The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Now, I must take a moment to acknowledge those who risked their lives to make the Hubble Space Telescope such a success. Every astronaut I know who has been on a Hubble mission has a special place in his or her heart for that machine. They believe it to be a part of something greater than themselves, that the risk of their lives is worth the promise of unlocking the secrets of our universe for future generations. As David Leckrone, Hubble program's senior scientist, once said:
.....We are privileged to be the first generation of homo sapiens to gain a clear and deep view of the visible universe. And what we see 'out there' is staggering in its beauty, awesome in its scale and shocking in the way it has upended our preconceived notions about how nature works. You don't have to be a scientist to grasp this. Any thinking person who has come in contact with Hubble images and Hubble discoveries seems to find exhilaration in the notion that our place in the grand scheme of things is now better defined than in all of prior human history."
Dave is so right. And yet, his comment makes a great preface to an observation I now wish to make. It will probably set you back a bit. Science is not everything we do at NASA, nor should it be. And, while the advancement of science is of fundamental importance at NASA, and scientific discovery has a key role in human spaceflight, it is not the most compelling reason to do it.
I would like to take some time to explain why I believe this to be so, because numerous critics have called into question the cost and risk of journeys to the Moon, Mars, and the near-Earth asteroids, or the construction of the International Space Station, which we are using as an engineering testbed to learn how to sustain such journeys. So let me try to provide some food for thought for you tonight. Some of you will disagree with me, and thus spark a worthwhile debate. I never learn a thing by talking with people who agree with me.
To me, NASA's manned missions to the Hubble Space Telescope are qualitatively different from our other human spaceflight endeavors. The difference is fundamental and important. And while our other efforts may not seem, today, to be as noble and worthwhile as servicing the Hubble, they are in the long run more important to the future of the human race. Allow me, if you will, to try to explain why I believe this to be so.
Surviving off-planet, in a different environment having different natural resources than those we have come to understand and take for granted, without the ability to drive to the nearest supermarket or doctor's office, is a qualitatively different experience than a brief foray into low Earth orbit. Not many will realize it, but NASA and our international partners have maintained a permanent human foothold in space onboard the International Space Station since October 2000. The hard lessons of living and working in outer space 24/7/365 are much different than those of an intense, two-week campaign to service a scientific instrument like the Hubble, to deploy a mission like Galileo to Jupiter or the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, or to conduct other research, as has been done on many individual Shuttle missions.
So, when we begin our halting steps back to the Moon in the next decade, or a journey to Mars in about twenty-five years, we will need to know what we must bring with us, but also how we might live off the land with the resources available to us when we arrive. And after we test the hypothesis that we can survive on other worlds, we then need to determine whether such outposts can become economically viable - meaning, is there anything to do there which is worth the investment to do it? Many today will assert, without benefit of proof, that the answer is categorically "yes", while others believe that the answer is "no". In my opinion, no one today can know the answer. The answer can be found only by experiment. In that sense, the purpose of today's human spaceflight program is to conduct such experiments, to explore and develop options, to unveil possibilities for future generations.
This experiment will be conducted in space over the course of the coming centuries by people from Earth. Only the language, culture, and motives of the experimenters remain to be determined. I hope that this experiment will always find Americans, in company with our international partners, as first among equals on the frontiers of their time.
The experiment will be not dissimilar to those conducted by our ancestors far removed in space and time, when they left East Africa looking for an easier existence elsewhere. It is not dissimilar to that conducted by our more immediate ancestors, just a few centuries ago, when they began to explore and settle what, to Europeans, was "the New World". In that context, I might note that it required the long-term investment of kingdoms, governments, commercial industry, and private citizens for many generations before it could honestly be said that the New World provided a positive return on investment for society at large.
And on a smaller scale, our experiment in space will not be dissimilar to that conducted by Thomas Jefferson, when he risked impeachment to consummate the Louisiana Purchase, and then sought Congressional financing for what became the Lewis and Clark Expedition, two hundred years ago. By the way, Lewis and Clark overran their budget, lost a considerable amount of their equipment, fell so far behind schedule that they were given up for dead, and failed to achieve their primary goal - finding a suitable water route from the headwaters of the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Does anyone here think their effort was wasted?
Venturing into space is similarly an experiment, but one eminently worth conducting, for several reasons. First, I strongly believe, that there will be near-term benefits to science, technology, economics, and national security as we begin to incorporate the Solar System into our sphere of influence, as Science Advisor Jack Marburger framed the issue a few years ago.
I do not believe I need to dwell upon the benefits to human society of scientific advances. We are on the verge of developing a new paradigm, a new view of how the universe is constructed. The last time - a century ago - that such an experience was forced upon us, it was accomplished through the work of Albert Einstein and his elucidation of relativity and quantum mechanics. Today these disciplines underpin much of modern technology, and form the backdrop of physics against which new ideas are interpreted. What will be the implications of forming new theories which embrace the experimental findings that 96% of the mass-energy of the universe is comprised of dark energy and dark matter, things we don't yet even pretend to understand?
Regarding technology, what is the benefit to a society which learns how to do what no one else has ever done? No human activity is more demanding, across a broader range of disciplines, than space exploration, nor is there any which produces greater returns from its mastery. Two generations and more ago, in what I consider to be the best speech he ever gave, President Kennedy said, "...We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills...". As a nation, we are still reaping the benefits of the Apollo investment, but they are coming to an end. America is no longer supreme in the world marketplace, not even in aerospace.It is time to move the goalposts, to define some new "hard things", to move outward again, for precisely the reasons Kennedy articulated so long ago.
I believe that a vigorous civil space program offers collateral benefits to national security as well. When I have spoken of this in the past, it has usually elicited some surprise. But I think those who are surprised are taking too narrow a view of "national security". For the last century, the United States has been a world power, even if at times we did not aspire to or even recognize that fact. As such, we have assumed certain responsibilities for leadership on the world stage, and in that capacity it is inevitable that we have been, and will again be, called upon to make decisions and take actions that displease other nations and societies. We cannot possibly please everyone, and we cannot retire from world affairs.
But it is equally true that we cannot prosper if every hand is against us. So if we must do hard things, it behooves us also to undertake activities which easily attract allies and partners, things which bind us to others in the world community. No activity has shown itself to be of greater inherent interest and excitement to others than has the exploration and development of the space frontier.And so I ask, concerning national security, what is the value of being a nation, a society, which leads the world in an endeavor that excites all others, one in which every nation that can do so seeks to partner with us?
David Bass
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