From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Wed Feb 05 2003 - 16:47:03 MST
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/04/opinion/04KRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=topLACKE
The New York Times
February 4, 2003
A Failed Mission
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Some commentators have suggested that the Columbia disaster is more than a
setback - that it marks the end of the whole space shuttle program. Let's
hope they're right.
I say this with regret. Like millions of other Americans, I dream of a day
when humanity expands beyond Earth, and I'm still a sucker for well-told
space travel stories - I was furious when Fox canceled "Firefly." I also
understand that many people feel we shouldn't retreat in the face of
adversity. But the shuttle program didn't suddenly go wrong last weekend;
in terms of its original mission, it was a failure from the get-go.
Indeed, manned space flight in general has turned out to be a bust.
The key word here is "manned." Space flight has been a huge boon to
mankind. It has advanced the cause of science: for example, cosmology, and
with it our understanding of basic physics, has made huge strides through
space-based observation. Space flight has also done a lot to improve life
here on Earth, as space-based systems help us track storms, communicate
with one another, even find out where we are. This column traveled 45,000
miles on its way to The New York Times: I access the Internet via
satellite.
Yet almost all the payoff from space travel, scientific and practical, has
come from unmanned vehicles and satellites. Yes, astronauts fitted the
Hubble telescope with new eyeglasses; but that aside, we have basically
sent people into space to show that we can. In the 1960's, manned space
travel was an extension of the cold war. After the Soviet Union dropped
out of the space race, we stopped visiting the moon. But why do we still
send people into orbit?
In space, you see, people are a nuisance. They're heavy; they need to
breathe; trickiest of all, as we have so tragically learned, they need to
get back to Earth.
One result is that manned space travel is extremely expensive. The space
shuttle was supposed to bring those costs down, by making the vehicles
reusable - hence the deliberately unglamorous name, suggesting a
utilitarian bus that takes astronauts back and forth. But the shuttle
never delivered significant cost savings - nor could it really have been
expected to. Manned space travel will remain prohibitively expensive until
there is a breakthrough in propulsion - until chemical rockets are
replaced with something better.
And even then, will there be any reason to send people, rather than our
ever more sophisticated machines, into space?
I had an epiphany a few months ago while reading George Dyson's "Project
Orion," which tells the true story of America's efforts to build a
nuclear-powered spacecraft. The project was eventually canceled, in part
because the proposed propulsion system - a series of small nuclear
explosions - would have run afoul of the test-ban treaty. But if the
project had proceeded, manned spacecraft might have visited much of the
solar system by now.
Faced with the thought that manned space travel - the real thing, not the
show NASA puts on to keep the public entertained - could already have
happened if history had played out a bit differently, I was forced to
confront my youthful dreams of space flight with the question, So what? I
found myself trying to think of wonderful things people might have done in
space these past 30 years - and came up blank. Scientific observation?
Machines can do that. Mining the asteroids? A dubious idea - but even if
it makes sense, machines can do that too. (A parallel: Remember all those
predictions of undersea cities? Sure enough, we now extract lots of
valuable resources from the ocean floor - but nobody wants to live there,
or even visit in person.)
The sad truth is that for many years NASA has struggled to invent reasons
to put people into space - sort of the way the Bush administration
struggles to invent reasons to . . . but let's not get into that today.
It's an open secret that the only real purpose of the International Space
Station is to give us a reason to keep flying space shuttles.
Does that mean people should never again go into space? Of course not.
Technology marches on: someday we will have a cost-effective way to get
people into orbit and back again. At that point it will be worth
rethinking the uses of space. I'm not giving up on the dream of space
colonization. But our current approach - using hugely expensive rockets to
launch a handful of people into space, where they have nothing much to do
- is a dead end.
-- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1@msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]
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