"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!
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.
ReplyDeleteThe shuttle was supposed to be a cost saving method to put payloads into low Earth orbit.
ReplyDeleteMore 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. "