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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 ================================================== ====== 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] |
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