Obama announced that we’d be giving up recently. For any further manned space exploration, we’ll be hitching rides on a Soviet-era rocket largely maintained by Russia, launched out of Kazakhstan. The USSR doesn’t even exist anymore, and they haven’t given up — we’re riding their rockets to the space station starting next year.
I never bought into Bush’s “big vision, small funding” fib about walking on Mars. I’m not convinced that landing on Mars is obtainable, or scientifically desirable. But I expected we’d be doing something in space. Asteroid travel, perhaps.
Not only is the shuttle ending, there’s nothing to replace it. America gave up on the moon before I was born, and now it’s giving up on manned space flight. What’s next? Watching the Hubble Telescope degrade, the GPS satellites give way, and hoping to piggyback on Japan’s, or Europe’s willingness to continue pushing forward in science?
For elemental physics, we’ll be depending on results from the Hadron Supercollider in Europe, because America decided to scrap its prototype in Texas years ago. How long before we give up on all colliders as unnecessary expense?
Our policy of giving up is starting to show. The number of patents awarded in America (not necessarily to Americans) has held largely even over the last four years, while the EU climbs steadily and has half again as many. Japan is also steadily rising up the ranks in the patent race.
NASA never demands commercial rights for its discoveries, but if they did we’d perhaps see how important they are. Heck, if NASA received its deserved cut for discovering the water-absorbent gel now used universally in diapers and hygiene products, it could probably build a moon base. Instead, it’s an easy target for people who think science isn’t important. True, NASA takes up some budgetary scraps that are dwarfed by the Department of Defense’s exorbitant spending to prepare for the last war, or the latest “bailout”. Those scraps could go toward other goals, but that’s always true, and always will be.
I don’t know if there’s a larger point to this. I just have trouble accepting the fact that as the richest, most powerful nation on Earth, we no longer seek to lead it in science. We’ve given up.
No one that lived through the adventure could forget the time. School attendance dropped for the live broadcasts of the launch. Alan Shepard putting an American in space. (Only later did we learn “Shepard’s Prayer.”)
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p>”God speed, John Glenn.”, as the US orbited the earth.
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p>The nation grief of losing “our people” in the Moon mission and the triumph of landing on the moon.
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p>The national and world prayers for the safety of Apollo 13. The triumph and tragedy of the space shuttle.
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p>Now the government gives up. “Goin’ to Mars!”, (that should be long enough for the public to forget about space…) “How about an asteroid?”
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p>Too much spending on global dominance. Little left for the engineering and imagination of our people. Wars without end cost money. Bankers need money, business too large to fail, too.
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p>I’m glad I’m in my 60s, rather than 6. What national adventure will the youth have? Endless war? Economic collapse?
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p>It’s as if the light were slowly going out all over the world…
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I’m not proclaiming the end of the world, just the end of American leadership in science. I imagine my child(ren) will grow up at a time when America is a nice boutique country whose best days are just behind, and often lives in the past in such a way that foreign tourists deem it “quaint”.
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p>Kind of like England.
I share your feelings about NASA and space program.
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p>At the same time, during the prior administration, America intentionally destroyed our leadership in the most promising and most exciting area of science that humanity is likely to experience for the next century.
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p>I’m referring to our intentional decision to do everything possible to block, delay, and demonize embryonic stem cell research.
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p>In my view, the Life Sciences today offer the excitement, low-hanging fruit, and unimaginable promise that space offered in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet we block stem cell research, we dance elaborately byzantine circles to avoid teaching evolution to our young people (how far would our technology endeavors have gone in the 50s and 60s if we refused to teach relativity in physics classes?), and we celebrate ignorance and stupidity in our popular culture.
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p>Did anyone notice that Craig Venter created a synthetic Mycoplasma mycoides from its digital sequence and common chemicals?
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p>Revolutionary, ground-breaking science is going on — and most Americans don’t seem to notice or care.
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p>… but who are we to insist upon our own destiny? Who are we to say that our hegemony, indeed any hegemony is the natural order of things?
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p>Where would that kind of arrogance come from?
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p>Once we did science for the sake of science. Now we do science for the sake of dick-swinging… and it has long since ceased to be actual science: shuttles and supercolliders are more about engineering, actually. And, somehow, you think this runs afoul of cause and effect… As though, out of the blue we’ve suddenly found that somebody came along and ripped it outta our hands, when, in fact, we dropped it way on down the road…
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p>Of course, where science is concerned, if we really believe in democracy for all… even those who don’t, or can’t, currently practice it… (I’m looking at you China) then we’re going to have to put aside the idea of leadership and take a cold hard look at collaboration and cooperation. We’re not going to be able to simply cure our separate patch of global warming and forgo those other patches over there… I’m not sanguine about this, since, as noted, most science in America really gets back to engineering a better (sic) defense department…
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…is that the United States is the richest nation in the world, in terms of cash, resources, patents, education, etc. We have the greatest potential base for science in the world, yet we refuse to fulfill it. Our leadership refuses to expect it to be fulfilled. Our conservative friends such as demolisher try to pretend this isn’t a problem.
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p>I agree with you on international collaboration, but I’d like to see that go beyond paying rental fees for other cultures’ scientific equipment. Also, there’s the example of Cape Canaveral — it’s a superior facility to anything in the world save Balkinour, and we’re mothballing large portions of it. That just seems wasteful, to expect Japan or the ESA to build something we already have here.
… is it the case that research funding to universities isn’t what it used to be?
… question (from my anecdotal and unconfirmed perspective) is “yes”.
in fact, it often seems like that is what they want.
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p>But don’t forget, after Carter we got Reagan. And after Obama we might get someone good as well.
…who both want and insist that we are the best in the world?
the next Iran-Contra and an unnecessary war that throws our current and future tax dollars down the tubes.
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p>Yeah, that would be great.
in broad unsubstantiated generalities, apparently.
… are more likely to be GOP and are more likely to believe reality as dictated from authority. Thus what you present as snark is actually more generally true than is often admitted. There is a reason Fox news correlates with mistaken beliefs about reality in general (think Iraq and 9/11) and that those with such mistaken beliefs tend to be more right than left.
I’m pretty much a space junkie. My office wall has the original “MAN LANDS ON THE MOON” page from the NYT. I keep waiting for NASA to recruit lawyer-astronauts. I want America to lead in both manned and unmanned space exploration
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p>But I’ve got to say that I’m glad in a way that the Shuttle program is coming to an end. We have been heading down a dead-end street for 30 years. There is nothing particularly inspiring, or even that important or useful, about a reusable vehicle for delivering people and payloads to low-earth orbit. Nor, frankly, do I think it is necessary to do what we did forty years ago and return to the moon. The next step for manned exploration is, as the President has rightly recognized, Mars. And I don’t see us being in a position to put together a crash program to get it done within the decade.
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p>While NASA engages in that long-term project, we should continue the unmanned robotic exploration of the solar system and the deployment of new orbiting and ground-based telescopes. (I got to spend a night on Kitt Peak within the last year–unbelievably awesome!) I’ve heard astronomers say that we are living in the golden age of astronomy, with new telescopes making incredible findings all the time.
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p>Anyway, I guess what I am saying is that I think you are being a little pessimistic.
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p>TedF
Interesting post, but a couple of relevant points need to be made here in response.
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p>First, I’m not sure that ending the shuttle program is equivalent to the United States “giving up” on science. For that to be true, the benefits of the current shuttle program on scientific advancement has to be documented. Those benefits may exist, but I haven’t seen a convincing argument for that point yet. It may be the case that the shuttle has simply outlasted its usefulness, in which case it should be canceled. I don’t know if this is true, but I need arguments to the contrary to support the claim that ending the shuttle is “giving up on science”. Otherwise, saying that this is “giving up on science” would be like saying that ending the F-22 fighter program is “giving up on national defense.”
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p>The second, and related, point is that I wouldn’t simply dismiss NASA’s $18 billion budget as “budgetary scraps” — it’s still a lot of money. The author of the piece linked in the post (in the “budgetary scraps” link) dismisses an argument critical of NASA spending as a “non sequitur”, but indeed his article itself is exactly that. Saying that NASA spends only $1 for every $98 of “social spending” isn’t a convincing case for the shuttle program if the program itself is outdated, could be done cheaper, and provides little benefit for the American public. Just like we shouldn’t simply throw money at the Pentagon simply because they want it (and even when they don’t!), we shouldn’t simply throw money at NASA because of memories of the optimism engendered by Neil Armstrong’s step.
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p>In short: consider me one of the many members of the public who, along with policymakers, are not convinced that the benefits of the shuttle program outweigh the costs. Whether this view is misinformed or not, at the very least NASA needs to do more to make the connection between the shuttle and scientific advancement much more clear.
The space shuttle was designed 45 years ago – it should have stopped flying 20 years ago – but because of all of the vested interests we kept flying it.
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p>NASA has become bureaucratic and very expensive. Private organizations are jumping in to offer launch services and NASA shouldn’t compete. Just as we don’t (or most of us) want the government running airlines – the government should get out of the space launch business and stick to basic space science research.
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p>Obama’s decision was correct.
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Private organizations are not “jumping” to get in space and do the kinds of things that NASA was doing. Yes, some few companies may be developing some technology capable of doing it, but that is not “jumping.” Until it becomes super-profitable, there’s not going to be much of anyone “jumping” to do it, like Ford is “jumping” to build cars, or Bowing for planes, at least.
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p>Furthermore, the notion of “privatizing” space flight isn’t particularly appealing to me. Is it going to be anything like how we’ve privatized much of the military industrialized complex? Or how we privatized hundreds or thousands of other things government had a history of doing, to disastrous results? Privatizing things may have been worshiped in the 1980s, but we’ve had 30 years since then to come to the realization that the private sector isn’t inherently better than the public, and in a great many ways it’s a helluva lot worse. If it’s a public good or a national interest, it should remain in the public sector — so the question needs to be answered whether or not what we do in space is a public good or a national interest. I think the clear answer is yes.
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p>But that is the main question about the shuttle program specifically, I think. It may be a public good or in the national interest (though the reasons for that need to be articulated). However, one doesn’t need to be a Reaganite free-market fundamentalist to question whether the money being used for the shuttle program would be better off being spent elsewhere for other public goods.
I don’t feel as though I need to list all the wonderful things that the space program has accomplished, but at its height, I think the most important thing is the sense of pride and wonderment that it brings, even in this day and age. I’d be very sad for future generations when countries like China, Japan, and India are exploring the moon and space, and we’re left behind. That’s of course to say nothing about all the scientific and engineering advancements we’ve received from the program, everything from velcro to, as Sabutai noted, the things that are necessary to create baby diapers.
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p>And, let’s remember, this is just the latest — and worst — part of a lengthy trend of privatization and scaling back in not only the space program, but all of government. I repeat the question: has that privatization and reduced role for government benefited America and the American people? The easy and irrefutable answer is no. Not only has it not led to efficiencies or reduced the role of government, by shifting responsibilities of government to the private sector, we’ve just served to reduce the accountability and quality of the services we’re getting, while often not even saving any money at all.
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p>If space flight is important to this country, manned or unmanned, we should not develop a laizze-faire attitude over it, because in the end it will diminish the quality of returns, not save us any sort of funds, not make it safer or more efficient, and may in the end create a situation where we’re paying far more than the fairly small funds we’re paying for NASA today. I’m not against the notion of changing the mission, but I’m hellbent against taking one step closer to privatizing government even more than we’ve done so.
The Apollo rockets and modules were made by various contractors – North American Aviation, Douglas Aircraft Company, Boeing and IBM. The “Military industrial” complex has always been private, but NASA just seems to be a failed organization. SpaceX is launching satellites
http://www.wired.com/wiredscie…
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p>BTW I would like nothing more than a strong space program – but NASA has become a congressional job machine without a clear purpose. The shuttle should have been replaced 20 years ago – and frankly shouldn’t have been designed the way it was.
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Sure, there’s a private component. At some level, you need that. I’m not exactly calling for a socialist revolution, here.
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p>If you can’t see that what is going on now is different, though, you’re b l i n d.
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p>Um… there’s really only one “congressional job machine” that this country really needs to be worried about. It’s called the defense budget. Until that’s fixed, attacking the budgets and programs of any other governmental body over “congressional job machine” complaints just isn’t credible.
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p>I know that’s false. Know how I know? Were it a congressional job machine, it’d be getting a much bigger budget each and every year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N…
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p>I love what NASA did, I’ve been on any tour available at Cape Kennedy – watched shuttle launches – my father worked indirectly on the Apollo – but it’s not delivering anymore. We haven’t had a manned high lift capability since Apollo. Something is broken and it’s not just the budget.
The government plows billions into building interstate highways, and conservatives announce that suburban construction and the automative industries pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
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p>The government funds the experimentation, facilities, and science for space exploration, and we get the song and dance about how NASA is a failed organization.
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p>The government funds expansion, subsidization, and land-use policies that encourage and advance farming ownership and technology, and we hear the “bootstrap shuffle”.
We’ve known for at least 15 years now that the Shuttle was living on time borrowed through meticulous and careful maintenance. It’s not as if this is a problem we didn’t see coming.
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p>However — however — arguments by conservatives that “we” want government out of space kept a replacement from being funded or supported.
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p>So the conservative dream has come true: American government is out of business, and private sectors aren’t in it. Conservatives win, Americans lose.*
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p>*I wish the government ran airlines. The most comfortable ones in the world are government run — Aer Lingus is far superior to its lying kin at RyanAir, and the government-run lines over the Pacific are the best on the planet.
The first space shuttle I’m pretty sure launched in 1981, just shy of 30 years ago, not 45. There was a hiatus after the Challenger disaster in 1986. Maybe something could have been developed to replace it sooner, but as a way to send “routine” missions into space, the shuttle did the job it would seem.
The design and construction of the Space Shuttle began in the early 1970s. It’s a 40 year old design.
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p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S…
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p>To look on the bright side.
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p>Masten Space Systems Achieves First-Ever VTVL Midair Engine Relight Milestone on Path to Space.
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p>http://www.commercialspaceflig…