Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

You know what annoys me about people who oppose the space program? Many of them say that we should spend the money instead on feeding and sheltering the homeless, or put it into schools, or welfare, or any number of other things.

The problem with that is that WE ARE spending money, trillions of dollars since LBJ, on those things! The relative pittance that NASA gets would be a drop in the bucket. I'd rather see us push the envelope again in science and technology, and like you say, actually do something in space again.

OTOH, this study is just the kind of stuff they have to do to be able to sell the funding in Congress.

Posted by Astrosmith at November 12, 2004 06:37 AM

Having worked on ISS, I know international cooperation is no panacea in regards to lowering cost and reducing schedule. A rational look would realize the additional resources necessary for coordination. Funny, many understand the budget busting issues of spreading the NASA pork (it's pork when its done for political gain not the interest of NASA) across many states, but apparently its ok when spread across many nations.

Unfortunately, Astrosmith is right... it's a necessary evil for getting funding. It's not a failure of public education; rather a "me too" attitude.

I hope NASA and the people of the US focus on the moon. I want to go further, but for now, I think it is more reasonable to support easy access to the moon. Many similar issues need to be addressed when going to either the moon or Mars, but the time required to manage those issues is several orders of magnitude less than Mars, while also being several orders of magnitude greater than LEO. It's not baby steps first, just rational progression.

Posted by Leland at November 12, 2004 07:10 AM

Astrosmith: spare us the entitlement whining, ok? We people who think the space program has been a waste of our tax dollars recognize where the money ultimately comes from. How about just leaving it in our pockets?

Posted by Paul Dietz at November 12, 2004 09:21 AM

Every one sems to miss the biggest benifit of a space program.

I'm a child of Apollo. I was 8 when we first landed on the moon. This early fascination had a big impact in my choice of enginering as a carrer.

It is my belief that the tech boom of the mid to late 90's was the inevitable result of the Apollo generation demographics. In the mid 90's the children of Apollo were 30 to 40 years old, at their productivity peak. Today far more children want to be Donald Trump then Werner Von Braun.

I keep hoping that the current efforts in China
will wake up the political establishment here to actually support a real space program.

Paul

Posted by Paul Breed at November 12, 2004 09:28 AM

Int'l cooperation and spinoff - the only two justifications for human exploration that are actually worse than science.

Not that human mission can't do good science - it's just that there are lots of much more important reasons to send people to the moon and mars.

Posted by James at November 12, 2004 09:44 AM

Paul; Spare us the taxpayer whining. If they no longer took NASA funding from your pocket, in the course of a decade you might get enough money to order off of the .99 cent menu at your local McBurgerChain.

Posted by Derek L. at November 12, 2004 09:58 AM

Hate to belabor the obvious, but without international cooperation, the ISS would've been in pretty bad shape since the Columbia crew died. Without the Soyuz capsules, would we have even been able to bring down the crew that was on board at the time? Without the Progress resupply vehicles, the ISS would've ran out of consumables a long time ago.

International cooperation does drive up R&D costs, but at least it can prevent the whole thing from dying of a single point failure.

Posted by Larry J at November 12, 2004 10:32 AM

We people who think the space program has been a waste of our tax dollars. . .

I think a strong libertarian case can be made that government should spend tax money on neither charity to the poor nor space exploration: let citizens who wish to do either volunteer their dough for the purpose. Astrosmith (and I) can donate our bux to NASA or buy stock in Scaled Composites, as we please, and Paul can throw his money down whichever socia1ist rathole he likes. No doubt Astro and I will be pleased when the pix come back from Pluto, or we can buy a weekend excursion ticket to the Moon, and no doubt Paul will be pleased when. . .I dunno, when he feels the millenium is that much closer because poverty is eliminated, well almost, nearly, any day now, hope is on the way! and all children now test above average, whatever.

What I fantasize is that government sets your tax liability -- you have to spend this much every April 15 on support of public projects -- but then you get to choose where it goes. Buy a share in a Mars orbiter or buy 50 clean needles to pass out to crack addicts, whichever you please. Let people vote with their dollars, as it were.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 12, 2004 10:37 AM

Quote from Paul Dietz: "How about just leaving it in our pockets?"

Okay Paul you can have your $.25 back

Posted by Josh "Hefty" Reiter at November 12, 2004 10:38 AM

Every one sems to miss the biggest benifit of a space program. I'm a child of Apollo. . .

Let me add my voice strongly to this most excellent point made by Paul (the other one). Social myths and goals matter and they matter strongly. The stories we tell each other, and to our children, have a profound impact on how we and they see the world. If the stories we tell are all about pessimism and retrenchment, then we become medieval, hiding in the castles, hoarding our corn against the brutal winter we expect any day now.

On the other hand, if the stories we tell are all about daring and glorious achievement, then we become Renaissance men, we venture out from our caves, and we plant (most of) the corn, hoping for a bountiful harvest.

Monetarist economists recognize this powerful principal, and it can arguably be seen clearly in the post 9/11 recession and recovery: when people are pessimistic about the future (because wackos have just destroyed the WTC) they retrench and become super cautious. Interest rates rise, folks delay starting their own business, and jobs disappear as the case for hiring someone gets tougher to make in the face of pessimistic assumptions about the future. One the other hand, when people become optimistic about the future (or are somewhat artificially induced to become so by the reduction of interest rates by the Fed) they take risks, borrow money, start businesses, and hire employees they are only 95% sure they can pay next year.

Many other historical examples abound, and the overall lesson is clear: optimism and faith in the future is not a minor symptom but rather the mainspring of the economic success of a nation.

That said, can we doubt that optimism and faith in our technological future is essential to our technological success? So let us not dismiss by any means the intangible "spin-offs" of Armstrong's photos of the American flag on the Moon or JPL's double rover bullseye this January.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 12, 2004 10:57 AM

Derek and Josh: the per capita impact of the NASA budget is on the order of $50/year. For my household, that comes to on the order of a thousand dollars over a decade. We pay this not only in direct tax payments, but in the portion of corporate taxes that are included in the price of goods and services we consume.

Someone who sucks kilobucks from my bank account better have a better justification than any you've come up with, misters.

Carl: who said I want to throw the money down a socia1ist rathole? I want to spend it on myself and my family. I didn't realize the possibility of one keeping one's own income was somehow so bizarre it wasn't to be considered.

(Rand: did you know your spam filter keeps me from properly spelling socia1ist?)

Posted by Paul Dietz at November 12, 2004 11:33 AM

did you know your spam filter keeps me from properly spelling socia1ist?

No, I didn't know that.

[taking a minute to do an experiment.]

It's not "socia1ist" that it doesn't like--it's "cia1is."

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 12, 2004 11:42 AM

Quote from Paul: "the per capita impact of the NASA budget is on the order of $50/year."

I spend more than that on a video game. If you and your girlfriend/mistress/wife go to the Movie theatre twice then you've spent that more than that. I spent more in just late fees alone, to Blockbuster video than that. The average dog owner spends several hundred dollars a year on dog treats alone. I think you get my point.

Posted by Josh "Hefty" Reiter at November 12, 2004 12:33 PM

Josh: I think I do get your point -- this unwanted (by me) theft of my money is ok because it's 'not very much.'

Instead of comparing this spending to spending from which I do derive value, let's compare it to the amount of money I spend on, say, velvet pictures of Elvis. That amount is zero, because I don't *want* velvet pictures of Elvis.

Similarly, if I don't derive value from the space program, why should I find *any* quantity of my money spent on it acceptable? The things I voluntarily spend money on have survived from a much larger set of possibilities I have rejected; the comparison of space spending to this select group of survivors begs the question of whether it belongs in that group in the first place.

Posted by Paul Dietz at November 12, 2004 12:49 PM

All those other things are voluntary expenditures, Hefty. Anyway, it's not the amount, so much as the principle.

I'm not a big fan of my tax dollars going to NASA, either, but I see it as pretty much inevitable, so my focus is on getting the most (rather than, as has been the case for most of my life, the least) for the money.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 12, 2004 12:51 PM

Similarly, if I don't derive value from the space program, why should I find *any* quantity of my money spent on it acceptable?

A fine argument, but you have begged the important question of who decides whether you derive value from the space program. Your position is that you do. Up to a point, I agree with you, or at least sympathize with you.

However, it needs pointing out that this is far from obviously the right answer, and reasonable people may disagree with you. There are quite a number of things you are forced to do "for your own good" by the rest of us, among them wear a seat belt in a car and a helmet on a motorcycle, get educated up to a certain minimum standard which includes (for example) learning the basic ideas of evolution, and not be allowed to buy certain drugs with unproven benefits and dangerous side effects, including Laetrile and cocaine.

In each case, there is a substantial minority of Americans who argue, as you do here, that it's obvious you should be allowed to determine for yourself what is and is not good for you.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your conclusion, but I'm saying as long as you don't live in a libertarian paradise, you need to make the case that it is your judgment (rather than, say, the judgment of the majority of the rest of us) that should determine the value of a space program to you, or rather to your share of our national endeavor.

If you have raised teenagers, you've been on the other side of this argument. The teen tells you: why should I have to {rake the yard, help my brother with his math homework, clean my room, not get my nipples pierced} when my judgment says it isn't worthwhile? You've struggled to explain the necessary compromises in personal freedom that come with the benefits of living in a cooperative venture such as a family, tribe, nation. . .

Again, not saying your conclusion is wrong, just that, so far, you have omitted a necessary justification for it.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 12, 2004 02:12 PM

Carl: it's certainly the case that in a democracy there may be things done with my tax dollars that I do not find acceptable. The money gets spent anyway, but there is no requirement that I put on a happy face and pretend it's all sunshine and smiles, or believe that if the majority wills it, they must know what's good for me.

If the people decide not to be interested in (say) sending missions to Mars, do you expect members of (say) the Planetary Society to say this is therefore good? I expect they would rant and rail against the public's shortsightedness. Grant me the freedom to do likewise from my own position.

The public, IMO, still doesn't fully get the disconnect between image and reality in the space program. The VSE is going to force this issue, I think, but not, I predict, in a way that space advocates will find particularly appealing.

Posted by paul Dietz at November 12, 2004 02:58 PM

> you need to make the case that it is your judgment (rather than, say,
> the judgment of the majority of the rest of us) that should determine
> the value of a space program to you

An individual needs to prove that he is a better judge of his own interests than elected politicians in Washington???

Where is Ronald Reagan when we need him?

Posted by Edward Wright at November 12, 2004 05:44 PM

An individual needs to prove that he is a better judge of his own interests than elected politicians in Washington???

No, sir, an individual needs to prove that he is a better judge of his own interests than the people who elected those politicians in Washington, i.e. the rest of us.

Don't be glib. We don't live in an anarchy, not even in a Jeffersonian minimal central government utopia. I would be the very first to agree that we as citizens need to drastically shrink our reliance on central government to solve our quotidian problems, that we should drastically reduce the enormous chunk of our GDP attributable to the Feds, and whack back taxes to that point last seen in the 1790s when customs revenue could pay for it all.

But, gee, maybe let's not start the diet with one of the few government enterprises that actually probably more than pays for itself over the long run, i.e. sponsoring far-out technological innovation of whatever stripe. Let's maybe start with the other various $100 billion behemoths hiding under the skirts of the nanny state.

When our space program sucks up as much as, oh, say a whopping 10% of Federal expenditures ($150 billion annually), then I'd entertain the thought that maybe we should rein the runaway monster in.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 12, 2004 06:13 PM

> There's apparently a lot of public support for going back to the moon,
> but not much for going to Mars.

Maybe, maybe not. The question actually asked was, "Which of the following best describes your response to the plan to return humans to the Moon/send humans to Mars?"

It's quite possible for someone to support the goal of going to the Moon or Mars without being "interested or excited" (as the polls phrased it) by the current plan.

The pollsters don't seem to have made that distinction in their own minds, however, and the poll made no serious attempt to determine how much the respondents knew about the current plan.

The annoying thing is that this is billed as a "Market Study for Space Exploration." Yet, there wasn't a single question about whether respondents wanted to explore space. The questions were all about public perception of NASA's program.

It's like a "market study for marine craft" that doesn't ask if people want to buy, rent, or ride boats but merely asks if they are "interested or excited" by Coast Guard cutters.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 12, 2004 06:19 PM

> No, sir, an individual needs to prove that he is a better judge of his own
> interests than the people who elected those politicians in Washington,
> i.e. the rest of us.

Spoken like a good collectivist.

Shall we vote on whether you will see a movie this weekend and which movie you should see?

After all, you haven't proved that you're a better judge of your own movie interests than we are.

> But, gee, maybe let's not start the diet with one of the few government enterprises
> that actually probably more than pays for itself over the long run, i.e. sponsoring
> far-out technological innovation of whatever stripe.

Yikes!!! To paraphrase Rand, we don't need no stinkin' far-out technology.

> When our space program sucks up as much as, oh, say a whopping 10% of Federal
> expenditures ($150 billion annually), then I'd entertain the thought that maybe
> we should rein the runaway monster in.

What if the program, as currently constituted, prevents a $150 billion industry from being born? Would it be allowable to think about that?

Posted by Edward Wright at November 12, 2004 06:33 PM

Woo Hoo!

Moon Rules! Mars Drools!

That'll show those snooty rust-eaters who's boss.

The people have spoken! Can we finally cut the Mars fat from the budget?

...

Sorry, just having a Republican moment.

Oh, and I wear a seatbelt irrespective of the law. From a physics standpoint it's just a smart thing to do.

Posted by ken murphy at November 12, 2004 06:43 PM

. . .there is no requirement that I put on a happy face and . . .believe that if the majority wills it, they must know what's good for me. . . .Grant me the freedom to do likewise from my own position.

Oh, absolutely. Rant on.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 12, 2004 07:09 PM

Spoken like a good collectivist.

Yes, a good collectivist would say would I did. But so would a rational republican, or even a moderate libertarian, both of which describe me better. That a statement would be voiced by a lunatic does not make it false.

Shall we vote on whether you will see a movie this weekend and which movie you should see? After all, you haven't proved that you're a better judge of your own movie interests than we are.

If you are paying for the movie, by all means.

Yikes!!! To paraphrase Rand, we don't need no stinkin' far-out technology.

Oh.

What if the program, as currently constituted, prevents a $150 billion industry from being born? Would it be allowable to think about that?

Absolutely. Just get out your crystal ball and show us the future, and the correctness of your opinion will be obvious to even as benighted an observer as I.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 12, 2004 07:20 PM

> Yes, a good collectivist would say would I did. But so would a rational republican, or even a moderate libertarian

They might, if they had never read an economics text.

>> Shall we vote on whether you will see a movie this weekend and which movie you should see?

> If you are paying for the movie, by all means.

Non sequitar. We're discussing your notion that the majority is, presumptively, a better judge of your personal interests than you are. If that's true, it's true regardless of who is paying.

The argument for our regulating your moviegoing is obvious. It's for your own good, since you aren't competent to make such decisions on your own...

>> What if the program, as currently constituted, prevents a $150 billion industry from being born? Would
>> it be allowable to think about that?

> Absolutely. Just get out your crystal ball and show us the future

I ask you if it's permitted to *think* about it, and you answer that it's permitted to gaze at crystal balls.

Interesting.

Do you believe that crystal balls are a better way of analyzing policies than rational thought?

Posted by Edward Wright at November 12, 2004 07:49 PM

We're discussing your notion that the majority is, presumptively, a better judge of your personal interests than you are.

Perhaps I see the misunderstanding now. I do not presume the majority is a better judge of my needs than I. That would indeed be a collectivist if not insectoid point of view. But, on the other hand (and this was my point), to presume the individual is obviously and always the best judge of his own needs is equally unreasonable, despite the attempts of my teenage children to convince me otherwise.

The thoughtful citizen takes a middle position. In the majority of cases the individual may decide, but in the minority the majority must. Now, in this case the majority has already decided not to leave the decision of whether to spend some of his money on spaceflight to the individual US citizen. The money is extracted from him by force and is spent with or without his approval.

What I suggest is merely that, if one wants to change this fact, then an argument needs to be made for why this particular decision, of the many similar decisions government makes, is best put back in the hands of each individual. Simply asserting that it obviously should be is not likely to convince anyone not already convinced.

Do you believe that crystal balls are a better way of analyzing policies than rational thought?

Of course. Who wouldn't? Unfortunately, a crystal ball in working order has never been found, so their advantages, much like the size or nature of industries that do not yet exist, remain entirely hypothetical.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 12, 2004 09:56 PM

> to presume the individual is obviously and always the best judge of his own needs is equally unreasonable

The discussion was not about needs, but interests, which is a far broader term. Spaceflight is not something you need -- you can live without it. It's something you're interested in.

You are always a better judge of your own interests because you have access to your own thoughts. Other people do not have direct access to your thoughts, unless you believe in psychics. Therefore, they are unable to judge your interests except by indirect observation.

> Now, in this case the majority has already decided not to leave the decision of whether to spend some
> of his money on spaceflight to the individual US citizen.

Okay, let's accept that premise. Even if the government has correctly gauged the public interest, we must then ask to what extent is the government effectively satisfying that interest.

This year, NASA spent $16 billion but flew only two US astronauts, and those were on Russian Soyuzes. You can buy a Soyuz for $40 million. So, we spent $16 billion and got $80 million worth of spaceflight (even ignoring much cheaper vehicles, like SpaceShip One, that are now in development). That's a very poor return on investment.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 13, 2004 01:18 PM

> Unfortunately, a crystal ball in working order has never been found,

Ebay has 1600 of them for sale right now.

> so their advantages, much like the size or nature of industries that do not yet exist, remain entirely hypothetical.

You don't believe in hypotheses? If you reject the scientific method, then I guess you might as well rely on crystal ball gazing.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 13, 2004 01:22 PM

Its too bad the American public is so ill informed. Besides, I thought polling had been discredited. ;-)

Posted by Bill White at November 13, 2004 03:10 PM

I consider myself a moderate libertarian as well. I believe that there are certain areas of basic research that should be done by government for the same reason that certain other things should be done by government: It isn't something business is likely to do, or would do it in ways that could cause big problems for society (I don't want business running the military or the courts, for example).

It is very hard to make a business case for exploring the solar system. On the other hand, it is likely to be very important in the long term. Even more important are the things we might not notice, or even consider, if we aren't doing the research - the possibility of asteroid impact, for example. Serendipity could save the world.

That isn't to say I'm happy with how NASA is going about their job, and certainly I wan't to see business involved in space, but should there be a NASA? Yes, absolutely.

Posted by VR at November 13, 2004 05:52 PM

You are always a better judge of your own interests because you have access to your own thoughts.

Well, I think your position could benefit from further reflection, even though it's widely held by folks in their teens and twenties struggling to minimize the compromises they need to make to live as adults in a community.

In essence, you've argued that he with the better data draws the better conclusion. Hardly. It's a combination of good data and good analysis that leads to good conclusions. Even if you have the best data about yourself there's no guarantee you'll make the better analysis and hence draw the most reliable conclusion. Mostly you will, of course. But not always.

If people were always the best judge of the meaning of the facts of their own lives, they'd never go to marriage or job counselors, and there'd be no psychiatrists and psychologists. Nor are those people simply morons and losers: being on the inside is simply not always the best place for perspective.

To repeat, I think individuals are usually but not always the best judge of where their dough should go, and so I favor generally smaller government, but not a libertarian minimalist government that confines its activities to a passive national defense and the enforcement of contracts. I believe in a certain modest level of public-funded science and technology initiative, including the operations of the NSF, NIH, NOAA and, yes, NASA.

I also strongly support private spaceflight, and so in addition to these activities, I would like to see government strongly encourage private initiative in space, most importantly by setting the right legal and regulatory framework, but also by angling its own procurement decisions that way (which implies change at NASA).

So, we spent $16 billion and got $80 million worth of spaceflight. . .That's a very poor return on investment.

If you say so. But to establish even this basic point, don't you need to make the case that all we got for our money was said spaceflight? Otherwise, you sound rather like someone who bought $100 of GE stock and is pissed because "all" he got for it this year was a $3 dividend.

Frankly, I think any argument for private spaceflight that begins with the proposition that NASA is staffed by idiots is suicidal. NASA makes mistakes, sure, both in management and in engineering. But any private industry is also going to make those mistakes. In fact, there will be more of them, because the industry we hope for is even more daring (= going to cut more corners, consider more ideas that in retrospect are stupid) than NASA.

If you teach people to turn away from NASA because they should expect fewer mistakes, you are setting up your baby industry for a hideous backlash when reality sets in. Don't believe it? Just ask the nuclear power industry.

So, by all means, suggest that leaving it all to NASA is a constricted and narrow-minded national effort in spaceflight. Argue that the power of private initiative and innovation should be turned loose. Suggest that now is the time for private firms to jump off the shoulders of NASA.

But cannibalize NASA at your peril.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 13, 2004 06:55 PM

> Well, I think your position could benefit from further reflection, even though it's widely held
> by folks in their teens and twenties struggling to minimize the compromises they need to make to live
> as adults in a community.

Oh, please. You sound like the trial lawyer in "The Incredibles."

>" If people were always the best judge of the meaning of the facts of their own lives, they'd never
> go to marriage or job counselors, and there'd be no psychiatrists and psychologists.

I qualified my statement by saying "unless you believe in psychics." I don't. Obviously, if you believe in Freudian mumb-jumbo, you will reach a different conclusion.

>> So, we spent $16 billion and got $80 million worth of spaceflight. . .That's a very poor return on investment.

> If you say so. But to establish even this basic point, don't you need to make the case that all we got
> for our money was said spaceflight?

No, because you were the one who argued that spaceflight was the reason for giving money to NASA. Not spaceflight and pictures of rocks, or spaceflight and cool T-shirts, just spaceflight.

If you want to change your argument -- well, then, you're changing your argument.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 13, 2004 07:30 PM

> (I don't want business running the military or the courts, for example).

Too bad. Private arbitration is usually a good deal cheaper than going through the government court system.

> It is very hard to make a business case for exploring the solar system.

Why do you say that? Richard Branson seems to be signing up quite a few people.

> Even more important are the things we might not notice, or even consider, if we aren't doing the
> research - the possibility of asteroid impact, for example.

Except for the obvious fact that asteroid impact is something we have thought of. It's also something NASA has almost zero interest in. Just getting them to spend a few million dollars for a ground-based search program was like pulling teeth.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 13, 2004 07:37 PM

You sound like the trial lawyer in "The Incredibles."

Perhaps. But I also sound like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Once again, that a statement is made by a silly person does not prove the statement is silly.

Obviously, if you believe in Freudian mumbo-jumbo, you will reach a different conclusion.

No doubt. But you will also reach a different conclusion if you believe, as I said above, that the best analysis is not always done by the person in possession of the original data. That doesn't sound like mumbo-jumbo to me.

FYI a number of your arguments are in the form of the classical logical fallacy known as Affirming the Consequent. In your arguments the general form of this fallacy goes something like this:

If you were an idiot then you'd say X.
You said X.
Therefore you're an idiot.

Here's another example that better emphasizes the logical flaw in the argument:

If car key gnomes existed, they'd steal my car keys and I wouldn't be able to find them. Hey! I can't find my car keys! Therefore, car key gnomes must exist.

Arguments following the pattern of this classical error will always be unusually easy for your opponents to disprove.

No, because you were the one who argued that spaceflight was the reason for giving money to NASA.

Oh. So can you make the case that our national investment in NASA is a waste?

Private arbitration is usually a good deal cheaper than going through the government court system.

What makes you think cheap best describes the kind of justice people want?

Richard Branson seems to be signing up quite a few people.

Richard Branson does not have to make a business case to anybody. He's rich. Now Burt Rutan did have to make a business case to Richard Branson, and you'll note it was not a piece of cake. Making the case involved some very expensive and tricky design and flight-test work. That is VR's point, I believe.

It would be folly for supporters of the nascent industry to underestimate the business challenges involved. And it is not irrational for citizens to want their government to take some modest steps to ease those challenges. I think VR said this, too.

asteroid impact is something we have thought of.

Who's this "we," white man? This particular issue was first explored by government funded astronomers and astrophysicists and they have done the bulk of the work required to characterize the threat. If you know of any private initiatives that were responsible for a major aspect of the work, go ahead and name 'em.

But I suspect VR's actual point was that the discovery of one previously-unsuspected very practical reason to explore the heavens leads the intelligent man to wonder whether there might be others we don't know about yet.

This reminds me of Nessus questioning Louis Wu in Ringworld et seq. about the "dubious" utility of general curiousity. Why all this monkey curiousity about stuff that you don't know is important to your survival? Why should government fund research into oddities of nature (nuclear physics, asteriod orbits, the structure of DNA) that seem to have no practical impact at the time? Which no sensible businessman would undertake?

Because sometimes, oops, it turns out they do have a practical impact. And it's nice to know this before the impact arrives.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 13, 2004 10:45 PM

> Perhaps. But I also sound like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Once again, that a statement
> is made by a silly person does not prove the statement is silly.

The fact that a statement was made by someone shot by Aaron Burr does not prove it is wise, either.

In this case, however, I don't believe the statement was made by Hamilton or Madison. I believe it was made by Carl Pham.

> But you will also reach a different conclusion if you believe, as I said above, that the best analysis is not
> always done by the person in possession of the original data. That doesn't sound like mumbo-jumbo to me.

People who believe in mumbo-jumbo never believe it sounds like mumbo-jumbo. All you have to do is look at the suicide rate among psychiatrists to see how good their "best analysis" is.

>> In your arguments the general form of this fallacy goes something like this:

> If you were an idiot then you'd say X.

No, you failed to correctly identify the form of the argument.

It's not "if you were a collectivist, then you would advocate collectivism," it's "if you advocate collectism, then you are a collectivist."

> So can you make the case that our national investment in NASA is a waste?

Let me get this straight. Because you want to "invest" my money in your project, the burden is on me to prove that it isn't a good investment???

> What makes you think cheap best describes the kind of justice people want?

Because most people don't relish the prospect of being reduced to poverty by a John Edwards if they ever make a mistake. YMMV.

>Making the case involved some very expensive and tricky design and flight-test work. That is VR's point, I believe.

No, you misread. His point was that "It's impossible to make a business case for space exploration."

> It would be folly for supporters of the nascent industry to underestimate the business challenges involved.

I never advocated that supporters should underestimate the business challenges. Any more strawmen?

> And it is not irrational for citizens to want their government to take some modest steps to ease those challenges.

But it is irrational to assert that the government is taking such steps without examining whether the government is taking such steps.

> This particular issue was first explored by government funded astronomers and astrophysicists

No, science-fiction writers explored the idea decades before NASA began funding astronomers and astrophysicists to study it.

> If you know of any private initiatives that were responsible for a major aspect of the work, go ahead and name 'em.

Early work was funded by The Watch, a project of the Space Frontier Foundation. It was years later that Congress finally forced NASA to accept funding for asteroid search. I did a lot of lobbying work to help get that funding, so I am very sure your account is not accurate.

> Why should government fund research into oddities of nature (nuclear physics, asteriod orbits,
> the structure of DNA) that seem to have no practical impact at the time?

A better question is why people who believe we're getting value out of scramjets, Constellation capsules, and all the other things NASA funds prefer to argue by analogy. The fact that we receive benefits from studying X does not prove we will receive similar benefits from studying Y. If you want to justify spending money on scramjets and Constellation capsules, don't tell us about the benefits of studying DNA, tell us about the benefits of studying scramjets and Constellation capsules.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 14, 2004 11:20 AM

All you have to do is look at the suicide rate among psychiatrists to see how good their "best analysis" is.

Let's write this as a syllogism:

1. People who make bad "best analyses" kill themselve more often.
2. Psychiatrists kill themselves more often.
3. Therefore, psychistrists make bad "best analyses."

Presto, another textbook example of an Affirming the Consequent fallacy. As I said, you will be more persuasive if you avoid obviously false logic.

Because you want to "invest" my money in your project, the burden is on me to prove that it isn't a good investment???

In this case, yes. You already understand this because you wrote "invest" in quotes. You know we are not talking about an investment, but about how the majority spends your tax money. It's not the same thing. Investment is a personal decision. Where your tax money goes is a public decision. Whether you buy Microsoft stock or a DVD is a personal decision. Whether your tax money buys air-to-air missiles or pays the salary of a Federal judge is not. If you want to change the way the majority allocates your tax money, you must convince enough other people to form a new majority.

No, you misread. His point was that "It's impossible to make a business case for space exploration."

Uh, perhaps you should scroll up and check?

No, science-fiction writers explored the idea decades before NASA began funding astronomers and astrophysicists to study it.

Science-fiction is ipso facto not science.

Early work was funded by The Watch, a project of the Space Frontier Foundation.

Well, I would hardly call the work of The Watch early or major. According to their own web site, The Watch was founded in 1998, and has made grants totalling $35,000 to maybe $50,000 in the last five years. The Space Frontier Foundations itself dates back only to 1988.

Yet the potential danger of Earth-orbit-crossing asteroids seemed to have been clearly recognized by professional scientists decades earlier. Professor Paul Sandorff lead a class project at MIT in 1967 called Project Icarus, which considered in detail how to divert an asteroid from collision with the Earth, and E. F. Helin and E. M. Shoemaker published a survey of Earth-crossing asteroids in 1979 (Icarus, 40, 321).

At a NASA "New Directions Symposium" held on Martha's Vineyard in 1980 a subpanel proposed a theme of investigating the potential hazard to the Earth posed by asteroids and comets, and this led to the convening, by NASA Planetary Astronomy program head Bill Brunk, of the Snowmass "Spacewatch Workshop" in the summer of 1981, at which Tom Gehrels of the University of Arizona proposed a dedicated telescope survey of Earth-crossing asteroids. An article published in 1988 by Clark Chapman and David Morrison contains a sentence in its abstract you'll find interesting:

Serious scientific attention was given to this issue in July 1981 at a NASA-sponsored Spacewatch Workshop in Snowmass, Colorado.

Got it? Your tax money at work on the issue, 17 years before The Watch was founded.

Finally, after hearings before the House Committee on Science, Technology and Space in 1989, the following language was inserted by Representative George Brown into NASA's fiscal 1991 authorization bill:

The Committee believes that it is imperative that the detection rate of Earth- orbit-crossing asteroids must be increased substantially, and that the means to destroy or alter the orbits of asteroids when they threaten collision should be defined and agreed upon. . . The Committee therefore directs that NASA undertake two workshop studies. The first would define a program for dramatically increasing the detection rate of Earth-orbit- crossing asteroids. . .The second study would define systems and technologies to alter the orbits of such asteroids or to destroy them. . .

Now you may certainly agree or disagree about how effective government and government-funded scientists have been in addressing the issue, just as people may agree or disagree about how effective certain private efforts (such as The Watch) have been.

But the bottom line is that professional scientists funded by the government discovered the potential issue many decades ago, and that NASA and the government have been looking into it (with whatever success you want to give them) for many years before and on a far larger scale than any private effort.

That is, I believe you are misinformed.

A better question is why people who believe we're getting value out of scramjets, Constellation capsules, and all the other things NASA funds prefer to argue by analogy.

What's wrong with arguing by analogy? Are you thinking of arguments by Weak Analogy? If so, let me quote helpfully from the above link:

Analogies are neither true nor false, instead they come in degrees from near identity to extreme dissimilarity. . .even a very weak analogical argument may be strong enough.

That means the fact that I argue by analogy does not make me wrong.

If you want to justify spending money on scramjets and Constellation capsules, don't tell us about the benefits of studying DNA, tell us about the benefits of studying scramjets and Constellation capsules.

What I am justifying is pure basic research, without any particular practical goal in mind, which is generally funded only by the government, since it makes almost no business sense for any private concern to do it. What I have said is that such research has proven to be exceedingly useful in the past, and -- yes, by analogy -- I would not be surprised to find it useful in the future.

Mr. Wright, I appreciate the opportunity to debate endlessly, but I must decline further exchanges. Not to put too fine a point on it, I find you so tiresomely ignorant on matters of fact and recent history, elementary logic, and the political ethos and history of your own nation that I must sincerely hope you are not yet a college graduate, lest the quality of thought you display here heap additional shame on our sorely inadequate educational system.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 14, 2004 05:35 PM

Carl Pham said:

But I suspect VR's actual point was that the discovery of one previously-unsuspected very practical reason to explore the heavens leads the intelligent man to wonder whether there might be others we don't know about yet.

Exactly. I'm not sure what we will find out studying Titan's atmosphere or Mars's surface. Chances are, most of the basic research will be interesting but have little practical impact for many decades. But we know so little about the universe, there is the very serious possibility that the thing we don't know could bite us. There is also the possibility of something that will radically change physics. "Dark energy" research, for example, might just do that.

Asteroid impact research wouldn't be anywhere near where it is now if it weren't for both astronomers and geologists. (There was actually quite a bit of healthy infighting on this one.) Some of them worked in private universities, but there was a huge government component.

Edward Wright said:

No, you misread. His point was that "It's impossible to make a business case for space exploration."

Ahem. I knew I didn't say that ... and you even quoted me correctly once. "Very hard" isn't impossible.

Why do you say that? Richard Branson seems to be signing up quite a few people.

Get back to me when he sends a probe to Saturn. I'm thrilled he is moving forward with a suborbital tourist busines, but exploring the solar system it ain't.

> (I don't want business running the military or the courts, for example).

Too bad. Private arbitration is usually a good deal cheaper than going through the government court system.

... and in about a week, whoever is running the courts will be the de facto government. Heck, even Ayn Rand recognized the need for government run courts. I have no great love for the current system, but we could do much worse. Frankly, while the concept of an extreme libertarian society is interesting in theory, I think it would be about as stable as Marxist communism, and for exactly the same reason: It goes against human nature. If you don't have a government, SOMEBODY is going to fill the power vacuum, and the libertarian paradise will be gone. I'd be happy if we could just manage to reduce government size for once, even a little.

Carl Pham said:

What I am justifying is pure basic research, without any particular practical goal in mind, which is generally funded only by the government, since it makes almost no business sense for any private concern to do it. What I have said is that such research has proven to be exceedingly useful in the past, and -- yes, by analogy -- I would not be surprised to find it useful in the future.

Yes, that sums up my position as well. Most basic research will probably have no direct practical effect. But some will, and we would be much poorer without it.

Posted by VR at November 14, 2004 07:00 PM

> Because you want to "invest" my money in your project, the burden is on me
> to prove that it isn't a good investment???

> In this case, yes. You already understand this because you wrote "invest" in
> quotes. You know we are not talking about an investment, but about how the
> majority spends your tax money.

No, Carl, I used quotes around "invest" because that's the word you used.

You'd better hope your teenagers don't read this thread. I can only imagine the result if they use your arguments the next time they want to "invest" some of your money. Especially since they are the "majority."

> Got it? Your tax money at work on the issue, 17 years before The Watch was founded.

Yes, I got it, Carl. Unfortunately, you don't get it. No serious NASA funding came out of those workshops you mention. Scientists got together, talked, and nothing happened.

> What's wrong with arguing by analogy?

"Analogy is always suspect."

> That means the fact that I argue by analogy does not make me wrong.

Nor does it mean you are right. The fact that you are argue only by analogy, however, is interesting.

> What I am justifying is pure basic research, without any particular practical goal in mind

Okay, but that's a completely different argument from the one in your previous message. You initially said that we fund NASA to get spaceflight -- a particular practical goal -- not for pure basic research.

Now, what you must answer is why so little of NASA's money goes for pure basic research, if that is indeed the reason for funding NASA.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 14, 2004 08:35 PM

>> Why do you say that? Richard Branson seems to be signing up quite a few people.

> Get back to me when he sends a probe to Saturn.

We were talking about space exploration.

The dictionary says exploration is "travel for purposes of discovery." Sitting in a mission control room watching pictures from a probe may be science, but it's not exploration.

> I'm thrilled he is moving forward with a suborbital tourist busines,
> but exploring the solar system it ain't.

It's exploring part of the solar system, which consists of more than Saturn. If you want to restrict the definition to Saturn, though, please tell me how many astronauts NASA has sent to Saturn?

>> Private arbitration is usually a good deal cheaper than going
>> through the government court system.

> ... and in about a week, whoever is running the courts will be the de facto government.

Do you think Judge Judy is now the de facto government? Or do you not know what arbitration means?

> Yes, that sums up my position as well. Most basic research will
> probably have no direct practical effect.

I guess that's where we disagree. You interpret space exploration to mean basic research. I interpret it to mean the exploration of space by human beings.

Posted by Edward Wright at November 14, 2004 08:48 PM

The dictionary says exploration is "travel for purposes of discovery." Sitting in a mission control room watching pictures from a probe may be science, but it's not exploration.

Now this is just getting silly. I'm opting out of this argument as well - my last comment was primarily to respond to some things said about my earlier comment, and I think I've made my position more than clear enough.

Posted by VR at November 15, 2004 01:15 AM

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