Eske Esquire wrote:
I don't disagree with the fact that we've accomplished much through the space program. Would we have all those developments without it? Well that's kind of impossible to say, since there are a bunch of different hypotheticals to examine. Say, for example, that we didn't attempt to land on the moon first, but still dumped our efforts into military research and technology. We might have some similar outcomes. Perhaps other motivations may have resulted in the same developments, perhaps not. Who's to say?
Who's to say isn't really a very strong argument though. Kao is right. I suspect that most people just don't understand that many of the most important technological advances made in the last half century (longer most likely) didn't come about because someone decided to research that specific thing. They started with what appeared to be an unrelated need (or even set of needs), and then after developing a whole bunch of things to accomplish that, then had other people come along and think of different applications for the various things that were developed along the way.
Technology research isn't linear. In most cases, it branches out into new things out of earlier developments which no one thought were significant along the way. One day, someone looks at a set of developments, shuffles them around in his head and thinks "Hey! With this, that, and the other thing, we could do.... <new thing no one thought of>". It happens all the time. No one planned to make home computers. But they developed the technology to make them (yup, related to the space program and cold war as well), and then one day someone thought "Hey! We can use these components, put them together in X way, and make a computer that can fit on someone's desk!". No one saw it coming. For other reasons, the components became more modular and smaller and energy efficient until it was possible. It was not a goal at any point.
I just think that it's a mistake to think that all we have to do is let people think of what they want to make and it'll happen. We have to allow as much "random" research as possible to happen to maximize the rate at which truly new and game-changing technologies will appear. And funding research which pushes the envelope of what is possible does seem to provide the best chances of those new things occurring.
The space program created so many new tech opportunities exactly because it pushed that envelope. They had to figure out how to make materials for which there was no other earthly reason to make. They had to figure out how to make things lighter and stronger due to the weight and G-force needs of space travel. They had to develop automated systems which were not needed anywhere else. They needed to develop tooling to tolerances well beyond what anything else required. All of these things saw applications in other areas.
Might we have developed those if we'd spent that money elsewhere? Maybe. But it's hard to argue a maybe against a known yes. Now, to be fair, the current direction NASA has been heading isn't so promising in terms of new tech development. Re-using existing tech to just make cheap robotic launches to do various things in space doesn't push the envelope much. Pushing for a 100% reusable manned orbiter would. Pushing for construction of space-2-space cargo-haulers would. Pushing for using the ISS to do more than just hang around in orbit would. We're wasting a huge opportunity with that thing to be honest. One of the biggest obstacles to near-earth space travel is a platform from which to launch and refuel craft (manned or not). Yet we still continue to largely ignore it.
There are a lot of wasted opportunities if we stop pushing for manned exploration of space. Of all the things we spend money on, IMO we've gotten by far the biggest return from our space program.
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What does matter, is that nostalgia shouldn't be governing how we handle the space shuttle program, nor any other space-related goals. It's a different era, with a completely different context. The same rules don't apply anymore.
Agreed. But we should have replaced the shuttle with something better. Had we made that a priority, we'd have accomplished it. And having accomplished it, we wouldn't just have a new nifty way of getting people to/from the ISS or low-orbit, but we'd be able to leverage all the advancements which would have to be made along the way towards developing such a thing. Who knows, someone might have come up with something really radical which might just revolutionize flight as we know it along the way. But we don't know what that might be, because we're not spending the time and money to research it. If we're satisfied with sending cargo and people up on 40+ year old rocket designs, then we wont ever find out, will we?
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Our current space travel approach was simply not cutting it. I'd rather that they go back to the drawing board, then to let it limp along aimlessly as it has been. It needs efficiency, and the only way to ensure that is with a clear focus and a comprehensive plan.
Absolutely. But that would have come much better if we'd gone in the other direction and demanded some tangible and difficult goal to be met. Instead, we've gotten sorta limp-wristed objectives, calls for less expensive missions, and a whole lot of nothing exciting accomplished. Some things have been neato (ion drive tests for example), but I just think that abandoning the manned mission parts of space travel will ***** us in the long run. We really should have gone in the opposite direction IMO.
