Why Does The British Media Hate Nasa?, It seems they criticise whenever the can Options

[GregM]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2015944,00.html

I know that a lot of folks here are from the UK (including our esteemed webmaster). I intend no offence to those folks, but I have just read yet another British criticism on NASA and feel the need to comment. It’s not that people don’t have the right to free speech – the right to speak your mind is all well and good. I guess though that I really have a hard time with a great deal of the British media’s consistent and unending hypercritical assessment of another country’s space program, while there is a general unwillingness of their own nation to step up to the plate and do better. It looks very petty. If the UK even spent half what the USA spends on civil space (even just as a percentage of GNP), there might be a firm moral footing from which to criticise the Americans on how they carry out their space program. But the UK does not, nor will they in the future.

I guess what I have a problem with the most is the attitude. I see it time and time again in the Brit media when it comes to the subject: a sanctimonious attitude, gross ignorance of the subject matter, ignoring the fact that the UK is in no position to criticise others, and hypocracy. I chose the above-noted article as an example, but I have seen many others.

The above-noted article goes so far to call NASA’s priorities of the past “criminal”. I guess that the UK in fact knows more about spaceflight than any other nation on Earth – and is endowed with the divine authority to judge all other nations for deciding on how they carry out their space programs – to the point of passing moral judgements. Funny, the author likely doesn’t even pay taxes or vote in America, yet harshly attacks what is for the most part a domestic American issue. Maybe it would be better for a UK citizen to criticise the UK government for not doing enough in the field of space science, as opposed to criticising the Americans for the same thing.

The article is also filled with several “facts” to support its arguments that are simply flat out wrong, and conveniently omits others that are unsupporting. This is also a common occurrence in the British media. Even the BBC is frequently terrible with even the most basic facts concerning spaceflight. When one criticises something and it becomes obvious that they really don’t know what they are talking about, their credibility is strained beyond the limit. It then seems like they are simply pushing a dogmatic agenda, or putting down others simply to build themselves up.

I find it a bizarre attitude concerning how the other nations with vastly more spaceflight experience, infrastructure, expertise, and commitment consistently get it all wrong. This is ironic considering that the UK’s space budget is somewhere at about tenth place globally (even as a percentage of GNP). NASA will spend more on Cassini than the UK will spend on all spaceflight in 5 years. NASA’s space science budget in any given year will be larger than almost any other space organisation’s ENTIRE space budget for that same year. Colin Pillinger had to literally BEG for donation money to finish the tiny, underengineered Beagle 2 (THAT is a national embarrassment, not Beagle 2’s ultimate demise). But hey, the UK knows what they are doing here. Everyone else, particularly NASA has got it all wrong – especially that murderous Space Shuttle.

Lastly, I find it bitterly ironic that a nation that carried out the largest, most expensive, dangerous, and exploitive agenda of exploration in human history can possibly criticise anyone else for attempting to do the same. The British Empire was the greatest that the world has ever seen. It wasn’t about science then either. It was about getting British people to new worlds with the aim to claim, populate, posses, and economically exploit. The UK got fat, rich, and powerful from global exploration in a previous era. There was no thought to quitting when things went badly then either. No questioning the wisdom or morality of such things. At the time, who called for the ending of the British global exploration program when the Franklin, Scott, Shackleton, or dozens of other expeditions went horribly badly? Now that era has passed, and the UK is no longer the global power it once was. However, it seems ok for the British to criticise other nations for trying to do the same now – and when things go badly for those nations on occasion, it is just fine to accuse them of the worst sort of thinking and behaviour for both the initial failure and then attempting to get over their tragedies and push on.

[dvandorn]

First off -- Doug, you know I was exaggerating for dramatic effect -- -- although, as with all such things, there is a germ of truth there. After all, as Benjamin Franklin once said, all rebellions are illegal in the third person -- such as "their rebellion." It is only in the first person -- "our rebellion" -- that they become legal.

We can try (and, to a certain extent, succeed) in "sending our minds but not our bodies" to other worlds. But there is a satisfaction of exploration that cannot be achieved unless human beings actually trod the sands and shores of the new worlds. Why do you think we anthropomorphize these robots as much as we do? If we could bring Spirit and Oppy back home, there are those who would give *them* ticker-tape parades, as if they could appreciate the adulation...

Yes, we need heroes. And we need heroes who accomplish great voyages of exploration far more than we need heroes who have proven their prowess in killing. Enemies come and go, and more often than not become allies in the next war -- but explorations live on in human history, the first steps onto foreign soil being remembered long after the wars that preceded or followed them.

For those of you who insist that there is no place in space exploration for manned explorations, I ask of you -- why do we, then, make those who perform manned explorations heroes?

The answer to that rhetorical question, of course, is that we all, in our heart of hearts, truly want to do such exploring ourselves. We can satisfy that need vicariously when one of us, another human being whose life and experience we can truly share and understand, does that which we long to do. But no matter how hard we try, we cannot anthropomorphize robots enough to fulfill that same need by looking through their cold eyes of glass, metal and plastic.

Yes, there are places humans cannot go, and we will expand our horizons via robots as much as is necessary. But (as has been said before), there is a fundamental truth to our nature: man must explore.

-the other Doug

[hendric]

... If we could bring Spirit and Oppy back home, there are those who would give *them* ticker-tape parades, as if they could appreciate the adulation...

-the other Doug

Hell, I would go to a ticker tape parade for the MER rovers...Let's schedule one for the year after they both pass away! We could even use that 1/4 scale model someone is building, and mount it on a Mars float/diorama...