Notes on Humans and Ponies in Space · 2:17pm Dec 20th, 2015
This week the world of British science communicators has been buzzing with talk about the adventures of Tim Peake.
From a global perspective, this is not exactly newsworthy. Tim is a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, who is boldly going where—err—some two hundred people have gone before and starting a six month mission on the International Space Station.
This is unlikely to generate much excitement in the US or Russia. But that fact that he is doing it with a British flag on his arm means that for once the UK press can’t get enough space science—and this is real public interest and not just media hype. We can enjoy a rare opportunity to enthuse to everyone about rockets and space stations and hint to government ministers that it’s really about time they put some proper money in a manned space flight programme. And the excited reports from the pro-space lobby are getting rather more attention than the bah-humbug-waste-of-money opinions.
Britain does not have a proper human space flight programme. Historically British citizens wanting to leave the planet have followed Douglas Adams' guidance and done so by hitching lifts, starting with Helen Sharman who visited Mir in 1991. There have also been a few British-born NASA astronauts who took US citizenship. And now, thanks to some sort of cut-price deal with ESA (the details don't seem to be public), we have an official astronaut.
Government stinginess has always blocked any suggestion of actually building people-carrying space modules. British scientists play a major part in the ESA unmanned programme, and we have a significant satellite construction industry. But the funds to do anything really cool, like build part of the Space Station have never been there.
Every so often, a politician will note the public interest in space, and ask why we can’t do this too? They then typically make some inspiring speech to say how much they want to support it, without actually committing funds for anything.
At this point the scientific community gets nervous. If the government is prepared to find the funds for a new initiative, that would be great. But inevitably what they want to do is redirect some of existing science funds to pay for something they can label as a human space flight programme.
This is a dangerous idea. The unfortunate reality is that manned space flight is very expensive. So if you want to pay for it by redirecting funds, this would mean brutally cutting other projects, such as the robot space probes (such as ExoMars), ground-based astronomy, particle physics, and many others. This would mean killing off a lot of cool projects doing great science, just to send a few astronauts into orbit.
From a purely scientific point of view, human space flight is not the way to do it. For a given financial investment, the amount of science you get out of robotic space missions is so much bigger. Just getting humans into space and keeping them alive sucks up all the resources before you can even think of doing any research.
But that’s not the point. You don’t do human space flight because it delivers efficient science. You do it because it’s awesome. And this sort of awesomeness is far more universally recognised than precision measurements of particle properties. This is what really excites young children and makes them want to study science and maths.
A cute side story is that Tim Peake will be accompanied by a ‘Stargazer Lottie’ doll, designed by a six-year old Canadian girl in collaboration with ESA.
Widely reported as the ‘First Doll in Space’, but I’m not sure that’s true. There is a story of Sigmund Jähn (first German in space) and Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Kovalyonok playing with dolls back in 1978. NASA also did a ‘toys in space’ thing at one time.
What about ponies? There have been reports of Luna and Celestia sneaking onto the space station as part of circuit boards. Another 2D pony hitched a ride on a resupply crate.
Rainbow Dash was once launched from Michigan and made it to the edge of the atmosphere.
But, as far as we know, the ISS crew have not yet had the fun of grooming the manes and tails of brushable ponies in micro gravity.
As an American, I say, Go for it, Britain! Better your tax dollars than mine.
Manned space missions are cool and testosterone-inducing, but if I made a list of important scientific research areas that need more funding, I doubt they'd make my top 100. Definitely not in terms of value per dollar.
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This week it seems Britain has a good deal. We get to join in the excitement of space exploration, despite having paid only a small fraction of the total cost.
In the long term? Experience suggests many of the bright new engineers and scientists inspired by this will probably move to the US anyway.
Im waiting to see how well the AstroPi that went up with Peake behaves on the ISS.
I mean, !ghz CPU and 1Gig of Ram for $3000, as opposed to the 750 Mhz 64 Meg of Ram for $300000 for Curiosity?
Maybe radiation shielding beats out error correction when talking about computers measured in cubic millimetres.
Be intresting to see how radiation resistant the 256 gig MRAM chip Intel made is.
Dont forget the UK resuable space plane, that isnt using standard rocket engines, and that Rolls Royce owns the patents on 40% more efficient engines but wont supply them to old aircraft. Thats even before NASAs 3D printed rocket motor, and the university 3D printed Keroscene rocket motor with Hydrogen performance which Dyson would probably try and claim patent rights on.
Pity noones taken up a simple loop of wire yet, to see how effective a weak field charge serpation plasma radiation shield it. but then, it would affect that particle experiemnt with the massively powerful self contained magnetic field.
Dont forget space research has the biggest return per dollar of anything, but its almost all where it cant be seen, so therefore politicians cant sand forward with their hand on the sword in the dragons neck and claim, looky here boys what I managed to kill.
A 12 room medical suite in a western hospital is all well and good, but its launch capable Autodoc that can fit on a truck between villages that really makes it worth.
3631299 Has anybody ever replied to you saying 'Yes, I know exactly what all of those things you just said mean. It was very interesting.' or not?
It's a sad fact that the human body is a lot less enthusiastic about space than the human mind. Space, meanwhile, has no opinion beyond highly hostile indifference.
I wonder how hard it would be to explain to government officials that the best way to get people into space would be to invest in materials science. After all, those elevator cables aren't going to develop themselves.
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Sorry about that, its suprising what turns up from the past when you look round.
Boeings SSTO that used the engines from 4 Apollo rockets, the Hyperion launch vehicle that used a launch ramp up the side of a mountain, and even NASAs design for sticking an Orion nuclear pulse launcher on top of a Saturn V.
3631376 I just created a Google Doc titled 'Awesome Quotes', just so I will never forget 'Space, meanwhile, has no opinion beyond highly hostile indifference.'
You're there with Shakespeare, man.
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I've read many studies of return per dollar on research. None of them have separated out space research as a separate category. I'd need to see some citations. I wouldn't be shocked if it has a higher return per dollar than many categories of research, but only because most things called "research", aren't, and because research into random mysterious topics has a higher social return than "responsible", justifiable-to-Congress research into well-researched areas, due to humans' instinctive bias against variance. Actual "there is something strange going on here and we should study it" research is almost non-existent nowadays.
You have Charlie Brown. Maybe, 1 day, a pony from the UK will find Snoopy.
The point of space flight, in the long run, is to enable our expansion beyond Just One Earth. Everything, and anything else, is secondary. In the course of this expansion, much useful and interesting science and engineering will be done, but the important thing is for us to expand through the Universe.
Consider this: wouldn't doing science on the Moon, or Mars, be a heck of a lot easier with boots (and labs) on the ground there?
And this: right now, if something wiped out Mankind on Earth, we'd be extinct as a species.
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That's one argument that has no impact at all on the policy makers. it's hard enough trying to get them to take action on climate change when they can't see beyond the next election. The long term survival of our species just doesn't come into their thinking.