I saw a BBC documentary where they interviewed every astronaut who had walked on the moon who would speak to them about life. Most were total and utter cranks! Strangest thing I've ever seen. You can understand why once you've seen it. Peaking at a young age, the incredible stress of being a test pilot and watching so many colleagues die through no fault of their own. The adulation for surviving, which really wasn't up to you. Etc. I have huge sympathy for all the Astronuats - not that they'd want it and good for them.
But I'm not taking an astronauts advice on literally anything because they are or were an astronaut. Doing that ends up in the realms of spoon bending. If an astronaut has an idea it stands or falls on the merit of the idea. If you want a heuristic, most astronaut's ideas aren't worth your time. It's a sad conclusion to come to and I'm sure it's unpopular because we love having glamorous heroes but there it is.
I agree with your criticism of hero worship, and the personal issues with the early pilots / astronauts, but modern space flight is nothing like that.
It's still dangerous, but our success rate with rockets is far, far better than it was in the 1960's. Complex systems, as Hadfield notes, succeed because of diligence and cooperation, not luck and cowboyism. Most astronauts in the 21st century don't have 1-in-4 of their colleagues killed on the job.
Astronauts are still the monkeys in a can. The success or failure now as it always was is in the engineering team, not the warm body who (to paraphrase Carl Sagan) is /still/ really only present for PR purposes rather than to optimise the advancement of technology and science.
Head of space flight engineering or whatever at NASA - yeah? Heuristic would be listen to them, they might know something. Monkey in the can on top of the fire-cracker? If they do know something it's more coincidence with their usefulness in PR than anything else. Sad but true. If NASA abandoned human flight tomorrow they'd probably get a lot more bang for buck - other than in PR because we love us a person to fuel our imagination and I am no different there. How flippin' cool is it ride the fireball into space?!?
You are wildly uninformed when it comes to astronaut roles. Could the ISS be automated? Perhaps, but at astronomical costs. And most tasks would still require remote operation. Also many experiments are done precisely on humans themselves.
In general modern astronauts have many roles -- flight managers, technicians (doing and evaluating repairs), scientists, experimental subjects, and finally yes communicators to an extent (frankly great to inspire people). Obvious Hadfield isn't a perfect human being and I'm sure he doesn't like adulation, but his vast set of skills, including communication effectiveness is quite impressive (and music ability -- check out his space video clip!). I assure you he's no crank (perhaps you're biased by early space program people that were test pilots). I recommend checking out his and other ISS youtube videos to get an idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hj3GnPRsJ4
Compare the costs of automation development vs the cost of life support systems development, launch and maitenance and it's not even close.
Yeah I know it sucks when someone poo-poos on your (and my) heroes. I know. "For a successful technology... " etc. Feynman wasn't perfect either. Astronauts continue to be selected according to an ideal of how they will come accross to the public, from Alan Shephard on. And there was something very impressive about all of them that played well in the media. It took 30 years to find out so many of them are also pretty weird and not people you'd take scientific advice from.
Experiments on humans in space are mostly interesting in research for space life-support. You do different, arguably vastly more bang for buck experiments if you're not using humans to do them.
The space race was literally cold war propaganda (and wonderful, beautiful stuff at that - vastly better than most propaganda). NASA continues to put PR front and centre. You can disagree, that's fine, decide to what extent the PR is influencing you and if you're sure it's minimal I can't ask for much more, right?
The ideal would be if NASA had basic science front and centre rather than the incredible waste frittering away vast wealth on the pretence of children's astronaut dreams. And I want a flying car too but reality should win out.
Oh here we go -- this is a vast subject (and I understand some of your questioning), I wish I had time for a more thorough analysis, but here are some key points.
- Humans are actually fantastic space exploration hardware.
We already have robotic vehicles exploring other planets. They are not autonomous, and have glorified Arduinos in them. Not for lack of money or development, but because it is extremely difficult to do autonomous exploration, and the hardware is essentially currently impossible because there's nothing good enough, and not even remotely close to good enough that can survive radiation and space environment. Exploration currently is extremely slow, done through remote control, with up to 24 minute delays (Mars).
- Humans can self-reproduce with low-tech inputs
We are perhaps from >50 to >>100s years away from machine compact self-reproduction, then imagine self-reproduction with human-like intelligence. Only humans can make colonies for the near future.
- AGI (or just good enough scientist AI, explorer AI, etc) is uncertainly distant
It could be 20, or it could be 100 years or more away (if our civilization even survives that long before wars/climate change/etc), economically viable AGI is uncertain, economically viable compact radiation-resistant AGI is vastly uncertain.
- It is worthwhile to bet on long term space exploration and habitation
This is the most difficult case. I think it's worthwhile to devote resources on long term space exploration and habitation. In particular research since it is so expensive right now and we still experiencing rapid technological change. We want to eventually live on other planets (and even other star systems). The other aspects are complementary, like inspiring people to work in engineering and science; the main thing is giving hope for the future, even if it's a future you won't live.
Most of the research anyways finds applications in terrestrial systems (remember that we still do pure Mathematics, whose research value tends to crop decades later or more).
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It is expensive, yes (ISS costs about $3 billion per year for NASA apparently), but overall I think it's a tiny investment for great returns (at varying levels of risk).
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Finally, to expand on hope: hope is great things many things, but one of them is simply the way people act on expectations of the future. If they don't expect to live long, or a long term future worth living for other generations, you expect we will act more selfishly and greedily, a self-fulfilling prophetical aspect. Thus it's extremely important not to neglect sustainability and somewhat distant dreams.
Modern astronauts are many things, monkeys in a can is not one of them. They have many roles and skills ranging form engineering to teaching and many things in between.
They perform engineering and procedural review.
Carry out public outreach that inspires scientists and engineers of the future.
Manage operations during launch and in space operations.
and are involved in most parts of approval of new equipment they will be using.
Yes they have a PR role, but getting photographed on the top of a rocket is a very small part of that.
They're only present for PR purposes? Yeah, um... let's see if I remember right...
Apollo 11: Had to make a visual adjustment because the pre-mission selected landing area was a boulder field. We didn't have computers that could do visual field processing in 1969. Without the humans, we could have lost the lander.
One of the Apollos (13?): The guidance system was all messed up (maybe had reset after the explosion, and reset to being on the pad?) One of the astronauts manually shot the stars to get correct current position data to input into the guidance system. Without this human intervention, the mission would have been (literally) lost.
So... yeah. Not exactly monkeys in a can, just there for PR.
Which documentary? I'd really like to see it before passing any judgment. There are a lot of really sharp astronauts out there, current and former.
NASA also employs a confidential psychological evaluation process for astronauts. I have heard some argue that the process has been biased, in the past, toward outcomes that may produce astronauts who, for example, struggle--relative to their other strengths, that is--to keep a handle on the emergence of emotion or complex experiential outcomes. (And I would mention that many of us humans down here on earth fall into this boat as well)
It was BBC world. It was a series, one moon walker per episode and I'm guessing 20 years ago. I'm not turning up the needle in the bbc astronaut haystack for you I'm sorry.
There really should be a list of every BBC doco somewhere. Not turning that up either.
Reminds me of the book The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. He describes the start of the US space program, being a test pilot, public reaction to being a astronaut...
Astronauts were treated like gods back then, or as Wolfe called them "single combat warriors". I think a lot of that sentiment still exists today.
But I'm not taking an astronauts advice on literally anything because they are or were an astronaut. Doing that ends up in the realms of spoon bending. If an astronaut has an idea it stands or falls on the merit of the idea. If you want a heuristic, most astronaut's ideas aren't worth your time. It's a sad conclusion to come to and I'm sure it's unpopular because we love having glamorous heroes but there it is.