Space Exploration-Is There Any Point?
Transcription of interview with Art Harman on November 21, 2011:
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Art Harman is the director of the Coalition to Save Manned Space Exploration and he has
been working on public policy for decades in the nationís capital.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Harman on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Art Harman: In so many ways, space exploration is not only the future of humanity.
Itís also the future of our country, our economy, and high technology.
If we go back to the 1960s, the challenge was to build a 1961 rocket to take us to the
moon, land there, and come back safely.
At that time, computers were entire floors of buildings and they had to miniaturize them
down to something that is smaller than a car.
Nowadays, weíve got that on our phones, that computing power and far more, but thatís
where it came from, thatís where the impetus, the necessity for how to miniaturize this
came from.
That really created the high-tech boom that lasted for decades, with the United States
being the preeminent leader in the world of high technology, and the benefits of that
to the whole world were incredible.
Douglas Goldstein: Youíre suggesting that the implication is that had we not had the
space program, today we would not be living in a world of iPads and mp3 players?
Art Harman: I think we would have gotten to similar places, but it would have been a lot
slower.
Hereís an example.
A recent NASA Spinoff is self-cleaning solar panels.
There is no real need to create a self-cleaning solar panel if youíve got a big desert solar
array, because you can just hire somebody to go out and hose the thing down once a day
or put sprayers on it and they do that.
But when youíre 100 million miles away, you canít do that, so they came up with a way.
I think it involves static electricity giving a reverse static charge to make the dust particles
leap off the solar panels.
We might eventually have come upon it, but when youíve got that absolute necessity,
when thereís going to be nobody there to spray the things down every morning, what
are we going to do?
Whether itís that or Edison trying to figure out how to make an incandescent light bulb,
thatís the mother of invention.
You could certainly make the point that the people are in effect subsidizing the advancement
of technology where it might not have otherwise gone, but itís an investment.
The incredible benefits to this country and to the world from having gone to the moon,
into the space shuttle and rivers on Mars, percolate through all of society in the world.
Itís a very beneficial thing to do.
Douglas Goldstein: Another more indirect way of handling this might have been for the government
to give subsidies to companies doing high tech work.
Would that be a more direct way to enhance high tech research?
Art Harman: Yes, if the only purpose is to advance high-tech research.
I think thereís an incredible value to seeing whatís out there.
Iíve spoken with astronaut Harrison Smith.
He is the only geologist to have been on the moon, and he says that there is a great value
to having human eyes, hands and feet there to distinguish between two rocks in a way
that a rover canít and to say this is more interesting.
Youíve got that judgment there, but also what are you doing?
Youíre exploring and finding out whatís beyond, just like the ancient explorers did
in the 13th century and so forth, and thatís a part of humanity too.
Douglas Goldstein: Assuming that America doesnít want to spend the money today
on sending manned spacecraft, would you support a vigorous unmanned space program?
Art Harman: We do have that.
In fact, weíve got a mission to Mars, the Curiosity, which in about a year or so should
be landing on Mars, and itís going to go around and show us incredible science.
On Saturn, weíve got a satellite thatís bringing back incredible data as well.
Weíre doing that, but when you take the humanity out of the equation, funding tends to drop.
Hereís an example.
When I go to a space shuttle launch, thereís hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people
there.
There were more than a million people watching right there at Kennedy Space Center for the
final space shuttle launch.
Now you can have the coolest robot blasting off to go to Mars or wherever, and you just
wonít get that because it doesnít have a human element.
Both can provide good science, but a robot can only do the very few things that it is
programmed to do.
That booth on the ground without human judgment, like Harrison Smith was saying, can do so
much more and ultimately will be bringing back rocks from Mars, and we would really
know a lot more about the planet than we could just with robots.
Douglas Goldstein: What sort of return on investment could the American people expect
to get from this?
Art Harman: First, letís take a look at the cost.
The entire NASA budget, from maintaining buildings and facilities around the country to weather
satellites and all sorts of routine things this year only comes to about less than 17
billion dollars.
The U.S. spent more on air conditioning tents in Iraq and Afghanistan for our troops.
Iím not saying donít air condition their tents, but that puts it into perspective.
The manned space percentage of that is even smaller.
Here are a couple of things we could get out of that.
Letís say weíre going to go to Mars, and thatís a two-and-a-half-year journey round
trip.
Weíre going to have to learn incredible advances in power that could mean cheaper, cleaner
power and energy here.
Weíre going to have to learn more about the environment because weíre going to have to
have a totally closed environmental life support system as there are no supply ships that are
going to be coming every few months carrying more.
Douglas Goldstein: Is there a possibility
that we could really get to the kind of Star Trek model in our lifetime?
Art Harman: Most certainly.
I think in our lifetime, weíll see people going to the outer planets.
I could certainly see a manned mission that would go out to Jupiter, Saturn, and things
like that, where they might orbit for a year or so and conduct experiments and so forth.
One way to get back from Mars quicker is to loop past Venus, and we might see that within
the next 15 years or so where weíll go to Mars, and on the way back, weíll take a swing
by Venus and that would be pretty cool.
There are risks that weíll probably see, just like we saw with the space shuttle such
as with the Israeli astronaut on the Columbia.
We will see things like that and they may be horrifying, but itís happened in all exploration
of humanity and weíve learned, grown, overcome and gotten things to be better and safer.
With the first airplanes, nobody could afford it, but now anybody practically can afford
a ticket to see family and friends halfway around
the world.
The moon is a beautiful test bed because itís got so many features that weíll find on Mars
and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Itís got low gravity and no atmosphere.
Mars has an atmosphere but is very, very faint and not breathable.
Those have fine dust that will get into the mechanisms of everything.
Both have water ice, as you said.
Both have intense radiation and both have what they called ìlava tube caves,î which
were from ancient volcanoes with hollowed-out passageways that lava would have rushed.
Every once in a while, theyíve seen on both the moon and Mars holes where a bit of it
falls through.
What do you do?
You put your habitat down inside that and you protect it against meteorites and radiation
and just like on a cave on Earth, the temperature is a fairly constant and safe temperature
like 20 or something.
Douglas Goldstein: Tell me how can people learn more about what youíre doing?
Art Harman: Our website is www.savemannedspace.com, and there youíll also get links to our Twitter,
Facebook, and YouTube pages.
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel.
Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA,
SIFMA.
Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC.
Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
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