I am back in Las Cruces, NM, attending this year’s ISPCS, and just like last year each panel and each conversation leaves me with new ideas and new perspectives. I promise to write a full report on the entire conference when I return to Dayton, but in the mean time I wanted to share the two highlights of Day 1.
First, a reflection on Mission. One of today’s panels was a presentation by Jeff Greason about his experience serving on the Augustine Committee. Jeff talked about a number of aspects of the committee’s work including launch vehicles, destinations, and enabling technologies. But I was most stuck with what he had to say about the committee’s review of the reason to send humans into space, and the difference between the reason we do a thing and the benefits we get from the thing. Jeff explained that in discussing the reason to send humans into space, we often get caught discussing the benefits (doing good science, building international relations, developing new technologies to name a few). The problem with getting caught discussing benefits instead of the reason is that there are lots of ways to go about getting the same benefits as space flight, but none of those address the real reason to send humans into space, namely, as the committee puts it: to extend human civilization beyond Earth.