Why NASA's New Video Game Misses the Point 205
longacre writes "Erik Sofge trudges through NASA's latest free video game, which he finds tedious, uninspiring and misguided. Quoting: 'Moonbase Alpha is a demo, of sorts, for NASA's more ambitious upcoming game, Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond, which will feature more destinations, and hopefully less welding. The European Space Agency is developing a similar game, set on the Jovian Moon, Europa. But Moonbase Alpha proves that as a recruiting campaign, or even as an educational tool, the astronaut simulation game is a lost cause. Unless NASA plans to veer into science fiction and populate its virtual moons, asteroids and planets with hostile species, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to suffer through another minute of pretending to weld power cables back into place, while thousands of miles away, the most advanced explorers ever built are hurtling toward asteroids and dwarf planets and into the heart of the sun. Even if it was possible to build an astronaut game that's both exciting and realistic, why bother? It will be more than a decade before humans even attempt another trip outside of Earth's orbit. If NASA wants to inspire the next generation of astronauts and engineers, its games should focus on the real winners of the space race — the robots.'"
I'd Love To Try It, But.... (Score:2, Informative)
Sounds as exciting (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Completely disconnected from reality (Score:2, Informative)
Why not? Because we've been doing that for hundreds of years, it's called astronomy, and its never attracted as much capital investment as the robotic spaceflight program which gets all its funding by riding on the coattails of the human spaceflight program.
The reason that the human space program attracts the funding is because it is a boondoggle, a pork barrel. I don't know whether the money for actual exploration gets siphoned off this pork or not - I'm guessing it's directed funding, that projects like the Mars Rovers get funded because they are exciting and prestigious - whereas the conjoined twins of human rated launcher and space station get funded because it helps to elect some old fart. talk about your grand society, your last bastion of Pure Progress.
Anyway, aren't you basically saying we should support human spaceflight because we can cook the books to do the real stuff, we can siphon off funds to do the things that excite and inspire us? Isn't that a cost benefit analysis in itself?
Human spaceflight is the last bastion of pure Progress. Technological, secular ideological, grand society style progress.
I put it to you that the majority of people - including myself, disagree with that opinion. And it IS an opinion, and not a fact. And there is no obligation on our part to fund human spaceflight or any other other supposed last bastion of pure progress, like giant escalators that lead to nowhere, or monorails, or popsicle skyscrapers.
It's the same reason why the British and the French set out to colonize the world. There was no economic justification for it, it's just what great nations do.
A brief examination of history would indicate that the reason that the British and the French set out to "colonise" the world was very much for economic reasons.