"Dare Mighty Things"

     Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. -- Teddy Roosevelt

Last night after a journey of several hundred million miles a small hunk of metal successfully touched down rather softly on the surface of Mars. 150 million miles away (and 14 minutes later) a large group of people started jumping up and down. This is the spirit of human exploration and a desire to dare mighty things.

The scientists at the JPL and NASA may just be smiling for days if not weeks.

A happy John Grunsfeld speaking with reporters after the landing.

Important Anniversaries (Slightly Late)

While I am currently staring at a room full of undergrads worrying over an Astro test, I though it appropriate to mention that yesterday we had two very important anniversaries. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight. He was the first person to travel to outer space and to orbit the earth. Perhaps many people just don't realize how amazing that is that someone was able to leave the atmosphere of our planet, travel all the way around it, and come back. That single act has radically changed the way we see the universe and our part in it.

On a slightly related note, yesterday was also the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch. That has also been very important for how we view our place in the universe. We are only beginning to explore and to know our universe. Here's to more years of exploration and life changing events.

(On an almost completely unrelated note, yesterday was the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. But that is an important anniversary for more terrestrial concerns.)

Father and Son Activity: Let's Send A Camera To Space.

Here is an ambitious father: he, with his son, made a weather balloon carrying a camera up to space to take pictures of the curvature of the earth against the dark background.  This video makes me feel like I am not ambitious enough.

I think my favorite part is when the weather balloon bursts it is at a high enough altitude that the camera actually feels weightlessness for a short time.  Pretty cool!


Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Was the Space Shuttle Worth It?

After 134 missions, 5 shuttles, 14 lives lost, and $174 billion dollars, the space shuttle program is scheduled to end on February 27, 2010.  The next generation of launch vehicles is still up in the air but no one is talking about a reusable vehicle like the shuttle.  Meanwhile the Russians are essentially still using the same one-time-use Soyuz system they've been launching since the 70's at much lower costs.  So now that we're approaching the end of an era in space exploration, let's ask the question:  was the shuttle program worth it?

If you ask the American public it was.  A Rassmusen Reports survey showed that 52% of those polled though the shuttles were worth the cost in dollars and lives, while only 28% disagreed.  Encouragingly, even in tough economic times like the present, 78% of Americans think it's important or very important to have an unmanned space exploration program and 72% say the same about a manned space exploration program.

I'm grateful that the US keeps investing in space exploration, however I personally think that the shuttle program was a poor way to do it.  With a fleet of vehicles that can only go into low-earth orbit there was no real destination for the shuttle program until the building of the International Space Station (and even then one has to ask why are we going there?).  Without a destination, the shuttle program fell into a "cause-of-the-year" syndrome where the shuttle became a zero-G research lab, a construction vehicle, a delivery truck, and a service van, to name a few.  Without a focused mission, NASA lost much of the public attention it had with the Apollo program.  Now if you ask people why NASA sends men and women into space you're likely to get responses like "good question".

I'm not trying to pin all of the inefficiencies and short-comings of the American space program on the shuttles, but I have to wonder if we could have done more over the past 30 years without it.

I Bet I Will Go To Space One Day.

I may be buying too much into this article by Reuters, buy I take from it I may go to space one day.  Here's why:

1. People should start flying into space by 2013. (Testing starts next year, 2011.)
2. The entire project will cost ~$450 million dollars.
3. Tickets go for $200,000.
4. They claim 100,000 people have expressed interest.  If even ~2500 actually do it, the program will pay for itself.
5. I'm betting much more than 2500 will go if 100,000 have expressed interest. (Only ~1%!)
6. # 5 implies there is a real profit to be made.

Given how economics works, major profits are sure to lead to major competition.  Furthermore, after the initial technology is developed, further development should be much cheaper.

For these reasons I expect the ticket prices should half at least about every ~10 years.  This means in 40 years, I should be able to afford to go. (I'll be in my sixties and hopefully this being a commercial thing means my body could still handle it. )

And if the price could somehow half somehow every 5 years, I could go even sooner. :)

NASA, maybe it's good your human space flight budget is being cut.  Sir Richard Branson looks like he can do it much cheaper and in a way that normal Americans can really experience it. (Once the cost drops.)

Say Goodbye to Constellation & America's Manned Space Program

For years there have been rumblings from NASA that the shuttle's replacement, collectively known as the Constellation system, was in big financial trouble. The shuttle program has been on its last legs for a while now and with shuttle operations ending at the latest next year, the US will need a new system to get people into space. In September the Obama administration put together a task force headed by Norm Augustine to determine what to do about the whole mess. The Augustine commission decided that NASA needed a major budget boost or to give up either the International Space Station (which won't even be completed until 2011) or the Constellation program.

The news this week is that Obama has decided to give up the Constellation program, meaning that the US will be without manned space-flight capability for at least the next decade. The Obama administration seems to have pinned their hopes on private companies like Boeing and Lockheed developing human spaceflight systems, much the way they have done for unmanned orbital rockets. When will those be available? Nobody knows. Right now there are rumors flying, but details should be more forthcoming after a 3PM EST press conference at NASA headquarters this coming Monday.

It's hard to blame Obama for cutting Constellation - his government is running a $1.7 trillion dollar a year deficit and the country is mired in a economic slump, so there isn't much money for a budget increase and the space station is practically already built - but I for one am sad to see it go. While Constellation might not have been the ideal system, having the US drop off the list of countries capable of putting people into orbit is disappointing.

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On a somewhat unrelated note, in looking for information on this topic I found a great blog for space-related news www.spacepolitics.com . I recommend checking it out if you're interested in what goes on at NASA.

Conspiracy Theorists Rejoice!

Those of you that don't believe the moon-landings actually happened are really going to get a kick out of this. Reuters reports that NASA is paying a Hollywood studio to digitally restore the footage of Apollo 11's moon landing in 1969 (Cue the "filmed in a Hollywood studio" theories). But here's the best part: the restoration is based on the CBS TV footage, not the original footage made on the moon. Why, you ask?

NASA admitted in 2006 that no one could find the original video recordings of the July 20, 1969, landing.

Since then, Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, who oversaw television processing at the ground-tracking sites during the Apollo 11 mission, has been looking for them.

The good news is he found where they went. The bad news is they were part of a batch of 200,000 tapes that were degaussed -- magnetically erased -- and re-used to save money.

Cue the crazies!

A Permanent Moon Base?

On Tuesday, October 8th, I had the opportunity to attend a colloquium presented by Wendell Mendell, Manager of Human Exploration Science Division at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Dr. Mendell is one of NASA's top people in trying to figure out what to do with the "Vision for Space Exploration" that NASA has adopted. President Bush and the U.S. Congress have decided that NASA's focus should be the human exploration of the solar system and that this should be done by returning men to the moon and then putting a human on Mars. There is one primary question that Dr. Mendell deals with : what are we going to do on the moon and later Mars when we get there?

The idea that NASA is currently pursuing is that between 2020 and 2024, NASA will establish a permanent lunar base on either the north or south pole of the Moon. Like the current International Space Station, the lunar base will have a few (Dr. Mendell's current prediction is about 3) occupants who are rotated in and out every 6-12 months. If this comes to fruition (and it looks like it will), the question that has to be answered is what will these people do on the moon? There is no sense at all in spending billions of dollars to get them there and keep them alive unless we have some good reasons for them to be there, so what are those good reasons?

In Dr. Mendell's colloquium, he presented NASA's list of 6 reasons to go to the moon. They include things like opportunities for technological advancement, development of new resources, increasing public interest in math and science, and so on. However, if I were to put words in Dr. Mendell's mouth, the main reason for NASA's moon base is to lead the way for others to build their own moon bases. Essentially, the idea is that NASA could show others how to do it, and then these other groups would privately fund the colonization of the moon. These groups may be commercial groups interested in tourism, industrial groups looking for cheap power (solar cells work wonderfully in space), raw materials, and an escape from pollution laws, or other unexpected groups. If we take the analogy of the American west, there could be any number of groups seeking wealth, freedom, or adventure. Dr. Mendell even suggested religious groups might want to set up their own "moral society" on the moon, which I thought was a bit silly until I remembered how Utah was settled.

After Dr. Mendell had finished his presentation, the lights came back on, the dreams of future marvels faded a bit, and a room full of skeptical scientists proceeded to ask the most blistering questions I have ever heard posed to a colloquium speaker. As many of you know, many scientists feel that NASA's new emphasis on human space exploration is taking money away from more worthwhile scientific endeavors. Several professors very bluntly stated technological, physical, and political challenges would make it so that a lunar base would be a waste of time and money.

After the colloquium, I was left unsure of what to think about the idea of a permanent lunar base. On one hand, as Stephen Hawking famously said, "I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space". As we increase our ability to change our world, the chance that we could irreparably damage or destroy it grows exponentially. If humanity is going to survive, I think it needs to expand beyond a single world and it seems like the moon and then Mars are the places to start.

On the other hand, I agree with the idea that human space exploration is probably taking money away from more important and timely science research. For example, NASA has cut funding or delayed a number of projects like the Constellation-X X-ray Observatory and the LISA gravitational wave detection satellites that could provide more science for the money.

So I thought I'd pose the question to you. Do you think NASA should build a permanent lunar base in the next 15 years? And on a broader note, is human exploration of space worth the cost or should we stay on our planet and let probes, robots, and telescopes do the exploring?