From motherboard.tv: "One commonly-heard notion about the demise of the Space Shuttle is that the costly and overly complex program was killed, rightfully, because it didn’t help to advance science. But this is based on a false premise, the astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson reminded us at the World Science Festival. The Shuttle was never really meant to promote research or fulfill NASA’s goal of space exploration. Instead, like the Apollo missions to the moon, the Shuttle program was the product of politics.
As inspiring as the grandeur of the spaceship has been to legions of young people – and as important as it was in fixing the Hubble telescope – it was actually the Western battle against the Soviet Union – and later, other diplomatic interests – that left NASA operating this amazing low-orbit dump truck. To criticize the Shuttle for not doing more science, he said, is to miss the larger picture."
23 Comments
spoco2So true.
And other than that... it gave us all something to look at and think "Look at what we can do". We can send a spaceship up into space and it can then come back down and land on a runway, that's just darn cool.
Yeah, it had problems, yeah it had a couple of catastrophes, yeah it never met the initial goals of cost of flights and number of flights that it was supposed to reach.
BUT.
It has given a generation of us a program of ships that looked like spaceships dammit... these looked like our science fiction fantasies, these looked like what we wanted spaceships to look like, not just a capsule on top of a rocket.
So yeah, it has been a success.
It's sad that it's quite some time before something as inspirational as that will fly into space again, it really is.
It's also sad that it's left up to private enterprise and some billionaires (SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Armadillo) to push forward in this regard, a unified, cross country effort would be do far more good for the soul of the planet at the moment I think.
MaxWilderWhile I agree that it is wonderful to have a unifying goal like the space program sometimes provides, this is one of the places where the free market might be able to take over and do it better. It certainly could not have done it back during the space race, but now there are lots of market driven reasons for investment in space, so it might work.
And we just don't have the political will during this economic climate to invest in the big ideas, like a Moon base or mission to Mars. Maybe in another decade or two, when the economy has recovered and people are bored with Virgin Galactic's low earth orbit.
spacemansays...Every time I watch one Neil's videos I learn something. He is really a great speaker and scientist. Makes me happy
WKB>> ^spaceman:
Every time I watch one Neil's videos I learn something. He is really a great speaker and scientist. Makes me happy
Yeah, I agree 100%. Neil deGrasse Tyson is really turning into the Carl Sagan of a new generation. This guy should be everywhere.
PHJFSomebody's been reading Pale Blue Dot again.
MrFisk*controversy
siftbotAdding video to channels (Controversy) - requested by MrFisk.
YogiI'm all for science and funding it in order to move our species forward. But we don't get to do it as long as there is a child still hungry or dying in our country from something easily preventable.
ELeesays...The Shuttle has been an amazing technical achievement, but it turned out to be far too expensive. It was a development vehicle that was declared operational.
Promised in the 70's to fly 500 times at $3M per flight (for a total ops cost of $1.5B), the Shuttle actually cost $1.6B *per flight*. Missing a cost target by a factor of 500x is not good. ('Mom, can I have $20,000 for a tank of gas?' :-)
The Shuttle is like a 1970's mainframe computer, and it is time to be retired. Sadly, Congress this week is trying to cut the $850M investment in the four commercial vehicles that companies are developing to replace the Shuttle. Invest half the cost of one Shuttle mission and you get four new vehicle designs!
http://spacefrontier.org/2011/07/08/fundthefuture/
NetRunnerI get that this was a segment taken from a longer conversation, but I come away from this having no idea what his position on the manned space program was.
Yes, the manned program isn't, and never was really about science. Wasn't that always obvious? Especially in the 60's and 70's, we were calling it the "Space Race", and only just barely shying away from openly calling it a front in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
But I'd like to know, does he think we're better off without it than with it? I get the impression he thinks the manned program was a waste of time and money from this clip.
He's no Carl Sagan if he thinks that!
Yogi>> ^NetRunner:
I get that this was a segment taken from a longer conversation, but I come away from this having no idea what his position on the manned space program was.
Yes, the manned program isn't, and never was really about science. Wasn't that always obvious? Especially in the 60's and 70's, we were calling it the "Space Race", and only just barely shying away from openly calling it a front in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
But I'd like to know, does he think we're better off without it than with it? I get the impression he thinks the manned program was a waste of time and money from this clip.
He's no Carl Sagan if he thinks that!
If it doesn't help us it is a waste of money. We need answers to serious questions not expensive ways to get pilots who call themselves astronauts laid.
NetRunner>> ^Yogi:
If it doesn't help us it is a waste of money. We need answers to serious questions not expensive ways to get pilots who call themselves astronauts laid.
I agree, but there are other reasons to spend money on it than the furtherment of science.
Even if you completely discount "keeping the dream alive", most of the Solar System's natural resources are located outside of Earth's orbit. Humanity would also be well served by having some permanent, self-sustaining environment to live in that's not on Earth, just in case.
None of those are scientific reasons to invest money, but they're not a waste just because it's not science, either.
Tyson was saying that too, as far as I could tell.
ChaosEngine>> ^Yogi:
I'm all for science and funding it in order to move our species forward. But we don't get to do it as long as there is a child still hungry or dying in our country from something easily preventable.
The U.S. spent ~$70 billion on science funding in 2010. In the same year, it spent nearly 10 times that much on the military. Tell me which is more likely to prevent a child dying from hunger or disease.
Granted, the space program probably* won't do much in that regard, but how about they cut NASA's paltry 18 billion out of the military budget and see what they can do with that?
* and here's the thing. We really don't know what will come out of research until we do it.
quantumushroomNow we'll never know if ants can sort tiny screws in space!
FREEDOM! HORRIBLE HORRIBLE FREEDOM!
siftbotTags for this video have been changed from 'nasa, mir, space station, geo political' to 'nasa, mir, space station, geo political, neil degrasse tyson' - edited by volumptuous
bmacs27says...Why send meat when you could send robots?
PHJFCarl Sagan *did* think the manned program was a waste of money. He was a much bigger proponent of robotic space exploration, which costs (or costed) 10x less.
The problem with sending people out into other worlds is that you have to get them back. Sure, symbolically it would be a boon to put a man on Mars (as it was with the moon), but that's all it would be at this point: a symbol.
YogiIsn't there some plus...we don't understand how everything in space effects the body. So putting a man in space and then measuring his various levels of this and that when he comes back might help something. Either way yeah lets send robots...people suck.
RyjkyjIt's funny that a lot of the same people who don't support space exploration are the very same people who support the companies who are making Earth uninhabitable. You'd think that they would understand the importance better than anyone.
Ryjkyj>> ^Yogi:
I'm all for science and funding it in order to move our species forward. But we don't get to do it as long as there is a child still hungry or dying in our country from something easily preventable.
By this logic we should never have funded Polio research, as there were still children who were hungry or dying in our country from things that were easily preventable.
Yogi>> ^Ryjkyj:
>> ^Yogi:
I'm all for science and funding it in order to move our species forward. But we don't get to do it as long as there is a child still hungry or dying in our country from something easily preventable.
By this logic we should never have funded Polio research, as there were still children who were hungry or dying in our country from things that were easily preventable.
If you choose to follow it absurdly than yes. The Shuttle program hasn't saved our lives or improved our living conditions. Is that logic easier?
RyjkyjI think I understand what you're saying. It's not that your logic isn't "easy".
Well, Polio research didn't save any lives or improve our living conditions until AFTER we found the cure. It had potential to, just like the space program does now. But we didn't know for sure that we could find a cure until afterward. And in fact, we never did find a cure, only a vaccine. The fact is that most scientific advancement happens sort of randomly. We never really know where the next big step is going to be made.
It's simply not possible to ONLY fund things that we KNOW will save lives or improve our living conditions, because we don't know where the next advancements are going to come from.
Either way, the space program HAS improved our living conditions. Even if you exclude the ones listed in this video.
http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html
zorI remember as far back as 1993 having a detailed discussion with some space scientists about the shuttle. Even then everyone whose opinion mattered recognized that it was very out of date. I'd rather we have a replacement on the ground right now but sometimes you have to just die to make way for the next generation. Whatever that is I hope it's as cool as the shuttle.
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