Human Spaceflight: No Single Rationale Justifies it, NRC Report

[Rhykker]

Human Spaceflight: No Single Rationale Justifies it, NRC Report

A new report from the National Research Council cites difficulties in funding human space exploration, including the lack of a majority agreement on a single rationale for the endeavor.

The congressionally mandated report argued for a continuation to the United States' human exploration program and an increased budget to maintain it in order to pursue the long-term goal of setting foot on Mars. But hurdles to getting the funding it needs exist in a lack of awareness from the public.

While public opinion of the space program has always been mostly positive, the report finds that most of the public is apathetic toward the topic, does not feel well-informed, and does not consider investing money in the program to be a priority. Further, surveys revealed that among neither the public nor among stakeholders is there any majority consensus on a single rationale for human spaceflight.

Historical rationales used to justify a human spaceflight program have included economic benefits, national security, national stature and international relations, inspiration for science and engineering education, contributions to science and knowledge, a shared human destiny and urge to explore, and the eventual survival of the human species. The report argues that the last two rationales and associated practical benefits should justify the continuation of the program.

"Human space exploration remains vital to the national interest for inspirational and aspirational reasons that appeal to a broad range of U.S. citizens," said Purdue University president, former Governor of Indiana, and committee co-chair Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. "But given the expense of any human spaceflight program and the significant risk to the crews involved, in our view the only pathways that fit these criteria are those that ultimately place humans on other worlds."

The report states that under the current budget, a manned Mars mission will never happen. With proper funding, that goal is still decades and hundreds of billions of dollars away.

"Our committee concluded that any human exploration program will only succeed if it is appropriately funded and receives a sustained commitment on the part of those who govern our nation. That commitment cannot change direction election after election. Our elected leaders are the critical enablers of the nation's investment in human spaceflight, and only they can assure that the leadership, personnel, governance, and resources are in place in our human exploration program," Daniels said.

What do you believe is the strongest rationale for human spaceflight?

Source: Phys.Org [http://phys.org/news/2014-06-nasa-long-term-focus-mars-horizon.html]

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[Rawbeard]

Why do you climb a mountain?

 

[RJ Dalton]

I guess "because it's awesome" doesn't count. How about "overpopulation"?

 

[The_Darkness]

I'm in the "shared human destiny and urge to explore, and the eventual survival of the human species" camp. That and, well, pushing engineering boundaries is NEVER a bad thing. Getting to Mars would certainly include some inventions along the while, and the nice thing about inventions is that you can still use them after the project.

Sadly, I think overpopulation is going to become a major issue long before we could realistically have substantial off-world colonies. As cool as it would be to have people living on Mars and the Moon, if we're to get billions of people up there, it's going to take a while. Still, I suppose that's as good a reason as any to get started...

 

[RJ 17]

How about "Because it's what we frickin' do as a species"? Why bother sailing across the ocean? Why bother exploring the bottom of the ocean? Why bother digging up fossils? Why bother studying ancient history? We're humans, we're explorers, it's in our very nature to see limitations and overcome them. Humanity is indeed capable of truly remarkable things when we put our minds to it, saying that there's no reason to explore space would be like telling Columbus there's no reason to sail west, or telling a caveman there's no reason to tie a sharpened rock to the end of a stick.

 

[Doclector]

How's about "The long term survival of our entire fucking species"?

Be it war, be it enviromental catastrophe, be it asteroids, be it the sun expanding, be it the horrifying randomness of the cosmic chaos just outside our atmosphere, me it the fucking core simply stopping it's rotation as unscientific as that is, eventually, if earth is the only planet with humans on it, humans will die out. That's even forgetting the massive benefits that continuing to explore and learn could have to humanity.

 

[Trishbot]

Where's the option for "because Star Trek got everything else right"?

Somewhere out there is a little alien boy dreaming of meeting a friendly creature from another planet, and the only obstacle in the way is we can't agree on a budget.

 

[Lightknight]

Why do you climb a mountain?

Our research indicates that there's no single rationale for doing so. It places humans at great risk so we shouldn't do it. *sigh*

Remember when humans used to do incredible things just to do incredible things? There are so many potential and unknown benefits. I think the primary goal is to develop the technology to do this. Our resources aren't infinite but the universe virtually is.

 

[Jodan]

i cant subscribe to the because of overpopulation argument as people in space will have babies too and then we will have two overpopulated worlds see: farmer in the sky. war is probably the most efficient population control next being abortion but those are very grizzly and touchy realities, and a one child per person polocy may become not so barbaric.

as for space it sucks that only countries that feel the need to one up another are willing to explore space a la the cold war or nations not the US flexing their scientific muscles for prestige just to claim they are better. we grew up with star trek so maybe we expect to much but the US dosent care because it does not have to care there is nothing at stake for them and the bounty of space is still much to far away. there is gold there but oceans are easier and we are getting lazy.

we dont go into space to aleviate problems on earth. and we shouldnt go for pride. unfortunatly any philisophical reasoning is not profitable and we are slaves to public opinion.

 

[Vivi22]

There's only one rationale for human spaceflight that actually matters: if we don't spread out into the galaxy our eventual extinction is assured to happen much sooner than is actually necessary.

 

[tangoprime]

"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision." - -xkcd

That is all.

 

[MCerberus]

Even if you don't think humanity should colonize planets, there's still the matter of the fact that the space program has and continues to be worth its cost due to basic research necessary to keep science moving forward.

And practically, we engineer stuff based on both the necessity of space flight and as a result of the research put in.



Then there's the prospect of asteroid mining in the future.
As stated before as well, we're on a ticking clock until SOMETHING makes Earth unsuitable for humans, whether this something is natural, cosmic, or just us ****ing things up too much.

 

[Jodan]

sorry i forgot the single strongest rational to go.
when enough people see something and say i must do that i must see that, I cannot die without expirianceing that, and when we realize it is within our limits man can become quite single minded. Realization of ones ephemeral nature can make people do great things.

 

[Pink Apocalypse]

Despite the out-of-control anthropomorphism in modern culture, nobody will ever hold a ticker-tape parade-level celebration event for a robot.

No space probe will stand on a stage, and give a life-altering moment of inspiration to do something great to a crowd of students.

Apparently now those facts aren't enough to completely destroy space exploration. Now we've upped the game by attacking that moment of inspiration itself, by sending a message that 'doing something great' isn't great at all, only pointless and expensive.

Wonderful.

 

[Rhykker]

Wow, that was a bait-and-switch headline. "No single rationale? Really? I can think of many reasons-" *reads article* "Ohhhh, so we just don't have one reason we all can agree on."
Seriously, Escapist Magazine? Are buzzword-trap headlines really what you've descended to?

From the source article:

The committee concluded that although no single rationale, either practical or aspirational, seems to justify the value of pursuing human spaceflight, the aspirational rationales, when supplemented by practical benefits associated with the pragmatic rationales, argue for the continuation of a U.S. human spaceflight program, provided that the program adopts a stable and sustainable pathways approach.

Generally, when people say there is no "single" anything, they don't mean there is nothing at all. I'm sorry if you feel misled, but I don't believe I said anything that is incorrect or misleading. We can only fit so many words into a headline. There's a huge distinction between "There is no rationale" and "There is no single rationale."

 

[shirkbot]

[...]saying that there's no reason to explore space would be like telling Columbus there's no reason to sail west[...]

Point of Pedantry: What sane person was going to tell Columbus not to go West? He was trying to find a shortcut to India, which would have provided an obvious and immediate advantage to whichever nation did so.

Looking at the other posts, people seem to forget all the crazy things we are researching here on Earth. We have found bacteria that eat petrol, learned to regrow human tissue from almost nothing and developed a magnetic donut twice the size of Gibraltar that hurls Hydrogen atoms around at nearly the speed of light, just to find a single particle. For goodness sake, someone just regrew Van Gogh's ear FOR ART. I know it's not as spectacular as a space launch, but come on guys, we're still doing incredible things.

OT: I'm against manned space flight because it's a great driver for robotic development. That and all the things that inspire me are here on Earth.

 

[youji itami]

Is manned space travel really still a thing even though we already know our species can't survive there for more than months at a time?


Any humans who went to mars would be both blind and riddled with cancer and they know this.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Not many people care about space exploration because they care more about either throwing money at greedy Hollywood shitheads, sports teams (I'm pretty sure I saw enough Urlacher jerseys in high school alone to fully fund a college tuition), and on upper middle-class luxury cars, or they would rather watch the latest hit TV shows than read about space news. They forget or never knew how many products resulted from a space agency's experiments that solved problems for them and trickled down to civilian goods.

It also doesn't help the news stations, both left and right wing, would rather pick up sensationalist stories and fight each other while maybe giving a glimpse of a revolutionary tech advancement people should be keeping an eye on. Maybe some of the national, not NASA's, budget should got to a NASA news site/channel or require all news network to cover actually useful information at least a few hours a week. But that might not work because even if they only once made the mistake of getting too technical in their descriptions, people who hate using their brain for more than keeping track of the Kardishians will ignore it entirely.