Biosphere 2
"The group of Mars colonization enthusiasts has a larger share of people with engineering expertise than the average group foisting some scheme upon the public as worthy of their altruistic support." " Engineers and aerospace engineers in particular have had a sorry record of selling projects to the public." " It is famous that any project recommended to the military takes longer, costs more, and does less than the boosters claim when they propose it; and not by any small margin. The people who sold the space station and the space shuttle are included." " That is the reputation we have." " It will not change this year or the next." " Engineers as a group have a disinclination to tell the boss that his or her pet project will not perform as advertised." " When it is clear that a part of a project he or she is responsible for will cause problems, the engineer says so, but there have been times when something could have been said but it was not." " We have had astronauts trained as fighter pilots even when it was clear that the best pilot for a rocket to orbit is a computer." " Worse, a pilot was designed into the space shuttle system." " The Soviet's Buran was not an economic vehicle, but it did prove that a pilot was not needed for a shuttle type vehicle." " A robot pilot and lack of a front window might not have been enough to save the space shuttle from economic ruin, but it would have helped." " The requirement for astronauts to be pilots was a matter of policy from Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it is proper for engineers that are hired to implement a policy do that instead of suggesting an alternate policy." " With all due respect to the memory of Eisenhower, having fighter pilots aboard a rocket does not help the rocket reach orbit." " The man-rating feature of giving the pilot control of abort modes never saved any lives." " The man-rating system had requirements that only the Space Shuttle could fulfill, guaranteeing that the project would continue until it killed astronauts." " Now that the space shuttle is destined to retire, the up-dating of the man-rating system can be considered too."
"Putting make work projects on the space shuttle or on the space station did not enhance the prestige of astronauts in the long run. People learned that sending up astronauts increases the expense of a project that could be done with robots, but it was the price that was paid to get funding from the NASA bureaucracy. If the purpose of a space program is to have astronauts as a demonstration of national technical prowess, this almost makes sense. If the purpose of a space program is to make progress toward eventual spaIf we sell people on colonizing Mars, then deliver a few astronauts who waltz around on Mars a while and then come back and report that there is no reason to ever go back to that magnificent desolation that is Mars; there will be some unhappy people. Of course there is water on Mars, as ice, frost and hydrated minerals. There is every element needed to build factories and cities on Mars, but if the industrial infrastructure is not put into place to extract these things, they will not help a bit. Let us see the plan that will result in cities on Mars before we sell them. Mars will kill an unprotected human being about as quickly as Luna will. Let us not" sell paradise and deliver a wasteland."ce colonization, make work projects for astronauts in orbit make no sense."
