When is manned spaceflight preferred?

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

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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]