Xref: utzoo sci.space:6135 sci.space.shuttle:889
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!esosun!ucsdhub!jack!sdeggo!dave
From: dave@sdeggo.UUCP (David L. Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Von Braun quote
Message-ID: <222@sdeggo.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jul 88 06:12:36 GMT
References: <1988Jun17.053132.5314@utzoo.uucp>, <3361@phri.UUCP> <1222@thumper.bellcore.com>
Organization: Lazy Programmer's Society of San Diego
Lines: 52

In article <1222@thumper.bellcore.com>, karn@thumper.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn) writes:
> > The state of communications has not gotten so good as to defy phyics, now
> > has it?  The non-manned approach works fine when in earth orbit, but what
> > happens when you get up there to around the moon?  By the time the person
> > on the ground has reacted to a problem, six seconds will have passed in 
> > transmission time!  In a critical situation, this could mean the destruction 
> > of the craft.
> 
> Good point. But how many applications really require six second response
> time? Voyager seems to have been highly successful without humans on
> board, despite round trip times measured in hours.  There may well be
> "deep space" applications which require short human response times and
> therefore humans in space, but this is a tiny fraction.

Voyager is a wonderful tool, but it's not a very useful tool in general.
It has a camera, a spectograph, and some other instruments.  It does not
have the ability to land on a moon of Jupiter and pick up a sample, or
to mine an asteroid.  If something comes up for which it does not have the
tools to deal with it does not have the ability to fabricate something
from the materials at hand.

> Most people know that there are some things computers do much better
> than humans, and there are other things that humans do much better than
> computers. An intelligently designed system will apply each resource
> where it is best suited. There is certainly room for discussion and
> disagreement as to exactly how to do this in any project. But in the
> realm of space travel, emotional romanticism has gotten the upper hand
> over rational design as in almost no other area of technology. The
> result? Expensive turkeys like the Shuttle that have sucked away almost
> all money from other, far more cost-effective projects and have nearly
> wrecked our space program in the process.

What is our space program?  To go out and take snapshots?  Hell NO!  The
reason we have a space program is to get mankind living, working and
exploiting the resources in space.  "Emotional romanticism" is a basic
part of human make-up.  Why do we fly to Paris when we could watch it
on videotape? Why do we climb mountains when we could send a camera on 
a balloon?  The arguments about the cost-effectiveness of unmanned probes 
only make sense when the only purpose of the space program is to feed data 
to a bunch of researchers sitting on their duffs.  If we're not going out 
there, why should we _care_ about what's on Jupiter, the makeup of the
Oort cloud or whether there's planets around Barnard's Star?  If 
the only reason we have a space program is to satisfy the curiousity of 
a bunch of scientists whose work will probably be of little value to the 
rest of the race if we stay at home here on Earth, they can bloody well pay 
for the program out of their own pockets!

-- 
David L. Smith
{sdcsvax!jack,ihnp4!jack, hp-sdd!crash, pyramid, uport}!sdeggo!dave
sdeggo!dave@amos.ling.edu 
Sinners can repent but stupid is forever.