[Tyler]

Human vs Robot Space Exploration
     


The debate over human
vs robot space exploration continues. The last time this issue
made news was in 2006 with the death of long time opponent
of human space exploration, James Van Allen. Opponents argue that the
only purpose of space exploration is to return data to Earth, something
they argue can be done by robots more cost effectively than by humans.
No one seriously argues that robots should not explore space and there
is a long history of successful robotic space
exploration. Proponents of human exploration simply disagree that
robots alone are sufficient. The latest dust up occurred recently with
Stephen Hawking's
call for Human colonies on the Moon and Mars. The point Hawking
makes is that robotic exploration doesn't expand the human race beyond
the planet Earth:
"Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more
scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in
the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I'm
arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human
race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go
where no one has gone before."

Hawking points out that if we devote only one quarter of one percent
of the world's GDP toward space exploration and colonization, it would
give us a budget 20 times that currently allocated to the International
Space Station. One problem may be NASA itself. Scientists
within the agency itself have argued that NASA's current human space
flight program is an expensive, misguided boondoggle. Now the Obama
administration has intervened and may force them to drop Ares to
work on a more sensible alternative to get humans back into space.
Meanwhile, space robots soldier on. The Japanese Kaguya probe
recorded it's final
approach to a Lunar impact and the NASA
LRO, pictured above, was successfully launched days ago and started
it journey towards the Moon.
   

http://robots.net/article/2864.html