The Planetary Society Is Against Human Spaceflight
Does Presidential Intervention Undermine Consensus for NASA?, Planetary Society
“I believe these two statements are actually at odds with each other. Consensus for human spaceflight is very difficult, given the lack of an external authority to unite the community or even being able to clearly define what the human spaceflight community actually is. And given the current nature of partisanship in the United States, achieving consensus for the human spaceflight program might actually be undermined by strong actions of a President attempting to provide clarity to NASA. … But for a Journey to Mars – a major effort that would, at best, require stability and significant funding over many Presidential administrations that may not be enough. Perhaps the solution is for the next President to maintain a light touch on space. Maybe they should speak softly through the budget process, and avoid the Kennedyesque speeches and declarations to Congress that induce the types of partisanship we so dearly need to avoid.”
NASA’s Mars Announcement: Present-day transient flows of briny water on steep slopes, Planetary Society
“This is one of many reasons I’m glad that The Planetary Society is advocating an orbit-first approach to human exploration. If we keep our filthy meatbag bodies in space and tele-operate sterile robots on the surface, we’ll avoid irreversible contamination of Mars — and obfuscation of the answer to the question of whether we’re alone in the solar system — for a little while longer. Maybe just long enough for robots to taste Martian water or discover Martian life.”
Keith’s note: Here’s how it starts. Sow those seeds of subtle doubt. Don’t talk too much about humans to Mars or anywhere else. Talk about more robots. Throw shade on anything having to do with humans. Talk about canceling the space station. If you have to talk about humans going to Mars, just restrict them to Mars orbit so they can drive robots on the surface without making things dirty. Look but don’t touch. Don’t rock the boat. Since that’s not worth billions of dollars, maybe just send robots instead.
The Planetary Society is engaged in a slow motion effort to halt the human exploration of space. If they don’t want humans on Mars, what other places will be off limits? Casey Dreier and other Planetary Society operatives are walking the halls of Congress and quietly sowing seeds of doubt about the wisdom and practicality of sending humans outward from Earth. If Mary Lynne Dittmar and the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration have any viability whatsoever they will publicly confront the Planetary Society with regard to their whisper campaign – one that seeks to prevent humans from traveling to other worlds.
But wait: there’s more. The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, a semi-stealth industry lobbying group for the NASA #JourneyToMars effort has an embarrassing lack of a credible budget profile to defend. The Planetary Society, a robot-hugging, human-shunning club, thinks that it will get a non-stop gravy train of huge robotic mission budgets for decades to come. Both efforts are woefully misguided and seriously overdue for a reality check.
Perhaps it is best that space policy not become a campaign issue – if for no other reason than the fact that the adherents and beneficiaries thereof are so utterly out of synch with one another and have little, if any, traction with the 300 million plus taxpayers who are stuck paying for this disorganized space program.
The other day a billionaire threw a huge sum of money – as a down payment – into a program to begin interstellar exploration – he is clearly looking outward – yet today’s space community can’t even agree how to get out of low Earth orbit. Tick tock.
– What is Good for Pasadena Is Good For The Planetary Society, earlier post
– Planetary Society’s Mars Mission Takes Longer To Do Less, earlier post
– The Planetary Society Does Not Want “The Martian” To Happen, earlier post
– Planetary Society Does Not Want Humans on Mars, earlier post
– The Planetary Society Is Against Human Space Flight, earlier post
– Planetary Society is Both For and Against Human Spaceflight, earlier post
Come on, Keith. Lakdawalla was expressing very real concerns about contamination and research in a cheeky fashion, and that’s it. She’s not talking about banning a Mars landing, or anything like that. Given that Mars is getting a ton of special attention because of the possibility that life may have also developed there (and still be there), it’s a real concern.
I’ve watched the chats on youtube that they have among their own ranks, and it’s the same thing. They’re not opposed to human exploration, but they also don’t romanticize it or space colonization, and recognize there’s a very real contamination risk if you’re looking for exo-life.
$100 million barely pays for more than a launch. If he wanted to do something better, maybe he should have tried to figure out how to get Discovery Program level missions at a fraction of the existing cost.
The PS has a history of being against humans in space.
I dropped membership years ago when they were even more vocal about opposing human spaceflight. Coupled with the fact that, unlike other space advocacy organizations, their board is self-selected without membership input my patience with them ran out.
Yep, same here. Early board members Sagan and Van Allen among others were against human space flight.
If only King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had been so ably advised!
Actually they were, but they knew when to ignore the Royal experts 🙂
it is actually pretty easy to be against human spaceflight, the way it is run in the US, and how it has been run almost since the beginning.
Personally I think it offers the future of humanity and inspires the education of youth, however, there is no long term plan. I guess this ‘Mission to Mars’ is a false means of trying to make believe we know where we are going.
In the US, there is no continuity between programs. There is a program that starts, comes to a complete halt, then we have a gap, and then we start doing something completely different. Mercury-Apollo-Skylab-Shuttle-ISS…Mars?? We saw this clearly with Dr. Griffin when he said “it was all a mistake”.
And really poorly run-big expensive gaps, no continuity of expertise, reinventing the wheel over and over again. Why can’t human space flight stay the course? Is it the contractors who simply demand “hush money”? Is it the NASA civil servants who want new opportunities for promotion?
The problems seem to be in the US, with NASA Human Space Flight management. The unmanned program seems to have a plan and program. Other nations, most notably the Russians, maintain continuity and are not so foolish as to throw away their hard fought gains.
I haven’t seen the last eight years resolve any issues. In fact there seem to be more issues now that ISS is up and operating, but with little bona-fide research being conducted and a grossly inefficient and problematic means for getting things accomplished on-board. So I support human space flight, but I am supercritical when it comes to how it is and has been managed in the US. You would think that the leadership would take some action, instead there appears to be little progress, which makes it easy to criticize and if the people at the top today can’t figure it out, they could cause its premature death. right now all of US HSF is dependent upon political good will.
We spent a decade building ISS from small 10-15 ton modules. Next up, completely ignore the experience and lessons learned from that and build as big of a rocket as we can because everyone knows that’s the only way to get big stuff so space.
It all starts with Congress and not NASA .. they do EXACTLY what congress funds them to do .. no more no less. Cut congress out of NASA is the way for NASA to move forward. But do that and Congress will not fund it .. not unless there is payback for their district.
Planet society understandably advocates to increase funding for planetary research and maximize science return for each tax dollar spent. Human space flight simply doesn’t fit the bill. It is the same thing for other space sciences communities. For example astronomers probably won’t find it very useful to fly to Hubble Telescope to do observing “runs” as they can do the job equally well staying on the ground. Singling out PS for its unwillingness to support HSF is a bit unfair. HSF now lives completely in the inspiration department, which is not enough to rally the support of the whole space community, especially when huge sacrifices are required from all space science disciplines. I won’t blame anyone for the lack of enthusiasm. I think private space will lead the way in space travel.
Um… bad metaphor there? Hubble orbits are still oversubscribed 5-10 times per proposal cycle. Space is just inherently better than ground in many ways. (And Kepler/K2 is the best thing that happened to time domain astronomy in the century so far.)
I think you misunderstood what I meant. I am not talking about ground based astronomy vs space astronomy. I am talking about space astronomy with astronomers staying on the ground vs space astronomy with astronomers flying to the orbit in person to do observations.
Ground based astronomy doesn’t mean astronomers going to the telescope anymore (at least always, and less and less every year.) But it does involve a staff to make repairs, and the opportunity for upgrading or replacing instruments. HST was the only orbital telescope with those options, it was quite difficult, and no longer possible.
However, each Hubble repair mission cost half as much as the original telescope. That’s not true with ground facilities, unless it’s a major replacement of the core observatory.
If Hubble had been part of a long term incremental program, you could simply replace each telescope with the next one. (And if the previous ‘scope outlasts its expected lifespan, you can run them in parallel for minimal extra cost.)
I’m not against HSF, nor against the idea of upgradeable satellites/telescopes/probes. But not one major HSF program out of NASA has lowered the cost of getting humans into space, nor lowered the cost of operating them in space.
You are right, my bad, I misread that…
I think we ought to be concerned about contaminating Mars with Earth life before we know whether native life survives there. This need not preclude human spaceflight; there’s plenty enough to do that heading straight for Mars need not be the long pole of the tent.
I worry about the logic of that position. It’s impossible to prove a negative. When would you (or anyone making this statement) say we ” know” there is no extant, native life on Mars? Terrestrial live has been found kilometers below the Earth’s surface. How could we prove nothing similar exists on Mars, and should we put off all human landings until such an impossible proof is available?
Life tends to spread. As I understand it, Mars has deposits of water below the surface. I don’t know if these are continuous or just isolated patches. In either case, robots should be able, given time, to drill down and test for life forms there.
I agree it will be very difficult to assure ourselves that native life exists nowhere on Mars. But this could be done for certain areas, which could then be exploited or occupied, with precautions.
Meanwhile we could be mining water at the Moon’s south pole, setting up and tending robotic observatories on farside, visiting near-Earth asteroids, and doing many other things.
My objection is that this logic is a vague and potentially an endless loop. At what point, specifically, do you say, we “know” with certainty, that there is no life somewhere? If you’re saying human exploration and the implied contamination have to wait until then, I think it’s fair to ask when that will be. What are the standards of proof? Or is this just another way of saying “never” and a rhetorical justification for repeatedly saying “not yet” every time the issue comes up?
I’m also not sure what to say about ruling out life in one area and then allowing human exploration of it. You write that, “this could be done for certain areas, which could then be exploited or occupied” but that seems to contradict your earlier statement “Life tends to spread.” If life tends to spread, isn’t contaminating a certain, limited area as bad as contaminating the whole planet? After all, the imported microbes will spread.
I am wondering if many folks are being outdated on their thinking. Advances in DNA analysis makes it possible to determine when two life forms had a common ancestor. It seems if any life forms are found on Mars it would simply take a DNA analysis to see if they were very recently related to forms on Earth (contamination), distantly related (exchanged by meteor), or unrelated (unique to Mars). Of course if their DNA is radically different (different basic properties?) it will be even easier to tell its unique to Mars.
Its not like decades ago when biologists would argue about two populations being a single species or two. Now they just take DNA samples and know the last time the two populations were connected by a common ancestor. We even know there was only a single origin to all life known on Earth.
http://www.nature.com/natur…
A formal test of the theory of universal common ancestry
Douglas A. Theobald
Think about it. If we are able to tell when the last common ancestor to all life on Earth existed, wouldn’t we be able to tell if any life we find on Mars is from Earth or Mars? Which makes the entire contamination argument is based on outdated science.
I support HSF, but I understand why there are those that don’t. I have personally lost faith in NASA and their HSF program. (or lack of) I have more faith in Blue Orgin and SpaceX to launch humans into space than I do NASA.
NASA has wasted billions of dollars and years of development and redevelopment on Constellation and now SLS/Orion with nothing to show for it and even when SLS/Orion is finally complete the first manned launch is still 8 years away.
I know .. ONLY eight more years .. this is REALLY getting exciting now.. we only have to wait through one or two more administrations and the Nation will be flying again.. WOW really exciting times… everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting for the SLS…
Without NASA and their HSF program there would be no Blue Origin or SpaceX to launch humans into space. Remember how much funding and support Blue Origin, SpaceX, SNC, Boeing, and Bigelow have gotten from NASA (and that isn’t even counting the fact that without ISS there would be no reason for commercial cargo and crew).
Is NASA perfect? No, but this hatred of NASA from some of the fanboys of commercial space needs to stop. Without NASA you wouldn’t have those commercial efforts to fanboy over.
I agree with everything you say. NASA has done a great job with their commercial programs and you are right that without NASA Spx, BO etc would not be as succesful as they are.
I grew up with NASA and in the begining they were incredible. The 60’s and 70’s were amazing times for space geeks, but if it wasn’t for commercial space us geeks would most likely totally lose interest in NASA. If it wasn’t for commercial space what would we have to look forward to?
The space shuttle got boring, the ISS had potential, but for what we paid for it I am disapointed. We can’t even send anybody to the ISS without paying the Russians 70 million per seat.
The James Webb fiasco, Constellation, Ares, Orion and SLS has done nothing imo but show that NASA has lost their way.
It won’t matter. The blinders that the Planetary Society wear with respect to Commercial Space are strapped on so tight so as to cut off the flow of blood to their brains. Someday they’ll look up, see folks standing toe-deep in red dirt, waving at them from their TV screens and say, “Hey! How’d they get there?”
It’s one of these instances where Keith Cowing is really spot on with his analysis. The Planetary Society’s idiotic anti-human spaceflight views are infuriating. I have dropped membership for this reason. They won’t be seeing me around in their members’ lists any time soon.
Ditto with me and many others. It is very disappointing because the Planetary Society had a lot of potential.
The whole question of being “for” or “against” human spaceflight is misconstrued. If humans can accomplish useful tasks in space at practical cost then they should go. If we want to go, then we should identify ways to reduce the cost and increase the value of sending us there, and the question will not even arise.
I really don’t see NASA in its present form being able to send humans to Mars. In order to do so it would need a major reboot as an organization, not simply additional funding. But the danger of the Planetary Society approach is it may lead to the prevention of private entities from going based on planetary protection restrictions. In fact you almost wonder if that is the motivate for it.
If the Planetary Society is opposed to manned spaceflight, then why are retired astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Owen Garriott, Tom Jones, and Franklin Chang-Diaz on the society’s advisory council?
http://www.planetary.org/ab…