This is Our Life, This is Our Song

Joe over at FroJoe has called a blog war! It is on! Joe has a good follow-up post regarding our shuttle debate.

To keep things simple, I think we can identify two main reasons to entertain the idea of manned space exploration. One is for research, the other is for national pride / inspiration (ie to keep Joe from feeling sad when he sees a private name on a space vehicle). After we decide which reason compels us to consider it, we then need to decide if the options available are good options and worth the gains.

I feel strongly that when conducting space exploration, research needs to be our main priority. To keep this post simple, I've put my explanation for why doing it for national pride is a problem in another post.

If research is our driving goal, then I fully agree that there are good research reasons for manned space exploration. But where I diverge is whether we have good policy options and whether the options are worth the research payoffs. In other words, I don't think the Shuttle or Constellation (the Bush program that would have eventually taken manned flights to the moon and mars) are good options.

As I said in my original post, I find the Space Shuttle to be too expensive and dangerous with the research payoffs too small to be worth continuing. We can find cheaper and safer ways to achieve low earth orbit.

And Constellation is also not the answer right now. Its troubles are great - over budget, behind schedule, and with some serious technical issues that need to be worked out (see the GAO paper).

Basically, I think the technology is not there to conduct bigger missions at a reasonable price (and there is no need for NASA to take on the risk of developing its own new low earth orbit vehicle).

I think it is instructive to compare another area where we could achieve research gains if we spent a lot more money - at the bottom of our oceans. If there was a decision to fully explore our depths (based on politics and national pride), we could spend hundreds of billions of dollars and take extra risks and learn a lot more. But instead, with ocean exploration we are able to let the technology progress and undertake research when the costs and risks are reasonable.

I think space exploration should be the same way. At the moment, based on where the technology is, we don't have any good options. So let’s use this time to let technology develop and reassess what our goals really are and what we can reasonably accomplish. And when we have good options to meet our research goals at reasonable costs, then let's shoot for the moon! Or Mars. Whichever.


*The title are lyrics from Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It.