I had to think about this for some time. IF man is going to actually travel out of the parking lot (Mars and farther), THEN the manned space program HAS been a good investment over all--albeit, lots of waste and unnecessary diversions. But I will also agree that as far as seeking scientific data OUT of the parking lot, then no. But would we HAVE those robot missions without the manned missions? PR, you know. Also, Skylab was left to burn up on re-entry; just about everything we needed to know should have been gathered way back then. The ISS never meant anything to me honestly. Definitlely not worth the money, IMO. Unless it becomes a docking station to whatever craft can make it out of the parking lot. Except for us who love rockets and space, the way mankind is heading (i.e., the oil war in Iraq) what really is the point? Boy, this is a depressing topic. 😯

Personally I prefer Gerry O'Neil's vision better...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_O%27Neill
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization

Warren

...But would we HAVE those robot missions without the manned missions? PR, you know. ...

Gosh, I think we'd have a lot MORE of them. I once read that for manned flight, the equipment needed to be 99%+ safe -- which, by the way, it is not. We lost 2 shuttles out of 119 launches, as well as the Apollo tragedy. It is far, far from 99% efficient. Anyway, the article I read said that the goal was 99% safety. For unmanned shots, a 90% success rate is deemed acceptable. That extra 9% safety margin costs a *lot* more than the first 90%. Said another way, 99% safe is something like 10X the cost of 90% safe.

As noted, I'm really hard pressed to come up with anything revolutionary that has come from the shuttle or ISS. Meanwhile, Spirit and Opportunity have been driving around Mars for years. Hubble keeps going and going. Check out some shots from Cassini at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070306.html or http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060503.html Voyager gave us shots like this *thirty* years ago. A crippled Hubble has given us more shots than you can list in a thousand of these forums.

What is it the ISS or the shuttle has done? I just don't get it...

In this interview from last week, Dr. Vernikos (on older woman - I like listening to older people talk about space) points out some things that 'we' should be doing: further basic research on humans and gravity and moving toward a sustainable, closed system. She isn't speaking specifically of ISS - just pointing out some gaps that she sees. Below is a clip from the show description.

Several questions for her were about our possible jumping the gun with settlement and long term space travel plans until the gravity issues are better understood, but she said no. This is because the human space program is needed to inspire and motivate and cause the necessary research. The program and the research are linked together so both have to happen at the same time. One inspires the funding and development for the other.

Good point - politics have to be involved since it is a government program.

The Shuttle is continued practice until private industry can blow past government efforts. It just isn't possible to jump right to the perfect reusable launch vehicle. And now that the shuttle is in use - perhaps we can now question the value of a universal, reusable launch vehicle.

I bet it sucks to work at NASA because everyone else knows better. Have you hugged your NASA friends today?

- jeremiah

Mine will be short.

I agree with choosing more careful as to what to fund.

A sad fact that I still struggle with is.

Space is poison to man and most anything put in it. I do not like that fact
but it is a fact. We should proceed with that in mind.

What would We actually do after an eighteen month trip to Mars. That has
not been done.

Oh crap. I still want us to go.

I've worked directly on 6 Mars robotic exploration missions, on a private commercial lunar entertainment/advertising mission, and now I'm working on Orion, so I'm kind of biased .

I totally agree that human spaceflight has contributed basically nothing to science since Apollo (but don't discount the tremendous scientific achievements in the Apollo mission). And the lame claims of direct medical and other direct spin-offs from ISS and other missions are frankly embarrassing.

I am also of the opinion that robotic space exploration is currently the most efficient way to do science in space, and it will continue to be.

But space has more to offer than scientific benefits. I believe that the reason why --so far-- we have decided that space exploration is worth it is because of the exploration part of it. If it were just scientists getting their jollies from space, they wouldn't be able to compete for dollars against cancer research, etc. But I think that a lot of people have an innate curiosity about what's beyond Earth, a desire to explore space themselves, and an idea that somehow, someday, humans will be the extraterrestrials. The MER rovers do a good job of letting people feel like they're the ones on the Martian plains and hills doing the exploring, but if we never had a manned program and there was never a hope of people walking on Mars, I don't think those images would generate the interest that they do now.

So I think there is value in putting humans in space, if only to scratch the itch of making investments toward eventually, far in the future, living permanently away from Earth.

But NASA needs good missions, so I'm glad we're shifting the focus of the manned program outside of LEO. Frankly, a mission to send people in circles a couple hundred miles from the surface doesn't attract the best engineering talent. With plenty of exceptions (and I'll probably get in trouble for this), I think a lot of the best engineers have gravitated toward the robotic missions because they care about having a mission with more of a point, and with fewer rules. It's been fascinating to see just how inefficient are the hardware solutions that have been derived from the station and shuttle. In general, the ISS-derived avionics require 2-3 times the mass and power that robotic-derived avionics do, to perform the same function with the same level of redundancy. Part of that is because that hardware is designed for servicing, etc., but a lot of it is just that there hasn't been a big incentive to do it more efficiently. The last time the US designed a mass and power efficient human spacecraft was Apollo. So on Orion we're working on blending in more of the robotic space influence to help deal with major mass issues.

Very interesting, Adrian. I'd enjoy visiting with you on your experiences sometime.

Gotta check THIS out -- http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060124.html that was New Horizons leaving home on an Atlas V. NH passed the moon in 9 hours! It was (and is) honkin' right along, traveling about 14 miles per second (!!) on the way to Pluto.

Adrian, who do you work for? Sounds like you have a lot of fun at work!

See you at Oktoberfest.

I work for a little subcontractor to Lockheed Martin. Out of college I got a job working directly for LM, and then I went to a little commerical space company in California, followed by the Jet Propulsion Laboaratory for the Mars Exploration Rover mission, and then I moved back here to to do the subcontracting thing. I've been very fortunate to get these good jobs, but trust me, model rocketry is almost always more fun. Too bad it doesn't pay as well.

Politics got us into space. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik... they're in orbit!... we'll go to the moon, and we did. Russia has recently revealed plans to get to the moon (finally--though it's a been there, done that) and Mars. I truly hope that the politics of this pushes us farther. Mike, I agree. I'd love to see man land on Mars--just for selfish, man-we're-there reasons. However, I really don't think anyone can dispute the fact that robotic missions, save Apollo, have achieved far more than the manned flights. And will continue to do so. Blast, JW, that rocket you posted the URL for is going to get to Pluto by 2015! That kinda makes your point. Adrian, I really envy your position of being on the inside. Since Apollo, NASA has been without a true, defined mission. Though we did achieve a nifty and funtional toilet for space travel. When we landed on the moon, the world stopped to watch. We need that to fund other projects as well. Manned and un-manned space travel function well together financially. One hand gets money for the other.

Ya know, I'm not taking a position either way, BUT there are alot of things that robots just can't do. It's takes the human element for true discovery. True, robots can collect data and take pretty pictures, but thats about it. It takes real people to analyze, decipher, and form conclusions based on the data. Robots take the risk out of space travel, but they don't make discoveries.

I guess I am taking a position.

Perhaps the shuttle and space station haven't produced many so called scientific advancements, but think about this, it's the experience gained from flying the shuttle and building the space station that are the advancements. One day, hopefully very soon, all of the knowledge and experience gained from building the station will be used for building a base on the moon, and then for building a base on mars and then for building a base somewhere else. But we'll all be dead by then.

It's about gaining practical knowledge and experience in the mechanics of space travel that matter, not the so called scientific discoveries. Those will come AFTER the robots have collected data and the experts have determined that the data is worth investigating by humans...

One day, hopefully very soon, all of the knowledge and experience gained from building the station will be used for building a base on the moon, and then for building a base on mars and then for building a base somewhere else. But we'll all be dead by then.

Very well said, Ken. You can't get one without the other. A robot may find a suitable planet for man, but who will make the decision? And, c'mon, guys... how close is a suitable planet for human life? We're talking light years. So as far as exploring THIS solar system, robots are cheaper and better at providing objective data, but only scientific data that WE determine relevant. Yes, Mars can be terraformed--but we'll wait a million years or so, and perhaps Jupiter's moon Europa has life under its ice. We NEED speed of light transport--beam me up, Scotty!, or near it if Einstein's right, to get anywhere. As much as all of us love the roar of rockets, IF anyone is visiting OR we're going any where, it's got to be by other means. We're just dribbling around the pond... sorry, I mean parking lot. Didn't mean to shift analogies. 🙂

...robots can collect data and take pretty pictures, but thats about it.....

...it's the experience gained from flying the shuttle and building the space station that are the advancements....

I respectfully disagree, on several levels. Many of the probes didn't just collect data, they brought samples home.... some of the finest pure science ever done was with the Stardust probe, which returned material from Comet Wild 2 http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news113.html Cassini dropped an incredibly sensitive probe (Huygens) onto Saturn's moon, Titan. It did a *lot* more than take some pix. Genesis brought back samples of solar wind -- even though it made a hard landing in Utah without parachutes, the experiment was largely intact (Astronauts would not have fared so well). There are three examples from the top of my head that are much more than a few photos. BTW, samples from the Stardust and Genesis missions were shared with hundreds of labs around the world. Much pure discovery has come from those missions. I believe it is the Stardust mother ship that is actually still out there working.

Regarding the knowledge learned from the ISS. Wasn't that what Skylab or Mir was for? Even the Nobel Laureate (quoted at the top of this thread) can't come up with a thing that has come out of the program. I guess I don't see how building a multi-billion dollar glider that has never been more than a few hundred miles above sea level gets us any closer to Mars. The Russians had men in space for many consecutive months probably 20 years ago, to study the long-term effects of living in space. We didn't need ISS for that.

Just my 2NS (ok, 4NS) worth 😯

John, I aggree. But there is a human element and a necessary one for space exploration. All of the probes you mention would not have even got off the ground if it wasn't for what we have learned from human space flight.

Many of the probes didn't just collect data, they brought samples home.... some of the finest pure science ever done was with the Stardust probe, which returned material from Comet Wild 2...

Again, these probes just collected samples. Yes, they brought them home, but they cannot and did not perform any analysis on the data. Humans did that. I'm not discounting the importance and achievements of what these probes have done, but imagine, despite all of the great things the Mars rovers have found, what would have been discovered if humans were there instead.

My 3 Euro's worth...

There is an old saying... "Man is the measure of all things..." Now I'm not going to comment on the right-ness of that statement, but it's a truism when you're talking about the masses. Getting funding for a space program in a democracy requires engaging the masses to a sufficient level that their congress-crooks feel pressured to spend money on it. The only thing that excites people - the non-space-nut people - is a manned program. Hubble is cool and people support it, but it didn't excite people the way that Apollo did. The Shuttle program got boring really fast because each flight didn't do much to extend the art, to "go where no man had gone before" and it wasn't intended to. A new lunar program undertaken with the idea that the goal is going to Mars might just excite people the way that Apollo did.

Warren