>From: "Larry Arnhart" <TI0LEA1@...>
>Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2003 22:36:35 -0600
>
>Norman Levitt scornfully dismisses as "sentimental crap" the romance of
>manned space travel centered on "glamour-boy pilots."
>
>But doesn't this ignore the emotional motivation not only for space
>exploration but for all great scientific endeavors?

"Space exploration" is not a terrily good characterization of the shuttle
program. What, precisely, is being explored when six or seven people are
put into low orbit for a couple of weeks like hundreds before them? The
shuttle program has never been a "scientific endeavor" in its own right and
has badly sabotaged some genuinely important scientific endeavors.

>Doesn't the heroism
>of astronauts appeal to something deep in our human nature that makes us
>willing to invest resources in space projects?

First, a quibble about "heroism" and the degradation of that term in current
discourse. Heroism, properly speaking, involves some sense that one is
exposing oneself to serious peril of one sort or another. Frankly, I doubt
that any of the Columbia crew regarded the flight as any more dangerous than
backing out of a driveway. I'm not saying they were timorous souls, merely
that they had most likely adopted the prevailing complacency that had
reestalished itself at NASA in the years since the Challenger fiasco. They
were victims, and their deaths are deplorable--but they were not heroes.

More important, the role of astronauts as the central figures of the space
program was to beguile us into investing in the wrong kinds of space
projects--the ones that detracted from scientifically and economically
valuable efforts.

>And don't we need to
>elicit such emotions to sustain scientific research generally? (Would
>Mr. Levitt dismiss the media coverage of Nobel Prizes as "sentimental
>crap"?)

Again, you seem to miss an essential point. The astronauts were at best
scientists of minor significance--those who were scientists at all, that is.
The emotions they evoked were of little use in generating public support
of important science. If you will recall, about ten years ago the
Superconducting Super-Collider project--a program of really major scientific
significance--was summarily abandoned. One of the reasons was competition
from the (much more expensive) Interntional Space Station. The latter
constituted the kind of phony science that was, unlike the former,
marketable to public opinion precisely because of the emotions you refer to.
Moreover, media coverage of Nobel Prizes is typically superficial and
shallow and far more interested in the glitter of the ceremony than in the
actual accomplishments of the laureates.

The problem, really, is to get people to perceive the "heroism" of people
who, in some cases, do little more, in terms of outward appearance, than
stare at their office wall.

>
>In contrast to the Challenger disaster, this shuttle disaster could
>stir more political support for NASA and for new initiatives such as
>striving for a moon settlement. Would Mr. Levitt would dismiss this as
>"sentimental crap"?

Of course, NASA's strategy has been to try to keep itself in budgetary
clover precisely by avoiding long-range, open-ended , and perhaps ultimately
unsustainable projects like lunar bases or Mars exploration. I'm sure that
NASA will try to spin the disaster in its favor with pious remarks to the
effect that the astronauts will have given their lives in vain if we fail to
go forth with the shuttle program, and so forth. It might not work this
time round, with Challenger still not completely forgotten. If it turns out
that the flaw lies in a serious design defect, (vulnerability of aging
vehicles to metal fatigue, for instance) I don't think the program will
survive, though the politicians will probably ease it into extinction by
gentle stages. But you're the political scientist, as I gather, so perhaps
you have a etter sense of how that will go.

>
>Larry Arnhart
>
>Department of Political Science
>Northern Illinois University
>DeKalb, IL 60115


Norman Levitt
Mathematics, Rutgers.

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