Category Archives: Space

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Perpetuating Space Policy Myths

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This kind of article drives me up the wall:

NASA Ames’ main goal now is to transfer technology for commercialization and the betterment of mankind… However, over the years, government and popular support for further space exploration has dwindled, despite its many benefits. So, I’ve made a list of the top 10 reasons we should continue to explore the outer depths, “to go where no man has gone before”.

It then goes on to list a number of earthly spin-offs, few if any of which have much to do with going “where no man has gone before, and at least one of which that isn’t related to space technology at all, other than it may have been helped by NASA on the aeronautics side. This irritates at least two of my pet peeves.

First is the notion that what NASA does or should be doing is “space exploration.” JPL does that, but it does it by sending robots where no robot has gone before, not man. The vast majority of NASA’s budget, and particularly the human spaceflight budget, has little-to-nothing to do with space exploration. Now, I don’t actually mind that this is the case, because I’m not that big on space exploration myself. I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do, but it’s a means to an end, not the end itself. But people who think that “exploration” is the be-all and end-all of what NASA does, or should be doing, are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Unfortunately, the public (and the media) has appropriated the word as a catch-all for orbital research, technology development, launching rockets (even for defense or commercial satellites), etc. — anything having to do with space. And as long as we misuse the language in such a way, we’ll continue to be unclear in our goals and our policy.

Second is the notion that spin-offs are a good argument for “space exploration,” even if space exploration actually results in the spin-offs (as already noted, they didn’t). The first reason is that they don’t generally come from “exploration,” even if they were a serendipitous result of some NASA expenditure. The other is that serendipity is by definition too unpredictable to use it as an argument for efficient technology development. The third is that it assumes that the technologies wouldn’t have been developed absent the space application. One of the favorite false myths of the spin-off crowd was that we wouldn’t have had large-scale-integration of semi-conductors in the absence of Apollo, which is simply nonsense. The technology was driven much more by military satellite requirements and miniaturization of warheads than by human spaceflight.

When I saw the headline, I expected to see the word “exploration” misused, because it seems as though it’s almost a professional requirement on the part of the media to do so, but I hoped to see some actual compelling reasons for continuing to fund spaceflight. For example: develop the ability to divert asteroids, utilize extraterrestrial resources beyond the silly example of “gold,” provide humanity backups in case things go sour on this one planet where we evolved, offer a new frontier for human freedom, even philosophical ones such as helping the planet to reproduce and spread the seed of life throughout the universe. But no, with the exception of orbital gold mines, it comes off as just more teflon and tang (both of which existed before NASA was formed).

Political Commentary, Space

Lori’s Speech At NewSpace

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She raised a lot of eyebrows in the audience a week and a half ago when she called some on the Hill “porkers” in public. It occurs to me this morning that now we know why. She was FIGMO.

[Update a few minutes later]

Over at Space Politics, DBN points out the real failure of the administration on space policy:

I’m no fan of the NASA workforce, but if you’re right and Tip O’Neill’s maxim that “all politics is local” is what’s driving the repeated failures of the Administration’s civil space initiatives, then the Administration is to blame for never making the local argument about how their initiatives would maintain NASA employment by shifting workers from Program A to Programs X, Y, and Z. We never saw that kind of argument, commitment, or the workforce numbers to back it up when the Administration rolled out its Constellation replacement programs, and we never saw it earlier this year when ARM was proposed.

I don’t lay this failure at Garver’s doorstep because we don’t know who did what in the Administration and White House before these initiatives were rolled out. That decision process is embargoed, and for all we know, Garver was pounding her fists for a sane workforce transition plan instead of the vacuum that ensued. And maybe the hyperpartisan environment on the Hill would have rendered even Tip O’Neill’s maxim useless. But the fact that the Administration never got to square one on the politics 101 topic of workforce redistribution is not Congress’s fault. As venal and stupid as Congress is, at some level their rejection of the Administration’s civil space initiatives is just them doing their job under the Constitution and protecting their constituents’ local interests. In the absence of any workforce argument, commitment, or plan from the Administration, it’s hard to see how the key members in Congress could have reacted differently. Even a workforce commitment and detailed plan might not have been enough to get the Administration’s civil space initiatives off the ground, but the Administration also didn’t even bother to try.

That’s because space policy wasn’t important to them. That was good, in terms of their willingness to leave it more to the commercial sector, but bad in that they made no effort to implement their good policy on the Hill. Of course, they’ve been pretty incompetent at dealing with Congress in general.

Philosophy, Space, Technology and Society

Randall Munroe’s Time Comic

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The back story.

This is something that used to concern space activists even in the seventies:

“In my comic, our civilization is long gone. Every civilization with written records has existed for less than 5,000 years; it seems optimistic to hope that the current one will last for 10,000 more,” Munroe told WIRED. “And as astronomer Fred Hoyle has pointed out, since we’ve stripped away the easily-accessed fossil fuels, whatever civilization comes along next won’t be able to jump-start an industrial revolution the way we did.”

You could think of fossil fuels as the yolk of an egg. If we eat it up, but fail to hatch and get into space, then this planet won’t reproduce.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Lori Garver

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I’m a little surprised, but not shocked, that she’s leaving NASA. I’m sure it’s been a very frustrating situation for her. What shocks me is this (via an email from her, though many got one):

I will be resigning from my position as NASA Deputy Administrator, effective September 6 and have accepted a new position in the private sector outside the space industry.

My emphasis.

She gave no hint when I talked to her in San Jose a week and a half ago, but that’s no surprise, either. If I had any brains, I’d probably do the same thing. I’ve been beating my head against this wall, and damaging my finances in the process, for over a third of a century now.