Would Anyone Actually Spend Years On A Space Craft, in the interests of exploration? Options

[Katie]

I was discussing the launch of New Horizons with my younger brother since he likes to complain about the whole "Is Pluto a planet controversy?"

Me: Isn't the fact that we're going to Pluto a great thing?
Him: It's not great until we send a human up there. Nothing counts to me unless people are being sent to other planets. Robotic missions are a waste of time and money.

Now my brother is rather uneducated and misinformed about space exploration as you can see by his statement about robotic missions. When the samples from stardust arrived back to earth, he was unimpressed. When Cassini arrived at Saturn all he could say about the 7 year journey it made to get there was that it was a joke because it was unmanned. Whenever he hears anything about man going back to the moon he goes into a rant about it being a waste of time.

It just makes me sad that he does not see the value in robotic missions but it got me thinking. I asked him if he would willingly spend years of his life on a space craft in the interests of sending manned missions on a grand tour of the solar system. He claimed he would happily do it. But would anyone really?

Even if it was financially possible, travel in space especially to the outer planets would at this point in time take huge chunks of time to get there and back with no guaruntee you would live. Even if there wasn't the ethical consideration of sending someone on a mission to somewhere like Pluto, would there be anyone willing to do it? At this point in time I don't think anyone would. Maybe when space travel is faster but maybe I am wrong and there are people who would risk their lives on a mission to Pluto.

[Toma B]

You said it yourself: "my brother is rather uneducated and misinformed about space exploration"...
So don't spent to much time convincing him...it is a waist of time...
If he became interested in space exploration someday, he will figure out his mistake...

BTW that is one lovely avatar Katie...

[dvandorn]

I think it's totally a mistake to discount Katie's brother's attitude. That is one of the reasons why, if the U.S. manned spaceflight budget were to go away entirely, that there would *not* be a sudden windfall for the unmanned program.

Manned spaceflight TO somewhere (not just going around and around endlessly in LEO) is intrinsically more interesting to, and more supportable by, public opinion (informed or not) than unmanned-only exploration.

I love the argument I've seen here -- "Why push the faulty, can't-fly-right manned program when we have such a successful unmanned program going?" I''ve even seen editorials that basically make that argument.

I'd have loved to see them try to make that argument in, say, 2000. With only the MCO and MPL failures, and the greatly curtailed Galileo, to point at for their "successful" unmanned space flight program...

-the other Doug

[Guest_Myran_*]

Yes I agree with dvandorn that a majority do consider manned spaceflight to be interesting wheras the unmanned variety are considered so uninteresting that I found several othervise intelligent and well informed people that even didnt know about the recent findings of the Mer rovers. I certainly did show them some images from exploratorium and one who have an interest in geology was astonished over the images from Opportunity.
But again we had a visit by a gentleman from the USA, and knowing my interest in space exploration from his first visit, he only wanted to discuss the possibility of a manned mission to Mars with me.

Back to the headline for this thread. "Would Anyone Actually Spend Years" I actually think there are the kind of people who would go on a journey taking years in the name of 'exploration' even though the concept are somewhat outdated.
And there certainly will be, my view is that we should wait until there are a political will to build the drives that cut down the flight time to months instead of years. We got the technological know-how to start building a nuclear drive already, its just that the cost and political climate does not allow it.
With this situation I do continue to advocate unmanned exploration, even though my avatar are a space station prop from a film that I think Toma B have identified already.

[tasp]

In the case of multi-generational star ships (like some of the more intense Orion concepts) the 2nd generation on would have no say in the matter.

The ethics of inflicting such a life style on folks is problematic.

In the event of some globally devestating catastrophe, the people on the craft would be 'lucky' in comparison to those left behind. In the case of a 'safe and sound earth' launching such a craft, the ethics get considerably more murky.

Especially if the craft is launched towards a star system not yet explored by an unmanned craft.

The ethics of expending machinery that way is simpler to contemplate.


btw: This website someday will have topics for craft dispatched to nearby star systems . . . . . .

Profound!

[Bob Shaw]

Robert L Forward examined many of these issues in his 'Rocheworld' series of novels (the expanded version of 'Flight of the Dragonfly'). He described a reasonably credible one-way interstellar mission where the crew would surely all die, but where they were all volunteers who wished to spend the end of their lives exploring another star system. None of the crew were young, all were volunteers, and all were of the view that as they were at some point going to die anyway, then it might as well be in an interesting place!

There is a strong argument for sending older astronauts to Mars, for whom long-term radiation damage might not be such an issue, and there would without doubt be volunteers.

Oh, if anyone has a note of where one might volunteer, might I join the queue?

Bob Shaw

[ljk4-1]

The one big reason I can see humanity sending itself on multigenerational interstellar voyages is due to our species being threatened with extinction if we did not leave the Sol system.

Another reason might be groups that want to live their own way without interference from the rest of humanity, just as some settlers from Europe did as their reasons for colonizing the Americas.

Otherwise I think our interstellar explorers will be AI ships, also called Artilects.

http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

http://www.cs.usu.edu/~degaris/

Regarding the multigenerational approach in terms of what could go wrong with a group that has been aboard a starship, even a big one, for centuries, read Robert Heinlein's classic, Orphans of the Sky.

http://www.wegrokit.com/jmoots.htm

As for a good purpose for sending a MGS in and of itself, check out this:

Kilston, Steven

The Project: An Observatory/Transport Spaceship for Discovering and Populating Habitable Extrasolar Terrestrial Planets

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., 1999.

March 8, 1999 JPL Talk, Online Viewgraph Presentation (661 KB PDF)

http://www.interstellar-probes.org/resources/TheProject.pdf


“Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not destined to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is destined to remain a tadpole.”

- William Burroughs

[Bob Shaw]

“Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not destined to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is destined to remain a tadpole.”

- William Burroughs

However:

"I wandered lonely as a clod,
Just picking up old rags and bottles,
When onward on my way I plod,
I saw a host of axolotls."

- Mad Magazine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl

Bob Shaw

[RNeuhaus]

About the space exploration history is not well documented or detailed but just a simple and short story in the history school books here in Perú and neither of other Latin America countries which I have visited. That is the reason that the young people are uneducated about this matter.

I think that we are spending the great moment about the initialization of space exploration that started about fifty years ago. Up to know, no school history book mention with emphasis about this importance as the Christopher Colon has discoverd the America in more than 500 years ago.

About the volunteer to spend long time to space, I think that these shall have some kind of hypnotised mind to accept that mission. However, when the space propulsion system is revolutionatized and the space travel will even shorten twice or more, then tour to our system solar would be in reality before than this century.

Rodolfo

[Stephen]

Manned spaceflight TO somewhere (not just going around and around endlessly in LEO) is intrinsically more interesting to, and more supportable by, public opinion (informed or not) than unmanned-only exploration.

You forgot three very important words: "at the moment".

It was not all that long ago that "going around and around endlessly in LEO" was regarded as interesting to the public. But then NASA went and put somebody on the Moon and LEO has never been quite the same since.

Once upon a time Charles Lindbergh earned fame flying across the Atlantic TO Europe, but nowadays nobody blinks an eyelash when the rest of us do it (and in a fraction of the time he did).

Sooner or later the same thing will happen to "manned spaceflight TO" [fill in blank]. The first people who travel to Mars, for example, are going to acquire the same kind of eternal fame Columbus and Armstrong did, but thereafter it will be a case of "been there, done that". For many of the public Apollo 12 is already a footnote in history; and can anybody name who was next to cross the Atlantic after Columbus?

The been-there-done-that syndrome is partly the reason not just for the scorn for LEO but also why some people scorn going back to the Moon. They would much rather NASA spend its billions going somewhere new--like Mars. The problem is that had we already been to Mars these same people would probably be now arguing that NASA should be sending its astronauts somewhere else. The Jovian moons, say.

I guess it's the lure of the exotic. The places you've been are never as exciting and exotic as the places you haven't.

======
Stephen

[Stephen]

It just makes me sad that he does not see the value in robotic missions but it got me thinking. I asked him if he would willingly spend years of his life on a space craft in the interests of sending manned missions on a grand tour of the solar system. He claimed he would happily do it. But would anyone really?

Even if it was financially possible, travel in space especially to the outer planets would at this point in time take huge chunks of time to get there and back with no guaruntee you would live. Even if there wasn't the ethical consideration of sending someone on a mission to somewhere like Pluto, would there be anyone willing to do it? At this point in time I don't think anyone would. Maybe when space travel is faster but maybe I am wrong and there are people who would risk their lives on a mission to Pluto.

I blame air travel. Nowadays we can all zoom across the Atlantic or the Pacific in nothing flat. Such speed and ease of travel makes people forget that once upon a time if you wanted to cross oceans you had to go by ship and that could take days, weeks, and sometimes months. (And if you go back far enough: years. Eg Magellan, Drake, & Cook.)

For example, when my great-great-grandparents travelled out from Ireland to Australia in 1844 it took their ship three months to sail from Cork to Sydney; and that was a fast passage for that era, without any stops. (In fact they may not have seen land from the time the shores of Ireland dropped below the horizon until they sighted the Down Under ones months later.)

Prior to that voyages could take even longer. The First Fleet which first settled Australia, for example, took eight months to reach these shores, from May 1787 to January 1788 (albeit with stops at Teneriffe, Rio, & the Cape of Good Hope).

The point is voyages of that length did not deter people from going. If tens of thousands of people--most of them ordinary folk, not daredevil adventurers; in fact a high proportion brought their families out with them--could make voyages of such lengths to Australia in the 1800s I have no doubt that you will have people queuing up to make the even longer ones travelling to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system will entail in the 21st century.

======
Stephen

[ljk4-1]

I blame air travel. Nowadays we can all zoom across the Atlantic or the Pacific in nothing flat. Such speed and ease of travel makes people forget that once upon a time if you wanted to cross oceans you had to go by ship and that could take days, weeks, and sometimes months. (And if you go back far enough: years. Eg Magellan, Drake, & Cook.)

For example, when my great-great-grandparents travelled out from Ireland to Australia in 1844 it took their ship three months to sail from Cork to Sydney; and that was a fast passage for that era, without any stops. (In fact they may not have seen land from the time the shores of Ireland dropped below the horizon until they sighted the Down Under ones months later.)

Prior to that voyages could take even longer. The First Fleet which first settled Australia, for example, took eight months to reach these shores, from May 1787 to January 1788 (albeit with stops at Teneriffe, Rio, & the Cape of Good Hope).

The point is voyages of that length did not deter people from going. If tens of thousands of people--most of them ordinary folk, not daredevil adventurers; in fact a high proportion brought their families out with them--could make voyages of such lengths to Australia in the 1800s I have no doubt that you will have people queuing up to make the even longer ones travelling to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system will entail in the 21st century.

======
Stephen

If you read Zubrin's The Case for Mars, he assumes that a group of trained
astronauts will deal with the relatively cramped living conditions for months
on the way to and from Mars just as those who explored the Arctic and
Antarctica in the old days dealt with much harsher conditions because it was
what needed to happen in order to really explore those places. And those
people didn't even have cell phones or DVD players - gasp!

http://spot.colorado.edu/~marscase/Home.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Mars

But, ultimately, for the real big journeys to other star systems, having
humans onboard just as we are now will not be practical unless you want
a multigenerational starship - and then you better hope they "stay the
course", literally.

[Stephen]

But, ultimately, for the real big journeys to other star systems, having
humans onboard just as we are now will not be practical unless you want
a multigenerational starship - and then you better hope they "stay the
course", literally.

Travelling to other star systems is a whole other order I agree, largely due to the potential sheer length of the journeytimes, but I think you've got it back to front about multigenerational starships. IMHO manned star travel is not going to be practical as long as it does take multiple generations simply to reach another star. It is not that I doubt that some people would be prepared to travel on multigenerational starships or that such vessels may not one day be technically and operationally possible but rather that it seems unlikely anybody will ever pay to build them.

Quite apart from the problem you allude to, multigenerational starships are going to be enormous, which means they are probably also going to be enormously expensive. Worse, if it takes hundreds of years to reach a destination do you wait until your prototype reaches its landfall and reports back or do you proceed to send out the next (and the next and the next...) before the first one even arrives?

The first approach could mean a very long wait between sailings, the second a disaster waiting to happen.

More likely that there will be no starships of any sort until the multigenerational kind are no longer necessary to reach the stars.

======
Stephen

[djellison]

6 years ago, I'd have signed up for a one way trip to Mars without thinking.

But now, I have my significant other, my home, my cat, my job, and this place....too many things that I couldnt leave behind.

Doug

[David]

But, ultimately, for the real big journeys to other star systems, having
humans onboard just as we are now will not be practical unless you want
a multigenerational starship - and then you better hope they "stay the
course", literally.

How do they expect to provide power for all the energy needs such a "starship" would require? Not just the acceleration, braking and maneuvering, but also the artificial sunlight that they'd need to grow food, electricity for communications, for air, and so on. They'd be a long way from any star (by definition) for most of their voyage, so solar energy is out of the question -- do they expect the crew of this "starship" to carry around a nuclear power plant with them?

And if they don't find breathable air and fertile soil at the other end, it would end up being a multigenerational suicide mission.