M
Malenfant
Guest
Well... no. Fact is, it's a lot cheaper (and safer) to explore using unmanned spacecraft. If you want manned exploration you need a whole load of extra mass for life support and habitation, you need to worry about keeping the occupants healthy through the very long trips, you a lot of cargo space to be used for food and supplies to keep them going, you need oxygen tanks etc...
Compare this to an unmanned vehicle, which needs none of the above, and can still return most of the data that we need. Look at the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers - they may be slow, but they've covered a lot of ground and have told us a lot about the Martian surface. Yes, a human geologist could have done that... but it would have cost many tens of billions of dollars to get him there, compared to the few hundred million it cost for each rover.
Plus, space travel is incredibly hazardous (particularly when agencies in NASA take shortcuts that comprimise the safety and integrity of their vehicles). Space is a very, VERY deadly place. It's romanticised in scifi, but there are so many things that could kill a human out there it's ridiculous - one thing going wrong, and you're toast. Much like deep sea exploration - we haven't done much of that with manned vehicles for a similar reason: it's expensive, not very cost-effective, and dangerous. Far better to lose an unmanned vehicle than a manned one.
In terms of cost-effectiveness and safety, unmanned is clearly the way to go. We can still explore, but it's not as if we'd ever be able to feel the martian air blowing in our faces or its sand running through our fingers because we'd be protected by suits anyway. That being the case, what does looking at the place with our own eyes tell us that looking at it with an array of much more sensitive cameras and sensors relayed back to Earth doesn't?
Yeah well, I feel we've been denied a promised future here too. But in the current regime (by which I mean, attitudes toward space science from governments since the 1970s) it ain't gonna happen. I'd be surprised if we had any of that - or even a manned moonbase - by 2100.
The ISS is good for nothing - it was supposed to be a place where science experiments could be conducted but it's not even good for that. It's not an orbital spacedock or spaceship construction facility - that in itself would be an engineering marvel far beyond anything we have today. I'm not sure it would be that much easier to get to the moon - it's only 350 km up, the earth's gravity at the station is only 1 m/s2 lower than at the surface (it's low gravity in the station only because it's in freefall in orbit around the planet). So a ship launched from there would still have to climb out of a significant gravity well there. (I think).
Maybe... but you're expecting that we should run before we walk? Realistically, that's not going to happen for centuries.
Shows how little you know about it then. We can tell a LOT about other worlds and stars from data gathered by unmanned vehicles - probably much more than we'd ever be able to tell by simply being there for the sake of it. And besides, even if we were there, that certainly doesn't mean we'd automatically be able to understand what's there - there'd still be plenty of those "pretty theories" that you so derogatively refer to.
For someone supposedly with big dreams of getting up into space, that's a remarkably short-sighted, ignorant, and contradictory statement. In one statement you've written off all of space science and astronomy and astrophysics as a complete waste of time. But how do you think the people that you want to see up there in space will know anything about the environments they're in. Just by guesswork? That they'll figure it out when they get there? How very forward-thinking that would be. How do you think we're going to spot the next asteroid that's going to hit us if everything outside the atmosphere "doesn't really matter"?
Yet to most people, it's just pretty pictures that they're fed by the PR. Most people in the US don't care about space exploration - they have more directly pressing issues to worry about. And for all that 'firing of the imagination', I dare say a lot of people would say a lot of it is about showing off technological prowess. Certainly, men didn't go to the moon for science, they did it to beat the Soviets. In fact, after men first go to the moon, the Apollo program only lasted 6 more missions (one of which - Apollo 13 - didn't get there) to finally do some actual SCIENCE before the whole thing was scrapped. And in the 32 years since Apollo 17 launched from the moon, men haven't walked on another world. In fact, NASA would have to reinvent all the technologies, since most of the people behind it have long since retired or died. In fact, I've even heard that the blueprints for Saturn V have been lost.
With all due respect, I think you have an overly-romantic view of your country. You certainly don't have anywhere near a monopoly on "pioneer spirit" - people of all creeds and colours are interested in space. And you certainly don't have some 'genetic tendency' toward exploration. You merely have the funds and the means to do it, and to pull out of space now would be politically a bad idea because enough people on the ground ARE interested in it. Considering the reason you went up there in the first place (in a contest between a rival superpower, who in fact got up there before you did) it would look bad if you did pull out completely. The sad thing is that the bottom line for all space exploration is that it's definitely a luxury that will only continue because the richest blocs can afford to do it. And there's no small element of 'cock-waving' (sorry, can't think of another less naughty phrase for it) involved too. There's a big element of national pride - look at China getting their first guy into space on their own spacecraft.
But certainly, there's nothing unique about America's urge to explore space. The Europeans have it, the Japanese have it, the Chinese are getting it, and the Soviets had it. All of those blocs explore(d) space because they can AFFORD to. Even the Brazilians and Indians are getting interested (they're certainly interested in LEO satellites). You're confusing your ancestors 'pioneer spirit' for natural human curiosity, which everyone shares across the world.
