see people lose jobs they've had for years, but industries need to evolve.  I applaud Obama's plan to spend extra money in re-integrating members of the space community into new jobs that will be created in new sectors of the space industry.

We cannot achieve a human presence in space without first being human to each other on Earth.

Links:

Obama Full Speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rNn_cUrlmE

BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8623691.stm

CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/15/obama.space/

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[Glenn Powers]

"The purpose of NASA is not to get humans into space, but to do as much
as possible to keep humans from getting into space."

Private industry is far better suited to the task. Why should Americans
pay $335 million to Russia to launch SIX Americans into space?
http://www.space.com/news/nasa-russia-astronaut-contract-100406.html

Other than "national pride" I see no reason that ANY Americans need to
go back into space. We have far better things to be spending our money
on: like roads!

The Russians, Japanese, etc. have talented astronauts who can do
whatever they need to up in space and let the world know how it goes.

Launching an experiment into orbit used to cost tens of millions of
dollars. Now, it costs $8,000:
http://www.interorbital.com/TubeSat_1.htm

NASA didn't do that. Private industry did. Admittedly, the Tubesats are
small. But, I could probably fund one with a Kickstarter(.com).

Cubesats cost about ten times as much, but are larger and several are on
orbit doing interesting things. Again, NASA didn't do that.

Virgin Galactic will soon fly you into space for $200,000. About 0.3% of
what NASA is paying the Russians. (Granted, docking with ISS is a more
expensive operation.)

For f*sake, NASA "lost" the original video from the moon landing!

I'm not against space exploration, I'm against wasting billions of tax
dollars.

cheers,
glenn

[Christopher Breedlove]

Humanity is doomed on an indefinite time-line.  Except perhaps, if we are able to leave the womb planet (or as bucky called it "spaceship earth").
Space holds unlimited resources.  Space holds unlimited room for expansion.  Space is the playground for (wo)men.

"Only in a universe of unlimited resources can all men be brothers."

-----

Here's some quotes about the importance of space travel, development, and science:

"Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds."
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."
Stephen Hawking, interview with Daily Telegraph, 2001

"Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving."
Gene Roddenberry, Planetary Report Vol. 1, 1981

"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in."
Robert Heinlein, speech

"Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die."
Robert Zubrin, Entering Space, 1999

"The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to space is worth the benefit. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not only for the reasons that are usually touted by the space community: the need to explore, the scientific return, and the possibility of commercial profit. The most compelling reason, a very long-term one, is the necessity of using space to protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity."
William E. Burrows, The Wall Street Journal, 2003

"In time, [a Martian] colony would grow to the point of being self- sustaining. When this stage was reached, humanity would have a precious insurance policy against catastrophe at home. During the next millennium there is a significant chance that civilization on Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid, a killer plague or a global war. A Martian colony could keep the flame of civilization and culture alive until Earth could be reverse- colonized from Mars."
Paul Davies, The New York Times, 2004

"We must turn our guns away from each other and outwards, to defend the Earth, creating a global and in space network of sensors and telescopes to find asteroids that could destroy our planet and create the systems to stop them. It makes no sense to dream great dreams while waiting to be hit by a train." Buzz Aldrin and Rick Tumlinson, Ad Astra Online, 2006

"There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?"
Isaac Asimov, speech at Rutgers University

"Knowing what we know now, we are being irresponsible in our failure to make the scientific and technical progress we will need for protecting our newly discovered severely threatened and probably endangered species--us. NASA is not about the 'Adventure of Human Space Exploration,' we are in the deadly serious business of saving the species. All Human Exploration's bottom line is about preserving our species over the long haul."
Astronaut John Young,"The Big Picture"

"Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival."
Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, Skylife, 2000

"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!"
Larry Niven, quoted by Arthur Clarke in interview
at space.com, 2001

"Colonization means potential immortality for the human genus. Man's safety on Earth was never great, and it dwindles hourly. Disarmament, even world government, will not guarantee survival in an age when population presses natural resources to the limit and when the knowledge of how to work mischief on a planetary scale is ever more widely diffused among peoples who may grow ever more desperate."
Poul Anderson, Is There Life on Other Worlds?, 1963

"I would not see our candle blown out in the wind. It is a small thing, this dear gift of life handed us mysteriously out of immensity. I would not have that gift expire... If I seem to be beating a dead horse again and again, I must protest: No! I am beating, again and again, living man to keep him awake and move his limbs and jump his mind... What's the use of looking at Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn't to guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever!"
Ray Bradbury, Mars and the Mind of Man, 1971

"If the human species, or indeed any part of the biosphere, is to continue to survive, it must eventually leave the Earth and colonize space. For the simple fact of the matter is, the planet Earth is doomed... Let us follow many environmentalists and regard the Earth as Gaia, the mother of all life (which indeed she is). Gaia, like all mothers, is not immortal. She is going to die. But her line of descent might be immortal... Gaia's children might never die out--provided they move into space. The Earth should be regarded as the womb of life--but one cannot remain in the womb forever."
Frank Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, 1994

"If humanity persists and endures, in time we will come face to face with the evolution of our sun. In a few billion years its slow brightening will speed up as it swells into a red giant. Earth will then be uninhabitable, as will the inner regions of the Solar System. Yet there will be other more clement stars to which our descendents may wish to migrate. Certainly a society that has developed space flight and space colonization will have the advantage of never thereafter having to stand hostage to fortune."
T. A. Heppenheimer, Toward Distant Suns, 1979

"If [the earth] goes, we go. And so we should go elsewhere, so that when the earth goes, we have another place to go. And while we're at it, we should take our pets and plants, too. We wouldn't want to be without them, just as they wouldn't want to be without us--even if they don't know it. It's our job to know things, and to act accordingly. And if we fail at that mission, then we really will have failed in upholding our end of the Burkean bargain--that is, partnering not only with the living and the dead, but with those who are yet to be born."
James Pinkerton, "The Ultimate Lifeboat," TCS Daily, 2006

"In the long run, a single-planet species will not survive. One day, I don't know when, but one day, there will be more humans living off the Earth than on it."
NASA director Mike Griffin, quoted in "Mars or Bust,"
Rolling Stone, 2006

"Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race."
Robert Heinlein, speech at World Science Fiction
Convention, 1961

"The most important fact of this century is not that Earth is threatened in many ways, It is that for the first time in all of its history a decisive means of protecting the home planet exists. It is by using space."
William E. Burrows, The Survival Imperative, 2006

[Glenn Powers]

I agree on the importance of space exploration. My objection to NASA is
how poorly they've done it.

We still have nearly unlimited resources on THIS PLANET. (Solar, Wind
(indirect solar) and Tidal power; Thorium reactors; etc)

We have more than a BILLION people on this planet who are STARVING
TODAY. If we can't solve this problem here, how are we going to do any
better in space?

Another issue I have with space exploration that I have found is that
many people use the idea as a way to escape dealing with the problems
all around us.

cheers,
glenn

Christopher Breedlove wrote:
> Humanity is doomed on an indefinite time-line. Except perhaps, if we
> are able to leave the womb planet (or as bucky called it "spaceship
> earth").
> Space holds unlimited resources. Space holds unlimited room for
> expansion. Space is the playground for (wo)men.
>

> "*Only in a universe of unlimited resources can all men be brothers."
> *

[John Stoner]

Yeah... I think it's time to move beyond the Von Braunian
(nationalistic, flag-planting) phase, into the O'Neillian, democratic
phase of the space adventure. It's not about sending a few select,
elite, highly trained experts into space. Fuck that. I want to go.

It's time to start to think about filling the heavens with our number.
And yes, private enterprise is a better mechanism to move us in that
direction. We need business to proliferate approaches to the problem
and master the basics: getting off Earth. You can't talk about 'best
of breed' when there are only a few players.

I love the direction Obama's going with this. You can debate his drug
policy, what he's done for gays, the health plan. But this he gets
right, like, dead on. NASA is for exploration and fostering new
technology. Getting off the rock needs to be someone else's job.

And as Heinlein also said, 'Get to low-Earth orbit and you're halfway
to anywhere in the solar system.' Once we master getting off the rock
and start driving down costs, things like going to Mars get much
easier.

I've often thought I want a space 747. What was the price of a flight
from LA to Tokyo in 2000? I want that cost and capacity for
earthlaunch by 2050. How many flights were there on that route that
year? How many seats? How much cargo? How reliable? If we could match
those metrics for earthlaunch, it would be revolutionary.

I think if we play it right, NASA rocket scientists will have no
problem getting jobs. They might have to adjust mentally, but
earthlaunch is a need, and if you can meet it, you have a valuable
skill.

The irony of opposition from Republicans is delicious: how can you
support the public option on space travel?

On Apr 16, 2:45 pm, Christopher Breedlove <cbreedl...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Humanity is doomed on an indefinite time-line.  Except perhaps, if we are
> able to leave the womb planet (or as bucky called it "spaceship earth").
> Space holds unlimited resources.  Space holds unlimited room for expansion.
> Space is the playground for (wo)men.
>

> "*Only in a universe of unlimited resources can all men be brothers."
>
> -----
>
> *Here's some quotes about the importance of space travel, development, and

> science:
>
> "Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by
> impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become
> spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most
> practical reason imaginable: staying alive... If our long-term survival is
> at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other
> worlds."

> Carl Sagan, *Pale Blue Dot,* 1994

>
> "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless
> we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a
> single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."

> Stephen Hawking, interview with *Daily Telegraph*, 2001

>
> "Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a
> human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing
> that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile
> ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn
> human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our
> only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of
> stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all
> chances of our evolving further or of even surviving."

> Gene Roddenberry, *Planetary Report Vol. 1*, 1981

>
> "The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep
> all its eggs in."

> Robert Heinlein, speech
>
> "Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species
> on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely
> fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our
> own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself.
> Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity
> on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both
> evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward:
> Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die."

> Robert Zubrin, *Entering Space*, 1999

>
> "The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to space is worth the
> benefit. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not only for the reasons that
> are usually touted by the space community: the need to explore, the
> scientific return, and the possibility of commercial profit. The most
> compelling reason, a very long-term one, is the necessity of using space to
> protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity."

> William E. Burrows, *The Wall Street Journal*, 2003

>
> "In time, [a Martian] colony would grow to the point of being self-
> sustaining. When this stage was reached, humanity would have a precious
> insurance policy against catastrophe at home. During the next millennium
> there is a significant chance that civilization on Earth will be destroyed
> by an asteroid, a killer plague or a global war. A Martian colony could keep
> the flame of civilization and culture alive until Earth could be reverse-
> colonized from Mars."

> Paul Davies, *The New York Times,* 2004

>
> "We must turn our guns away from each other and outwards, to defend the
> Earth, creating a global and in space network of sensors and telescopes to
> find asteroids that could destroy our planet and create the systems to stop
> them. It makes no sense to dream great dreams while waiting to be hit by a

> train." Buzz Aldrin and Rick Tumlinson, *Ad Astra Online*, 2006

>
> "There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and
> exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what
> is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to
> achieve for 50,000 years?"

> Isaac Asimov, speech at Rutgers University
>
> "Knowing what we know now, we are being irresponsible in our failure to make
> the scientific and technical progress we will need for protecting our newly
> discovered severely threatened and probably endangered species--us. NASA is
> not about the 'Adventure of Human Space Exploration,' we are in the deadly
> serious business of saving the species. All Human Exploration's bottom line
> is about preserving our species over the long haul."

> Astronaut John Young,"The Big Picture"
>
> "Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the
> question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary
> culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our
> history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if
> we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is
> worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is
> acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival."

> Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, *Skylife,* 2000

>
> "The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And
> if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us
> right!"

> Larry Niven, quoted by Arthur Clarke in interview

> at space.com, 2001
>
> "Colonization means potential immortality for the human genus. Man's safety
> on Earth was never great, and it dwindles hourly. Disarmament, even world
> government, will not guarantee survival in an age when population presses
> natural resources to the limit and when the knowledge of how to work
> mischief on a planetary scale is ever more widely diffused among peoples who
> may grow ever more desperate."

> Poul Anderson, *Is There Life on Other Worlds?,* 1963

>
> "I would not see our candle blown out in the wind. It is a small thing, this
> dear gift of life handed us mysteriously out of immensity. I would not have
> that gift expire... If I seem to be beating a dead horse again and again, I
> must protest: No! I am beating, again and again, living man to keep him
> awake and move his limbs and jump his mind... What's the use of looking at
> Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn't to
> guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever!"

> Ray Bradbury, *Mars and the Mind of Man,* 1971

>
> "If the human species, or indeed any part of the biosphere, is to continue
> to survive, it must eventually leave the Earth and colonize space. For the
> simple fact of the matter is, the planet Earth is doomed... Let us follow

> many environmentalists and regard the Earth as *Gaia,* the mother of all

> life (which indeed she is). Gaia, like all mothers, is not immortal. She is

> going to die. But her line of descent *might* be immortal... Gaia's children

> might never die out--provided they move into space. The Earth should be
> regarded as the womb of life--but one cannot remain in the womb forever."

> Frank Tipler, *The Physics of Immortality, * 1994

>
> "If humanity persists and endures, in time we will come face to face with
> the evolution of our sun. In a few billion years its slow brightening will
> speed up as it swells into a red giant. Earth will then be uninhabitable, as
> will the inner regions of the Solar System. Yet there will be other more
> clement stars to which our descendents may wish to migrate. Certainly a
> society that has developed space flight and space colonization will have the
> advantage of never thereafter having to stand hostage to fortune."

> T. A. Heppenheimer, *Toward Distant Suns,* 1979

>
> "If [the earth] goes, we go. And so we should go elsewhere, so that when the
> earth goes, we have another place to go. And while we're at it, we should
> take our pets and plants, too. We wouldn't want to be without them, just as
> they wouldn't want to be without us--even if they don't know it. It's our
> job to know things, and to act accordingly. And if we fail at that mission,
> then we really will have failed in upholding our end of the Burkean
> bargain--that is, partnering not only with the living and the dead, but with
> those who are yet to be born."

> James Pinkerton, "The Ultimate Lifeboat," *TCS Daily,* 2006

>
> "In the long run, a single-planet species will not survive. One day, I don't
> know when, but one day, there will be more humans living off the Earth than
> on it."

> NASA director Mike Griffin, quoted in "Mars or Bust,"

> *Rolling Stone,* 2006

>
> "Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet
> and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now
> imaginable to kill off the human race."

> Robert Heinlein, speech at World Science Fiction

> Convention, 1961
> "The most important fact of this century is not that Earth is threatened in
> many ways, It is that for the first time in all of its history a decisive
> means of protecting the home planet exists. It is by using space."

> William E. Burrows, *The Survival Imperative,* 2006

[Jef]

We're also at the crossroads of being able to question and perhaps transform what it means to be human. All current conceptions of humans in space are premised on traditional biological forms of humanity. NASA planning, like the "Star Trek" vision of the future, is based on what Charles Stross calls "monkeys in a tin can" notions of spaceflight. Will human beings even exist as biological entities a century from now? Even if we are biological, how much will be biotic and how much machine? If we can send machines into space with advanced remote senses and articulation, controlled via human neural interface from here, isn't that a way of "being" in space? That is what I see happening - the line between man and machine will blur so much that it will become meaningless.

We should do as much as possible with automation including the creation of autonomous self-replicators to create the infrastructure we need in space. There are many jobs better suited to machines, though I am not a Singularitarian and doubt that we ourselves are on the verge of a rebirth as machines. At some point the difference will become meaningless, as machines become biological and we become cyborg, hipsters replacing piercings with implants as the new chic. Machines are our extensions, thousand-fold arms like Shiva extending our reach in every realm.

[Ora Uzel]

Humanity has one mission: Save earth and leave it.

These must be done at the same time, but it must also be understood that waiting for humanity to fix itself could be a fatal obstacle to the continuation of the species.  For all we know there might always been those who starve, those who kill, and those who portray the worst traits of humanity.  But if we do not place a priority on human space exploration, all our attempts to solve our problems on Earth will be futile, ending in a big dusty cosmic mess.  If we wait to see if humanity can all get along, we might one day be no more than a bunch of atoms strewn about a barren planet that once had so much potential, but never saw it through.

Regardless of how dire the conditions for some humans on Earth, we are nearing a point where humanity has the capacity to put at least *some* humans into extra-terrestrial habitation.  Until there is permanent extra-terrestrial habitation by humans which will sufficiently 'guarantee' (using that term loosely of course) continuation of the species for at least the next 1 billion years -- just enough to get us through the lifespan of the Earth -- everything that has happened on Earth is, on a cosmic scale, entirely meaningless and without merit or value.

Sure it can be done for cheaper and done more efficiently, and I think that's much of what Obama was getting at with his speech (if you listen to the full speech).  But regardless of how little or much of our antiquated green paper value system it requires, continuation of the species is vital for humanity as an entire conscious species to have had ANY value at all in this universe -- SETI and Voyager possible contacts with other civilizations (if any) not withstanding.

Money is as irrelevant as religion when it comes to the continuation of the human species.  When you consider that Defense spending has taken over $1 trillion over the last decade, I think we could afford dozens of $2,000 hammers if it got us closer to the continuation of the species.  Money is no object.  It is simply a matter of people realizing just how singularly vital human extra-terrestrial habitation is to not just our future, but our past and present.  Without it, everything we know, believe and do is futile, and humanity will be no more than a hundred year radio blip on the local group of star systems, which for all we know may have no life at all themselves.

Humanity has one mission: Save earth and leave it.