Occasionally I see news stories that I’m too lazy to investigate. I’d rather have my commenters fill me in. I see that Elon Musk’s SpaceX is going to send a couple of men up into space. Why?
More generally, why does NASA still wish to send people into space? What’s the point? Here are some possible answers, none of which makes any sense. You tell me what I am missing.
1. Men and women can do useful things in space. Yes, but can’t unmanned space probes do those things much more cheaply (in terms of money and risk to human life?)
2. You never know what we’ll discover. Yes, but we can discover things much more cheaply with unmanned probes.
3. Mankind needs an inspiring goal. Yes, but we sent men into space 59 years ago, and to the moon 51 years ago. It would have looked pretty silly in 1962 (by which time people were routinely flying in 707s) to recreate the inspiring Kitty Hawk flight of 1903.
I get that sending men into space is an inspiring idea, and ditto for the Moon landing. I just can’t get inspired by doing it over and over again.
So what am I missing?
PS. In my view, the (unmanned) Voyager program was one of humanity’s most inspiring achievements, so I’m not immune to the allure of space. I just don’t see the point of our recent manned activities in space, much less returning to the Moon (which some have proposed.)
PPS. Here’s why I think people are silly when they lament the slowdown in (measured) technological progress after 1973. Does anyone seriously think that we could have had just as much progress in the first 59 years of manned space flight as in the first 59 years of civil aviation, if we’d just tried harder. Sorry folks, but the laws of physics cannot be brushed aside.
Perhaps unmeasured technological progress is higher than we think, but that’s an entirely different question.