JCC The American Space Program and its Future...

I'm just going to throw this out there because I was actually following this thread to begin with and interested in the subject - there is the ignore feature for users. I highly recommend using it. When I turned off ignore for this thread, I swear my IQ went down and I immediately turned it back on.

I really really suggest using that feature of the forum, because you'll have a lot more meaningful conversations of intelligence about this actual subject.

 

Stop with the trolling accusations. It's getting old and I'm tempted to deal with them in a more than passing way. I know I've said it before but it bears repeating, if only as a reality check: I decide who's trolling. Not you.

No second warnings

 

So it was kind of a joke earlier, but could there be anything gained from mining for resources in the sun?

 

No. Unless if you want super-heated hydrogen or helium.

 

Well that would be wonderful for my planned hot air balloon farm.

 

We need to mine the wormhole instead

 

I don’t think anyone’s really put the case for manned spaceflight forward in the thread, so I thought I might have a go at it. By way of personal bias, I do think we need to have more of it, and we need to go back to the Moon, and on to Mars.

Two papers set out the basic position, both by IA Crawford. There’s some overlap between them because one addresses the scientific case for manned spaceflight and the other the case for infrastructure surrounding manned spaceflight. They date back to 1998 and 2001 respectively. I won't rehash them for length, but they bear reading.

What’s left out of the papers is Carl Sagan’s argument in Pale Blue Dot, which escalates of the need for manned spaceflight to the highest possible tier: that of survival of the species. Not survival due to the risks inherent in our own predilection to destroy our own planet, mind you, but rather from extraplanetary threats such as asteroids. It might appear a seductive argument that the Harry Stamper option would suffice for that – that you could easily push an asteroid off course with a ship sent to it before it reaches the Earth – except that to perform a feat of that magnitude, you basically need to develop all the infrastructure and technology for manned spaceflight in any event. For that cost you might as well just develop the technology anyway. Maybe Warren Ellis put the argument most eloquently: "The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species.”

I think there’s also an implicit argument to be made for manned spaceflight which is found most obviously in Sagan’s own (paraphrased) commentary on the titular pale blue dot of the Earth as seen from the vast distances of space: “On this pale blue dot has lived everyone: every saint, sinner, dictator, every drop of blood shed for a tiny fraction of the pale blue dot”. Manned spaceflight, going to other planets, colonising other planets, changes our perspective on the Earth’s place in the universe and perhaps more importantly humanity’s place in the universe. You might well find, just as scientific advances would be achieved as an adjunct to manned spaceflight rather than as their purpose, beneficial cultural changes in society and how we deal with one another on this Earth as an adjunct to the fact of a colony on Mars or the Moon.

You can argue, of course, that we already have the picture of the pale blue dot itself to make that contention, but in response I’d say it’s one thing to see a picture of Michelangelo’s David in a book, and another thing entirely to be standing before the sculpture’s fifteen-foot frame, being deluged in every fine detail of the artist’s masterpiece, from the deliberately out-of-proportion hands (sometimes interpreted to be suggesting David’s hands are in fact the hands of God) to the fact he was carved having taken a deep breath preparatory to hurling the first of the stones in his sling. Concordantly, it’s one thing to see NASA’s latest pictures released from its rover; it’s another to listen to a living man (or woman) speak about the intense, unfiltered-by-an-atmosphere light of the Earth's crescent at Tranquility Base. I suspect the astronauts who have been there understood that difference, which is why they keep advocating for us to return even in their old age, thirty, forty years after they went. One day, I dearly hope, they’ll send an artist, or a writer, or a theologian to the Moon. It’ll be as big a step forward as sending the first astronaut. These are not questions of inspiration as such; they are issues of the fundamental changes in our perspective as human beings that are available from stepping onto other worlds, from looking back at a steadily-smaller, steadily more precious homeworld behind them. The more we explore space as living beings, the more people available to speak about how the Earth’s place in the heavens can be obliterated just by raising a thumb to block it out of one’s vision on Mars, the less insular we become; the less inhuman religious doctrine becomes. Because, in short, the more of space we explore, the more we realise ultimately in our universe that one of the few things which gives meaning to the void is each other.

Despite saying this isn't an issue of inspiration I should say that I think, too, that inspiration is also a big part of it. Posit the cost, certainly. But if so you must similarly posit the cost of justice, or democracy, or ethics, any of those institutions which are theoretically a net impost on economic or scientific efficiency. Moreover I believe the human psyche needs to have physical frontiers, perhaps almost by definition; and as a species I think we have a constant need to be pushing against those physical frontiers. That's especially now as reading declines in a serious way and we grow ever more insular, ever shorter in our attention spans, ever more online and ever less able to find psychological or physical spaces for silence and solitude.

I am not here, for a moment, denigrating the inspiration that flows from looking inside an atom, or from the intense surge of certainty, control, and inspiration that surely the researchers at CERN must have had when the Higgs Boson changed forever from a guess to an observed reality. There is no question scientists and scientific researches go on to inspire scientists and those who would be scientists. But it is not just scientists who must be inspired if we are to colonise other worlds, ensure our survival, change our perspective as a species. That takes exploration. It takes risk. As Apollo’s history tells us, it takes lives. It takes cost. And it takes going to the place we can see in a telescope but have yet to visit. It takes reaching out to grasp that which can be in our reach. Not for nothing was the western hemisphere of the Earth first hailed as the “New World” by Vespucci in his letter back to Portugal on discovering Brazil, and not for nothing was it received with great interest and reprinted at great length across Europe. The New World, both in the short term and the long term, opened our perspectives in so many ways it’s impossible to tease all of them out in an analytical way. It allowed a break away from, quite literally, the Old World and the old perspectives that had characterised it. It may sound like I’m talking about Manifest Destiny here, but I am not: I am speaking of a manifest change of how we see ourselves.

 

Personally, I'd prefer we just abandon the space exploration programs all together, at least those that have to do with man supposedly colonizing another world. The closest stars to our own system are about 200,000 years away at constant light speed; we're not going anywhere.

 

Actually the closest star to our own system is Proxima Centauri at 4.2 lightyears from us, which means roughly 4 years at constant light speed. It's a red dwarf, certainly, and there's a lot of speculation about the habitability of any planet that orbits it. The nearest planet we've detected that lies on the inner edge of our present concept of the habitable zone from its star is Tau Ceti e, 11.9 lightyears away, thus, 12 years at constant lightspeed.

The lightspeed barrier is going to be one tough ask to overcome, but I'd bet medieval scientists (insofar as the word existed at the time) couldn't conceive of passing the speed of sound, either. Our technological progress in just the past fifty years has been meteoric in a number of areas, not the least of which is communication and travel. If (and one has to accept it's an if) our technology continues to advance in the right areas at that rate, I would wager we can't conceive of the technological breakthroughs that will be available by the end of our lifetimes, anymore than Leonardo da Vinci could conceive a picture of the world four centuries hence.

But we're not going to get there by sitting here on Earth and waiting to hit a home run that allows us to get to the nearest star. The best place to experiment on what works for colonisation of worlds orbiting other stars is on the worlds orbiting our star that we don't presently occupy.

 

Erm, the closest stars are only a few light-years away. The trouble is getting a spacecraft to move anywhere near that speed. Not that 3 or 4+ years one-way would be a short journey, or that lifeless nothing (which, even with generous estimates of life's abundance, makes up well over 99% of the universe) would be worth a manned trip.

EDIT: And the speed of sound (in Earth's atmosphere) is a bit different than the universal speed limit. Not to mention a hell of a lot slower.

 

To that I can only repeat what may have only been implicit in my earlier post: you are looking at the gap and the journey through our present frame of reference, not through the frame of reference of mankind a hundred, two hundred years down the road given our present rate of advancement. I seem to recall you're a historian, D_Guy, does that sense of humanity's progress across time not give you a sense of how fast we've accelerated technologically in the past fifty years alone, how unprecedented our society (some dare to call it a civilisation) advancement has been across 4000-odd years of human history? As Tommy Lee Jones said to Will Smith in MIB, admittedly in a slightly different context: "Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat. ... Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

I would accept much of this is projection out from our current frame of reference, which necessarily is probably not going to be accurate out past, I dunno, the next ten years or so, but it is staggering to see nonetheless, and in my mind at least a cause for hope, even optimism, on this score -- so long as we make manned spaceflight a priority.

 

The rapid technological progress will stop. It's debatable at what point it will happen and why-- whether due to infeasibility/impossibility or civilization declining to a point where we can't sustain it or whatever. But 1750 (approximately the start of the Industrial Revolution) wasn't that long ago considering the scope of recorded human history (~5,000 years) and human history altogether (200,000 years). The thing is, as far as we know, a spacecraft reaching or exceeding the speed of light is impossible. Sure, we could be wrong, but why assume that? We knew it was possible to go faster than sound decades (or longer, I'm not sure) before it first (intentionally) happened. We knew that it was possible to split the atom and release enormous amounts of energy long before it happened. We knew it was possible to eradicate Smallpox. We knew it was possible to go to the moon. We know it's possible to go to Mars. Etc. It was only a matter of technology catching up and resources being poured into those pursuits.

And even if reaching the speed of light were possible, why is it worth it? What is out there that is makes the trillions of dollars more well-spent than if we had used them for things like education, disease eradication, increased food security, better sources of energy? What bothers me with talks of colonization and terraforming (I'm thinking of Stephen Hawking in particular) (and terraforming is another thing that's pretty dubious) is that it seems to have given up on this planet. We can't give up on it, though. It's all we have and it's probably all we'll ever have.

 

Read through my long post above and you'll see the argument in favour. Leaving aside survival of the species via diaspora which is probably the most immediate reason of them all, there are a number of other benefits to humanity from manned spaceflight.

I am also not arguing that we should assume exceeding the speed of light is possible; you seem to be mischaracterising my argument there. In support of your argument you seem to be putting forward that we knew certain things were possible before we could achieve them technologically. This ignores an important point: at every point, up to the second we knew they were possible, we either had not turned our minds to the possibility or had thought each was impossible. And sometimes the conception of something as possible is the result of an accident rather than dedicated thought on the subject first -- Rontgen and his X-Rays, penicillin, and so on.

That's why science as a general discipline, no matter how hard-scored the phenomenon into the pages of history, still calls Relativity a theory: it might only be paying lip service to the fact all scientific principles are working ideas until confronted with an anomaly that does not obey the theory, but the working viewpoint default assumption (presumption?) of science is doubt. Science at a philosophical level requires us to not assume that the speed of light is non-surpassable, even though large bodies of our technology and much of our current scientific thought do depend on that principle being correct. And the absolute limit of lightspeed (if indeed it is absolute) does not prevent us from seeking ways to circumvent that limit, whether it be via notional wormhole or warp drive or whatever. Travel via wormhole or notional warp drive is unquestionably theoretical at best and dependent on a lot of different assumptions, not the least of which is far more advanced technology than we have; my point is that depending on the point of history you were living in, the same was true of rocketry, travel above the speed of sound, and all the rest. They were all notional, untested, only theoretical at one point or another in our history. Given that track record and the current acceleration of our technology, I still have cause for optimism. It probably would not be in my lifetime, probably not that of my children's, either, but I think it must come eventually. It is also inherent that when that solution comes, it will be in a form that we, in our present moment of history, can't possibly conceive of or understand. Once again, the issue is the frame of reference chosen.

EDIT: I see you edited ... I won't rehash Sagan, but I don't see colonisation as a rush to the exits abandonment of Earth concept, any more than colonisation of the New World caused a rush to the exits from England or that the world suddenly gave up on Europe. Again, I see it as a major step towards a change in our perspective: like Sagan said, that blue dot looks a hell of a lot more precious from the perspective of seeing it in the midst of the darkness of space.

 

> still calls Relativity a theory

What do you mean 'still calls it?' There is no where else for it to go. A scientific theory is the highest rank for an scientific explanation. There is nothing higher to call it.

> : at every point, up to the second we knew they were possible, we either had not turned our minds to the possibility or had thought each was impossible.

That's a mischaracterization of the scientific process. There was no fundamental dynamics of the universe that was preventing peopld from breaking the sound barrier that was then disproven. Whereas relativity prohibits faster than light travel for all massive particles (and even if we somehow became massless, we'd then only get to go at exactly c).

 

Newton's Laws of Motion? Either way I take it you would agree with the proposition,that the default assumption of science is doubt and that a theory must necessarily be called into question and re-evaluated, even overturned in part if not in whole, if an anomaly is produced (and reproduced) which does not obey that theory?

So far as we know. I am not saying that we'll necessarily figure out otherwise in our lifetimes. But if the history of science is anything to go by, we're an accomplished species at getting around or over limits, even those we thought were insurmountable or unattainable. That's my main point and my cause for optimism.

 

I think it is you who are mischaracterizing things. Yes, humanity has often been wrong about the way that the natural world works. But many of the issues you raise don't represent any scientific error. There was no real theoretical framework being employed at all. People simply had a rather arbitrarily assembled set of things that they held to be true. It often predates the very notion of data collection, let alone the broader scientific method. One of the major advantages of the scientific method is that it provides a framework for making evidence-based predictions about the unknown. For you to compare that to a bunch of results that came prior to any reliable system for doing this is pointless, and doesn't really demonstrate anything at all.

Why do you have a cause for optimism? While science requires that we always be open to disproving what we consider to be foundational truths, it doesn't require that we actually be wrong. We have known about the concept of photosynthesis since the 1790s. Would you, by the same logic you offered above, also contend that we will imminently disprove the notion that plants use carbon dioxide and sunlight to produce oxygen, water, and carbohydrates? If not, why is falsifying one widely held scientific belief inevitable when the other is not? You've made no arguments specific to space travel.

 

You are still clinging very strongly to our present frame of reference. I would think in a couple hundred years' time it is as likely as not that our descendants will look back on our approach to science and principle and conclude that we were as arbitrary and primitive as those we now criticise for a lack of precision.

This is a false analogue, mainly because nobody has speculated about altering the very process of photosynthesis or proposed a theoretical method for how it might be done. Supraluminal space travel does have those theoretical imaginings available to it, even accepting they require major assumptions and a much higher level of technology than we presently have. The field of unknowns in the region is entirely different. In addition, I have not once said I think the speed of light will be overturned as an absolute limit, so I'd suggest you put away the pitchforks and burning torches on that score. Only that its circumvention may well come in a form which we in the present can't conceive of by definition of our current state of knowledge.

EDIT: Indeed, on your photosynthesis example, consider the notional and in-production designs for skyscrapers that supply artificial light to allow photosynthesis to occur even without the sun; vertical, urban crop farming, as it were. That would be one example of circumvention of what you seem to be postulating as absolute limits of CO2 + sunlight = oxygen + water + carbohydrates. It doesn't disobey the principle; merely circumvents it.

 

What? A law isn't the next rank. There is no next rank. A law is just a mathematical relationship constructed from observation/experimentation.

Also I'd agree that we must be open to scrapping a theory if new anomalous evidence shows up, but there simply hasn't been any for Relativity and there is no reason to think there will be. General Relativity has stood up to every single test. All this feel good nonsense about surpassing our limits is meaningless.

 

Not really. People in prior eras were pretty acutely aware of their poor predictive ability. While people sometimes ventured to offer their own ideas about how things work, it was never really presented as anything more than a given individual's idea. Things were fundamentally and recognizably different when we started being able to list reasons in support of our ideas about the natural world. What are you talking about?

But to hear you tell things above, the theoretical imaginings are simply a function of no one having tried to do so. All you've addressed in your response above is how far along someone has come in working on each problem. But the amount of attention we've given something has nothing to do with its true nature. You can't talk about "the field of unknowns" after having just lectured us about how likely it is that we've made some fundamental error in our understanding of the laws of the universe. The truth is that, yes, photosynthesis is pretty well-settled science. In order for it to be untrue, we would have to assume that we are just completely wrong on some major points. But you know what? The exact same thing is true of faster than light travel. And that's why everyone keeps laughing off your talk about warp drives and pseudo-spiritual hogwash about human destiny.

 

If by "everyone" you mean you, Vivec, and D_Guy, Wock, I suggest you get some glasses.

Otherwise, see my edits.

 

You might very well think that. Now go and show me where I said general relativity was invalid.

 

And Ender, Lowbacca, Ramza, Morella, Jello, etc.

Edit: Don't even think about playing that game. You spent post after post going on about how relativity is only a theory, how we need to keep our minds open for evidence that migh disprove it, etc.

 

Your edit doesn't really alter my response, or address the issues I raised there. While my post used the word "sunlight," the idea of photosynthesis never does. It merely requires a light source. Your example neither circumvents nor disproves the theory at all.

 

I'm sorry, you seem to have me mixed up with VLM.

 

You said sunlight, not me. And I wasn't disproving it. Only showing the ways in which human ingenuity gets around the normal restrictions applying to it.