An article by Dennis Wingo at SpaceRef talks about needing a compelling reason for space exploration and development, in response to the recently released MIT report.
Wingo takes issue with the MIT paper, citing this paragraph:
We define primary objectives of human spaceflight as those that can only be accomplished through the physical presence of human beings, have benefits that exceed the opportunity costs, and are worthy of significant risk to human life. These include exploration, national pride, and international prestige and leadership. Human spaceflight achieves its goals and appeals to the broadest number of people when it represents an expansion of human experience.
and responding with this:
Huh? As a long time space advocate I look at the above and see nothing different than what has been spouted as the reasons for the past 30+ years that at each time a critical mass of support was reached, ended up with broken architectures and deferred dreams. The above rational from the MIT group makes about as much sense to me as a mission to setup an Antarctic outpost in 1862.
Wingo then goes on to talk about the need for a compelling argument for space development:
Space, if it is to ever prosper must be coincident with the compelling national interest and the MIT report as well as NASA's current plan are both ignoring the serious national peril that we are in today.
The way that sustained political support is built for any long term effort is to show that whatever is proposed provides a crucial national capability or addresses a critical national problem.
In other words, if we're going to present space exploration as a necessary task worth the investment in it, there must be some compelling reason that satisfies traditional human self interest. If we are to sell space development as the solution, it must be the solution to a real problem.
Unfortunately, Wingo goes astray at this point, believing hydrogen fuel cell technology to fit the bill. He cites an unnamed and unsourced press release for his argument:
Current fuel cell technology is hamstrung by impracticality. The most efficient and powerful fuel cells need large amounts of heat and space, whereas those suitable for smaller scale operation require lots of precious, expensive platinum. "If we converted every car in the U.S. to fuel cells, we'd need more platinum than there is in the proven reserves," Haile says.
But this ignores the fact that fuel cell technology have environmental implications of their own and are still inferior to what our ultimate energy goal should be anyway: pure electric.
No doubt fuel cells will play an important part of our energy needs of the future, but they aren't the lynch pin that will justify billions in space spending.
No, the sentiment is right, but the nuts and bolts are wrong. We need to reach into space for the resources that exist there, because we're starting to come up short on a whole spectrum of materials needed for the whole array of human activities, from platinum to copper.
A Scientific American article pegs the problem more accurately:
So copper serves as an excellent metallic bellwether for potential future resource scarcity, according to a group of researchers who compiled data on its extraction, use, recycling and discard to estimate whether there is enough copper available to make a developed standard of living available to all the world's people. The short answer is: no.
If the rest of the world wants to live like America, which we know they do (and won't be easily dissuaded from), the only possible conclusion is to start recovering the resources from beyond our gravity well.
Crossposted at Orbital Blue.