Friday Poll - No.4: Should We Go Into Space?

[Rob McCow]

Space is a wonderful place.
Space is a marvellous place.

Sang Lorraine Bowen (I'll be corrected on the full lyrics, I'm sure!).

Space.



Is it mankind's destiny to head to the stars? Or should we stay with our feet firmly on Mother Earth?

Should we even now have spent billions and billions putting a man on the Moon and on Mars? Or are there too many starving people and perhaps we should blow them all up first before taking our wars to the stars?

Space.


Space.


Space!


Shall we go to Space?

[SiHart]

Yes! Let's go to space! If we don't push ourselves to achieve things like that, then well, it's not very good is it?

Si xx

[Wayne]

I voted Yes!
Pity nothing much has happened since we went to the moon!

[Alex]

I voted no. Though I think we should, and it'd be amazing if passenger flights became possible for the masses during my life time, I really think there's too many problems we need to sort out on Earth right now where the money could be better spent.

Boo. I didn't want to vote no either. I want to see the Earth from outer space, and bounce around on the moon. But my pragmatic side took over alas.

Damn you pragmatic side. Damn you!!!!

[Dirk Gently]

I went YES! I've always wanted to go in to space. When I was 10 I told my Dad that I wanted to be shot into space & he said that I would have been had he not been p!ssed!

[Ralph]

Let's go for it!

[Captain Tancredi]

I think we need to start looking at space exploration as the next stage of our development- if only because the Earth is becoming overcrowded and its minerals running out or becoming uneconomical to process. The thing is, the first hurdle is the most difficult and expensive, and it depends on whether we have the vision and determination to persist with it.

[Milky Tears]

#Far beyond this world I've known,
Far beyond my time,

What kind of world am I going to find?
Will it be real or just all in my mind?

What will I do and what will I be?
Where am I going and what will I see?


Hot dog damn and diggity doo... I wanna to be a spaceman too!

Or should we stay with our feet firmly on Mother Earth?

Mother Earth is on overload, one more war and she might explode!

[Andrew Curnow]

When I was at Primary School we were all given the impression we'd be space-shuttling to the moon and back and think nothing more of it than jumping on the bus into the City Centre. They lied to us, why oh why!!!

Anyway, ahem, I voted yes. Pragmatically there's a lot better things the huge amounts of money required could go on, and yet my 'heart' for want of a better word, says yes. There's something so... challenging about it, and something so inspiring about the attempt, that it has to be a yes.

[Larry]

I think we need to start looking at space exploration as the next stage of our development- if only because the Earth is becoming overcrowded and its minerals running out or becoming uneconomical to process. The thing is, the first hurdle is the most difficult and expensive, and it depends on whether we have the vision and determination to persist with it.

pretty much agree with that the only problem is the vast distances involved man simply dose not live long enough or will probaly ever be able to build ships fast enough to be able to reach planets out side our solar system.

[Jason Thompson]

"Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men."

Gus Grissom

If you doubt the truth of that sentiment, consider how much more meaningful the words of men actually talking about what they are experiencing on the Moon are than the admittedly wonderful images being sent back from Mars by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

We should absolutely go into space. It is human nature to explore, and space is a place to explore. One thing that seems to be overlooked by critics of the space program is that the money, the billions of dollars that put men on the Moon, is spent right here on Earth. The way some critics talk you'd think NASA just loaded up rockets with coins and notes and shot them into space. The project provides jobs, provides challenges and provides inspiration. What is more, the money allocated to space travel represents a really small fraction of the funds allocated to such other vital projects as developing new and more ingenious ways of killing people.

But of course we live in a world of short attention spans and demands for immediate benefits, and the vocal masses who feel aggrieved about things are heard more often than those who are happy just because happy people don't advertise the fact all the time. Putting a man on the Moon not only advanced our knowledge of our place in the cosmos, but led to important developments in computing, medical monitoring, communications, video technology... all things that everyone is grateful for now but equally things no-one seems to realise came out of space research.

Yes, there are important things that need to be addressed here on Earth, but there is no reason why an 'either/or' situation should exist. Either we do something about the homeless or we go to space. Either we help developing countries or we go to space. Either we tackle crime or we go to space. Bullshit. With proper allocations there is no reason why all those things can't be done. If you insist on having your house immaculate before going out, you'd never set foot outside your front door.

[Jason Thompson]

pretty much agree with that the only problem is the vast distances involved man simply dose not live long enough or will probaly ever be able to build ships fast enough to be able to reach planets out side our solar system.

Why do we need to leave the solar system? If the concern is resources then the solar system offers plenty of those.

[Jason Thompson]

When I was at Primary School we were all given the impression we'd be space-shuttling to the moon and back and think nothing more of it than jumping on the bus into the City Centre. They lied to us, why oh why!!!

They didn't lie, they just reckoned without tightwad politicians whipping the rug out from under them. Trying to justify the money needed for space travel to a bunch of politicians only interested in what will get them elected next term is not an easy thing to do, and without the impetus of a race with a hostile nation no-one on the decision-making side cares about space any more. Space won't win votes, so space don't get the cash.

When Apollo was in full swing, future plans included space stations, Moon colonies, flights to Mars and a reusable transport to take crews to and from the space stations. By the time Apollo was done and Skylab was being prepared the shuttle was all that was left. Even then they had to severely compromise the design to have a hope in hell of getting it made with the money they were given. Further cuts made it late, which was partly what led to the loss of Skylab. Without the shuttle to go up and boost it into a higher orbit it came back to Earth with a spash and a few loud bangs in Australia. Nearly two years later, and about three years late, the first shuttle went into space.

When your funding depends on politicians allocating you the money you'd better have the public at large behind you, or you go nowhere.

[Si Hunt]

I really don't know. On the one hand, I love everything about the idea of space travel - new worlds, new resources, getting away from Earth... on the other hand it costs so many billions and I just can't square the thought of one of these rockets which tells us a small amount more about the type of rocks on Mars costing the same as it would to alleviate suffering in some starving country or other.

So I'm all for the idea, but it's a shame it's not cheaper.

Si.

[Jason Thompson]

I just can't square the thought of one of these rockets which tells us a small amount more about the type of rocks on Mars costing the same as it would to alleviate suffering in some starving country or other.

See above. That amount of money can be easily spared from other places. How about from a program designed to create machines that serve no purpose but a destructive one, for example?

If money has to be diverted from somewhere to feed starving people then I'd rather see it diverted from military projects than from any form of scientific endeavour such as space research.

Space research is expensive, but not that expensive when compared with some other things that huge sums of money are spent on. It just so happens that it is a very visible expense.

In FY2007 NASA is allocated $16.8 billion. In the same year the US department of defence is allocated $440 billion, $84.2 billion of which is for weapons. But they never make a fuss about costs of weapons being better spent, do they?

[WhiteCrow]

I think the way we're doing it is about right. YES we should be in space, we should be exploring.

Did anyone see the 50th Anniversary of Sky at Night? It was clever - they used a fake time machine to look back at 1957 and show how our understanding of the Universe has changed in that time.

The way to do it though it with probes. It's the cheaper option, it involves little risk of life, and Gallileo for instance was out there for 2 years solid - no human crew could match!

[Jason Thompson]

The way to do it though it with probes. It's the cheaper option, it involves little risk of life, and Gallileo for instance was out there for 2 years solid - no human crew could match!

I agree with that to a point, but certain areas would be better explored by man. On Jupiter there is no surface to walk around on. A human crew would do little more than orbit in an automatic probe, and there their presence is superfluous.

Mars and the Moon are different. Humans can walk around. The Mars rovers have sent back great pictures, but it's taken them years to cover a distance smaller than the later Apollo missions covered in a couple of days. Humans can make on the spot decisions. Humans can make on the spot repairs. Weeks were lost last year just trying to get one of the Mars rovers out of some loose sand. Humans can see something interesting and decide to go pick it up. Humans on Mars and on a lunar colony could take their samples back and analyse them on the spot.

Whilst there is risk of life and limb on such missions, as long as there are people willing to take that risk I don't see a problem with that.

[WhiteCrow]

I agree with that to a point, but certain areas would be better explored by man. On Jupiter there is no surface to walk around on. A human crew would do little more than orbit in an automatic probe, and there their presence is superfluous.

Mars and the Moon are different. Humans can walk around. The Mars rovers have sent back great pictures, but it's taken them years to cover a distance smaller than the later Apollo missions covered in a couple of days. Humans can make on the spot decisions. Humans can make on the spot repairs. Weeks were lost last year just trying to get one of the Mars rovers out of some loose sand. Humans can see something interesting and decide to go pick it up. Humans on Mars and on a lunar colony could take their samples back and analyse them on the spot.

Whilst there is risk of life and limb on such missions, as long as there are people willing to take that risk I don't see a problem with that.

No we should be sending out there ever more increasingly intelligent probes, so that eventually they'll fall into the rift, and return some kind of God-like entity out to find it's creator. What that's too Star Trek!

I think there was a program saying that we've spent about 1% on unmanned missions of what we spend on manned missions, and yet we've learned far more about the Universe from our unmanned trips. Puts it into perspective.

[Jason Thompson]

I think there was a program saying that we've spent about 1% on unmanned missions of what we spend on manned missions, and yet we've learned far more about the Universe from our unmanned trips. Puts it into perspective.

It would put it in perspective if it were a proper comparison. Unmanned probes are being sent to areas we just can't go at the moment, so they are returning more data that we simply cannot gather any other way. Most manned flights now are for learning things closer to home.

As yet, however, no unmanned lunar probe has told us anywhere near as much in one mission as the manned Apollo missions have. We have around 800lb of lunar material on this planet now that we could not have retrieved without sending trained men up there, and we're still analysing the stuff and learning. Apollo is still giving us returns forty years later. Large portions of the cost of Apollo went on equipment and infrastructure that is still in use today. Probes spend years around the Moon. Apollo spent days. A cost/time/return analysis would be a far better comparison than simply dividing space research into manned and ummanned.

[Rob McCow]

for Jason - superb stuff!

So the poll closes now, with PS definetly heading into space! I'll get my helmet.

[Si Hunt]

I'll cook supper.

Si.

[WhiteCrow]

It would put it in perspective if it were a proper comparison. Unmanned probes are being sent to areas we just can't go at the moment, so they are returning more data that we simply cannot gather any other way. Most manned flights now are for learning things closer to home.

As yet, however, no unmanned lunar probe has told us anywhere near as much in one mission as the manned Apollo missions have. We have around 800lb of lunar material on this planet now that we could not have retrieved without sending trained men up there, and we're still analysing the stuff and learning. Apollo is still giving us returns forty years later. Large portions of the cost of Apollo went on equipment and infrastructure that is still in use today. Probes spend years around the Moon. Apollo spent days. A cost/time/return analysis would be a far better comparison than simply dividing space research into manned and ummanned.

Pah - intelligent robots are the way forward I tell you and I have the blueprints for one right here ...