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Old July 11th 13, 11:41 PM posted to sci.space.moderated
Brad Guth[_3_]
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Default When is manned spaceflight preferred?

On Friday, June 7, 2013 7:02:56 PM UTC-7, Martha Adams wrote:
On 5/5/2008 9:28 PM, BradGuth wrote:

On Apr 2, 8:18 pm, wrote:


Can anyone refer me to papers/reports which study


when one might need manned spaceflight? What


tasks can't robots do?




In a biologically toxic, physically extreme and often gamma plus X-ray


saturated environment, unless you're talking about a one-way human


style expedition as having no budgetary or time limitations of getting


that expendable astronaut onto such remote locations, whereas instead


rad-hard and robust robotics are not likely 1% the cost, as well as in


most instances representing the one and only viable option.




In other words, 10 robots for 10% the cost of one astronaut seems far


better, of much faster deployments and by far cheaper per required


science feedback.


. - Brad Guth




================================================== ======



I think the money argument is true as far as it goes, but that it

doesn't go far enough. Spend money / save money: send out machines.

Where my problem with this is, *for why?*



Which makes this argument a root of my belief the most practical use for

space, is *for people*. If you look from that point of view,

exploration comes into focus and you can see where it's going. For

people. But for reason I do not see, nearly everyone thinking about

space seems to come up to some variation on "Man was meant to explore"

and never notices how us humans live in a human environment and when we

grow and expand somehow, human environment is the first part of what's

new. Thus "space exploration" needs to come to "people Out There" asap,

and that's not an intellectual exercise.



As I try to picture it, the big picture, this universe is a dangerous

place, not our friend at all; and if we stay around for a while depends

entirely upon ourselves and luck. The style nowadays seems to leave all

that up to luck: a real bad strategy. So I'd like to see today's

robotics explorers set into a perspective where what we're up to, is to

get *ourselves* out to Luna, to Mars, to the asteroids, and etc. Then

when astronomical or social catastrophe strikes here on Terra, we don't

have all our historical and racial eggs in this one target, I mean, Terra.



Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [Fri 2013 Jun 07]


Yes indeed, Earth has been a very dangerous place for us as well as ETs, so they'd best keep their distance.

A terraformed interior of our moon could put a lot of our eggs in a very failsafe kind of place.