Can We Afford Not To Pay The Premuiums?

[Faustus]

Can we afford not to insure against obvious possibilities, as soon as the insurance becomes available?

The United States Federal Budget (for one) is about $2.8 trillion (receipts about 2.4 trillions), and the budget of NASA for 2007 is 16.25 Billions. NASA Expenditures comprise about 6/10ths of 1 percent of the 2007 Federal budget, and have occupied a similarly small proportion of the budget since NASA was created. We have many more urgent uses for those expenditures; or have we?

 

What are the risks of not exploring space? Redirecting an errant Near Earth Object is always under discussion, but what about the Human seed? Can it be preserved? Is the price too high? If we saved those NASA dollar expenditures, would we direct them towards more useful purposes? Would they then make a difference here on earth, or are dollars merely fungible? What are the risks?

 

There are about 10,000 craters on the near side of the Moon, visible to telescopes on Earth. Most of them are in the ancient lunar highlands and date from the time of the final accretion of the Moon from interplanetary debris. There are about a thousand craters larger than a kilometer across in the maria (Latin for seas), the lowland regions that were flooded, perhaps by lava, shortly after the formation of the Moon, covering over the preexisting craters. Thus, very roughly, craters on the Moon should be formed today at the rate of about 109 years/104 craters, = 105 years/crater, a hundred thousand years between cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years ago than there is today, we might have to wait even longer than a hundred thousand years to see a crater form on the Moon. Because the Earth has a larger area than the Moon, we might have to wait something like ten thousand years between collisions that would make craters as big as a kilometer across on our planet. And since Meteor Crater, Arizona, an impact crater about a kilometer across, has been found to be twenty or thirty thousand years old, the observations on the Earth are in agreement with such crude calculations.

 

The actual impact of a small comet or asteroid with the Moon might make a momentary explosion sufficiently bright to be visible from the Earth. We can imagine our ancestors gazing idly up on some night a hundred thousand years ago and noting a strange cloud arising from the unilluminated part of the Moon suddenly struck by the Sun's rays. But we would not expect such an event to have happened in historical times. The odds against it must be something like a hundred to one. Nevertheless, there is an historical account which may in fact describe an impact on the Moon seen from Earth with the naked eye: On the evening of June 25, 1178, five British monks reported something extraordinary, which was later recorded in the chronicle of Gervase of Canterbury, generally considered a reliable reporter on the political and cultural events of his time, after he had interviewed the eyewitnesses who asserted, under oath, the truth of their story.

 

The chronicle reads: There was a bright New Moon, and as usual in that phase its horns were tilted towards the east. Suddenly, the upper horn split in two. From the midpoint of the division, a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out fire, hot coals, and sparks.

 

The astronomers Derral Mulholland and Odile Calame have calculated that a lunar impact would produce a dust cloud rising off the surface of the Moon with an appearance corresponding rather closely to the report of the Canterbury monks. If such an impact were made only 800 years ago, the crater should still be visible. Erosion on the Moon is so inefficient, because of the absence of air and water, that even small craters a few billion years old are still comparatively well preserved. From the description recorded by Gervase, it is possible to pinpoint the sector of the Moon to which the observations refer. Impacts produce rays, linear trails of fine powder spewed out during the explosion. Such rays are associated with the very youngest craters on the Moon-for example, those named after Aristarchus and Copernicus and Kepler. But while the craters may withstand erosion on the Moon, the rays, being exceptionally thin, do not. As time goes on, even the arrival of micrometeorites-fine dust from space-stirs up and covers over the rays, and they gradually disappear. Thus rays are a signature of a recent impact.

 

The meteoriticist Jack Hartung has pointed out that a very recent, very fresh-looking small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to by the Canterbury monks. It is called Giordano Bruno after the sixteenth century Roman Catholic scholar who held that there are an infinity of worlds and that many are inhabited. For this and other crimes he was burned at the stake in the year 1600. Another line of evidence consistent with this interpretation has been provided by Calame and Mulholland. When an object impacts the Moon at high speed, it sets the Moon slightly wobbling. Eventually the vibrations die down but not in so short a period as eight hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo astronauts scattered in several locales on the Moon special mirrors called laser retro reflectors. When a laser beam from Earth strikes the mirror and bounces back, the round-trip travel time can be measured with remarkable precision. This time multiplied by the speed of light gives us the distance to the Moon at that moment to equally remarkable precision. Such measurements, performed over a period of years, reveal the Moon to be quivering with a period (about three years) and amplitude (about three meters), consistent with the idea that the crater Giordano Bruno ( The object's size, and another theory HERE ) was gouged out less than a thousand years ago.

 

 

All this evidence is inferential and indirect. The odds, as I have said, are against such an event happening in historical times. But the evidence is at least suggestive. As the Tunguska Event and Meteor Crater, Arizona, also remind us, not all impact catastrophes occurred in the early history of the solar system. But the fact that only a few of the lunar craters have extensive ray systems also reminds us that, even on the Moon, some erosion occurs. By noting which craters overlap which and other signs of lunar stratigraphy, we can reconstruct the sequence of impact and flooding events of which the production of crater Bruno is perhaps the most recent. example.

 

The Earth is very near the Moon. If the Moon is so severely cratered by impacts, how has the Earth avoided them? Why is Meteor Crater so rare? Do the comets and asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance. The only possible explanation is that impact crater are formed at very similar rates on both the Earth and the Moon, but that on the airless, waterless Moon they are preserved for immense periods of time, while on the Earth slow erosion wipes them out or fills them in. Running water,-windblown sand and mountain-building are very slow processes. But over millions or billions of years, they are capable of utterly erasing even very large impact scars.

 

On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as impacts from space, and internal processes, such as earthquakes; there will be fast, catastrophic events, such as volcanic explosions, and processes of excruciating slowness, such as the pitting of a surface by tiny airborne sand grains. There is no general answer to the question of which processes dominate, the outside ones or the inside ones; the rare but violent events, or the common and inconspicuous occurrences. On the Moon, the outside, catastrophic events hold sway; on Earth, the inside, slow processes dominate.

 

Do we pay the insurance premium, or wait and see?

[ASCLEPIADES]

What are the risks of not exploring space? Redirecting an errant Near Earth Object is always under discussion, but what about the Human seed? Can it be preserved? Is the price too high? If we saved those NASA dollar expenditures, would we direct them towards more useful purposes? Would they then make a difference here on earth, or are dollars merely fungible? What are the risks?

Salve, F!

 

On both counts, I think the odds largely favours (exponentially, in fact) the

[Faustus]

What are the risks of not exploring space? Redirecting an errant Near Earth Object is always under discussion, but what about the Human seed? Can it be preserved? Is the price too high? If we saved those NASA dollar expenditures, would we direct them towards more useful purposes? Would they then make a difference here on earth, or are dollars merely fungible? What are the risks?

Salve, F!

 

On both counts, I think the odds largely favours (exponentially, in fact) the

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, F.

 

If there

Edited October 7, 2007 by ASCLEPIADES

[Nephele]

I am as impressed by the achievements and the potential of space exploration as the guy next door, but it has always be predominantly a military activity.

 

Must space exploration be a military (and, subsequently, government) activity, though?

 

I never cease to be amazed by what the private sector can accomplish, without government funding (and, ideally, without government intrusion -- although one cannot always escape government intrusion even when one chooses not to take government money).

 

In 2004, aviator and engineer Burt Rutan (with financing by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to the tune of $20 million), won the Ansari X Prize for designing and launching SpaceShipOne, the world's first privately-funded, human-manned, suborbital spaceship.

 

Granted, that was just one small step for the free market man, but the imagination soars as high as SpaceShipOne, when one considers what can be accomplished by the private sector. And, we should remember that Orville and Wilbur Wright were not government-funded.

 

-- Nephele

[Ursus]

I have no desire to leave the solar system. We need to take better care of the home we have. The US can cooperate with Japan and Europe to defray the costs of the space program - if it so freaking important to "humanity" then let "humanity" share the costs.

[Faustus]

Salve,

 

Thanks to Nephele for bringing us back to earth from the minutia on this topic and to the obvious answer: human ingenuity is not derived from governmental bureaucracies.

 

Being a believer in private enterprise, I should

Edited October 7, 2007 by Faustus

[Julius Ratus]

I am all for more space exploration. When Spain funded expeditions to check out the edge of the earth, they reaped the benefits for a century as the strongest nation in Europe.

 

In addition to working with Europe and Japan the US should work more closely with the Russians. They may be broke but their space stuff generally works (excepting Mir). When our expensive shuttles were down, the venerable Soyuz rockets were the life line to the space station. Besides, they were the first in space with Sputnik and Gargarin (not to mention Mila(?) the dog).

[ASCLEPIADES]

Besides, they were the first in space with Sputnik and Gargarin (not to mention Mila(?) the dog).

The name of the first cosmic bitch on Sputnik II fifty years ago was Laika (Лайка; Russian for "barker"), altough it has been reported that her original name was Kudryavka (кудрявка)

 

 

This is Milla. Even if she was born in the USSR, her name (M. Jovovich) is Sebian.

 

Edited October 8, 2007 by ASCLEPIADES

[Klingan]

I am of the extreme kinda that truly believe that it's time to get the space programs going on full speed again. In my opinion we should be working on Mars projects with the ultimate goals of putting a man on mars and in a not too far away future start to construct a colony there. Many ask my why I want this when I they hear me argue for it.

 

Well first of all I'm curious, secondly I believe that exploration is a good thing for itself. Many say that it's worthless to go to Mars, we don't need anything it have, and we can't ship it home. I wonder how much Columbus counted on bringing home from the new world in his very small ships. When he came home we had just about no clue what the new continents had to offer. Even then they sent ships, may I say bloody small ships. The potential gain must have been very low.

 

Before we go to Mars big style, we will not know what we can gain from it. Technological development is good and that is for sure one thing a large scale Mars project would bring again as the Apollo project once did.

[Faustus]

In the first post on this topic there was/is a link to another theory designed to explain what possibly may have happened the night the monk & witnesses saw the apparent

Edited October 9, 2007 by Faustus

[Faustus]

Salve,

 

BTW The Messenger was a great flick about Joan of Arc, a little past 576 years ago. Recommended!

Rehabilitation Trial, huh. . . .?

[caldrail]

We have many more urgent uses for those expenditures; or have we?

Long sightedness is not a faculty posessed by politicans. They adopt policies that will see them popular, or succesful, or personally well off when they finally get the push. Whether or not we all become extinct in a few generations rarely has any real bearing on politics.

 

What are the risks of not exploring space?

None. Our enviroment remains roughly as dangerous as it has always been, although it does mean that our survival as a species must be finite.

 

Redirecting an errant Near Earth Object is always under discussion, but what about the Human seed? Can it be preserved?

Yes it could, though not perhaps in a useful capacity. However, I guess you mean can the species go on? Well... assuming we actually can do something to find new enviroments in which to survive then possibly, but in the very long term there's absolutely no guarantee of survival whatsoever.

 

If the Moon is so severely cratered by impacts, how has the Earth avoided them? Why is Meteor Crater so rare? Do the comets and asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet?

A meteor was observed falling over the Saudi desert in the late 19th century. A british explorer, who happened to be searching for lost civilisations in the area, made a study of the crater (I think it was around 50 to 100 feet across). The site was revisited in the 90's and has almost vanished. The earth has a measure of protection because of the atmosphere. Most impacts are very snmall. There was a recorded instance of a small rock (about the size of a large marble) that hit a house in small town america and ricocheted through the flimsy wooden construction.

 

But over millions or billions of years, they are capable of utterly erasing even very large impact scars.

Not completely. The crater off the coast of mexico (the biggie that dropped on T Rex) has been located for instance. Ok, it was a huge crater with ripple formations around it, but that ones 65 million years old. There are craters known as astrons, the really really really big impacts, that can still be traced after billions of years. There's also a region in australia which seems to have been a target for meteor impacts (don't know why) and some of those craters are miles across.

 

Do we pay the insurance premium, or wait and see?

It probably makes little difference. Our perspective is very small. We live only three score years and ten and can only perceive the world in our locality, thus our experience of the world is necessarily limited. The modern media has raised our global awareness but we don't fully experience the images on TV as real. Also, this question assumes that by spreading into space we make ourselves somehow safer. Why? Because we can colonise other worlds? Fact is, we're vulnerable little creatures and the enviroment out there is none too friendly. Our new nests on other planets will very likely be vulnerable too. Humanity likes to be optimistic about such things - thats probably a good thing - but our expansion is not going to be easy if achievable at all. The engineering to send people to another world with a view to a permanent home is colossal, and our resources here on earth are finite. There's only so much raw materials we can use before our modern technological civilisation crumbles away and we all go back to surviving in the wild (and many of us won't survive that change). We are products of the ecosystem on earth. We like to think we can rise above that - that we're not animals, that we're somehow more superior, but at the end of the day we are still the same nasty animal we always were. That unfortunate inheritance also means that human behaviour will exist in our brave new worlds, and even if we do get our act together, discover some means of travel that doesn't take hundreds of generations, we aren't likely to be living in peace and harmony because with new territory comes competition. Also, given the difficulty of communication, its likely that one colony will advance far ahead of another and that produces all sorts of problems as a study of history shows. Socialism is all very well if a powerful government foists it on you, but many humans would soon adopt an 'I'm all right Jack' attitude, and there will always be those who resort to violence to grab the resources they need.

 

Insurance policy? - There isn't one. Its a question of survival and nature has always dictated that the fittest should survive. Nature also dictates that a species who cannot adapt to new enviroments will become extinct. We are an increasingly specialised animal, and such creatures are always more and more dependent on the enviroment that suited them. Frankly, we'll be lucky if we get much further than we have today.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Along the lines of Nephele's argument, I'd point out that there is a fascinating difference between the enthusiasm for space travel among astronauts and that of the general public. Perhaps if more people could go up in space themselves (via commercial space travel) and could have an earth-rise cup of coffee in the morning at a space resort (yes, the prices would probably be out of this world), then there would be not only higher demand for increased space exploration, there would also be the economic resources that would make it possible.