I Aim at the Stars…but sometimes I only make viewgraphs
The more things change....
Over the long holiday weekend, Turner Classic Movies regaled us with a really obscure one – the 1960 biopic, I Aim at the Stars, starring Curd Jürgens. This movie is a biography of Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who built the V-2 for Hitler and the Saturn V for America. Although no landmark in cinematic history, it was an interesting and reasonably well told story, even if it glossed over a few inconvenient facts about von Braun, like his nominal membership in Himmler’s SS.
What fascinated me in this movie (which I had not seen) was not von Braun, but the character played by James Daly, Major William Taggert (an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army who, having lost his family to a V-2 hitting London, hated von Braun and all of the Peenemunde rocket group). After the war, Taggert follows the Germans as they relocate, first to White Sands and finally to Huntsville to continue their research into rocket flight. Taggert becomes a reporter (his civilian occupation) who beats his media pulpit about the irrelevancy of space flight. “All the money spent on space could build schools and hospitals instead!” he angrily harangues via television, a philosophical counterpoint to von Braun’s plea for an American satellite program.
Watching the movie, I was struck that this debate has been ongoing for the last 50 years. Something about space exploration or human forays into new realms sticks in the craw of some people. Although the context of the von Braun-Taggart argument was Sputnik and a possible American response, much has remained the same over these last 50 years. The public still falls into two camps – those who believe that our survival depends on continued reach beyond Earth versus those who think it’s a waste of money or that the money could be better spent. NASA spends most of its outreach efforts trying to win the hearts and minds of this latter group.
Case in point: a NASA “white paper,” clearly a rough draft, leaked to the press, describing the post-Augustine space program. Omitting the use of our Moon as the logical next step, “Generation Mars” is billed as the necessary pathway to keep NASA relevant, the public engaged and the required pipeline for sustainable product and group input cycles. No more idiotic fooling around with, or distractions from, lunar bases. The “exciting” destination is Mars – in about thirty years or so. In the mean time, keep flying Shuttle so as not to upset the applecart. Oh, and imagine, “use” the ISS for something (Just pull one or two studies—from the hundreds gathering dust—off the shelf of unfunded programs).
A key assumption here is that NASA’s survival revolves around an excited and engaged public. The authors of this piece apparently think this will happen with Mars because the public doesn’t care about the Moon; that the Mars Generation can become “emotionally engaged because they will become contributors to the Mars goal and part of the maturation process in achieving it.” Great stuff that – “emotional engagement,” not reason or logic. The system of taking incremental steps using lunar resources to make space faring routine is abandoned for a multi-decadal agency program to take an “excited” public to Mars, a program “owned” by its contributors. That’s a lot of time and work needed to engage, excite and own something. It sounds like the description of an entitlement program, not a mission statement.
After 50 years of obvious benefits of space flight, many still are, at best, indifferent to it. But even more significantly, few feel the need to be emotionally engaged with it. People understand that along with our vast interstate road network, we have other vital economic infrastructure, such as railroad transportation, air traffic and more recently, a network of telecommunication satellites orbiting Earth. We depend upon this infrastructure on a daily basis, but except for buffs, we do not get emotionally engaged in their day to day operations.
As no significant additional money is likely to materialize, we must strive for achievable goals and a paced rate of advancement. A program that promises accomplishment thirty years in the future is not a program at all, but rather, an excuse to “study” the problem indefinitely. In other words, it means another thirty years like the previous thirty years – lots of swell viewgraphs, color artwork of astronauts climbing the walls of Valles Marineris, and bureaucratic blither about exciting students. But no actual spaceflight infrastructure.
I’ve touched on this issue before; no one votes for a candidate based on their position on the space program. The net effect of this environment of public indifference is that NASA’s budget (which comes from an ever shrinking slice of the tax-funded, discretionary spending pie) will remain at existing levels for the foreseeable future. What does this mean for NASA’s Mad Men advertising campaign for “Generation Mars?” Basically it means that a space agency dependent upon public excitement to enrich its budget is one that is not likely to prosper. With budgets devoured by countless cycles of viewgraphs, white papers and consensus management missives in the coming decades, what remains is an agency with no sustainable space exploration system.
To add space to our other national transportation networks, the kind that we take for granted but that contribute in so many ways to our prosperity and security, NASA needs to lay the groundwork for private industry to follow. NASA needs to be the driver of private sector technology as it explores. Without logical steps, NASA becomes the devourer of resources and not a technology driver.
As the next frontier is scouted, business will follow, as it always does. Business is eager to follow. NASA needs to finish laying the groundwork before moving on. The Moon is the next destination in space. Will America lead and have a stake in this new land or will we stay behind and watch the movie?
Digg
Reddit
Stumbleupon
I too used to take for granted that public excitement was essential to reaching the next major milestone in space exploration development. But reading you post, I realise that, beyond the resources consumed in trying to engage the public, that very goal is sending us back to the old days. Trying to revive public excitement is another way of trying to revive history. It actually makes perfect sense that the level of public excitement about space will probably never ever reach again the level it has back in the 60s, as space is no longer new. Likewise, people are no longer excited about say, the internet. BUT, the internet and NTIC at large now offer something more important : the prospect of an exciting career to young students. Excited students who will become excited researchers and engineers is what the space industry really needs, not an excited public.
Once again, a most enlighting article, thank you !
Comment by matchad — September 9, 2009 @ 7:38 am
As far as a candidate, particularly at the national level turning support for NASA into a campaign issue, much of it is the candidates themselves. There rarely is a huge difference, and in the case of Obama he needed to be gently reminded that NASA is more than an engineering jobs program that could be cut to fund the Dept. of Education. I’d hardly call either George W. Bush’s or John McCain’s support of NASA to be that of a hardcore fan, although Bush being from Texas certainly was familiar with NASA programs.
Basically, I don’t think the general public has been given a clear choice between the two camps in a visible race to really be able to express their feelings on this issue. Congressmen and Senators from districts and states with huge aerospace infrastructure are going to be whole hog supporters of NASA and spaceflight (Texas, Florida, Alabama, and northern Utah), or at worst apathetic about space exploration. Congressional delegations in other states might be mildly against NASA, but otherwise simply don’t care either. It hasn’t been an issue in part because there is no real difference in philosophical attitudes by the candidates.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if there was a significant political race with somebody firmly in each “camp” of support/opposition to spaceflight and see how that might play out as an issue.
Missing from this discussion is somebody like Walt Disney, who played a major role in selling space exploration to the generation of Americans in the 1950’s and 1960’s. While there are some like James Cameron (he wants to book a private spaceflight to make a film in orbit) and Tom Hanks (a major supporter of the X-Prize foundation) who are strong supporters of spaceflight, I don’t think anybody could match the handiwork of the master of the mouse. An old-fashioned sci-fi thriller filmed in orbit with actual astronaut-actors might just pull off something that would put actual views of Earth orbit onto the big screen could be one of those kind of major moments in history to allow ordinary folks to “get it” on what can be done in space. Yes, there have been Imax films done like that which are awesome, but those don’t go everywhere or are seen by ordinary folks that aren’t already space fans. I just don’t know who would be able to pull off the kind of P.R. campaign that Disney did back in the early days of spaceflight.
Comment by Robert Horning — September 9, 2009 @ 11:53 am
It is my humble assertion that the previous generation are sated. Largely by the cinematic guile of Hollywood! Not only have we gone to the Moon; we’ve gone to 40 Eridani A and met the slightly green tinted, pointy eared hominids with hemocyanin for blood! Or Canopus and the silicon based Sand Worms. How can the orbital plodding of the ISS compete with Warp Drives and Guild Steersmen? Add the fact that [strike]Spice[/strike] Space has always been a political football: Proxmire anyone?
Unless NASA develops a program to re-engage the next generation. Say with the massively hands on lunar tele-presence explore-athon that I keep banging on about. (See Link) Then the drift away from the High Frontier will continue, leaving the field for less jaded nations: China, Russia, Japan and indeed even tired old Europe. “Festina Lente!” As one tired old European (Augustus Caesar) used to say!
Comment by brobof — September 10, 2009 @ 4:38 pm
You know if I were President I’d be at every shuttle launch. That would be one way to draw attention to the program. I would have made sure the press saw me watching the test today of the Ares rocket. Things like that would make a big difference. A few comments about just how much the economy has been repaid for what we spent in space in technology spin offs and lives saved by weather satellites. I’d also spend some time just evoking the gosh gee whiz wow factor. It’s not hard. Not really. A statement like this “Investing in man space ios an investment to our children’s future and will materially make their lives better as it has ours.”
The meek can inherit the Earth. The rest of us are going to the stars. It would be shame if those people were Indian or Chinese and not American.
Comment by Stacy Brian Bartley — September 10, 2009 @ 5:06 pm
Nations are just too overstretched to justify spending such large sums of money on something that gives no immediate return(in the wallet). We will return to the Moon, i think, if we get a working fusion reactor to generate electricity… but that’s some while away. Perhaps this would lead to the merging of the military-industrial complex with oil and mining. Run out of oil? lets go to Titan!
Comment by Phil Thomas — September 11, 2009 @ 2:48 am
Generation Mars, GEEEZ! Once again NASA doesn’t get it. A few quotes from the Augustine Committee summary, “Planning for a human spaceflight program should begin with a choice about its goals-rather than a choice of possible destinations.” So what does NASA do, it picks a destination. Quoting again, “The Committee concluded that the ultimate goal of human exploration is to chart a path for human expansion into the solar system.” Shooting for Mars is truly ‘Apollo on steroids’, just another big rocket program not even leaving bread crumbs for a path. Quoting again, “The Committee finds that Mars is the ultimate destination for human exploration; but it is not the best first destination.” Hello, is NASA reading this stuff? (I do find it curious that the committee finds Mars the “ultimate destination”. I’m glad our forefathers didn’t think of the Appalachian Mountains as the ultimate destination. Such short-sightedness.) The plan is out there folks, its been there for 50 years! Read Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘The Exploration of Space’ or Werner Von Braun’s articles in Colliers magazine from the 1950s. Incremental steps, with the Moon being the first step, learning how to work and live on another planetary body, and using the knowledge gained on the Moon to venture to Mars, and other places in the solar system. Mars Generation, GEEEZ.
Comment by John G. — September 11, 2009 @ 11:36 am
The idea of excitement as the basis of NASA support was always contingent on there being little real opposition, and the ability of NASA-backers to ridicule their opposition as ignorant made them ignore it, till way too late. In fact, while in January of 1962 42 percent of the population thought we needed to spend more on spaceflight, and only 6 percent thought we should spend less, by January of 1972 43 percent thought we should spend more on spaceflight, but 38 percent now thought we should spend less. The political profit for any politician had dropped steeply. All NASA’s attempts to win back that 30+ percent in opposition have failed, because they thought “excitement” and “spinoffs” claims could do it.
They cannot do it. That leaves a competent building of space infrastructure that really can allow our society to lower the costs of human spaceflight, so we can do many more missions for the same money we have today. That means refusing the lure of “excitement” which was always based on the ability to manipulate the great mass of people. They *know* that is being tried, and they resent it bitterly!
We must admit that human spaceflight is pointed at the settlement of the rest of the Solar system, and that making it cheaper to do this is NASA’s primary mission, including lots of science to let settlers know what they will be getting for resources, and for problems in their new environments. This is a rational goal for the growth that rational people will realize is needed for our society.
*Forget*manipulation* and concentrate on competent lowering of costs, and we will then have a rational argument that we can take to people we admit are rational themselves, not the emotion-driven morons of academic and bureaucratic fantasy.
Regards,
Tom Billings
Comment by Tom Billings — September 11, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
We will return to the Moon, i think, if we get a working fusion reactor to generate electricity
I fail to understand the reasoning behind this. Space travel isn’t expensive because of high electricity bills (and fusion, even in a best case outcome, isn’t going to reduce electric rates much, if at all.)
Comment by Paul F. Dietz — September 11, 2009 @ 4:41 pm
I once saw an Australian TV story about helium-3 and how its the best fuel available for fusion reactors. This material is most abundant on the moon, as its regolith is soaked in solar particles.
I think that our lack of natural resources is eventually going to force us out of the ground and into space. In this TV program Harrison Schmitt was all for mining the moon while Ed Mitchell was flatly against it.
I just don’t think we’ll be able to raise the megabucks necessary to leave the earth in the near future unless there’s serious commercial gain in it, or the war on terrorism ends.
Comment by Phil Thomas — September 12, 2009 @ 6:26 am
I once saw an Australian TV story about helium-3 and how its the best fuel available for fusion reactors.
While D-3He does enable the reactor to produce less of its energy in neutrons (5-10% of the energy coming out as neutrons, vs. 75% in DT fusion), that fuel is also much less reactive than DT. IIRC, it’s about 50 times less reactive, which means much denser plasma is required. This makes the reactor more expensive (more powerful magnets are needed). All the studies I’ve seen have not shown D3He fusion to result in any significant cost advantage over DT (and DT doesn’t have any large cost advantage over ordinary fission.)
Comment by Paul F. Dietz — September 15, 2009 @ 1:27 pm
I agree that frenzied excitement isn’t necessary for NASA survival; in any case, a significant proportion of the public were not excited by the Apollo landings, (cf. Gil Scott Heron’s proto-rap tune about it.) As it is, every shuttle launch rates a blurb in the mainstream media. I think going back to the Moon would increase interest levels.
That said, I don’t appreciate the way the Augustine committee has not-so-subtly inverted the VSE priorities. The Moon was the “must have” destination, while the shuttle and ISS were “nice to haves” that would require extra, new monies to keep going; now it’s the opposite.
PS: Paul, have you seen ULA’s proposal to use EELV’s as an alternative to the CxN scenario? It came out a couple of days after your post. It says we can get back to the Moon by 2018 under the current budget without heavy lift, and proposes a cool, “Space 1999″-like horizontally landing lunar lander architecture. Very refreshing after the depressing Augustine hearings. This is an important third alternative to Cxn and Augustine, something concrete that Congress can get behind. With any luck, the lunar base will still get constructed within our lifetimes.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/09/ula-claim-gap-reducing-solution-via-eelv-exploration-master-plan/
Comment by Warren Platts — September 17, 2009 @ 8:14 am
To understand why NASA is where it is; one needs to look at the economic incentives it has.
Who is NASA’s customer (i.e. who gives it money)?
The U.S. Government.
Whom does NASA serve, in order to get that money?
The U.S. Government.
I posit to you that *at best* government space programs exist to get government people into government-operated space. At worst, they’re self-perpetuating jobs programs with marginal productivity when compared to an organization that has competition driving it.
NASA will not get you or I into space. They have *no* incentive to do so. Even if they tried they probably couldn’t do it effectively because there are no economizing forces on them. They get their money from taxes, which are not given in voluntary exchange.
On the other hand, Burt Rutan and the like *are* getting a lot of interest from individuals and the media, because they *do* promise a way that non-government-affiliated individuals can get into space. It costs a lot of money right now; but it doesn’t cost a lifetime, and it will get much cheaper and better in short order due to competition.
If you want to go into space, you do indeed need to engage them… and you need to engage their wallets. Offer them real value that they can see, and they will vote you loads of money straight from their pockets.
We like to justify the government space program with it’s spinoffs and money returned; but in a lot of cases it’s just self-justification. It ignores the fact that a lot of those spinoffs would have happened anyway, because they were technologically ready to happen. The benefits of the space program to the average consumer have been largely due to market-driven forces; such as communication satellites, weather prediction (as consumed by commercial aviation and many other enterprises), mapping (again as consumed commercially), and others. Those benefits largely come to the consumers via commercial channels, which means money is available to fund their operation. The consumers won’t give money voluntarily to a space program that pretty obviously returns very little value directly to them. They give it to the companies that provide them value and *then* those companies use space-based technology.
Comment by Carl — September 17, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
All comments to date ignore the dominant driving force behind the Appollo program and the landing of a man on the moon … it was the Cold War,the Missile Gap, and the Space Race all prompted by the post WWII competition between the Soviet Union and the USA. Without that geo-political backdrop, there might not yet have been a man(kind) on the surface of the moon.
Comment by Lawrence Courant — September 18, 2009 @ 11:06 am
“it was an interesting and reasonably well told story, even if it glossed over a few inconvenient facts about von Braun, like his nominal membership in Himmler’s SS.”
This is slightly off topic, but speaking of Faustian bargains, I just now ran across the curious case of Gerry Bull, a rocket scientist who’s life kind of mirrored Von Braun’s. Von Braun was born in the German periphery in what is now Poland; Bull was from Canada. Von Braun worked on new-fangled liquid fueled rockets; Bull worked on the old-fashioned, Jules Verne technology of using big guns to launch things into orbit. Both would turn to any military that would fund their ideas, but Von Braun worked for the bad guys first, and then turned to the good guys, whereas Bull worked for the good guys first, and when that didn’t pan out, he turned to Saddam Hussein and helped develop the infamous “Babylon Gun”, that would have been by far the world’s biggest gun ever built. (In theory, the gun could have delivered 100 pound payloads into orbit for ~$300 per pound–not bad when compared to the $5,000 per pound that current EELV’s cost!) To complete the bizarre mirror symmetry, Von Braun died a natural death; Bull was shot in the back of his head 6 times, probably by the Mossad. Crazy . . . .
Comment by Warren Platts — September 22, 2009 @ 11:05 pm