Please, Kill Your Inner Astronaut and Fund Something Useful
April 13th, 2007 by Brian
The continued funding of the space program is based, in my opinion, on the traditional question of “so what do you want to be when you grow up?” When I was 5 years old I definitely answered “astronaut” to that question as did many of my classmates as do many children these days.
Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s the space program was still moving us forward. Look at all the great things we have now whose origins lie in the space program 20 years ago. We’ve got GPS in our cars, DirectTV in our homes, vastly improved battery and solar power resources, and so on.
These days, on the other hand, I don’t see the space program driving technological innovation as it once did. It feels more like broader global issues such as petroleum dependency and the ever-present quest for more money are firmly in the tech driver’s seat.
That being said, as a scientist many people are surprised to hear me say that I think the space program is a colossal waste of money. I think governments blindly pump money into space exploration because at the heart of everyone is a little kid who wanted to be an astronaut. I honestly don’t care what’s on Mars. I honestly don’t care if there’s life on other planets. Neither of those breakthroughs can put food on our tables or cure a loved one should they acquire a terminal disease.
Space exploration should be limited to study of the Sun and near-Earth Asteroids ONLY. We’ve got 5 BILLION YEARS before our Sun goes red giant on our ass. That’s plenty of time to solve our problems here and then figure out a way off this rock.
Agreed. Space hasn’t yielded anything cool and we haven’t been challenged enough by any other countries to try and improve our spacefaring technology.
But I am pretty happy about my Tempurpedic bed. I’d trade a sick relative or two for that.
1) I disagree entirely and 2) I suspect I know one of the reasons we’re still pumping money into it.
1) The sun burning out is indeed distant, but the trajectories of every asteroid in this very large universe are an unknown. As long as the entire human population is on one planet, we could easily go the way of the dinosaurs. How likely is it? I don’t think anybody has an accurate idea. Maybe it’ll never happen. Maybe it’s 15 years away. But we don’t know, and it’s not safe to hope for the best without preparing for the worst.
I don’t think we’ll get much concrete out of going to Mars itself, but it’d be good experience for getting out to some other planet we can reasonably colonize one of these centuries.
2) Sputnik got the US thinking of the small area of space around our planet as a strategic theater. Treating it as such caused the USSR to do the same, and thus it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. While space-based weapons platforms never materialized the way Reagan imagined they would, satellites have been a principal source of intelligence-gathering for decades now.
While the Sovs may be gone, the Chinese have been ramping up their space efforts (including ASAT technology), and given that they’re seen as one of the largest potential threats to the US, space is still a strategic theater. So I don’t think the govt thinks we’re getting much out of the space program, but they are very afraid, and not without reason, of what would happen if we’re outpaced by another large, not-so-friendly nation.