ISS and the return to the moon: necessary human exploration or a waste of our money?

Personal opinion, if we would spend as much time and money repairing Earth and controlling population we wouldn’t have to be looking for a new place to live when we finally kill this one. At the rate we are going, it’s not a waste, cause we’re gonna need a new place shortly.

Problem is, most of the ones who will be able to afford to move to the new planet are the ones who screwed this one up.

Space exploration is very valuable. I don’t see the point of sending humans into space when robots can do a decent job for one-tenth the cost. It’s not like there will ever be colonies on the moon, or Mars.

Sending humans into space is just science fiction machismo. I think it’s worth doing a little bit of that, based on the principle that you never know what skills you might need in the future. However I don’t think we should do nearly as much as we do, and moon trips are a waste.

The research we did to get a man on the moon in 1969 had a lot to do with the improved quality of life for people in the 1960s and early 1970s and the increased prosperity. Getting a man on the moon was really only a symbolic goal, and not very useful; all of the stuff that happened as a result of getting a man on the moon turned out to be very useful.

Space and space exploration/colonization is the only hope for our species. I mean this in all seriousness. It’s just a matter of time before some angry nation gets a nuke, and poof, there goes humanity as we know it. It’s vital for us to get out there, colonizing other planets, to ensure we survive. It’s just a bonus if we discover extraterrestrial life, let alone life that can actually communicate and interact with us.

As well, like cwilbur, the amounts of knowledge and technology that is generated by such scientific endeavours have applications all over the world in all fields of expertise. It’s not just the mission that benefits.

I disagree strongly with daloon’s assertion that there will be no colonies on the moon or Mars. If I am lucky, I may even see the first in my lifetime. Now I’m not really holding out on that hope, but I am completely confident that it will be achieved within the next century at most.

@dynamicduo: too bad we won’t be around to settle a bet about that. Though, we’d have to define colony carefully. I was thinking of several hundred people, and enough space to grow their own food.

The point about collateral technology developed out of efforts like this is a good one, and I had not thought of it. I wonder how significant it is, though. Would these things have been developed anyway? Hard to say. I do know there are extraordinay research into all kinds of things right now. I think that the only thing the space effort does as far as inventions, is to apportion the research money differently. Who knows what kind of things would be available to directly help humanity, had the moon effort money been devoted to other areas of research? Hmm. On second thought, I stand with my first opinion.

Absolutely no offense or negativity directed at you, daloon, with this comment (more specifically the first paragraph). Just wanted to make that crystal clear now, from the start :)

I personally don’t enjoy arguments that base themselves on what-ifs. There are too many what-ifs that happen all day to make it worthwhile of discussion. Such as, let’s take this big whopper here: what if America hadn’t invaded Iraq, and instead used that three trillion plus dollars to better itself and the world over the past eight years? There’s just so many possibilities of things that could have happen but won’t, things that didn’t happen but are happening now, etc etc etc…. I find that the ‘what if’ mentality is not conductive to a thoughtful and persuasive discussion because there is zero way for us to continue with the train of thought when we get into hypotheticals. I much prefer looking at facts and analysis of things that did happen, over ponderings and theoretical projections about things that did not happen.

Here’s one thing that would not exist without the space race – the internet. Yes, the precursor to the precursor to the internet (the agency named “Advanced Research Projects Agency”, or ARPA, which created ARPANET, which was the predecessor to today’s Internet) was created as a response to the USSR launching Sputnik, and America wanting to regain its technological advantage. As well, other DARPA (ARPA renamed) results that have made it into our modern day lifestyle include the GUI (graphical user interface – meaning you see images and use your mouse to click instead of typing your text command into a text interface).

Now try and think of every single advance we’ve made that’s happened or facilitated by the existence of computers as we know them, as well as the Internet. This includes all forecasts or models of weather/population growth/anything, all research that was simplified or made possible thanks to computer processing and rendering (after all, the computer would not have been continually developed and advanced [faster processors, etc] as fast as it was had there been no interest or desire for it) – everything from the most important cancer research down to Shrek and LOLcats would not exist in the same form that they exist now, though as I mention above I’d rather not get into the exact details of it as it is frivolous had the USSR not launched Sputnik. And that’s not landing a man on Mars, that’s just putting something into orbit!

And for clarity’s sake nah, it’s for the bet ;) I will clearly state my definition of colony. I hope to be alive to see the first humans landing on Mars and setting up some type of research base, albeit very similar to ISS in lack of food production, breeding, etc. But I believe that this research colony could expand in my lifetime to include some type of food production on Mars (even if it’s just Earth plants growing in Earth soil in Earth pots only in the Martian atmosphere), and could expand and increase its capacity for adults so as to house thirty to fifty people. I highly doubt I would be able to see the first human conceived and born on Mars though, so in that sense it is not a true self-sufficient colony. But the establishment of a simple research lab is the first step in becoming one.

When we say something happened, but could not have happened any other way, we are engaging in what-if. It’s a big problem for historians. It’s hard to design experiments to see if there are alternate ways things can happen. They have bunch of tools they use in order to get as close to science as they can get, but I’m not sure I buy those tools.

In any case, to decide what to do in the future, we have to engage in what-if. We have an outcome in mind (say, saving humanty), and we want to figure out the best course to achieve that goal. No matter what we decide, we won’t know whether we would be better off if we had taken another course of action.

So we look to the past to predict the future. Now, as it happens, there is plenty of evidence that scientific “discoveries” are made in different ways by different scientists. Therefore there is plenty of room to differ on alternative courses to the future. It is not wise to say it could only have happened that way.

However, the future is always a probability function. It is often extremely difficult to establish the probability of various outcomes, give various actions we take now. So, in the end, we go with our guts, and only time can tell us how right or wrong we were.

I guess I’m saying we have no choice but to “what-if.” You do it, too. So, I don’t see why you are arguing about the methodology here. We are both making wild guesses (I almost called them hypotheses), and I think we are perfectly justified in using outcomes from past behavior to estimate future outcomes. And, as it happens, there probably is data that would allow us to compare the rate of inventions in non-space race time to the pace of inventions in space-race time. Of course, unless you are a graduate student or professor with an interest in this kind of thing, neither of us is going to spend the effort needed to get useful data.

Now, as to the role of the the space race in developing the internet, you might be surpised to learn that it is not nearly as cut and dried as you might think. As Professor Akera’s book, Calculating a Natural World: Scientists, Engineers, and Computers During the Rise of U.S. Cold War Research (Inside Technology) (Paperback), outlines, there were many other factors at play there, and indeed, the government pressures might have slowed things down.

Anyway, there’s plenty of evidence to make our assumptions about the space race questionable. I don’t know if you will consider those arguments, or not. I hope you will. It may be that the way towards the future is different than what you might be imagining.

So, as to the issue of the Mars Landing. The amount of resource required to achieve such a thing would require the cooperation of many nations. Not gonna happen. I am surprised you think it will, since you think we’re gonna all die in a blaze of nuclear glory.

BTW, lurve to you for your post. Lots to think about there!

Granted, space exploration spill over has advanced our scientific community and “improved” our lives.

Are we saying that these would not have happened without shooting rockets to the moon.

Perhaps, if we had used the money that the moon shots cost for research, we would be far beyond where we are now in other areas.

Perhaps we would know how to stop viruses, or how to cure cancer instead of what kind of underware you need for a space walk.

Who knows.

Space exploration is not a “waste of money”.

I think the question should first be asked about military expenses, particularly when 10% of world military expenses would be enough to feed everyone who’s starving. Not to mention the other species we’re driving out of existence due to apathy, ignorance, etc.

I can think of plenty of terrestrial wastes of money.