Expensive Construction Projects

First of all, went to get coffee(!) this morning around 7 at my friendly neighborhood Starbucks. I was shocked to discover that they don't open until 7:30. What kind of self-respecting coffee shop...Starbucks no less...opens at 7:30? Don't they usually open around 5? Anyway, the good news is that the early bird gets a seat on the Tube, so the commute was relatively luxurious since I wasn't plastered awkwardly against some stranger's shoulder today.

Anyway, making page 43 headlines today, the space shuttle Discovery landed yesterday. Most shuttle missions these days focus on constructing the International Space Station - the goal is to get that finished and retire the shuttle by 2010, and only the shuttle has the ability to lift large pieces of space station into orbit. This mission was more complicated and technically demanding than most. Astronauts completed several challenging spacewalks, fitted the space station (ISS) with another module, and repaired a couple of key components. Here's the thing, though: despite the highly technical feats that were accomplished, I still find it hard to get excited about these kinds of missions - in the end, it was little more than construction work. NASA's purported goals for the ISS are to maintain a human presence of space (better to stay where you are than move backward I suppose) and perform scientific work from orbit. So what's this science component about?

Space-related science is generally derived from four sources - the engineering challenges associated with getting there (rocket engines, propulsion technology, etc), remote sensing once you are there (i.e. Hubble and other space-based telescopes), study of the destination (lunar geology), and applying microgravity to other scientific disciplines. Our current human spaceflight program is all about the final category - seeing how our bodies respond to space, how plants respond to space, how crystals respond to space, etc. I guess my point is that microgravity research, while possibly important and certainly interesting, is merely a side-effect of a past political agenda. After getting to the moon, we found ourselves in a place that just so happened to have no gravity, so to take advantage of that and justify the continued inhabitance of low-earth orbit, this scientific program took root. In other words, science is not what is driving human spaceflight right now, and I think that is a crucial point. If we want to really expand our reaches into and knowledge of our universe, pushing humans farther into space is vital; not only would this invigorate propulsion technology but it would also allow us to do more science at the places we visit. Hopefully we can begin to see humans in space as more than a political bargaining chip and start to get more out of the huge potential of space exploration.