“Also available in Arctic Slut, Morning-After Melon, and Elon Musk.” – The Simpsons
Artifacts from another time – when NASA actually flew rockets into space. In the 1990’s NASA lawyers made them wire the rockets to the ground so that they couldn’t fly and maybe hurt someone. Also, NASA HR has made fart jokes grounds for termination.
When I was a young Wilder, I was in awe of NASA. I was expecting that the moon landing was just a start for manned spaceflight. Successes like the Voyager probe were confirmation – NASA would be leading us into a great new era that would end up with a man on Mars. Spaceflight would be available (at least) to rich people. We’d have great cylindrical colonies up in space, and mining on asteroids would produce massive amounts of wealth. Solar power satellites would beam power via microwave down to receiving dishes and eliminate energy shortages on Earth. And probably some birds.
Ahh, the future. Now back off to the Moon mines honey! Go deal with hard radiation for a week. Then we’ll have Swiss steak! (Source – NASA Ames)
The Space Shuttle was a hopeful idea. Built on the idea of being reusable, shuttles were going to revolutionize space travel. We’d shoot one up every week or two, and the cost would be less than $700 (today’s dollars) per pound. That was the idea, anyway.
Over the course of the 135 total missions it cost about $27,000 per pound. Each mission cost about $1.5 billion. And NASA would send up a Space Shuttle to launch a communications satellite. Yes. Every time we wanted to launch something, we’d put 25% of our space launch ability along with seven astronauts on the line. The shuttle was further crippled by added weight, which limited the orbits it could reach.
In 2007, NASA estimated they could have flown Saturn V (the same rocket that went to the Moon) missions six times a year, with two trips to the Moon, each year for the same price as the shuttle. With the amount of payload that the Saturn V could have sent up, our space infrastructure and time in space would have been significantly higher than with the Space Shuttle. We’d have been on Mars. Actual people.
Yeah. NASA essentially burned our future in space on a crappy space truck. But it’s gotten worse.
The current NASA rocket program, the Space Launch System, has consumed $11.5 billion dollars over seven years. And produced no rocket.
Pictured: Actual rocket. Not pictured: NASA rocket. Because there isn’t one. (Source: SpaceX)
Elon Musk spent $500 million on the Falcon Heavy to develop it, and launch costs are $90 million to $150 million per launch, and it has a greater capacity than any rocket on Earth right now. And a greater capacity than the Space Launch System will ever have. Musk’s only competition is Jeff Bezos, who has a LOT of money and the same ideas.
In perhaps the biggest NASA troll ever, Musk sent his car into space. With a Matchbox® car of his car glued to the dash. Playing David Bowie. With a spacesuit in the car. NASA? Unable to launch bottle rockets – probably because of all of the procedures required to launch one.
How can Musk do this when NASA cannot? Several reasons:
- NASA is observably stupid. It started spending money on a launch pad for a cancelled rocket. It spent $200+ million dollars. Then it decided to change the pad for the Space Launch System. As of now, NASA has spent $300 million more. It anticipates spending another $400 million. But the launch pad leans. And it might only be used . . . once. Don’t believe me? Here’s a LINK.
Yes, this is a billion dollars. Oh, the alternative? Yeah, build a complete new one for a couple hundred million. (Source: NASA)
- NASA is a jobs program. There are many fine scientists at NASA. Not sure NASA needs any scientists – NASA needs engineers to build rockets and rovers. I’m sure there are plenty of universities that NASA can go to if they need scientists. But let’s pretend that NASA needs a scientist or two. Does NASA need to make braille books for blind kids about eclipses? No, but they did. (LINK) Does NASA need a writer to write about how NASA helped make the statuettes that they give out at the Oscars® shiny? (LINK) They did.
- NASA has been given no fixed mission. In the 1960’s, the idea was we’ll get men to the moon by the end of the decade. And they did. The entire world watched while young (less than 40 years old, most of them) men (almost overwhelmingly) conquered the moon. What’s the mission now? To watch while Elon Musk and eventually Jeff Bezos do more than NASA ever could? How demoralized must the government workers be watching future Bond® villains take over space?
- Related to the above – NASA has no consistency. Rocket programs start/stop based on the political climate of the day. Bush proposes a rocket, Obama deletes the rocket and proposes another rocket. Manned spaceflight should take second place to unmanned probes. Unmanned probes should take second place to manned spaceflight. It’s like trying to negotiate between Mom and Dad when they don’t even speak the same language.
So, the solution?
Make Elon Musk NASA Emperor For Life®. Give him the money. If we gave Musk the money, we’d be on Mars in five years. We’d have a base on it in seven years. In twenty years, there would be a million Americans living on Mars. We’d start turning the atmosphere into something we could breathe. We’d make the place homey. Maybe in a several hundred years. Maybe a thousand.
Don’t get me wrong. Living on Mars is hard. It’s tougher than living on the top of Mount Everest. It’s tougher than living at the South Pole. But it’s worth doing. Why?
Intelligent life may be very rare in the Universe – it might even be rarer than intelligent life at NASA. The one thing we owe to our posterity is that they be given a chance to live. And even though planets appear to be fairly common in the Galaxy, there’s no real sign of intelligent life around here besides us. This previous week, we saw the nearest planet to our Solar system get torched by a solar flare that we could see from Earth (with huge telescopes). This happened four years ago. If anything was living there before, it was nuked, microwaved, and fried. Colonel Sanders could only sell Kentucky Fried Alien® there, since there certainly aren’t any living ones.
And for how much time of the existence of the Earth have we had intelligent life. 20,000 years? 100,000 years? If you generously (how could intelligent life exist without beer?) assume 200,000 years, only for 0.004% of the life of the Earth have we had intelligent life. And how long has that life been observable? 0.000002%.
When we look at the threats that mankind realistically faces, putting ourselves on Mars should be the ultimate, number one goal of the human race. We face economic disruption (LINK), we face the potential for artificial intelligence being a really tough child (LINK), big asteroids (LINK), super volcanos (LINK), and diseases and other stuff (like reality television) that could wipe us out.
The alternative are space habitats. The LaGrange points (which have nothing to do with ZZ Top®) are relatively stable orbits that math provides around the Earth-Moon system. In the diagram below, you can see that LaGrange 1, 2, and 3 are stable, but tiny places. LaGrange 4 (L4) and LaGrange 5 (L5) are awesome places because they are large – you could put a lot of stuff there and not worry about bumping into each other. And you can stay in those areas for millions of years without expending any fuel.
Here are the LaGrange points, courtesy NASA and ZZ Top®.
The L5 (or L4) colonies are perhaps tougher than Mars. Or not. Manufacturing these habitats would be difficult – you’d have to set up an entire manufacturing complex on the Moon (likely) and pull some choice asteroids into L4 or L5 orbit for raw materials. It’s certain that this work would cost billions and take decades for the larger colonies that would host millions of people. On the plus side? There’s already a song built for the colonies:
Home, home on LaGrange,
Where the space debris always collects,
We possess, so it seems, two of Man’s greatest dreams:
Solar power and zero-gee sex.
-Home on LaGrange (The L5 Song)
© 1978 by William S. Higgins and Barry D. Gehm, via Wikipedia
Here’s a NASA depiction of a space colony at the L5 point. Only NASA would create a colony where you’d have to build a bridge. (Source, NASA Ames)
I really love humanity. I want it to live on until the Universe can no longer support life. I’d like to think that in 2 trillion years that young Wilders (whatever they look like) are out viewing the birth of a new black hole, or watching the latest episode of The Simpsons. Why? All of the Universe, all of creation is meaningless unless we have someone there to watch it in joy and wonder. And to make fart jokes.
