Yesterday's diary by Vladislaw -- Why do liberals hate human space flight? -- provoked a few ferocious exchanges in the comments section concerning the well trod ground of "robotic exploration versus human spaceflight" and despite the unscientific Daily Kos diary poll showing 53% in strong agreement that we should pursue an aggressive space exploration policy, I predict the issue shall remain contentious.
Why is human spaceflight such a contentious issue?
I believe William Langewiesche formerly of The Atlantic hit the nail squarely with an essay he published in January 2004, A Two-Planet Species in which he writes:
Because articles of faith are involved, the arguments tend to be manipulative and hyperbolic. If the debate is to be productive, that needs to change.
I agree.
Langewiesche's essay deserves to be read in full, and being short, it is quickly read.
Here is another link:
A Two-Planet Species? The right way to think about our space program.
The opening paragraph in full:
In the aftermath of the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia an important debate on the purpose and future of the U.S. human-space-flight program is under way, though perhaps not as forthrightly as it should be. The issue at stake is not space exploration in itself but the necessity of launching manned (versus robotic) vehicles. Because articles of faith are involved, the arguments tend to be manipulative and hyperbolic. If the debate is to be productive, that needs to change.
Form follows function
I believe the phrase "form follows function" should be one starting point for any discussion of design, be it buildings, vehicles, spaceflight architectures or government policy. Where do we want to go? What are our objective?
As I asked on July 27, 2005 right here at Daily Kos: Space Exploration: Why?
Space shuttle Discovery returned to flight this week. This success is offset by some anxiety over possible damage to Discovery's heat shield. Taken together, perhaps the Discovery mission creates a suitable occasion to discuss underlying rationale(s) for space exploration itself.
Why should we, as a nation or as a species, engage in space exploration?
If framed properly, this question will go far beyond Washington wonkery concerning the expenditure of tax dollars, although I note in passing that the recent NASA authorization bill passed 385-15 with a rare display of bi-partisan unity. Instead, I propose that we discuss (speculate?) on the future destiny of humanity; whether that destiny should include space exploration; and if so, why.
Funding human spaceflight is overdetermined
It shall be difficult to debate government space policy without at least some common ground concerning WHY we are spending money on NASA.
More recently, I posted another "why space" diary here at Daily Kos: Why space? A novel approach which began as follows:
Why fund human spaceflight?
I am becoming increasingly persuaded that the case for funding human spaceflight is overdetermined provided we somewhat modify the Wikipedia description of that term, perhaps as follows:
Overdetermination is the idea that a single effect can be determined by multiple causes at once, any one of which - standing alone - would constitute sufficient cause for that effect.
Applied to human space flight, various reasons for funding human spaceflight can independently exist (perhaps in contradiction with one another) which yields this marvelous phrase "contradiction and over-determination" which Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser proposed as "a way of thinking about the multiple, often opposed, forces active at once in any political situation, without falling into an over-simple idea of these forces being simply contradictory"
Suppose two US Senators support human spaceflight for contradictory reasons -- reasons that cannot both be true. Perhaps that doesn't really matter, since the roll call will remain the same: two votes of "Aye" and the budget either passes or fails.
I am reminded of the old quip about making law is like making sausage, its best not to watch.
Hot hyperbole in action
As President Obama has himself said on numerous occasions, many believe NASA as an agency has ceased to provide our nation what was intended to provide and I find Langeweische's phrasing compelling:
[A candid debate about NASA] would almost certainly lead to the conclusion that the United States has for thirty years followed human-space-flight policies that are directionless and deeply flawed, and that those policies must now be radically changed, with whatever regret about the historical costs.
But! Merely because NASA has been "doing it wrong" by endlessly flying the Shuttle to the International Space Station that does not prove "robots only" is the way to go.
Nonetheless, opposition to any human spaceflight remains strong among some, with that opposition showing far greater intensity than would seem justified by the minuscule budget given NASA for human spaceflight.
Becoming a Multi-Planet Species
Underneath all of the hyperbole, I believe there is a core existential question which we are having difficulty addressing in a candid and straightforward manner.
Should our species undertake to become a two-planet species and later a multi-planet species? As articulated by Rick Tumlinson:
First, visualize the Earth as the center of an expanding bubble of life, moving ever outwards. The edge of that bubble, the edge of the area of human activity, sits on the Moon. Inside of the Moon we have explored relatively heavily, we have been tromping and stomping around for some thirty years. Hell, we are even running telephone poles and wires through it in the form of communications satellites. NASA, or today's Lewis and Clarks, have done a fine job exploring this area.
Tumlinson obviously believes there is only one "reasonable" answer to this question:
"Do we wish to envision the Earth as the center of an expanding bubble of life, moving ever outwards."
Other obviously believe that dreams of the permanent settlement of space are insane and should be dismissed out of hand.
And we return full circle to what I quoted from Langewiesche, above:
Because articles of faith are involved, the arguments tend to be manipulative and hyperbolic. If the debate is to be productive, that needs to change.
And this, also from the Langewiesche piece:
Indeed, it may be that a pause to regroup is precisely what a vigorous human-space-flight program now needs. One thing for sure is that the American public is more sophisticated than the space community has given it credit for. In the event of a grounding the public might well be presented with a question now asked only of insiders—not whether there are immediate benefits to be gleaned from a human presence in space but, more fundamentally, whether we are to be a two-planet species. If upon due consideration the public's answer is "yes," as it probably should be, the solutions will be centuries in coming.
The first Federalist Paper
One reason for my strong support of Barack Obama is my belief that he not only read the Federalist Papers but that he actually understands what was written there, having taught that subject well.
Federalist Paper #1 also offers -- again IMHO -- some of the best advice ever given on how to resolve disputes such as the question of whether humanity should strive to become a two-planet species.
So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy.
and the passage that captures the American experiment in a nutshell:
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.
Whether humanity should strive to become space-faring is ultimately an existential question of the first magnitude. Reasonable, wise and good human beings can legitimately differ in their answer to that question.
I believe we should make the attempt even as I am not entirely convinced that it shall be biologically feasible to safely and routinely conceive bear and raise children away from the Earth. People (infants!) might well suffer horribly and die terrible deaths making that attempt.
What I wrote in July 2005 (here at Daily Kos) remains my position on this question:
Can the human species safely conceive and bear children on other worlds? I don't know. The prospect of that undertaking is quite sobering.
But I know this much. If any of our species undertakes to transform homo sapiens into a multiplanet species I would very much desire that people who revere Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr., people who espouse "one person, one vote" and the essential equality of all human beings participate in that journey.