To Boldly Go Nowhere, For Now 308
An anonymous reader writes "A recent Slate article makes the argument that manned space exploration is not useful and we should concentrate on Robots. The article makes the claim that manned space exploration was never popular and by diverting money to robotic space exploration we can get more bang for the buck. From the article: 'Most of the arguments in favor of manned space exploration boil down to the following: a) We need to explore space using people since keeping the entire human race on a single piece of rock is a bad strategy, and even if we send robots first, people would have to make the journey eventually; and b) humans can explore much better than robots. Both these arguments are very near-sighted—in large part because they assume that robots aren’t going to get any better. They also fail to recognize that technology may radically change humans in the next century or so.'"
Re:It's not just about the data (Score:5, Informative)
The engineering problem of sending a human to another planet is very different from that of sending a robot. And the resulting knowledge will be different too. Why not do both?
Because sending the human currently costs hundreds of times as much as sending the robot. And the media will be full of stories for months after you kill a human crew in deep space, whereas a failed unmanned mission makes a brief story on page ten for a day.
Re:Why bother at all (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's not just about the data (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the real world, that money comes from taxpayers, who can think of many better things to do with it.
Yeah, like spend it on the military.
Oh I'm sorry, were you under the impression that the taxpayers got to decide where the money goes?
Re:Welcome to 1990 (Score:5, Informative)
I work at Kennedy Space Center. When there were Space Shuttle Launches I would adjust my work schedule to get in about 6 hours before launch or leave about 4 hours afterwards so I wouldn't be stuck in traffic for hours.
Now it doesn't matter. No matter what is launched there is never traffic. Sure the die hard space geeks like myself still manage to watch every launch but the crowds are not there.