Many technologies progress at a rapid pace, some more slowly, but few appear to actually go backwards. Space travel is a rare exception so I thought about why that might be and what is the best way to progress it.
Firstly lets consider the moon landings, a wonderful achievement with the technology at the time. So the first time,
Firstly lets consider the moon landings, a wonderful achievement with the technology at the time. So the first time,
"That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind", and one massive budget.
The second time its
"One small step for Mankind, one massive bill", and on to one insignificant step for Mankind and still the same massive bill.
Its easy to see why the moon trips were cancelled, the budget stayed the same, but the benefit was ever diminishing.
Since then of course the solar system has been explored in ever more detail by unmanned spacecraft and there has discussion and controversy about which is best, manned or unmanned spaceflight.
Even major technology magazines, government organizations etc think that putting human space travel to mars will change everything. It is not hard to find examples:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/slideshow/aerospace/space-flight/slideshow-how-to-go-to-marsright-now
However both approaches are both missing the point, to start with lets see what will happen if the mission to mars is a success.
Since then of course the solar system has been explored in ever more detail by unmanned spacecraft and there has discussion and controversy about which is best, manned or unmanned spaceflight.
Even major technology magazines, government organizations etc think that putting human space travel to mars will change everything. It is not hard to find examples:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/slideshow/aerospace/space-flight/slideshow-how-to-go-to-marsright-now
However both approaches are both missing the point, to start with lets see what will happen if the mission to mars is a success.
At first it will be celebrated as a great achievement like the moon landings, but the cost will be even more, and just like the moon landings won't go down with our current technology. It will then be abandoned just like the moon or at best will have a very small number of people there at extreme cost. Likewise what if we send probes to the far reaches of the solar system and explore most places in detail. Unless we find life, there will be the same problem. There will be no public enthusiasm to say map Europa in ever more detail once it has been done once, but it will still cost about the same amount for each mission.
In terms of exploring the solar system we are not that far off from diminishing returns where further discoveries will fail to excite the general public and only add incremental knowledge and fill in gaps.
To advance further, it needs to be now about colonization and sustainability in space, and to talk about that we need to come right back to earth almost and address the root of all these problems, that is the cost of getting people and cargo into low earth orbit. It is impossible to make sustained and permanent progress while launch costs stay what they are.
Now there are efforts being made in this area such as:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38867/?nlid=nldly&nld=2011-10-14
More radical are the Space elevator:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
and Launch loop:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop
If we were talking about getting ahead in the long term, rather than making small perhaps illusory steps in the short term then it would make sense to put the majority of the budgets of government space agencies toward solving these problems at the expense even of projects such as the next space telescope and of course just going back to the moon for the sake of it. That of course will be a hard sell, but it is necessary.
If we were talking about getting ahead in the long term, rather than making small perhaps illusory steps in the short term then it would make sense to put the majority of the budgets of government space agencies toward solving these problems at the expense even of projects such as the next space telescope and of course just going back to the moon for the sake of it. That of course will be a hard sell, but it is necessary.
Once that has been conquered, then the capability to live, and build things in orbit should be developed. The more sustainable things are then, the cheaper it will be. The components of a large mission to Mars could be sent up in parts and assembled in orbit giving much more flexibility and cost reduction. The rockets could of course also be much smaller if the mission is not launched from Earth. It would then be very easy to launch multiple telescopes, missions to the point where small companies or organizations could do what they wanted at little cost in a short amount of time without needing to be part of a government project. All the science projects will then look after themselves.
A good analogy for the current situation would be say you want to build a vehicle to go ever faster, and you start by inventing a bicycle and are impressed by how much better it is than running. However to make further progress you need to stop trying to make the bicycle better, lighter etc and even let it rust while you work on something different altogether, i.e. a car.
Future successful missions will not be launched all the way from Earth on a massive expensive rocket used once, so we should stop spending money on that kind of thing right away and spend more effort on potentially risky solutions as they are the only way to make permanent progress.
If a strategic resource is discovered that would be different and Robert Bigelow has invoked 'stop the communists' recently, since that worked in 1961. Otherwise, space travel is dead in the water.
I do agree a risky basic research operation is more likely to have a breakthrough. The current government-funding model has shown it is not capable to doing much revolutionary work at all.