Is Space Exploration Worth the Cost? A Freakonomics Quorum

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We gathered up a group of space authorities — G. Scott Hubbard, Joan Vernikos, Kathleen M. Connell, Keith Cowing, and David M. Livingston, and John M. Logsdon — and asked them the following:

Is manned space exploration worth the cost? Why or why not?
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For the impatient among you, here are a few highlights:

Logsdon on a not-so-obvious incentive for manned space travel: “Space exploration can also serve as a stimulus for children to enter the fields of science and engineering.”

Vernikos on the R.O.I. of space travel: “Economic, scientific and technological returns of space exploration have far exceeded the investment. … Royalties on NASA patents and licenses currently go directly to the U.S. Treasury, not back to NASA.”

Cowing on space expenditures relative to other costs: “Right now, all of America’s human space flight programs cost around $7 billion a year. That’s pennies per person per day. In 2006, according to the USDA, Americans spent more than $154 billion on alcohol. We spend around $10 billion a month in Iraq. And so on.”
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The interviewees:

G. Scott Hubbard, professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and former director of the NASA Ames Research Center:

Joan Vernikos, a member of the Space Studies Board of the National Academy and former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division:

Kathleen M. Connell, a principal of The Connell Whittaker Group, a founding team member of NASA’s Astrobiology Program, and former policy director of the Aerospace States Association:

Keith Cowing, founder and editor of NASAWatch.com and former NASA space biologist.

David M. Livingston, host of The Space Show, a talk radio show focusing on increasing space commerce and developing space tourism:

John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute and acting director of the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs:


http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/is-space-exploration-worth-the-cost-a-freakonomics-quorum/

Yes. Of course.

Progress or die.

No Freakonomics required.

--p!

Everyone listed on that panel is a space enthusiast -- to the extreme point of devoting their career to the space program.

I haven't read the article yet, but it doesn't look like it will be an even-handed discussion.

--Peter

NASA has determined that the expense to launch objects into orbit costs approx.$25,000/kg. per payload. That's a Year 2000 estimate so I'm not sure how more expensive it is today in 2008.

One of the mistakes people make is that they associate the exploration of space with the previous explorations of Earth. Columbus used free energy (old-fashioned wind technology and sail power) to discover the New World (discovery, as in a narrow-minded West European sense, the native peoples of Turtle Island never could have discovered Europe, of course). Wind and sails cost Columbus nothing in terms of the energy being harnessed, although it must be noted that the Spanish monarchy financed the trip - built the ships, loaned him the money for the manpower and provisions, ect.

And it paid off, the subsequent Spanish conquistadors got all the precious minerals and Indian slave labor they could grab, for free! No wonder the discovery of the New World helped directly to create the modern banking system and capitalism we know today. Gold, silver, slave labor did it!

But to not get off a tangent here, if any space agency and their contracting concerns, such as NASA, Arianne, the Japanese, Chinese and Russian space agencies, if any of them really were capable of bringing anything back of value (titanium, He-3, ect.) from, say the moon, beyond the "prestige factor" of landing on the moon, someone should have a plan to do that by now. We've been waiting for 50 years, right? If there was any profit to be made in space, NASA would have been privatized like the commercial airliner industry after the Apollo missions.

But the economic equations can never be solved in space. NEVER!

The second biggest problem wrt the economics of space exploration remains the same today as it was almost half a century ago. Every nation is competing against the other nation in space, which BTW was completely counter to JFK's idea which was proposed at the UN in Sept. 1963: JFK wanted to pool our national resources with the Soviets in 1963 for a joint moon mission. In fact, that was what his Apollo Program was supposed to do. This never happened after his sudden demise (removal from power) and it became a 'space race' with the USA the only one in the competition.

So what we have today are nationalized space programs that are essentially state-sponsored welfare agencies, draining tax dollars from we the people and working citizens. It provides very, very little in return for us, outside of the so-called "prestige factor". Such etheral benefits may be sufficient for people who are easily manipulated by psy-ops and other forms of thought manipulation, OTOH most of us are more practical-minded and are not convinced by such hoopla and theatrics.

Welfare is still welfare, it isn't any better just because it benefits the big aerospace contractors and other sectors of the military-industrial complex. And yet, while no one can muster to courage to say "privatize NASA", privatizing something completely down-to-Earth like Social Security is supposed to be a good idea by the same crowd of politicians. Go figure!

p.s. we don't want to privatize NASA because it would be bankrupt the following year, guaranteed. And no, you can't have your money back.

The bar is certainly much higher for an initial investment to gain economic benefit from deep space and like any analogy the analogy between exploration of the American continents by Europeans and Space exploration will break down in the details but that doesn't mean there aren't lessons that can be learned, inspirations taken.

I think part of the problem (and markets are not the end all of determining what should be done, there's more than economics that have kept humanity stymied in space exploration gains) is there needs to be a shift of focus from planets to space itself and that ideas like O'Neill colonies are more likely to be successful.

http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/CoEvolutionBook/p1.html

Actually, I think you are the first person in a good many years that has actually responded positively to my critique on the (un)economics of space exploration.

"...markets are not the end all of determining what should be done..."

Wow, that's great, you almost sound like a Marxist like me, or perhaps anarcho-syndicalist. Wish there was more of this kind of thinking here on Earth.

Be that as it may, I do agree that if it's impossible to be a capitalist in outer space, and that's what you appear to be saying to me, then I think we will have to become some kind of communists albeit on a cosmic level, universalists as it were, mentally we almost have to evolve into a totally different species compared to the little mindsets we are framed with today, that's the type of mindset needed to even begin to be prepared for 'the final frontier'. In this regard, my favorite conception of this mentality needed to explore space, it happens to be the same vision of Gene Roddenberry. For in his advanced 'Star Trek communism' we see a near-future with technology so advanced that people can live without money and without pay, and yet everything they desire in the way of material things is instantly available. In this future the “necessities” of everyday life are made available to everyone as a matter of birthright. A near-future with technology so advanced that when a person wants a cup of coffee or a meal he/she simply asks the “replicator” machine for said item and the food and the cup or plate containing it instantly appears. Private ownership of such things as food and cutlery is an anachronism; i.e., irrelevant; immaterial. Also geographic borderlines don't really exist anymore, because there are no borderlines in space when looking down on Earth.

I suppose what Roddenberry pictures for us wrt faster-than-light travel, it may become possible and maybe it will be achieved in the 21st century (note: virtually everything else from The Original Series has been invented and is very much with us, with this exception, and the exception of teleportation). As far as space travel in general is concerned, yes, the one big remaining problem is the cost. But from a several-centuries perspective, that problem would go away once science and engineering create an anti-gravity engine.

is that on the one hand you say space will never be commercially viable under a capitalistic system, which is a fairly hard claim to prove, then turn around and talk about science one day creating an "anti-gravity" engine, something that IS almost guaranteed to "never" happen.

we invest in the present and the future.

At some point if the human race is to survive, we must cut the ties with mother earth and journey to the stars.

Will that happen? I hope so if we are not visited by intelligent beings from other places first.

In the universal scope of things, we are just primitive, insignificant beings obsessed with our inconsequential existence.

The shuttle is the current US manned space vehicle. Most of the cost of launching it is launching the dead weight need to return the vehicle to Earth. On a cost basis the Shuttle isn't very cost effective. Also because it requires redundant systems to kept it's human cargo alive it also costs more than an unmanned craft. Which is why most private and military launches decided long ago to not launch on the shuttle.

The other cost is of course relative to what you could have spent your money on. Manned flight is for the most part is confined to low Earth orbit. There's only so much one can do in LEO. Most of the "work" and exploration is thus done by unmanned spacecraft and vehicles. The cost of hanging around in LEO on neat but not necessarily essential manned spaceflight is thus the loss and delay of many more unmanned missions. Missions that explore other planets, other moons, the sun...

On a pure science basis the manned program has been a major loser. On a launch vehicle basis the manned launch vehicle is a loser. So I'd say economics is all against manned space flight.