Why should I care about NASA and the space program?

The Coffee Shop
22

I don’t think anyone has suggested the space program is a waste. The issue is the continuance of the manned space program in its present form of sending men into the same low earth orbits, filing their time with high school science experiments, literally in many cases.

The idea of manned space flight powered by chemical fuel is just silly any longer. Were NASA able to develop technology, presumably nuclear technology, that allows much greater power generation per pound of payload, the entire equation changes. I am not seeing much of an effort in this direction, presumably because they simply don’t know how to do it. The sail propulsion technology is the only interesting exception of which I am aware.

I would be interested to see a description of what we have learned or developed as a result of the ISS. Like Skylab, I have expected it to be a total loss since the inception of the project.

On the other hand, if we can drop a nuclear reactor on the moon or Mars and develop robots to do infrastructure construction prior to human arrival, my opinion would change dramatically.

23

I don’t think anyone at NASA intends to just continue the same manned low Earth orbit flights for very long anyway. They’ve stated their goal of phasing out the Shuttle by 2010 in favor of new flight technology that will expand their mission capabilities. They’ve stated their goal of getting manned flights to Mars. They’ve stated their goal of continued exploration of our galaxy with unmanned missions. I think the average American spends somewhere around $60 a year on space travel out of an average tax burden somewhere around 8 or 9K. I don’t think that’s too bad.

24

Sorry if it feels like I or others were trying to b*tch slap you, I certainly wasn’t. And I’m only hear to learn too, and hear the opinions of others.

I’d have to do further research but I guess the claim could be made that all of the research and scientific experiments that go on during space missions are benefits we derive from the travel. If nothing else though, we’ve learned that we can go to outer space and return safely, I can’t speculate what the long-term benefits from that are though.