Ambitions in Space

Hi. I noticed that you wrote a good comment on the Times editorial about the space program, and wanted to invite you to participate in the Letters Department's new feature, Sunday Dialogue, which this week is focused on our future in space. We posted a letter to the editor on the Times Web site today that criticizes President Obama's space plans:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/opinion/l27dialogue.html

We are soliciting reader responses to the letter, several of which will be published on Sunday, and some of which the original writer will address in his counterreply. You could use the ideas from your comment if they apply, but we'd appreciate a revised version more targeted at the letter.

I got this message from the NYTimes yesterday and thought about it, then wrote them a nice little piece.  But I doubt it will see print because I seriously went over the 150 word limitation for Letters to the Editor.

So, I thought, what the heck, I have my own blog site and I can include it here.  Below is the original posit from Dick Morris, a 35 year aerospace engineer, just to give you the gist.

Re “After the Space Shuttle“ (editorial, July 22):

As one of the most enthusiastic supporters of human space flight for 60 years, I appreciate your support of a “far more ambitious set of manned voyages” to follow the end of the shuttle program (which did, indeed, fail to live up to its promise) and “inspire a new generation.”

I believe that Apollo and the shuttle’s Hubble telescope repair flights proved conclusively the value of human space flight. Apollo sent half a dozen manned expeditions to land on the moon in less than a dozen years from the program’s conception. That’s “ambitious,” and it certainly inspired my generation.

Unfortunately, I cannot characterize the Obama plan as either ambitious or inspiring. President Obama wants us to spend the next 25 years on scientifically useless stunts like sending manned expeditions to land on a small asteroid and to orbit Mars.

The goal is to land on Mars and search for life. We should immediately start on the Mars Direct proposal of Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society. We could return to the moon before this decade is out, followed by the first human landing on Mars early in the next decade. We could have permanent bases on the moon and perhaps Mars by the end of the next decade.

DICK MORRIS
Seattle, July 23, 2011

The writer is a senior engineer with 35 years of aerospace experience.

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So, here's what I wrote.

Unfortunately our ambitions in space are no longer driven by the same problems we were trying to define and solve when we started. Well, maybe that’s not unfortunate as we no longer are disguising learning about space while designing weapons systems under pressure from an opposing force.

And we really did do some good science, and that is a good reason, but that’s not the real reason either. The fact is that humans have to get off this planet and that should be recognized as a necessity, not just an ambition.

At any point in time we are just a hair’s breadth away from massive destruction by numerous forces, not the least of which is a direct hit by a comet or large asteroid, or Yosemite could blow up again. And just because it doesn’t happen today doesn’t mean it won’t happen tomorrow or even five years from now. The best science, however, does say that any and all of these things will happen again. Every species has gone extinct on this planet and we will be doomed to do the same without continuing or recreating a new space program.

All of this is a good enough reason, but the real reason is man’s accomplishment for accomplishment’s sake. Not the Cold War and putting weapons into space, or weapons defense systems, but people moving into space and going about their lives. Not the elite of an Astronaut corps and the brave test pilots, but the miners, the construction workers, the scientists, the cooks, the café owners and the guitar players on Friday nights. And yes, even the schoolteachers and the children.

We are the only animals produced by this planet that can even conceive of the ideas necessary to live in space, on the Moon and on Mars, but the accomplishment cannot be the fact that we can conceive of it. We must do it. Our first job is to preserve the human species and we cannot guarantee that such preservation is possible without moving into space as a normal step in our evolution. Not to mention that this planet is not going to be able to support the 9 billion people projected in the next 100 years, when even the lowly solar system has vast resources available.

However, this is not yet a job only for the private sector or there will be a lack of configuration standards, corners cut for profits, and there is the fact that none of the private sector could actually take on the immense burden in dollars, nor do they have the necessary management or engineering skills. Even our current crop of engineers, such as Mr. Morris, are a little long in the tooth (no offense intended) to be doing the new work, but they can sure start training our new crop of engineers whilst doing the initial development work. After all, we are going to have a glut in the market of highly skilled engineers that need something to do.

One last thing to ponder. Without government involvement in all development in space, what would hold corporations to the rule of law if they did get out there? We cannot allow humanity to become victims of the bottom line, nor held in thrall as their only option. One only has to look at our contractor’s employment of Indian and Pakistani in Iraq, whereby they confiscated passports to understand the problems of corporations without any constraints.
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And there's another reason it won't get published.  I didn't target the proposition Mr. Morris made, but rather, like I always do, I find some little niggling point to pick on or discuss.  It's like a crack in the floor.  When something falls through it falls INTO a whole new vast space that needs to be explored.

I do it to Paul Krugman and David Brooks all the time, but it's their fault for leaving so many cracks in the floor.

As to the article, well, I don't know what world Mr. Morris is residing on, but obviously they have plenty of money to continue what many consider to be an outdated system of space exploration.

I cannot conceive of any current plans that make any sense in terms of traveling to the Moon or especially to Mars.  The thinking is way too small.  The rewards would be greater than we can imagine, but you can't bring down a 747 at 39,000 feet with a .22 caliber rifle, no matter how well you aim the weapon.  A supposed impossible situation.

In the 60s it was possible to bring about this new agency, this NASA, and build it up from a few people to a fully functioning space exploration entity.  NASA is essentially dead now, with the last of all the shuttles flown off to some museum somewhere.  And even though everyone knew that the program was winding down nobody had the courage and tenacity to stand up and argue for increased spending, to bell the cat, to stop the raging bull in it's tracks.

Now we've spent somewhere close to a Billion dollars on the ISS and we have to hitch a ride with the Russians (who didn't pay for their end, we did).  And the Russians can only put up a capsule with two empty seats.  What the heck is all of that about.

This is the one time I'm going to bash President Obama, but the concept of allowing corporations to develop space technology and take the risks is absolutely the wrong way to go about.  For a while I felt like it might be a good idea, but then I went back and read about ten years of my own writings and I've convinced myself that this is a disastrous plan.  It would be the penultimate concession to what corporations always want, which is to be free from government regulations protecting the innocent.  It would result in slavery, yet once again, because if you're in space you have no where else to go.  There is no Underground Railroad, and yet the last I looked, some 2.5 Million people have been sold in the past ten years.  Human trafficking continues to this day, so why would corporations not be willing to buy and sell slaves?

While it is a good idea to escape this planet bound existence, it is not a good idea to leave behind all that man has done in terms of law.

There are no shortcuts to human advancement.  No ability to shuck off what we are to become what we will be.  We have baggage and we have to take it with us.

Comments

[Bill Perkins]

Interesting blog. After you offer to use the site for dialog on whatever I might want to discuss, I pose some questions which you apparently don't want to answer or don't have responses for, and you just delete the whole thing.

Apparently your the one who can't take the heat. But it's your blog, so if you want to keep blowing smoke up your own derriere, have at it.

[Roger W. Norman]

Sorry, Bill. You are correct. I deleted the particular article and it probably was that I had no real answers. But I plead medical complications.

I've given you my main state of health in emails, and when I continued to try to use the medication and write my blog, I came up short. It has taken me 5 days of not taking my medicine to get some of my brains back. I deleted the article because it needed to be deleted.

You don't want to have battle with a man who admits you would win simply because you were willing to do battle, would you?

And yes, it is my blog. And the way things are going it may be the last few things I have to say, so perhaps I just chose to have what I've written speak for themselves rather than spending time responding to a reasonable person when I didn't have the capacity for the same level of reasonable discourse.

So I apologize, but I still reserve to create a response when I've gotten this medical problem under better control.

Right now I'm not taking anything and I feel normal and perhaps even capable, but I still have the underlying problem which needs to be addressed.

But on a good day I could beat you to a verbal pulp. I just don't have many good days these days.

I do respect your arguments.

Roger

[Bill Perkins]

Ok, Roger. Best of luck with your health problems.