h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In today's Houston Chronicle (as in "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed"), the editorial page reprinted a Los Angeles Times piece about the recent NASA decision to abandon the Hubble Space Telescope. The gist was that the Hubble is the most successful project NASA has ever had, and has almost unlimited future potential. Further, as NASA and many in Congress (with big money flowing into their districts from NASA) seem to insist on continuing the Shuttle program, abandoning one of its (few) justifiable goals - servicing the Hubble - seems, ummm, stupid. The NASA director said something like, "Well, I had to cancel something, since Bush wants to go to ... (wherever)". To paraphrase a political axion, "It's the funding, stupid."

Unfortunately, space exploration needs to get its funding from somewhere. I'll stick with NASA here, since I'm more familiar with US politics than with the politics of various other space-faring countries/groups. NASA gets its funding from the US Congress voting to give it money (through various subcommittees, etc.). Congressmen and Senators decide what to vote on based (in theory) on what their electorate wants, but...

In order to get elected (advertising costs), Congressmen and Senators generally get money from outside special interest groups (ie: donors). I don't think that space exploration or generic scientific research has a very large political backing in terms of special interest group money (I think most of their money comes from military justifications and defense but I might be wrong).

Investment in generic research or exploration is difficult to justify in terms of the short-term bottom line, although it definitely has long-term benefits. Until short-term/private sector benefits become more obvious, I think it will continue to be difficult to get money for NASA space exploration or research which does not benefit US military/defense.

I guess I'm a cynic here--not to say that I think space research/exploration is wrong.

I think the hubble repair cancellation has an even simpler explanation. it is time constained, if you don't do it relatively soon, you don't do it at all.

I think there are fairly good odds that the shuttle cannot be gaurenteed to be ready early enough to count on it. if it turns out to be available with plenty of time, and there is enough funding in the budget, they can always reinstate the repair mission.

ABout that whole shuttle thing. It was a trajedy but lets look ath this statisticly, there have been hundreds of shuddle launched that have obviously all had this defect. 1 has been a problem. So basicly despite the single accedent the astronaughts are relatively safe, certainly safer then crossing a street, statisticly speaking. And not statisticly speaking they understood that their lives would be at risk when they took the bloody job in th first place and caqn change the hundrends to one odd to go fix hubble.

On to hubble its self there is no real reason not to keep it. Yes NASA needs to get the money from somewhere... how about the huge tax cut? The rich don't need the money, their rich, and the benafit to man kind is well worth the $1500 or less that the rest of us get.

I understand that supporting NASA over the tax cut isn't good for a congressman's electability, but if you will remember that more then two thirds of all incombants are reelected you will agree with me that it won't make much of a difference when compaired to the signifficant advantages of incombancy.

And about Mars, it would be a wonderful idea if we weren't spending so much money on the whole war on iraq/ war on terrorism thing. Maybe Bush should wait a while untill we aren't running a 300 Billion dollar deficite.
sorry for the spelling errors

first the reelection issue. the statistic is that 98% of all congressmen are reelected.

the safety issue is more serious. statistically, the sample size is so small as to be meaningless, but the problem wasn't that it was unsafe, it was that people knew it was unsafe soon after launch, and systemic problems resulted in this warning not being acted upon, and thus the preventable deaths of the astronaughts.

An almost trivial EVA would have confirmed the problem, but they trusted a poorly tested computer program over their engineers.

Finally I am getting fed up with this talk about the waste of money from the war, and what good it would do if used better. While I agree with the basic point that there are better ways to spend the money than starting the war in the first place, the money is largely a one off payment from the contingency fund (like taking money out of the rainy day bank account to fix the broken boiler) and the tasks usually suggested for it spend the whole lot in the first year and think they can keep that funding up indefinately.

lets by all means spend more money on space, it's worth doing, but let's have realistic sources for it, and realistic plans on how to spend it.

I suspect that will be the area where bush's idea falls down. Typically politicians think they can start it running and forget about it, forgetting that the only person who managed a sucessfull space program (kennedy) was actively fighting for it all the time. When he was replaced by nixon, and the fighting for it stopped, so did the funding for the moon shots.

the shuttle also became the white elephant it is for the same reason, the design was compromised for funding, making it massively more experimental and expensive.

this also sank the various space station tasks (although the changing nature of them didn't help) and the nuclear powered engines also went the same way.

so did the X33.

If you want to fund space properly, you have to fight for it, and then exploit the technology you create to bring in more funding.

Well how about instead of considering the money spent in Iraq, we consider the $400,000,000,000 annual military budget?

Well, the shuttle is becoming obsolete, and obviously needs to be replaced with a more up-to-date vehicle. I don't agree that NASA should cut back on the number of shuttle missions until its replacement has been decided on, though.

A big problem with investment in space is that it is very risky. An entire mission could fail if a shuttle blows up, or a mars-rover doesn't respond properly, or some other piece of vital equipment fails. These failures are incredibly expensive in terms of cash, and are spectacular in terms of loss of life, due to media coverage and high expectations (although few people actually die).

In the past (16th or 17th century I believe), the joint stock company was created basically to fund adventuring/exploring on sailing ships. No single person could afford the huge financial risk involved, and so they decided to legally share the risk, making complete failure more acceptable. Maybe if the private sector got seriously involved in space exploration/research, something similar would happen again. But it would need gobs of cash.

Much as i would like to see those billions spent on helping the third world, its not going to happen (because it not profitable for Bush or any of his corporate buddies). I would much rather see the billions spent on space than on even more nukes.

I think an international effort would make more sense finacially, but also the process of working together towards a collective goal might help improve international relations (especially if you could get china involved). it also would stop any one nation claiming control of ethier mars or the moon which could only turn nasty.

Also maybe the construction of a luna base or setting foot on mars, might effect the way people view Earth or each other in much the same way that the luna landings effected many people during the 1960's.

I sorry if this sounds very naive and stupid but hey it might happen

Free Mars

The lack of shuttle missions is because the whole thing is a disaster waiting to happen, so they can't afford to launch another shuttle until they fix all the faults.

On a different point, programs don't have to have n all or nothing approach. take beagle 2.

first, they got a vehicle assembly building out of it. this makes a beagle 3 even cheaper to build, or there are a whole host of other uses they could put it to.

then they sucessfully managed the seperation and de-orbit procedure, which is very difficult to do.

then they have the "suitcase spectrometer" which was developed for beagle. if they sell that to crime labs, there would be a lot of use for it. it would be much harder to cart the more conventional laboratory workshop sized spectrometer to disasters and crimes.

similarly with mars direct, you end up with a heavy lift launch platform when you send the first craft. this would allow the launching of 125 ton loads, which would be usefull for both the space station and the moon base.

it would also make it easy to launch a lifting body design shuttle replacement, just strap your lifting body on top of the rocket, and it gets launched, and returns the same way as the shuttle, but much more safely.

Hubble has done a fabulous job. We need to progress peopled space flight. We need it to establish proven technological lead. And we need a tangible goal that involves emotional fulfilment. We need to be on the next planet. We need to be on Mars!