2.10.2010

"anything a human being does up there could be done by unmanned machinery for one-thousandth the cost"

Is Manned Spaceflight Obsolete?

Excerpt:

... manned space exploration as a national goal — to be financed from public funds, organized by state or federal employees to promote some general good like stronger defenses, economic dynamism, social stability or public health — is another question altogether.

There is no case for publicly funded human spaceflight in any of those areas. Even in the matter of defense, none of the most useful off-planet projects — G.P.S., earth imaging, antimissile technology — has any requirement for human beings in space.

It is in fact a universal principle of space science — a “prime directive,” as it were — that anything a human being does up there could be done by unmanned machinery for one-thousandth the cost. With the ever-increasing intelligence of our machines, the cost gap will only get wider.


Comment: Full article presents three views. My view is the above!

2 comments:

  1. Has manned spaceflight ever been a good idea? I seem to remember "sputnik" doing just fine without people on it in 1958, and all the prep for Apollo was done without people aboard.

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  2. The shuttle was supposed to be a cost saving method to put payloads into low Earth orbit.

    More here:

    "The Shuttle was originally billed as a space vehicle that would be able to launch once a week and give low launch costs through amortization. Development costs were expected to be recouped through frequent access to space. "

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