A Russian view - on humans in space

Bill White · 2003-12-31 12:11:08

Key points:

- - For the Russians the ISS is a "been there, done that" project (Salyut & Mir, for example) therefore spending much more Russian money on the ISS seems pointless. Also, the space programs of Europe, Canada and Japan suffer the most from the slow down of the ISS project.

If the USA pulls the plug on ISS, we will annoy Japan, Canada and Europe far more than the Russians. (As an aside, we should note that passage of a US ban on buying more Soyuz was enacted to leverage Russian cooperation with the Iranian nuclear program and that seems to NOT be working.)

- - Mars is the most logical destination for the Russians =IF= they were to pursue "Tsiolkovsky's dream of mankind populating the Universe" however its just too expensive given Russian budget woes. (That said, in IMHO any private venture to Mars would get great value buying Russian stuff off the shelf.)

- - Interesting Russian take on the domestic US politics of humans to Mars. Only Mars can give a real political bounce to GWB if he seeks political fringe benefits from a bold new vision for space. This author also ties JFK's call for a lunar landing to geo-political setbacks in the early 1960s.

- - Why go into space at all? Robots and telescopes can do science perfectly well. Until we have good reasons to go, its unlikley we will.

Link to this essay:

SAD MISTAKE OF COMMON SENSE

Beyond any shadow of doubt, the Columbia disaster mainly focused attention not on the future of shuttles (the present design evolved over 40 years ago has long been condemned) but on the future of the International Space Station. The Challenger tragedy grounded American shuttles for more than two years. Today, in the wake of Columbia, the next flight is unlikely to take place until after the US presidential elections. As follows from an opinion by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, the reliability of shuttles is indeterminate, but estimated between 97 and 99%. If it is 98%, the odds of losing one more shuttle in 34 missions are 50-50. Will the Bush administration run such a risk before the elections?
Evidently the lion's share of serving the ISS will be further borne by Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. They are considered to be highly reliable, but cannot carry the same payload as shuttles. This means the station will effectively remain on a starvation diet. Its further evolution will stall, and cosmonauts, being short-handed, will, instead of doing research, be concerned with maintaining and repairing on-board systems.
It will be recalled that the project for the international permanently manned orbital station, which during the first ten years of its existence was called Freedom, dates back to 1984. The project was revised and simplified repeatedly because of financial cuts, and it was only when Russia joined in, by developing and launching the first two of the station's basic modules, that the project got off the ground. Moreover, despite some delay in sending these elements into space, the assembly deadline was set one year earlier than the Freedom programme had envisaged.
The construction of the ISS was scheduled to have been completed in January 2008, i.e. nine years after the first (basic) Russian module Zarya was launched (the August 2000 schedule set the final date at April 2006). Since the new schedule was put together before the Columbia disaster, it will now have to be revised again, with many missions being postponed. Changes, moreover, may be considerable not only in time terms but also in configuration, because the first elements put up in space will have outlasted their usefulness by the time the assembly is completed. The situation will be similar to the Russian Mir station, when the just completed station had to be sunk into the ocean.
For Russia, the ISS is in general a repetition of the path it has been following for more than thirty years by exploiting Russian-made orbital stations. For other ISS partners - the US, Europe, Japan and Canada - it is a new step in space exploration, and they have already invested more than 20 billion dollars in the effort. But it is not only a matter of money. To a larger extent, it concerns the prestige of America, which claimed reasonably enough, financially if nothing else, to lead the project, but failed to keep it going and raised doubts about its leadership.
Leadership in space exploration does not compare with anything in the modern world, which, according to Eugene Carr, one of the leading 20th century theorists of international relations, is very important, for if your strength is recognised, you need not use it to achieve your goals. In today's situation, it is a matter of US prestige not only in the eyes of other nations, but above all Americans. One option for keeping up such prestige, which would also be able to give a fresh impulse to space research, should evidently be, in the view of the American administration, a manned expedition to Mars.
The reasons that impelled President Kennedy to launch the Apollo programme were US setbacks in Laos and Congo, the abortive invasion of Cuba and a response to Gagarin's flight. Today it is Iraq and the Columbia disaster, which has put the completion of the station under threat.
Public opinion polls show that nearly half the Americans want NASA to start work on a manned mission to Mars, and most of the country's population consider space exploration to be undoubtedly or highly important for the US. On the other hand, never-ending arguments about the significance of manned flights have got their second wind following the latest developments.
"So far manned cosmonautics has not fulfilled the objectives set before it," believes Russian cosmonaut Professor Konstantin Feoktistov, "it has not still been possible to formulate the strategic goal of man's emergence into space. Apart from engineering expertise, manned cosmonautics has no gains or technological breakthroughs to boast of - only enormous expenses. Automatic devices bring space exploration its dividends. Perhaps a human presence in space is necessary, but no worthy job has been found as yet for man up there." He is echoed by Russian Academician Rashid Syunyayev, director of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. "Mankind is entering Magellan's era," he believes. "Scientists are making discoveries in the Universe that will overturn our ideas of the world and the finer properties of matter. But the gist of the issue is that these discoveries are being made without astronomers or cosmonauts participating. They are made by powerful telescopes installed on unmanned spacecraft."
Certainly, both Russia and America have a large following of supporters of manned cosmonautics in general and a manned mission to Mars in particular. In their view, a manned expedition to Mars will enable Russia to regain its leading positions in space exploration - a sort of "nostalgic revenge" - but unfortunately not backed up by economic realities. If anything, they "agree" to an international expedition, in which, bearing in mind Russian design and technological experience, they believe they will play the leading role in overall guidance and coordination of the international project. In reality, narrow departmental interests lie behind these aspirations: they are begging the state for money to maintain national prestige instead of working hard to tap the Russian and international markets of rocket and space equipment and services.
It is now absolutely clear that Russia, currently on a short budget, cannot afford to compete with other nations in all areas of space exploration, as was the case with the USSR, and the Russian industry should look first of all to projects likely to yield world-class results at the minimum cost. And these are not a manned expedition to Mars or even the international orbital station.
And, moreover, for a relatively prosperous America, now experiencing perhaps a temporary and specific crisis, an expedition to Mars would be nothing other than a costly show, if at all. In scientific and practical terms, its results will bring precious little, as man's flight to the Moon brought nothing new in its time. In either case, the purpose was one: to prove American supremacy to the world (and to themselves), and nothing more. There is no scientific target in the exploration of the solar system worthy enough to justify the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Of course, Tsiolkovsky's dream of mankind populating the Universe is highly appealing. But the current methods of space travel are ill suited to accomplishing tasks like this. In order to reach the hub of the Universe, using the latest type of fuel, a rocket the size of the Sun would be required, with hypothetical fuels downsizing it only to that of the Moon.
The outstanding 20th century physicist Niels Bohr once remarked that manned space research is no doubt a triumph of the human intellect but a sad mistake of common sense. Need we repeat this mistake again and again? Or are there some "loftier" motives to justify them?

clark · 2003-12-31 12:43:08

There is no scientific target in the exploration of the solar system worthy enough to justify the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Common sense.

It takes the collective work and resources of several million people to explore space. It makes more sense to invest that same time and effort into goals that improve a majority of peoples lives and our understanding of the universe.

Putting people in space fufills none of this.

We can either spend 100 billion to send a few people to Mars, once; or we can spend 100 billion to send probes to Mars for the next century. Which is more likely to produce a better understanding of Mars, or space?

That's common sense. But the desire to explore space physically by man is irrational to begin with. It's a bit like me saying, "I want to go play on the freeway".

But then, it's common sense to stay in the tree, instead of learning to walk across the plains. Guess the monkies new better than the author of that op-piece.

Bill White · 2003-12-31 12:53:49

But then, it's common sense to stay in the tree, instead of learning to walk across the plains.

Some monkeys did stay in the trees. Others walked the plains, and many of those did indeed die horrible deaths. Yet today, those descended from the plains-walkers keep the tree-stayers in zoos.

Happy New Year to my fellow plains-walkers!

jadeheart · 2003-12-31 12:56:38

Of course, Tsiolkovsky's dream of mankind populating the Universe is highly appealing. But the current methods of space travel are ill suited to accomplishing tasks like this.

This appealing dream will not ever be accomplished by sending out only robot explorers, as cost-effective as they may be. Current methods of human spaceflight may be insufficient, but you can be sure they will remain that way if we eliminate crewed space missions in favor of robots. If a dream is appealing then it needs to be pursued. Let the robots do their thing, but don't keep people entirely out of the fun. I think society deserves to splurge once in awhile.

Happy New Year everyone.

clark · 2003-12-31 13:09:51

This appealing dream will not ever be accomplished by sending out only robot explorers, as cost-effective as they may be.

This dream, as most, is all about defying inevitability.

It is inevitable that the sun, and this planet, will die; taking with it, us, if we still happen to be around for the big day.

Thus, the dream.

My personal take on it is that sending machines into space, to explore space, to give us an understanding of space, it's a bit like having postcards mailed to you from all over the world, without ever actually visiting the places. Yeah, you get some pictures, an idea of experience, of what may be, but no postcard compares to experience itself, or understanding through anothers experience.

People are the means by which we can understand the universe in a way no machine could ever be designed to do.

I also like to add, what is made possible for one, is made possible for all. Bit optimistic, but that's the point.

Happy New Year.

Bill White · 2003-12-31 14:14:34

Of course, Tsiolkovsky's dream of mankind populating the Universe is highly appealing. But the current methods of space travel are ill suited to accomplishing tasks like this.
This appealing dream will not ever be accomplished by sending out only robot explorers, as cost-effective as they may be. Current methods of human spaceflight may be insufficient, but you can be sure they will remain that way if we eliminate crewed space missions in favor of robots. If a dream is appealing then it needs to be pursued. Let the robots do their thing, but don't keep people entirely out of the fun. I think society deserves to splurge once in awhile.
Happy New Year everyone.

This is the $64 billion dollar question, IMHO.

Is MarsDirect too frail an architecture to commence populating the solar system? Or must we wait for Gas Core Nuclear propulsion as GCNRevenger asserts?

A classic historical hinge or turning point. Visualize from a galactic perspective perhaps 1000 species engaged in Drake's Lottery (Drake's Equation turned into a race). No one knows the other racers even exist. Some species extinguish themselves by playing with thermonuclear fire and others destroy their biosphere with pollution. Still others turn inward, saying "why bother" or perhaps refuse to try saying its still "too risky" - - but when will it stop being risky?

Is MarsDirect too risky? Too frail to be prudent? I don't know. As a species we will make our choice and live with the consequences.

Imagine being a god (small g) laying odds on which species will win at Drake's Lottery. What are the chances for homo sapiens? Would you bet on us?

= = =

I stand by my definition of spacefaring. A spacefaring species has the ability to conceive, bear and raise its young (safely and routinely) at more than one celestial location. Anything else is mere tourism. Whether we need 50 years or 500 years to accomplish this, becoming spacefaring is the standard all space-directed activities should be measured against.

= = =

Does it defy common sense to settle space? Most certainly. The cost will be high. But the cost of NOT trying will be our very souls.

clark · 2003-12-31 14:28:45

Does it defy common sense to settle space? Most certainly. The cost will be high. But the cost of NOT trying will be our very souls.

Very pretty Bill! You should use it.

Of course, not trying is really us rejecting whatever drive has gotten us this far.

Now it seems we're back on the 'lottery' tangent. If we win the Drake lottery, can we choose annual payments or an upfront cash sum? :laugh:

Palomar · 2003-12-31 14:35:58

Does it defy common sense to settle space? Most certainly. The cost will be high. But the cost of NOT trying will be our very souls.

*I'm reminded of the saying: "There's never a convenient time for having a baby."

Which is, I take it, one of many ways of saying: Things have a tendency to work themselves out (and successfully)...if given a chance.

This applies to manned space exploration too, IMO. Schedules, money/budgets, other aspects of life...

--Cindy

Stu · 2003-12-31 15:00:46

Why send people into space when it's a dangerous, expensive, frustrating place to go to and get anything done in once you're there? Why not just send cheaper, expendable, replaceable robots instead?

Because somewhere, hidden in the microscopic coiled-up universe inside our DNA, there's a genetic program that makes us want to explore, makes us *need* to explore, a program which if ignored would literally send us crazy.

Our ancestors had that program, it made them climb down from the trees and start walking, as has been pointed out in previous posts. And as Earth continued to roll around the Sun their descendants felt that same program start-up too - urging them first to cross the great icy wastes from continent to continent, then explore their new lands. Earth rolled around the Sun more, and as "civilisation" spread across the globe and Man started to live in larger settlements, villages, towns, cities, that urge, that need to explore remained and, if anything, grew stronger.

When we ran out of land in our own countries and on our own continents, we took to the seas, crossing vast oceans in flimsy ships on journeys that took months and years, not in search of trade routes, or spices, or slaves, but because we were pulled to the horizon by this primeval urge inside us. It would have been safer for Columbus, Magellan, the Chinese traders to have stayed at home, but they didn't, they set off into vast oceans without even knowing what lay ahead. For all they knew, the dark, deep waters beneath their vessels might have been populated by serpents and demons, as stories said, but they went anyway, because they had no choice. Something was over the horizon, they knew it, they could feel it, they just didn't know what it was. But they could hear and feel it calling to them, so they went.

Nothing has changed centuries later. We still find places to explore even on this crowded planet. Adventurers scale mountains so they can stand on their summits so they can see farther than anyone else, so they can look beyond the horizon. Others drop to the ocean floor in submarines, to places darker than midnight, because they want to know what amazing things are hidden down there, even tho they know that any minute a technical failure could crumple their submarines like a can of Coke in a gorilla's fist. Still others hack their way through rainforests, or trek across polar wastelands or sun-baked deserts just because they feel something inside them pushing them on, on.

And everyone on this list is exactly the same. You can feel it right now, there inside you, that itch. It's the same itch that made you join this board in the first place, and keeps you coming back each day to check on what others have said during your absence. You're exploring every time you log on to newmars, because this is a new place, an original place. You want to Know, to Learn. And outside, in the "real world", that itch is always there. When you go hiking, something inside you makes you determined to get to the top of that hill so you can see farther than you have done before. When you walk through a city, you look up at skyscrapers and wish you were on their top floor so you could marvel at the view. When you stand on a beach, and look out to sea, if there's an island on the horizon it's *that* your eye is drawn to, not the waves, or the clouds above, but the island. I defy anyone to tell me otherwise.

It's just the way we are, we can't help it; it's as much a part of what we are as is breathing, or reproducing. It's like a shard of glass lodged inside our hearts and minds, driving us crazy.

And today we, as a Race, are standing on a shore, only it's Earth that's the shore and space is the ocean. The islands in that ocean are incredibly far away, but we can see them, and they call to us just as loudly as any of the mountains, deserts, rainforests or ocean floors of the Earth. We have swum out to the nearest island, only to lose our nerve and turn back again, just as the ancient Chinese trading fleets did all those centuries ago. I don't know why we came home. Some say money, some say politics, I think maybe we were just scared by how far it was to the next island, but whatever the reason all we do now is occasionally pull up our pants and tiptoe into the surf before running back again, convincing ourselves we're taming the ocean, one footstep at a time. We're not. We're cowering from it, and we should be ashamed of that.

So, instead of swimming out ourselves we send camera-carrying robots to the other islands, and they send us back pictures of amazing canyons, cliffs, volcanoes and mountains, and what do we do with the photos? We imagine we're there! We show them during lectures and tell our audiences "If you were on Mars this is what you'd see..." when the fact is that if we all pulled together and worked together we actually WOULD be able to see those places for ourselves, for real.

Because that's why, as impressive as robots and their multi-jointed arms, onboard laboratories and spectrometers are, they're no substitute for being there in person. It's about experience, personal experience, and empathy too. If there's a sports event you really want to see, and can go to, you don't give a friend a digital camera and tell them to go on your behalf and take photos to show you later, you go yourself. If there's a city, or town, or cathedral or natural landmark you want to see, and can get to, you don't look for a webcam showing you a view of it, you go there and see it for yourself. Why? because pictures don't tell you what it was actually like to stand in the crowd at the Superbowl, or stand on the edge of Yosemite Valley and peer into its depths. They don't convey the feelings of excitement you felt as the score changed hands, or the shiver that ran up your spine when you felt that breeze wafting up from the valley floor, carrying the scent of pine with it. Photos are a record, not an experience.

So why should we send people into space today, when spaceprobes are cheaper, replaceable and easier to operate? Because people are versatile, they can make decisions, quickly, they can change their minds and react to situations. They can take advantage of changing situations. They have intuition, instinct, gut-feelings that spaceprobes will never have. Give them water to drink, food to eat and air to breathe and they will work their fingers to the bone for you out of duty, stubbornness, or both.

And because people only really empathise with other people. True, we humanise our spaceprobes, giving them cute or bold names so they reflect our own ambitions, dreams and philosophies, but at the end of the day they're just mega-smart PCs with lots of fancy add-ons, we don'tr relate to them. They send back pretty pictures, but they're never going to be able to describe what a sunset on Mars is really like, or convey the wonder of seeing Earth rising into the martian dawn, which is what we all want to experience, either for ourselves, in person, or through the eyes and the words of others of our species.

No place is real until someone has been there and told others about it. Until Apollo, the Moon was just a ball of cold, dead, cratered rock going around the Earth, but astronauts walked on its surface and made it a real world, with canyons, plains, and a black sky decorated with the Earth. Mars is the same. Viking and Pathfinder sent back stunning pictures of its surface, but they could have been taken in Death Valley, or the middle of the Atacama, they look *too* familiar, if anything. Mars won't be appreciated as a truly alien world until someone has stood on its surface and told the waiting world what the wind sounsd like rasping against their helmet visor,or how it feels to watch a dust devil dancing across the plain in front of them.

On Sunday the first MER lands on Mars, and it's carrying proof, of two kinds, that the future of space exploration is human and not machine. Firstly, it's tens of thousands of names on it, the names of people who submitted their names to NASA via a website so they could be etched onto a CD and carried to Mars by the rover. For each and every person whose name is on that CD, they will be "on" Mars from Sunday.

And Spirit's cameras are mounted on a pillar which will place them roughly the same height above the surface of Mars as an astronaut's eyes would be, specifically so we will see Mars as a human would see it, instead of how a turtle would.

So why send people? Because that's what we've always done, and will always do. We left the trees, and for a brief, wonderful time decades ago we left Earth too. In years to come we'll leave Earth again, first to return to the Moon and then to go to Mars. Children born on Mars, frustrated with their own near horizons, feeling their own itch, inspired by the stories of Columbus, Magellan and Armstrong will leave their home and strike out for the miniature worlds of the asteroids, then stand on their surfaces and stare longingly at the pinprick worlds of Europa and Ganymede circling Jupiter. When they are conquered, Europans or Ganymedeans will scratch their own itch by striking out for Titan, and so on and so on, until one day a handful of men and women will burst through the Oort Cloud and, turning their backs on the Sun, plot a course for Alpha Centauri...

Why? Not for science, not for pretty pictures, or to discover new chemicals or minerals, but because it's what makes us human.

Happy New Year everyone, wherever you are :-)

Stu

Stu · 2003-12-31 16:51:25

Stu, my oppinion is a little bit different. I think that inside us, hidden (all over the place...) in our DNA, is only one desire, only one basic instinct: survival of the species. Nothing else.

Actually, we agree :-) That desire to ensure the survival of the species is absolutely tied in with the "explore itch" I spoke about, because only by exploring, and finding new places to develop and exploit, can we *give* ourselves the new options you spoke about.

Space is full of new options - they're on the Moon in the form of minerals and metals ripe for processing, on Mars in the form of water, and in the asteroid belt in the form of city-sized metal ingots.

I say let's go get 'em.

Stu

Aetius · 2003-12-31 22:44:36

I just want to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

Great comebacks to the robot-only killjoys! :;):

Rxke · 2004-01-01 01:10:41

Hey! great topic, gonna bookmarkk it and read when sober

(edit)

WARNING! Reports suggest this thread is corrupted, so before you post, save your comments in one way or another, they might get lost otherwize....

Rxke · 2004-01-01 11:21:36

Trying to get the grey matter active again...

In the mid 80's when USSR was building MIR, there was lots of -unofficial- talk about the next step, going to Mars. Some scientists and cosmonauts were, in fact, quite confident they'd be there aroundd the turn of the century. An interesting read is National Geographic's big article: october 1986 article 'The Soviets: Are they ahead?'

try to find one second hand, somewhere, interesting read. (Did i just repeat myself?)

Here is a link with the cover (scroll down to october...)

It was definitely a different time, back then, *sigh*

(ok, i was also definitely a different political climate....)

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#1 2003-12-31 12:11:08

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#2 2003-12-31 12:43:08

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#3 2003-12-31 12:53:49

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#4 2003-12-31 12:56:38

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#5 2003-12-31 13:09:51

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#6 2003-12-31 14:14:34

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#7 2003-12-31 14:28:45

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#8 2003-12-31 14:35:58

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#9 2003-12-31 15:00:46

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#10 2003-12-31 16:51:25

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#11 2003-12-31 22:44:36

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#12 2004-01-01 01:10:41

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

#13 2004-01-01 11:21:36

Re: A Russian view - on humans in space

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