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

They travelled to the Moon six times, but they originally intended to take more trips there. These trips began to get cut particularly because of the problems with Vietnam and voter antipathy. After the first one or two trips, people began to lose interest despite the fact that the astronauts were now doing anything they could to capture back people's interest such as playing astro-golf and ramming around on quad-bikes.

As well as that, the footage began to get somewhat tedious for non-geologists - like this from one of the more interesting visits "If I ever saw a classic alteration halo around a volcanic crater, this is it. It's ellipsoidal; it appears to be zoned. There's one sample we didn't get. We didn't get the more yellowy stuff, we got the center portion...".

To be honest, they found out a hell of a lot, discovering in particular direct evidence that our Earth is 4.5 billion years old, that the Moon was created by a huge Earth impact, and that the early solar system was a fairly dangerous place. They also discovered by accident that certain bacteria can live in suspended animation in lunar conditions, which is pretty amazing, I think. They achieved their primary purpose : just going there, but from a scientific point of view it was just a start. People wanted great TV, and that didn't really gel with scientific work.

There were calls for cheap (hah!) shuttles and a space station back then as the next step for going into space, so from a practical point of view that's where people started to concentrate their efforts.

'Did we fly to the moon too soon?
Did we squander the chance?
In the rush of the race,
Was the reason we chase lost in Romance?

But still we try,
To justify the waste
And all for a taste
Of man's greatest adventure
Awoooooo'

Yeah man's greatest adventure. Right. Maybe it's time that men stopped deciding what the money gets spent on.

On the news tonight they described the next trip to the moon as Apollo on steroids. It'll cost 1 billion (presumably US dollars) - the Katrina cleanup is expected to take 2 billion.

It's a collosal waste of money (the space programme). Not that humans shouldn't do this at some point, but when your back yard is on fire you don't go out and buy a new sports car.

Yep. It's a real waste of time having those satellites up there monitoring climate change and helping to predict the paths of hurricanes and forest fires. It's also a real waste of time understanding our origins. We really have more to be doing than trying to understand the universe. Likewise, if there is a large meteoroid on it's way with our name on it, it's better we do nothing about it before it reaches us.

I'm surprised you think those things are a waste of time.

I don't think the space programme is a waste of time at all. I think it's a really stupid use of resourcese at this point in history when it's not clear that we actually get to survive as a species (at least not in a degree of comfort).

The problems we face aren't technological - we can solve the problems with the technology we have and developping that without sending men to mars. The problems are political, ethical, moral, spiritual. The space programme makes a mockery of starving children, collapsing ecosystems, war-torn countries when we already have the technology to solve those.

I joined Carl Sagan's group, the Planetary Society, who were interested in furthering the causes of planetary exploration. But then I found that their main aim was to send a man to Mars. For the price of that, you could send a thousand probes out to explore the solar system. So I left them.

kea,

You seem to be using the argument that because we need to solve the problems of poverty, famine and war, we shouldn't do anything else that costs money.

SHould we ban all drinking of alcohol, because the money would be better spent on the starving children in Africa? Should we stop building roads? Should we dismantle the entertainment industry and put all that technology to better use solving the environment problem?

The Space Programme is quite cheap, particularly if you use unmanned probes, and actually has a good chance of helping us solve the world's climate and poverty problems.

I notice that in 2003, the USA budgeted $16,000,000,000 for nuclear weapons.

Being slightly less intemperate, what I would say is that all societies, to prosper, need both long-term and short term funding on projects. There will never be a Golden Age when there are not fires burning in the back-yard anywhere, where there are not starving kids and environmental damage and wars. It will never happen. It doesn't mean that these important things are ignored or left unfunded, but if a society concentrates purely on the here and now, the technologies, discoveries and insights needed to face the challenges of the future are ignored, potentially to our peril.

Why single out space funding, when there are probably a ton of other very big, well funded projects that are yielding very little in the way of actual benefit for the people who are spending money on them right now, and for which you could also start diverting funding right now to help the needy. These projects include alzheimers research, nuclear fusion, hydrogen powered fuels, geothermal research, tidal energy research, etc. Space is one, admittedly high-profile, area of research which deserves funding because of the long-term understandings it may help us gain regarding our own home planet, it's precariousness, and our chances of survival if our Earth, ever so gently but adamantly, tells us to sod off.

Gnomon, I'm open to being persuaded that the space programme isn't inherently idiotic, just the way it's being used

However it's still hard to see that it's a valid thing to spend money on at this time. Like I said - our environmental and social problems aren't short of technological solutions, they're short of political and moral ones.

I'm against sending humans into space myself. I think the only reason to send anything into space is for scientific reasons, and this can be done better by robots.

Mind you, if they built the space elevator, it would be a different matter, because once it is built, it is just a question of hauling them up and letting them go.

Woddpigeon , I think the 'we have to have the space programme to keep our selves intellectually and creatively sharp for the future' argument is a redherring. We can and do of course already explore the world we are in in many exciting and creative ways. We do have choices about this though and not every exploration is inherently worthwhile just because we can do it.

>> and our chances of survival if our Earth, ever so gently but adamantly, tells us to sod off. <<

That probably worries me more than anything. If we think we can escape the problems here by heading into space we already have the wrong mindset to make the changes we need to survive.

The whole space race, we can conquer mentality *is the essential problem. As long as we approach the universe with this kind of machismo we miss the solutions that are right in front of us.


I'd be interested to see an environmental impact analysis of the US space programme.

"I'd be interested to see an environmental impact analysis of the US space programme"

Pardon me? If mankind did that for every technological advancement, then we would still be living in hamlets and riding donkeys everywhere.

So, do you think it's ok to make a mess and not have to think about the implications?

And what's wrong with living in hamlets and riding donkeys?

From the article link I posted in post 9:

<>


az

I think for society to advance technologically, then yes - there will be an inevitable "Mess" to one degree or another. That does not make it right, and effort should be made to keep the "Mess" to an absolute minimum but not at the cost of staying in medieval times

Maybe I'm being a bit naive here, but I didn't think that money was necessarily the problem when it came to solving political problems and moral problems. A lot of the suffering in the world is solvable fairly quickly with relatively modest levels of funding: the problem as always is political, and no amounts of money will usually create long-term solutions for that.

The space programme as a means to keep us intellectually sharp is missing the point. This is not Sudoku we're talking about. The space programme, along with plenty of other research programmes, is being used to further a ton of long term research, much of it focused on our planet and our lives. Much of the research will probably go nowhere, but that is the nature of almost all areas of research. You seem to misunderstand the point of research. "Hey, I want lots of funding into atmospheric particle physics because, um, it keeps me intellectually challenged".

It may well be that, yes, our planet is getting sick from all the messing around that we have been engaged on. What I would prefer to have around are a ton of satellites in space carefully amassing data and examining how other neighbouring worlds coped with different stresses, and identifying ways that we can cope under the new stresses than people declaring that it's all a waste of time and money. You know very well that even with all the data around, significant world politicians continue to bury their heads in the sand. What would it be like if we chose not to amass this information and rely purely on argumentation and "gut feel"?

Why do you think that NASA does not think about environmental implications of going into space? Space research is generates a tiny proportion of the waste compared to many large industries.

Doc, I'm sure an environmental study into the space programme would list both costs and benefits. Then we could decide if the cost is *worth* the benefit, rather than just wilfully ignoring whatever costs there are.

The problem with us all riding donkeys and living in hamlets and not engaging in anything worthy of further research is that you are left listening to idiots the whole time - people who rely purely on custom and traditional belief and gut feel to tell others how the world works and how they should behave themselve.

Give me scientific progress over baseless superstition any day...