Do Robots Make Better Astronauts?

nightflight... I do understand your frustration. But the one simple lesson you can learn in and from the space program is that everything is politics. There would be no useful carrier rockets, at least yet, except for the fact that rockets make wonderful weapons of mass destruction. And for the same reason there would be no unmanned space program without the manned space program. Everyone in the unmanned programs is aware of this every day they get to do what they love. There happens to be fairly little resentment among the practitioners about the realities. We only rove Mars and fly circles around Saturn because there was an Apollo program and because there is a Shuttle program and because there is an ISS. If you want to change that, you will first have to change the inner workings of the human animal. And if I may suggest, doing that will cost significantly more than the $1 trillion or so that has been put into space so far. It will most likely cost the lives and treasures of another ten or twenty generations of humans. If you are willing to pay that and wait that long, you will probably get your wish and have only "cost effective" projects. I think most everyone else is probably going to chose the "inefficient today" over the "efficient maybe one day".

I want to thank FORA.tv and Wonderfest for bringing us the informative, insightful and inspiring talk with Kanna Rajan and Chris McKay on this subject of robot verses manned flights for space exploration. I must disagree with the host in his introduction of the spaeaker when he stated that they had spent time in Mars like environments, THEY HAVE NOT, they had earth gravity, they had food of earth, earth air and were not subject to radiation and if all went wrong they had the facilities of earth to escape to. They may have been isolated and recycled what ever resources they could and though that may be a social and mechanical study, it is hardly the equivalent of being marooned on Mars.
I do agree with the host when he summarized that robots don't need the facilities of humans- like water, food, air, living areas, bathroom facilities- and can take greater G forces and thus far less fuel to get to their destination because of the extra weight of the life support and the people themselves. Essentially Mr. Rajan projected the same in his presentation and I certainly agree with his implication that since we are no longer in the Bush administration, reality is now back with us, being that the Bush administration was quite happy to lock us into a lasting and expensive war and run-amok capitalism with a manned base on the moon and a manned mission to Mars so long as the next administration would have to deal with the economic consequences. Perhaps it is unfortunate that politics would be a factor in space, and science in general, but it is via the politics that the funding is procreated and should be regulated by the economic health of the nation on a cost verses benefit bases, meaning cost and benefit to the people and not cost to the people and benefit for the contractors. Those that espouse human space flight always point to the glories of the Apollo Moon missions, those these were indeed great achievements there is little doubt that if done today that robots could do the same job and much, much cheaper, though bringing back samples would be a bit more difficult and more expensive, but considering the cost of the manned missions it would have been feasible.
Chris McKay brings up the point that the ISS was a international endeavor and though there was some experiments of the effect of insects and plants in a weightless environment, it's main objective was the study of prolonged weightlessness on the human body in preparation for prolonged manned space flights with a cost of around $160. Billion and then in five years would be directed to deorbit and burn up in the earths atmosphere, then we would be subject to Billions more for manned flights and a base on the Moon and then even more Billions for a manned flight and a base on Mars with no real benefit, science or otherwise, other than just to say we did it.
And though he brought up several reasons for manned space flights, none of these could not be done much more efficiently with robots but this would not require a base with life support and so one can only conclude that the only reason for manned flight, when robots could do the same, is to build a base on the moon that would be in need of constant resupply at great cost for no other reason but preparation of a manned flights and a base on Mars. One must ask ones self “why”, just because we can do a thing does not mean that we must do a thing. Again, it should be a cost verses benefit.
He also brings up the question of sending up several missions to explore several locations on the moon or less manned missions to stay longer with a base. This should be a mute points because, in my opinion, we could send up a few rovers, like on Mars, to do all the science and even bring back samples without a lot of manned missions and no base required and a lot cheaper but if the true objective is to send manned missions, regardless of the cost to the tax paying public, then that is another mater and should not be regarded as science but a very expensive adventure for no other reason other than for adventure itself and not camouflaged as science. It was said that robots are a precursor to human exploration, but in my opinion robots are a end to themselves, for the dreams of colonizing Mars is just that, a dream. With gravity of 39% of that of earth and no magnetic field, Mars will probably never be suitable for prolonged human habitat on any great scale, no mater how much money is thrown at it.