Karol and I and our nine-year-old, Thomas, are in Houston visiting the Johnson Space Center. Thomas is fascinated with astronomy and space travel.
I’m impressed with the exhibits and activities available to tourists here.
But why is NASA so self-congratulatory these days? Why is the current shuttle mission (STS-121) so newsworthy? Why is any shuttle mission newsworthy? Space travel — old news; big deal; been there and done that; yawn.
Oooops! Sorry. Of course even the most routine space shuttle flight (or an "STS" as each one is called here in Houston) is a marvel of human achievement. Nevertheless, I continue to insist that space-shuttle flights are no longer as newsworthy as NASA makes them out to be.
Here’s a short essay that I wrote a few years ago on this matter. (Note that this essay was written before the February 2003 Columbia shuttle tragedy.) Here’s my main point:
It’s true, of course, that each shuttle flight is a marvelous achievement of human ingenuity — scientific and organizational — but our world is a barrage of similar achievements, almost all of which we regard as mundane and not the least bit newsworthy. There’s nothing so special about shuttle flights to distinguish them from any of the cornucopia of other wonders that we encounter daily.
Is the flight of a shuttle a greater wonder than the flight of a Boeing 747? Each time a 747-400 takes off, 437 tons of steel, plastic, cloth, fuel, cargo, and people rise gracefully into the sky. Meals are served and movies are watched. Passengers eat, sleep, work, sip cocktails, relax, and chit-chat as if whizzing through the air seven miles above the earth’s surface at nearly 600 miles per hour is among the most natural of human situations.
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I look at it this way – in seven decades the science and industry of flight had progressed from a 0.02 passenger-mile achievement (Orville's first flight) to a routine million passenger-miles (300 passengers, NY-to-Europe), per flight, many times a day, by 1973. This includes not only the vehicles, but the extensive infrastructure of airports, communications, and industry.
Manned space flight is now 45 years old, and still has a long way to go to achieve similar gains.
This reminds me of the closing passage of James Gould Cozzens's 1942 novel "The Just and the Unjust":
A retired judge is talking to his son, a young and somewhat priggish lawyer, about the son's outlook on life: "'In the present, every day is a miracle. The world gets up in the morning and is fed and goes to work, and in the evening it comes home and is fed again and perhaps has a little amusement and goes to sleep. To make that possible, so much has to be done by so many people that, on the face of it, it is impossible. Well, every day we do it; and every day, come hell, come high water, we're going to have to go on doing it as well as we can. . . . And that's where you come in. That's all we want of you.'
". . . 'What do you want of me?'
"'We just want you to do the impossible.'"
Gee, do you spend your days looking for reasons to be grumpy and negative?
Save the Rustbelt,
You ask if I spend my days looking for reasons to be grumpy and negative. Who's grumpy and negative? I LOVE the marvels that surround us in our world — our cars, fusion cuisine, big-box retailing, 200 channels on my television set, Wi-Fi. My point precisely is that our world generally is splendid — so splendid that there's no point in singling out NASA's achievements as remarkable.
If you look at the number of flights I would not be suprised if the new Boeing 777 has had more test flights then the space shuttle.
The space shuttle is still newsworthy because the space program is still in the test flight stage. It has just been stretched out over 30 years rather then 3 years.
Well, you forget one important point. While both are tremendous engineering achievements, the Boing takes you to places where are already people and more people. The shuttle mission takes you to places were either are few people or no people at all. It goes where men are still scarce, so this is more romantic and interesting.
However, the way we do it (space travel) is not economically sound nor a grand archievement of engineering anymore. The basic technology used in Space Shuttle flights (remember the Discovery is an old horse!!) is still the same as it was in the first flight.
There have been made improvements (to the better and the worse) on the original design, but there was no creative improvement and this is the curse of beaurocracy at the NASA…
Max,
Your point about why spaceflight is "romantic" also occurred to me as why it hasn't progressed so much. I.e. Airliners take people to places where other people already are — there is an actual solid reason for people to want to get on a plane and arrive at their destination. They want to meet the other people at the destination. In spaceflight, there are no other people on the other end, therefore there is fundamentally less demand. Hence fewer flights, less progress.
Sadly, I am in agreement with save the rustbelt (never thought I'd ever say that). What's it to you that many people find this fascinating? Why shouldn't the news organizations cover something that people want to hear about? Yes, 747 flights are marvels, but nobody cares enough to warrant the resources to be spent covering that. I don't understand your question about the newsworthiness of the space shuttle, people care about it, so the news media cover it. Surely news organizations have to sell their product on the information market, they obviously think that they are providing a desirable product and anecdotal evidence (your son for example) shows that they are right. If you are wondering why so many people care about it, that is a different question.
Frankly I like to follow the shuttle but I completely agree with your comments. I have had similar thoughts about technology in general. When people talk about high-tech they are usually referring to thel latest developments in computers etc. — developments that are frankly still full of bugs and breakdowns. That should be called low-tech. High-tech is the Maytag dryer that runs for 20 years without a breakdown.
Mike
Comparing a 777 to the Shuttle is exactly like comparing the family car to Formula 1. Both are amazing achievements, examples of technology pushed to the limits, it's just that the limits being pushed in the F1 car are way cool. Nothing terribly romantic about 200,000 miles of trouble-free trips to the grocery store, but a remarkable achievement nonetheless.
For my money, the only thing newsworthy about the space shuttle is that it has absolutely no point to it whatsoever. It is the biggest make work boondoggle in the history of the planet.
Every dollar spent on it can be geometrically more usefully spent on pure and near pure science elsewhere.
The day will come when technology makes space flight worthwhile from both a science and economic perspective. Right now it is neither.
What's the harm in waiting a few decades for science to come up with ways to make space flight meaningful?
The marginal cost of flying across the country on a plane is a buck or two a pound. The marginal cost of a ride into orbit is about 10000 times that. Those numbers drive the decisions that make Shuttle flights rare and special events.
I find the comparison with the 747 definitively misleading.
With space flight we're talking about edge cutting stuff. You can make the same statement for the difference between a Laptop and a Cray: why super-computer are so often in the press? Or between a aspirin pill and the genoma project.
The point is, front running technology are compicate because the industry needs time to fill the gap.
OK, since nobody wants to give the real reason for all the attention… it's because of the drama and the perceived possibility that a disaster could be witnessed.
I am reminded of the El Toro Air Show in 1993 or 1994. Popular funny-man radio talk show guy Joe Crummy (LA's KFI at the time) did this bit about how the only reason people went to air shows was to see a plane crash. At the show, a MIG crashed passing through show center. It left a flame trail several stories high. You could feel the heat from 200 yards away as if you'd opened a 400° oven in your kitchen. The ambulance stopped at several places to scrape up the pilot. After cleanup and some apparently severe hand-wringing by the show organizers, "he would have wanted the show to go on", so it did.
After the show, Joe Crummy was apologetic for having suggested, even in jest, that people went to air shows to witness crashes. But was he really wrong? Isn't that some of the appeal of the left-turn circuit (aka NASCAR)? Isn't 99% of the coverage of the Space Shuttle about foam and tiles and inspections and repairs and the two guys who voted against launching and all that?
Recall that Jet Blue flight into LAX last September that had its nose gear 90° out of whack. Or the Nike corporate jet two months later. Or, for drama with a sadder ending, Payne Stewart's corporate jet in 1999.
Anyone have any idea what the mission of this Shuttle is, other than meet the Space Station? Doesn't that sorta make the point in and of itself?
"there's no point in singling out NASA's achievements as remarkable."
Perhaps their achievements are not remarkable, but their recklessness is. The foam pealing problems persist and the nimrods at NASA still refuse to admit that the EPA's restrictions on the use of CFCs as a foam blowing agent are a hazard to human life. Contentious engineers have warned NASA administrators of this for years. But why should the administrators care? They have government jobs. They are effectively immune from the sort of liability that would put a private operator out of business.
I do agree with Brad that it's the element of risk that makes it newsworthy right now.
Fabrizio says: "With space flight we're talking about edge cutting stuff. "
No, not any more. The shuttle prototype "Enterprise" began flight tests 30 years ago, and the design work predated that by a few more. Yes, it's been improved and updated via retrofit, but the basic science has not improved one bit. The 747 is older than the shuttle.
"I do agree with Brad that it's the element of risk that makes it newsworthy right now."
Umm, how about supply and demand? The risk is why some people may be interested, but that is separate from newsworthiness. If you are wondering what makes something newsworthy, it is strictly the amount of demand for information about that subject, that's it. If there is a demand for a product (in this case information) producers will rush in and provide it regardless of *why* people demand it. C'mon Don, this is pretty basic stuff…
Isaac
Eh Isaac… Your explanation lacks depth. Shuttle news is not a commodity like oil, something that is necessary for our lives, but for which we each could temper or increase our own demand on the margins in response to price.
Shuttle news competes on the supply side with everything else that's news. Think Natalie Holloway… was there any demand for that story? Or was it so captivating (for a whole multitude of reasons) that people just stopped the clicker on Gretta at 10 pm Eastern?
Is there demand for televised car chases? Does the demand for accidents on the side of the road outweigh the demand for quickly flowing traffic? I'd say no to both, but given the opportunity to see one live in real time, most people enjoy a good train wreck.
Watch the news segments about the Shuttle. I doubt you'll see one between now and next Sunday that isn't somehow focussed on the potential for re-entry disaster. News people don't think that the mating behavior of killer fire ants in microgravity is terribly compelling. They're mostly right.
Isn't the space program newsworthy because it's a Big Government, non-defense program? exactly what mainstream media liberals view as the proper use of our tax money? Don't they favor such programs because they show how managed capitalism can "succeed"?
"Eh Isaac… Your explanation lacks depth. Shuttle news is not a commodity like oil, something that is necessary for our lives, but for which we each could temper or increase our own demand on the margins in response to price."
Lacks depth? How detailed do you want me to get? All of the things you mentioned can be explained by the concepts of supply and demand, but much more concisely than throwing out example after example. News about the shuttle is just like any other product, it has a cost to consume (our time) and a cost to produce. It's awfully tough to argue that anything is "necessary", the decision weather to consume or not depends on the cost to the consumer. Can we live without oil, sure we could, and we would if the price were too high. We may even forgo clean air if the price is too high. If you really want to get into consumer behavior, I'd argue that news in general is highly elastic. If the cost goes much beyond a little bit of time, most people will tune out. From the producers' side of things, the news media is simply filling a demand. They have to gauge the demand and produce the appropriate amount of product taking into consideration their competitors' production as well.
My main point was that Don's original post about this was silly. If he actually wondered why the news media covered the shuttle he should stop teaching economics. If he wondered why people like something that he isn't particularly interested in, well, that's a complete waste of time. People like things for all sorts of reasons that don't make sense to me. But that's one of the differences between a free market and a controlled economy. The person(s) controlling an economy can't keep up with all the "whys" people consume things. Consumers can satisfy their "whys" on their own by picking the product that suits them the best from the various competitors. To get back to your "temper or increase our own demand on the margins in response to price" this is why some people will turn off the news about the shuttle, some will watch the blurb on "Headline News", some people will watch the NASA channel for minute by minute news about the shuttle, and some people subscribe to magazines and buy DVDs just to get information about the shuttle. Isn't this a great place to live?:-)
Isaac