

One Step Back For Mankind - DanielBMarkham
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f748d4c6-128b-11df-a611-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

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hga
If you've exceeded you free 1 article per month quota on ft.com, just register
and you'll get 10 per month without having to pay them (these are the current
limits for people in the US and every other country I checked besides the U.K.
and are down from 3 and 17 respectively; see details at
[http://www.ft.com/cms/275bc334-3063-11dc-9a81-0000779fd2ac.h...](http://www.ft.com/cms/275bc334-3063-11dc-9a81-0000779fd2ac.html?segid=70009&segsrc=fthome&countryCode=CHN&cpgid_sub=0302&cpgid_prem=0303&term=annually&)).

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jameskilton
Or, because the dialog is done entirely with Javascript, just view the source
of the page and read the article, and you can see it's yet another (short)
rant on the decision to cancel NASA's shuttle program:

If we can put a man on the moon, Americans used to say, we ought to be able to
solve our current problems. So the question of whether the US can still put a
man on the moon matters a lot to national morale. Barack Obama’s
administration this week released a budget that would scrap Nasa’s
Constellation programme. That plan, announced by George W. Bush after the
crash of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, aimed to send US astronauts to
the moon by the year 2020. It has failed. The new budget dresses up the demise
of Constellation as opening the way to “a bold new course for human space
flight”, a more modern, “21st-century” space programme. But the bravado is
that of a dog barking louder as he backs away from a fight. There is no
indication of any alternative destination for manned space missions. Richard
Shelby, the Republican senator from Alabama, called the Nasa budget a “death
march for the future of US human spaceflight”.

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hga
While I agree that Constellation was failing hard (or at least the Ares part
of it, and that part _desperately_ needed to be terminated with extreme
prejudice), the final paragraph it telling:

"That is what makes the debate over Constellation symbolic. The decision to
abandon moon exploration has “decline” written all over it. Americans often
profess astonishment that the Chinese of 600 years ago failed to take full
advantage of their technological superiority. They invented gunpowder and, on
the eve of Columbus’s discovery of America, their ocean-going vessels were
bigger and more seaworthy than Europe’s. Perhaps now the process by which an
innovative civilisation invents technologies that it is unable to exploit will
be easier to explain. The failure of the latest US moon programme is a small
disappointment for national pride, but it is one giant leap for historical
understanding."

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azgolfer
The Shuttle program has alwasy been a boondoggle. There has been not one
significant piece of science that has come out of it. Robots are far better at
space exploration than humans.

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hga
Without the ability to do maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope it would
have been an epic fail from first light (due to how ineptly it was ground and
then not properly tested before launch).

The subsequent repair missions have keep it in operation a lot longer than
would have been possible otherwise (replacing failed gyros, failed
electronics, orbit boosting), plus the ability to put in new technology
instruments has to have been very valuable. And the ability to put in
instruments for a limited time, i.e. ones that could be justified for a period
between maintenance missions but not for the lifetime of the whole thing.

Robots have their place and so do men.

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azgolfer
This could have been done for way less than 175 billion (the estimated cost of
the shuttle program).

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hga
You're shifting your argument: you pointed out correctly that the Shutte is a
boondoggle, claimed it provided " _not one significant piece of science_ ",
and finished by saying " _Robots are far better at space exploration than
humans._ "

I pointed out just one example contradicting the last two points. Trying to
apply the whole cost of the Shuttle program to just this one project is not to
the point, nor is implying that we couldn't have done it in a manner that cost
less and was safer.

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azgolfer
I still say robots are far better than humans for space exploration. There was
even a proposal for repairing the Hubble with them. It would have been better
if they had designed it with this type of repair/upgrade mission in mind. But
it is always easier for them to justify an incremental cost, along with the
romantic notion of humans in space.

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hga
It probably wouldn't have worked for the last repair job, where they worked on
things that had never been planned for repair (tiny screws and all that).

As an incremental cost, _assuming you have a manned space program_ , you can't
justify doing robotic repair due to the extra costs and limitations.

On the other hand the next big telescope project
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope>) will be non-
repairable, but that sort of goes with its mission, which is to sit at the
Earth-Sun L2 point. Design life of 5 years, they hope it'll make it to 10.
Note that the Hubble has made it to 20 years and they expect it'll last at
least another 4.

And I'll certainly agree with you that if you want to explore beyond Mars for
now, do it with robots. And to put humans on the Moon or Mars, send robots
first (as we did for the Moon and are doing for Mars).

On the other hand, if I wanted to thoroughly play with an asteroid, I would
want to do it with a manned mission (after suitable earlier check-out by
robots).

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bbsabelli
First time to ft.com and... wow, what a horrible experience.

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hga
Curious ... could you be more specific?

While I wouldn't rate its web fu all that highly, it seems to get the job
done. It's certainly a lot less "busy" than its major competitor, _The Wall
Street Journal_.

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moe
Well, don't know what his experience was but mine was: "Sorry, you have
exceeded your 1 allowed article in 30 days..."

That's funny, as this was literally the first time I landed on that site (oh,
and likely the last time, too).

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hga
Strange. Well, you could register and get 10 every 30 days; they _do_ publish
stuff worth reading, especially in this "Great Recession".

