NASA Needs To Explain Why Human Spaceflight Is Important
Keith’s note: A lot of people have asked if this is a Photoshopped image. No. It is real. This actually happened in 1992. How quickly we forget.
IMHO @JimBridenstine should take Pew space poll to heart as being a series of action items to address in a total reboot of their education & public outreach. If human space exploration is truly important then @NASA is not doing a good job explaining why. https://t.co/cekhxhznmq pic.twitter.com/r2zoElXduf
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) June 6, 2018
Majority of Americans Believe It Is Essential That the U.S. Remain a Global Leader in Space, Pew Research
“- Sending astronauts to Mars: 18% top priority, 45% important but lower priority, 37% not too important or should not be done.
– Sending astronauts to the moon: 13% top priority, 42% important but lower priority, 44% not too important or should not be done. “
I realize that this is digging deep into philosophical/civics issues, but should an entity that presumably exists to pursue ‘the public good’ be obligated to explain or define what ‘the public good’ is? Shouldn’t such a thing, such an underlying purpose or exterior objective, be defined by someone or something outside of the agent charged with achieving that purpose or objective? I sense a bit of bootstrapping going on here.
How many of our problems (and not just space) derive from the fact that we the people depend on/expect elements of our government to define/defend why they exist in the first place? I may be off, but something doesn’t smell right here, something deep down in the core.
I don’t think that’s a problem. The goals and objectives should be defined by someone outside the agency, but that’s true of NASA. The goals and objectives are defined by the President (with advice from his National Space Council, now that he has one) and by Congress. Those might not be totally consistent goals and objectives (o.k. in some cases, they’re wildly inconsistent) and they are often based on advice, information and recommendations from NASA. But it isn’t as if NASA were writing their own statement of work. I think that’s what you’re concerned with.
But, once those goals and objectives are set, NASA does have a legitimate job of communicating them to the public. In this case, since the goals they’ve been given don’t match public opinion, they also have the job of explaining why there is a mismatch. That implies explaining why the President thinks returning astronauts to the Moon is a high priority, and why Congress thinks using SLS to do so is important. That’s a job I’m very glad I don’t have. But NASA’s hardly the only government agency in that position. At least the President is reasonably consistent about this. I really wouldn’t want to be one of the people at the State Department who get to explain his foreign policy agenda.
Why should NASA be tasked with explaining why the President has prioritized a return to the Moon and why Congress continues to fund SLS?
That’s like demanding that the US military was responsible for providing the reason/justification for invading Europe to defeat Nazi Germany, or that any employee in any work environment is responsible for providing the generating explanation/justification for why they are doing any assigned task. [Boy, wouldn’t it be great to work at THAT company! Or maybe not…] Think back to Apollo…the Administration provided the What & the Why, then NASA defined the How and then executed it. When did things change?
NASA is supposed to be executing tasks and achieving objectives. Sure, it should report on/engage the public with what it’s doing…but create the rationale behind what it’s doing?
Doesn’t anyone else recognize the boot-strapping insanity of such an arrangement…for ANY govt entity? Could any company or organization persist if each of its employees got to define why he did whatever he did?
If an organizational entity with proper authority directs NASA to do something, then that directing entity is responsible for providing the rationale for that something.
Aren’t they?
Again, I’m not talking about NASA inventing the reasons for its existence or priorities. That’s obviously not a good idea.
Since the President and Congress define the goals, they get to supply the reasons. But, except for an initial press statement or two, NASA gets to communicate that to the public. And, on their own, explain how they are implementing those goals and why that’s how they decided to do it. (E.g. given the Congressional mandate for SLS and Orion, the reason for that mandate should come from Congress but NASA would be the one to communicate them and NASA would be the one to explain why the currently planned EM missions are the right way to do whatever it is Congress wants.) Note that this is an ideal; Congress isn’t about to provide a clear, honest reason for their mandates…
As far as the World War II comparison goes, didn’t the press occasionally ask various generals and admirals about the Europe first strategy? Perhaps not by that name, but the focus on Europe was discussed in the press and high-ranking officers were interviewed.
NASA is supposed to have a mission, a goal, a raison d’être. I no longer know what that is for NASA’s human space program? A few years ago I heard a loud outcry from NASA hsf that ‘they were the operators’. They apparently thought of themselves as the operations arm of spaceflight? Apparently at that time their goal was no longer exploration, no longer proving the utility of the space environment, no longer the developers of the technology to make spaceflight more achievable or affordable. I got the impression that NASA human space flight, at that point led by a long line of astronauts, flight directors and people exclusively out of”operations”, and I got the impression they all thought they were the space version of the USAF. Mainly all their money was going into flying Shuttle a few times a year. They gave away most of their role in building spaceships to our international “partners”. The curtailed support of space utilization and research and in fact made it damn difficult for US users to get on-board. In the spirit of no longer even trying to inspire, they were trying to shut down their efforts at education. I think they succeeded in all these things; they divested themselves of all these worthwhile roles, but seem to try and maintain their role in operations if far too costly and with minimal payback-they have 2 or 3 astronauts on ISS at any given point. So what is NASA’s role, and are they succeeding at it? I would say, ‘not’. NASA has lost its way.
Agree with Keith’s tweet 100%, but also with my fellow Americans who are unenthusiastic about sending people to a world that’s always been lifeless and that we’ve been to before, at least without a much better rationale — and I don’t care if it’s resource extraction, science, or whatever, as long as it strikes a chord. I think it would be much easier to sell Mars as a goal, and virtually impossible to make anyone believe we need a near-lunar “gateway” to nowhere.
That picture says it all. The Santa Maria was financed by a group of bankers from Genoa, while the Nina and Pinta were owned by a merchant family. All were privately owned and sailed because Columbus was given a monopoly by Spain on exploiting for profit any lands he discovered.
The Space Shuttle was owned by the government, funded by taxpayer dollars and operated by government employees to produce “public benefits”. Hence the need to “educate” the public on the benefits they are getting for their tax dollars.
It is only now with the Space Resources Act and with billionaires interested in the profits from space that we are recreating the environment that produced the Age of Discovery. Finally the forces are aligning to move beyond NASA.
I’m thinking of the pop quiz explain what NASA does in 15 seconds or less that fully justifies funding. But if you have to explain, then already lost. Back in the days nobody asked what NASA does because everyone knew what they did even when they didn’t (most don’t know of aero, bio, and various esoteric programs). These days nobody asks what Google or SpaceX does because everyone knows what they do even if they don’t (most of us only know of SpaceX from what Elon says).
Besides Columbus didn’t do a survey, he shopped for rich people willing to fund his startup. Some of these rich people were govt (i.e. Queen of Spain).
NASA is both a science project to advance technology to keep the US industrial base ahead of adversaries and also a technology-based tool to advance foreign policy goals.
Guys, respectfully, the elephant in the room is being overlooked.
The first person(s) or company(ies) which determine(s) a manner to make money via spaceflight and space exploration – resource extraction / energy creation, for example – AT A PROFIT – will open the flood gates of colonization and expansion of humanity off-planet. Mark my words.
Show them the money, and they will be there. All of this debate and polling is nothing more than kabuki theater. A waste of time and resources. Making money = growth and great interest / participation of the general public.
Bingo! When Columbus returned with wealth from the New World in his ships fleets followed. When Captain Grey brought huge profits back to the adventure merchants who funded him the first rush to California and the Northwest followed.
um, what wealth did Columbus bring back ? the islanders didn’t have the wealth, that was in Mexico and Peru, and found by later explorers.
But certainly, once someone demonstrates that there’s money in them there hills then millions will try to strike it rich. And the pathfinders are the ones who’ll probably make the most money (having risked the most).
He brought some gold and some exotic fruits, a drop in the bucket compared to those later resilts, but it was enough to get the folks in Spain, broke from the recent Moorish wats we excited, particularly as his stories promised there was more to be had.
It was enough, barely, to keep carrying his head around on his shoulders. They still had Marco Polo-inspired expectations that were not fulfilled. They expected to open up two-way trade with the Far East with maybe a little bit of conquest (piracy) folded in. What they seemed to get was a primitive people that didn’t even care enough about gold to bother extracting it. Later, they found more advanced civilizations, an isolated land for expansion, economic growth opportunities, etc. Later, it helped make then a superpower for a while.
The promises of benefits from exploration have always been written in the answers to the questions that no one who plants that first flag has in mind. That is why these poll results are at the same time troubling, no surprise, and irrelevant.
It was enough that it was easy to raise private funding for additional exploration, and get other countries like England interested.
This is in contrast to China where its exploration fleets were government funded. When they found nothing the Emperor found interesting he just scraped the whole program, just like the US did after Apollo. This is the weakness of the government funding.
That’s not quite fair to China. Their long range, massive fleet wasn’t scrapped because the Emperor lost interest. It involved a political fight between factions in his government. Those factions used an outward policy versus a focus on internal matters as an excuse or justification for their political feuds. Centuries later and in a different nation, I can’t say the United States are planning exploration in a more rational manner.
Let’s put that in a slightly different way and see if it doesn’t change the spin.
Columbus would never have gotten funding for his first voyage, if there hadn’t been an explanation that a new trade route to East Asia would be profitable. He was wrong about that route, since the diameter of the world was greater than he claimed and America was in the way. But his funding did depend on a claim that profits could be found.
Later expeditions were funded because Columbus’ discoveries showed that something profitable could be found in this New (to Europeans) World. If there hadn’t been a hint of that, the later voyages probably won’t have happened. The profits didn’t actually come from the things the first follow-on explorers expected, but there was always an impression that something profitable was somewhere over the Western Ocean.
So, by analogy, the requirement for space exploration is not the actual demonstrated and proven existence of profitable, extraterrestrial things. It is the impression that something is out there. The idea of what that something is doesn’t matter. And the initial ideas will probably be wrong. But the idea of something profitable motivates people to go out there and look. Then they will find things which really are profitable.
I’m putting that in my stack of awesomely worded things.
It is interesting that that circumference of the Earth thing was a dangerous and amazing math error. Amazing because he made maps for a living and had spent his whole life working on that particular formula, yet the mission might not have been possible without it; dangerous because it nearly caused a mutiny and the failure of that same mission.
That is why I keep returning to gemstones. Bring back a sparkly rock and call it a lunar diamond and just watch DeBeers jump in to maintain their monopoly .. LOL
But public opinion can greatly affect the initial timing of the next gold rush.
Right now, SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA, etc. still need government contracts in order to fully fund their human spaceflight operations, because there is no private market for human spaceflight.
I can see your point that once there’s a “there” there, space colonization will be turned on like a switch was flipped, but right now, government money is needed to find that “there,” and without public support, that government money won’t flow so freely.
No, Blue Origin does not need government money, as Jeff Bezos stated at ISDC. He is going to the Moon with or without NASA. SpaceX also doesn’t need any government funds for BFR. Really NASA could shut down tomorrow, or spend its entire budget on climate change studies, and they would keep moving forward.
Only Old Space ULA, Boeing, Lockheed need government funding to keep the pork projects like SLS, Orion, and LOP-G moving forward.
And one thing about public opinion, it is able to change quickly. If SpaceX or Blue Origin get to the Moon before NASA, and do it sustainably they will quickly dismiss NASA.
Thomas: I’m sure you mean this metaphorically? I mean to the extent that trips to ISS represent a reliable market?
Indeed that’s a model NASA might consider more widely and apparently will; recent comments by the Congressman indicate, at least to me, an attempt to put NASA’s collective foot in the water (a few small loads to Luna via 3rd party could be part of colonization).
I think he means it literally. Look at the Falcon 9 launches in 2018. Leaving out demonstration flights, Zuma and Tesla launches, and things with mixed accounting, I get 22 commercial launches and 4 government launches (actual or planned.) They don’t exactly tell us how much each customer was charged, but various statements suggest something like $65 million for a commercial launch and $100 million for a government launch. That adds up to $1.43 billion from commercial launches and $0.4 billion from government launches.
Of course, that’s income not profit (we don’t know what a launch costs SpaceX) and people may argue about my exclusion of government-funded demonstration flights. Regardless, it looks like SpaceX could keep going without any government business. They certainly wouldn’t want to, and they certainly wouldn’t have all that commercial business without NASA having been an anchor tenant. But they would still be in the black if ISS and commercial resupply for NASA went away.
“anchor tenant” is a good description. There is no either-or between NASA and SpaceX. There are vast details in these Space Act Agreement contracts that are not visible…as evidenced by how unfunded contracts make progress too. They are partners in every measurable way.
Eventually, when one of these companies is doing *everything* that NASA does, then they won’t need NASA…meaning never.
I’ve sometimes been accused of being a SpaceX fanboy. But they would not be where they are, nor would they continue to innovate at anywhere near their current pace, without that partnership. There is a lot of “soft support” being leveraged.
Not necessarily. Private companies have already found ways to make money from spaceflight. Operating communications and remote sensing satellites is very profitable. If a company finds a way to make money from extraterrestrial resources or energy (are you thinking of beamed solar power?), it may not have an affect on human spaceflight. For the result you’re looking for, it has to be a profitable industry which can not be done without people in space.
Don’t get me started on PAO this morning….
The great big question of WHY. I know that I have provided this paper before here when this or related topics pop up, but I would really like feedback from any readers as to its validity given this discussion. I know where I believe it falls, but other insight might prove useful on this topic. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/a…
From the paper’s abstract:
“…ever-looming specters of social collapse or even extinction dictate enacting immediate off-world diversification and self-preservation efforts.”
Your conclusion does not follow directly (‘dictate’) from your indefinite postulating premises. Such a path is indeed one option that may or may not achieve the desired objective. However, many would counter that we’ve got a better chance of ‘saving ourselves’ by attacking the content defined by your premises directly without any need to set up shop elsewhere…where the same human problems might come along.
I fear, though, even if one could irrefutably demonstrate today that settling Mars is the ONLY way to ensure survival of our species, that the public (or their govts representing them), would necessarily bite. Without an imminent almost-already-affecting-them intrusion into their daily lives, humans rarely disturb their status quo…and the status quo, despite your dire portrait, isn’t much worse (if it even is so) than circumstances and challenges that humans have made it through previously.
I do not find this argument for space settlement sufficiently convincing. At best, it offers a nice potential side benefit should space settlement succeed.
If you think the survival of the human species, and possibly even of Earth Life itself (Earth could end up like Venus, after all), are “nice potential side benefit”s, I cannot help you much ! 🙂
And space settlement WILL succeed, if only it receives appropriate support to get it over the hump during the window of opportunity we have now. The fundamental physical needs of human life are energy, access to adequate material resources, and room to expand. All the rest follow from these three basic things.
I think we are going to make it, whether the US does it or no: we are getting so close. I do wonder if other life forms in our galaxy have confronted similar crises, and if so, what fraction of them, if any, have surmounted the challenges. Maybe all, maybe none, maybe just a precious few. Only time, in the Deep Future, will tell; yet the “hinge of fate” may well be now.
You seem to be presuming that Mr. Barker’s purported premise that the human species will not survive unless we create colonies elsewhere is a given. It is not; this is my point. Since it is not so, and because it suffers from other deficiencies, using this as a justifying argument for space exploration & development (IMHO) has little chance of generating your desired ‘appropriate support’.
Perhaps my phrasing about it being a side benefit was too quick. But it is based on my premise that the argument (colonies elsewhere will increase the chances of species survival) will likely only ever be a side or parallel justification, not a primary one. We need to proclaim a much, much stronger primary one; contributing to the POSSIBILITY of insuring species survival thereby then becomes a ‘side benefit’.
In the meantime, we should be addressing the numerous troubles & dangers he lists by other means since they are within our reach already…especially since most of those troubles & dangers are products of human choices. And even many if not all of those that are not (e.g., asteroid impact) can be mitigated by means other than actual Martian colonization.
The planet we have seems to be a remarkable bit of historical happenstance for which we should be deeply grateful. I have a sense that offering solutions that preserve it will ring much louder than solutions that essentially suggest that we run away from it.
From a purely biological point of view, a notable characteristic of almost all varieties of Life is that it has a strong tendency to explore and expand into its environment. For primitive, simple life forms, this tendency is surely mindless, yet it has succeeded in spreading life almost everywhere on the superficial regions of the Earth. Without design or plan, why does Life do this?
The standard answer in biology is that Evolution simply tries everything. Some things succeed, while some fail spectacularly. The failures are forgotten, and the successes remain. In crises (almost all kinds of life are normally in some kind of crisis, struggling to survive vs predators, competitors, environmental changes & disasters in countless varieties), when information is incomplete (as usual) we don’t quite know what to do.
So, as usual, we tend to try everything. And if a solution exists, this mindless strategy often finds one, or even the best one. Of course intelligence, tightly focused purpose, may find the best solution quicker or cheaper if we really know what we are doing, still, if not, a wider vision may be wise.
A memorable example of this was with the development of nuclear energy after 1938, in what was perceived as an emergency, with several routes (three to five major ones, at least) to a solution — read or reread Richard Rhodes’s “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” for a classic example of the success of this strategy in a complex situation.
There is currently good reason for concern about the threats to the near-term (~ few centuries) survival of human (or all) of Life on Earth. Google ‘human extinction scenarios for Earth’ for some examples, or try Wikipedia’s “Human Extinction” entry. Notably, Stephen Hawking argued for settlement off the Earth as an important response to improve the prospects for human survival. Many others have discussed similar themes. Thus it seems unwise to dismiss human expansion into the space environment as a reasonable, if imperfect, method of improving the long-term prospects of Earth life, and human life.
My personal belief is that we should reasonably propose, as a human-wide, planetary goal, the establishment of one or more self-supporting colonies off-Earth, before the end of this century, much as J. F. Kennedy proposed a human landing on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. This would be far from a perfect solution, removing all the dangers that confront us, but it would dramatically improve the odds in our favor.
The book ‘Mining the Sky’, by the renown planetary chemist (retired) Prof. John S. Lewis of the University of Arizona, explores in detail the technical and economic prospects for human mining and settlement of the Solar System. I wish all who are interested in human space exploration would read this book. While primarily addressing economic issues of resource exploitation for us on Earth, it also discusses the nearly endless promise of material resources, energy, and open space in the Solar System, optimistically in support of outward expansion for humanity, and Earth Life in general.
When China’s astronauts made their first docking with a space station, I saw a live discussion on CCTV between leaders of China’s human space program and John Lewis. The Chinese were amazed that Americans would even take notice of it, since we had done that in 1965. Lewis assured them that it was a necessary step in a ladder to make a presence in space, and that besides the US, only Russia had independently developed that capability. The Chinese made it clear that their goal in space was not to be first (they realized that they were decades too late for that), but that the ability to navigate space, the moon and planets, was what a modern technological civilization does if it is to be successful. China is building on the knowledge that it can be done, with newer technology, and clearly with the goal of materially bettering their society.
My thought is that if our society appreciated that the progress made in order to achieve “impossible” goals is beneficial to all as an investment, not as a stunt, opinions would be different. If the day comes that our citizens have to apply to Chinese universities to get the best background in technology and science (because China attains the best technology and becomes the leading source of scientific information) we will understand, too late, why we should have settled the moon and mined the asteroids.
I asked the creator of the great Taiko short animation “One Small Step” (2018) about the attitude of human space travel in China vs. here, and he said that the Chinese are infused with optimism for the Future in the way we were in the 1950’s.
When I look at the survey results, and see more support for Earth observation and asteroid defense, I see a very smart evolutionary response – save the untold billions at risk due to climate change, ecosystem loss or a major asteroid impact; a Mars colony might preserve our species and a few others but that is little consolation to the billions who would die – and who are the ones paying for Exploration.
There are many great reasons to send people to the Moon and Mars – a backup plan for human extinction is not very high on a rational person’s list.
NASA’s job is to implement the civilian space program of the US government – that’s what it did when JFK said we’re going to the moon, when Reagan said we will build ISS, when Clinton said we will bring Russia into the space station and when GW Bush said we will end the Space Shuttle program. It is the advocacy community’s job to make the case as to why human exploration is important. So far, the scientific community has done a better job of convincing the public that we should worry about Earth and asteroids; if the Texas delegation loses control of space priorities in Congress after November, I bet you will see even more interest in Earth and environmental satellite programs in Congress and less on the moon and Mars.
Funny how Keith thinks NASA needs to explain the value of space; hell, they are trying to shut down education. Not only do they not want to tell anyone the value, they do not want to explain anything about it.
Why is it funny that I think NASA needs to explain the value of space? As for the ill-advised effort to shut the NASA education office – you have not been reading NASAWatch for the past 22 years.
Its amazing to me that with the interest and potential that NASA draws they cannot get a couple people to put together a good plan to communicate their potential value to the public. It is amazing to me how poor a job NASA does. Maybe they figure that since they do not know how to do the job, why bother to try? Maybe that is whats behind their efforts to shut down education?.
Keith, not just NASA but you and everyone else here with a marketing footprint.
I for one, as a space exploration cheerleader, take these poll results very personally. *WE* have to do things better. *WE* have to metaphorically send up our Teslas.
Ad Astra.
It’s more about this:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
And not so much about this:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
It’s more about this:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
And not so much about this:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
It’s more about this:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
And very much, not about this:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
And even if the music doesn’t work for you, it’s about this:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Touch our hearts, not just our heads. Tell us what we can do, and what we will do … and then DO it. Take risks but make the risks MEANINGFUL in human terms, not just to the science community and the contractor community.
This is great! I haven’t seen it in a few years. This was produced through a NASA education grant. NASA cancelled the program years ago. Which I think is what this blog post is all about-how NASA’s clueless management hasn’t a clue of how to support education, or how to support their own program.
Yea, highlights NASA’s problem. They waste billions$$ and decades on hardware that hasn’t been built and which has no certain purpose, but when it comes to a few thousand $$ for students, they are trying to save.
The survey skews more toward favoring Mars as a destination because the movie “The Martian” is still in their recent memory. Once that fades, both destinations will be equally unpopular to the general public.
When you have a population of 320 MILLION people and only 2 or 3 people are in space … well if the federal government of the United States believes it is only worth having 2 people in space just how important can it be?
You SHOW the people how important an activity is by how many people are actually engaged in doing it. Having two people is space out of 320 million people makes it closer to myth then reality.
Once America has finally commercialized space travel you will see the interest change. Sub orbital will really start the conversations on this subject. America enjoys having over 10 million millionaires and once suborbital starts a lot of people are going to be deciding if they want to take a ride on that roller coaster and take it off the bucket list.
Access to all Americans will start the conversations ..
I agree. To be sustainable spaceflight must have a cost that significant numbers of people are willing to pay. One major study found that the “knee” in the curve, where the market would be large enough to be sustainable, would be a cost of ~$1M per person for a trip to orbit (and back).
If a million dollars per person is that “knee” than we aren’t quite there yet. The lowest cost option I know of is a Falcon 9/Dragon 2, and an optimist price for that is $10 million per passenger. But things are going in the right direction and going there fairly rapidly. We may hit that “knee” within a decade.
Yes , I believe that was from the Fruton study on space tourism. I believe suborbital is going to be the warm up act for a lot of people. It will start conversations and if it is is going on the bucket list. I believe 20 million or less will start the ball rolling. The russians had a list of about 300 people who were interested at that price point at the time that Tito did his flight. There was one of those russian tourists that paid twice and I heard he spent about 70 – 80 million for the two flights. Once we have those waiting lists competition will get even greater since reusability has been demonstrated…