SIGNAL: NASA’s 50th anniversary – thanks!

COMMENT: The way is the goal?

When I was a little boy my parents did wake me up in the midst of the night to show me some live pictures from the moon – one of my earliest memories. So that was one big step, you know. Hmm, but in which direction, to what purpose? Is a budget of $17.3 billion p.a. (PDF, nasa.gov) justified by the results? To be honest a good part of research in space is done in a selfreferential manner. There are so much problems in space for the human organism, that one first has to research the consequences and measurements of zero gravity etc.

ANALYTICAL EXCURSE: Some archaic patterns lurking in the background?

Remember the Challenger and Columbia catastrophe – with the loss of the whole crew, transmissioned live to millions of people. There is so much trouble in space and while the start an reentry that a sober analysis comes to the conclusion that there are some “irrational motives” behind that high risk manned trips.

My very personal stance is, that there is a strong ideological component even after the cold war space race. It is as if the humankind of the Western hemisphere manifests core values in an archaic human sacrifice from time to time. A lot of space experiments could be made by semi-autonomous robots – they need not to sleep and are no source of permanent vibrations. Why do we not switch to more unmanned trips? Be brave to ask yourself: Is there a common root deep in the ground between “enlighted” modernism and the “monstrous and dark” djihad mind set? Time to see the “modernist fundamentalism” and to analyze the blind spots.

RELEVANCE: Space research is earth research too

Our planet is in danger – that is what we learn every day. We need a lot of knowledge to come to terms with the consequences of our “too successful” breed of homo sapiens sapiens. Time will tell whether the cognitive, moral, structural and technological ressources are there to recognize and realize the right measurements. Sometimes I ask myself what else we have to know before we start action? But of course, the system earth is really complicated and the more we know the more precise we can interact – and regain some control (when there is not too much nonlinearity anyway).

WARNING: Mars trips are an illusion – and an effective PR trick

There is this paragraph 1.6.4 on the Wikipedia – “Man on Mars”

On September 28, 2007, NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin stated that NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037, and in 2057, “We should be celebrating 20 years of man on Mars.” (WP)

Sorry, but as long as there is no breakthrough technology for cheap and fast space travel the public should know:

What we have done up to now is a really huge, complex and expensive thing, but it is nothing in comparison with a project called “manned Mars trip”!

Sorry, but when I hear someone talk about “colonizing the Mars” I think that there is a lack of knowledge or of honesty. As a futurist and tech analyst I know that sometimes a “disruptive innovation” changes the game completely. What I say is, that it is an irresponsible attitude to produce false hopes in the public, that there is a kind of second earth, a substitute, when we made a mess of our home planet. There is none. So, when water has been detected on Mars some weeks ago, the news has been distributed with the connotation that this means something – and as if we are short from terraforming Mars. First, in the science dimension the “news” is more than four years old, (Mars Express Sees Its First Water – Jan. 23, 2004, sciencedaily.com). Second, compared with the obstacle to travel the distance (even oneway trip) and build some meaningful structure on Mars, water is not the big issue …

CONCLUSION: Unless there is some breakthrough technology, we better do not talk of “space travel”

In a literal sense there are no “astro”nauts and “cosmo”nauts, we just made tiny jumps in the gravity zone of our planet – to our vast and rocky moon. But there is serious work to do – and ok, we can talk about a moon station and the advantages of it in the near future.

Update 2008-07-30 LT 11:28

  • Concerning the controversial “psychoanalysis” of the manned space exploration see my comment beneath, quote: “Some Mars trip evangelists are a bit desperate (realizing the facts) in the last time and now there are proposals for a “A One-Way, One-Person Mission to Mars” (Jim McLane and Nancy Atkinson, http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/04/a-one-way-one-person-mission-to-mars/ what takes us back to the irrational and archaic part – the “human sacrifice” for the “tin god of progress” or something like that.”