Are Manned Missions Really Necessary?

[Seret]

But Curiosity has been on the Martian surface for 21 months now, and at a significantly lower cost than getting a human to Mars and keeping them alive on the surface for 21 days. Given a long enough time period, I'd say we could probably do 9 out of 10 things in space with a robot instead of a human.

This is the bottom line really, and why we just don't send humans to do the job. We can get it done using a robot on the kind of budgets space agencies actually get, and at levels of risk that are palatable to everybody involved. If we tried to do the same using a human on that budget we'd be sending one mission every few decades, still with a dicey chance of success. We do exploration the way we do (ie: unmanned) because it actually works.

[Nuke]

the only reason to send humans into space is to test things needed to make permanent human habitability of space a possibility. if what you are looking for has nothing to do with any of that, send a robot.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Very interesting presentation they have on the BBC news website at the moment on exactly this subject!

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23349496

I have started up a seperate discussion thread to discuss just this, as I felt it merited it (but the threads could get merged at some point!) Here

I think they have some very good ideas... but all of the simulated craft they use inthe videos remind me of modded KSP haha!

[Tortoise]

Well we're gonna need to send men into space anyways, because one day we won't be able to live on earth anymore if the human species hasn't gone extinct by then.

[GreatWyrmGold]

In theory? Yes. Most practical uses for space travel require no human presence. See: Communication satellites, GPS satellites, etc.

In practice? The manned missions don't have the same objectives. They're more publicity or somesuch than simple space-drudgery. Moreover, having a human onboard, while it greatly increases costs, also increases versatility. The most obvious way this comes into play is when people fix things that get broken, or (theoretically) improvise something from what they have. Moreover, it can allow better response time for unexpected events. Mars has a communication delay no less than a few minutes and at times nearly half an hour (when the Sun or somesuch isn't in the way). With humans on-site, rovers can be controlled in effectively real time, if rovers are needed at all.

Overall...different tools for different jobs.

[Valley]

Manned missions are totally unnecessary. In fact, we don't need a space program at all.

[NASAFanboy]

In fact, we don't need a space program at all.

You better be joking.

------

IMO, I have a mentality of first exploring an area with robots to search out a site for colonization and do science, then sending two or three manned expeditions to explore the sites that have been marked as candidates for a base and spend "extended stays" there, followed by sending more robots to prepare a base at the selected base site. Base construction would be done robotically. Then another manned expedition heads for that base and then proceeds to explore around it more along with using telepresence to explore the rest of the planet.

We need to pursue a hand-in-hand relationship between colonization and exploration, manned and unmanned missions.

Only then can humanity become a spacefaring civilization.

[Rickenbacker]

Manned missions are totally unnecessary. In fact, we don't need a space program at all.

Not if we don't care about surviving as a species, no. But if we want to survive the inevitable big rock from space, we have to get off the planet.

[Seret]

Not if we don't care about surviving as a species, no. But if we want to survive the inevitable big rock from space, we have to get off the planet.

Hmm, that's a lot of certainty to hang off a big bag of whatifs...

[NASAFanboy]

Hmm, that's a lot of certainty to hang off a big bag of whatifs...

Whatifs that have a extremely large chance of happening.

You have to assume and predict. If humanity literally waited for confirmation of everything and didn't assume, we would be extinct long ago.

[cantab]

You better be joking.

It's fair to say - we don't need a space program. But then we didn't need to research the behaviour of water and steam (which gave us the industrial revolution), or the weird anomalies in the theory of electromagnetism (which gave us general relativity and quantum mechanics, both of which along with spaceflight itself made possible GPS.)

[RuBisCO]

If developments in AI keep going it will eventually be able to do everything human do, except it won't need air, water, food, living space, toilet facilities, it won't feel fear or waste time jacking off. We human's had our chance decades ago to begin building manned outposts and colonies on the moon and beyond and we blew it, frankly we just don't seem to be able to get our act together. Hopefully our transhuman successors will be better at that then we are. They likely will look back and chuckle at the idea though: "Talking monkeys in space? what a silly notion!"

[shynung]

We human's had our chance decades ago to begin building manned outposts and colonies on the moon and beyond and we blew it, frankly we just don't seem to be able to get our act together. Hopefully our transhuman successors will be better at that then we are. They likely will look back and chuckle at the idea though: "Talking monkeys in space? what a silly notion!"

The Moon Landings of the late 1960s-early 1970s were mostly politically-induced, which explains why there is only one mission specialist crew on the whole program (the geologist). Colonizing Moon using 1960s technology would be highly impractical.

Besides, the Moon back then has practically no value at all. The discovery of the Moon's polar ice-water was quite recent compared to the whole Apollo missions.

Edited May 19, 2014 by shynung

[RuBisCO]

The Moon Landings of the late 1960s-early 1970s were mostly politically-induced, which explains why there is only one mission specialist crew on the whole program (the geologist). Colonizing Moon using 1960s technology would be highly impractical.

Besides, the Moon back then has practically no value at all. The discovery of the Moon's polar ice-water was quite recent compared to the whole Apollo missions.

Frankely the Saturn V was the best we ever had for such a task and "colonizing" the moon would have taken decades and would not have been limited to 1960's tech: the technology would have advanced. More so the discovery of water on the moon could have happened decades ago with a man landing near the poles which was perfectly possible with Apollo hardware. Molab could have easily circumnativated the lunar south pole and survayed the area.

Sure it was political, hence why we did not continue lunar exploration, hence why humans have proven themselves poor planers with poorer forsight. Which is why I'm suggest we need to account for what technology can bring and that space is already a place where machines have supplanted us.

[GreatWyrmGold]

You better be joking.

From a totally pragmatic point of view? Space travel isn't much use.

His point was that most things a space program really aren't "necessary".

Not if we don't care about surviving as a species, no. But if we want to survive the inevitable big rock from space, we have to get off the planet.

"the inevitable big rock from space"? First off, we're pretty much going to kill ourselves off before any asteroid gets the chance. Second off, we already have several ways we could divert any such asteroids if they came. Third off, unless we're talking the kind of really huge asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, we'd survive. Fourth, it's not practical to save the human species from such an event by "getting off the planet". Do you have any idea how much it costs to just get someone into orbit, let alone also bring enough to let him or her survive indefinitely? Even if all seven billion and change human beings put all their efforts towards creating such a program starting now, I don't think we'd see any kind of progress for a long, long time.

Frankely the Saturn V was the best we ever had for such a task and "colonizing" the moon would have taken decades and would not have been limited to 1960's tech: the technology would have advanced.

"We should build a colony on the Moon!"

"But we don't have the technology to do that."

"Eh, something'll come up. What's the worst that could happen?"

"Trillions of dollars and dozens of human lives wasted?"

"Aside from that."

Sure it was political, hence why we did not continue lunar exploration, hence why humans have proven themselves poor planers with poorer forsight. Which is why I'm suggest we need to account for what technology can bring and that space is already a place where machines have supplanted us.

They didn't supplant us, they simply have the advantage of not needing life support, and humans simply don't care about space travel. Or making sentient AIs.

[RuBisCO]

"We should build a colony on the Moon!"

"But we don't have the technology to do that."

"Eh, something'll come up. What's the worst that could happen?"

"Trillions of dollars and dozens of human lives wasted?"

"Aside from that."

Billions of dollars, not trillions, NASA could have funded at least 2 lunar missions per year every year since the 1968 on the budget they had over the time span from then to now (with a LEO spacestation on the side!), if they had not built the greatest technological mistake in human history called the space shuttle instead. The technology was certainly available for extensive lunar exploration, by the 1980's they could have begun developing ways to mine and convert lunar water, Sulfur–iodine cycle was invented in the 1970's but has remand ill developed because of lack of need, a lunar colonization program could have provided that need and accelerated the development of many key technologies necessary for space colonization (as well as other things here on earth).

But we have become too shortsighted, that an or morality is wack. A few centuries ago we did not have much of a problem with colonizing other continents despite a staggering fatality rate, wooden wind powered ships prone to sinking, dysentery, scurvy, whole colonies dying off, yet that did stop them. Now days we can't handle even the idea of a few willing volunteers dying in space for the glory and progress of all of mankind.

And that is why machines will own space.

[Jouni]

Billions of dollars, not trillions, NASA could have funded at least 2 lunar missions per year every year since the 1968 on the budget they had over the time span from then to now (with a LEO spacestation on the side!), if they had not built the greatest technological mistake in human history called the space shuttle instead.

The Space Shuttle program only cost about $200 billion (present value). Nokia lost more, when they made some bad choices around 2005. Some guys did some risky experiments at Chernobyl back in 1986, and ended up causing much more damage than $200 billion. You can probably find many other examples of technological mistakes bigger than $200 billion.

Space travel is cheap. People just don't want to invest in it, because they're not that interested in it.

Edited May 20, 2014 by Jouni

[Red Iron Crown]

The advantages of manned missions are a bit recursive, in that the biggest thing we learn about in manned missions is how humans react to manned missions. For almost all other science, unmanned is better, we can get more instruments and other science equipment per kg when we don't need life support supplies and a return mechanism.

That said, I think it is important that we keep doing manned missions, it should be one of our long term goals to colonize other bodies.

[RuBisCO]

The Space Shuttle program only cost about $200 billion (present value). Nokia lost more, when they made some bad choices around 2005. Some guys did some risky experiments at Chernobyl back in 1986, and ended up causing much more damage than $200 billion. You can probably find many other examples of technological mistakes bigger than $200 billion.

None of those were the causitive event that trap mankind on this planet forever.

Space travel is cheap. People just don't want to invest in it, because they're not that interested in it.

Hence why space is for the machines.

[zarakon]

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

[NASAFanboy]

Space travel is cheap. People just don't want to invest in it, because they're not that interested in it.

They were.

But then the whole thing got routine and mudane, and people simply stopped caring.

A manned "blockbuster" mission with a crew that the media can relate to will gain more attention to NASA

[Jouni]

None of those were the causitive event that trap mankind on this planet forever.

The Space Shuttle program was just a temporary setback for one country that has been a superpower for less than a century, and probably has less than a century left. 50 years from now, people will remember it only as an obscure symbol of a long gone era, much like Zeppelins today.

Of course, we can invent stories, where one bad choice becomes the decisive event that forever dooms the mankind. For example, people stopped building nuclear power after the Chernobyl disaster. The use of fossil fuels increased and nobody took global warming seriously until it was too late. Entire regions became uninhabitable, wars erupted, and the industrial civilization collapsed forever.

[xcorps]

The Space Shuttle program only cost about $200 billion (present value). Nokia lost more, when they made some bad choices around 2005. Some guys did some risky experiments at Chernobyl back in 1986, and ended up causing much more damage than $200 billion. You can probably find many other examples of technological mistakes bigger than $200 billion.

Space travel is cheap. People just don't want to invest in it, because they're not that interested in it.

Strawmen, really. Nokia isn't involved in space travel, and neither is Chernobyl.

Space travel is cheap compared to what? According to Forbes, it's about 10,000$ a pound to put anything in LEO. It's 10 times that to put a pound of anything on the Moon.

Cheap compared to what? That's not any cheaper than it was back at the start of the space program. Cheap vs the value of the science return? Quantify the value in dollars of whatever science experiments have been done on the ISS. Don't say priceless, because it's 10 grand a pound. The NASA budget for 2014 for ISS is 3 billion. What are we getting for that 3 billion that we wouldn't get by investing in specific research, instead of waiting for potential spinoff development?

Cheap compared to what?

[RuBisCO]

Jouni,

Hey if human's never colonize space we will have a huge historical saga to point at as it cause: the space shuttle program.

[Skyler4856]

Space exploration will either live or die with manned expeditions

When questioning the necessity of manned exploration, one must first consider the public and political ramifications of manned exploration. Regardless of prior bias, one cannot disagree with the fact that manned missions will always be more politically and publically potent than robotic, or autonomous missions. The public at large still marvels at the sheer incredulity of the Apollo missions, yet is completely ignorant of the Ranger or Surveyor missions, and politicians are extraordinarily aware of this. Along with the obvious industrial benefits, sheer public support of projects will always be efficacious.

Governments today still dictates the direction and use of space exploration, and the public dictates the direction of the space faring governments

- - - Updated - - -

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

That speech gives me the goosebumps