The Wrong Stuff

Steven Weinberg, writing in the New York Review of Books, notes in this article that there is no scientific or practical justification for sending people into space. Sure, it's an old debate -- as old as space flight itself. But considering that George W. Bush says he wants to utterly change the course of the nation's space flight program, to emphasize human flight to the Moon and Mars, it's worth revisiting. Weinberg reminds us that Bush may not at all be serious about the new initiative, that it might be just a political exercise, the real goal of which is to kill off the ISS and the Space Shuttle -- maybe even NASA itself. I think it's very possible that this is the case, but only time will tell.

It's interesting to remember how we got here. When space ships and space stations were first proposed, back in the late 19th century, they didn't have any practical purpose at all, much less the means to build and fly them. As the century advanced and the technology to fly in space became closer and closer to realizable, there were plenty of ideas for how manned space stations could actually be utilized: astronomical observatories, communications relays, weather observation stations, and bombing platforms. In the 30s, 40s, and 50s, it seemed that such applications could only be filled by manned stations. But then a funny thing happened: advances in computers and electronics made it possible to do all of these things without requiring astronauts in the loop. (Bombing platforms are a special case: you don't even need to keep the bombs on orbit -- that's a violation of treaty, anyway -- and ICBMs are more accurate than anyone could have imagined in the 40s.) We now use space for a very large number of military, scientific and commercial purposes, all without requiring human flight.

The irony is that these technologies were enablers of practical space flight in the first place: without computers and miniaturized electronics, space flight might be possible, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as robust as it is now. In the course of getting there, though, those same technologies removed the need to put astronauts into orbit.

Why do we need to put humans into space at all? The answer is all political. NASA has to put astronauts into orbit in order to maintain public interest in space flight, which keeps the dollars coming -- which NASA spends to put astronauts into orbit. Their claims of scientific utility from doing so sound more threadbare every year, but we keep putting them up. I don't have much of a problem with putting astronauts into space per se, but I wish we were more upfront about it.

There is no practical point in putting people into orbit, unless they're actually doing exploration. Putting people into space is a political act, and it should be explicitly discussed as such. Exploration and colonization are the only reasons for human flight into space (at this point in history), and these are both long-term projects.

Maybe NASA thinks these statements of fact, which are simple articles of faith to the true-believer community (e.g. The Mars Society), are too "far-out" for mainstream Americans and Congressmen, and they might be right. But the current state of affairs, in which we continue to spend lots of money and risk astronauts' lives with no good justification, cannot be sustained indefinitely.