"What have 42 years of astronomically expensive manned space flight shown other than how many times we can circle the Earth? What's the cost-benefit ratio? What's NASA's annual $15 billion budget brought us? I mean other than Tang and Velcro. (...) It's time to think about these things. And ask tough questions. And slip the surly bonds of Congress and smack the face of NASA."
--John Baer, "Is NASA Lost in Space?", Philadelphia Daily News, Feb. 3, 2003
Far be it for me to disagree with the
learned Mr. Baer. I have no doubt that he spent costly
seconds of
research determining that space travel has produced only Tang and Velcro. Surely something as
frivolous as space travel could not have produced
important research in
biology,
medicine,
metallurgy,
physics, and
astronomy, right? I mean, who am I to argue with a
guy who'd claim that he wants NASA gone partly out of respect for deceased astronauts then close his column by
twisting a
poem particularly beloved by astronauts into a
cruel,
mean-spirited jab at those same astronauts and their families, right? Right?
You hear this
argument from people sometimes -- that space travel is too
dangerous, that we should be spending NASA's money on
education (although these same people always seem to
complain when too much
money is devoted to
public schools, damn
whippersnapper coddled children), that
robots could do the job as well as people.
Is space travel
dangerous? It sure as hell is. With the
Columbia crash, NASA has a 2%
failure rate for its crewed launches. That's not an insignificant risk -- kill two of your 100 closest friends and try to tell me that's something you'd feel good about. But it's a much better rate than in the early days of
aviation or the early days of
jet aviation. When pilots were testing
experimental aircraft at
Edwards Air Force Base in the 1950s and '60s, they had a failure rate of
25%. Do Mr. Baer and his ilk think the
risks outweighed the
benefits back then? Would he give up the
jet airliner? The
automobile?
Vaccinations? Would he ever emerge from his
cave?
Progress is always
risky;
stagnation, on the other hand, is not always
safe.
Could
funds allocated for space travel be better spent on other programs? Perhaps. I know many people who would agree, though most of them would probably
disagree, even with each other, on what the money should be spent on. However, I consider the argument to be
bogus -- if space travel and education (or
defense or the
environment or
highway safety or
business incentives or whatever) are both
worthy enterprises AND if there is sufficient money to fund both, it's
foolish to say that one of the programs should be designated
less worthy and shut down. It's the equivalent of asking a parent to choose which child they
love the most so that the other can be given up for adoption.
And could NASA's projects be carried out more
efficiently by uncrewed missions? I'm not convinced. I can't trust my
home computer not to
crash when I'm working on important projects -- why should I trust that a
space crew of robots won't suffer
computer malfunctions, also? Sure, my computer is a lot less complex than the
machines that NASA uses, but I've seen enough problems with other computers, both
weak and
powerful, to know that they're not a magical
cure-all. Computers make good
tools, but until they're smart enough not to make silly
glitch-driven mistakes, I'm not convinced they'd make good
explorers without human
guidance.
I am not, by training or inclination, a
scientist, so I'm not really that comfortable discussing the scientific breakthroughs that space exploration and research have brought about. I'm not a good
businessman either, so I have trouble saying, yeah, the stuff discovered up there is good for business. But I have no difficulty saying that if we run away from the
space program because people have died, we are
Worthless Damnable Cowards. Any race that abandons progress onwards and upwards has stopped
evolving -- hell, they've probably already started
devolving.
On a purely
personal level, I want the space program to continue because I've read and loved stories by
Ray Bradbury,
Isaac Asimov,
Jack Williamson, and dozens of others and have
dreamed, with them, of riding that big
rocketship into the
vacuum, of watching that
big blue marble fall away below me, of seeing other
worlds with my own eyes, rather than through a
television or
movie screen. I doubt I'll ever have a chance to stand on the surface of the
moon, but I've seen
photographs taken on the moon, and I know that the
beauty of those photos is certainly not something I'd pin a
price tag on. I'll never have the opportunity to stand on the red sands of
Mars, but I think someone
will someday, and that's worth, to me, even more than that $15 billion annual cost.
"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return."
--Leonardo da Vinci
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/columnists/john_baer/5091311.htm
http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/research_projects/researchupdate.html
http://www.locusmag.com/2003/Features/Letters02.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery
Thanks to The Custodian, riverrun, Professor Pi, and arcanamundi for help with the title