Put men on mars or launch hundreds of robots and satellites to survey the solar system? Which will produce more knowledge? Which will be more cost effective? In 100 years, which path will lead to more increased human space travel?
Sending robots is agile space exploration. Release early, release often. We can lose a few robots and use more experimental technology quicker. Sending humans sounds cool but we shouldn't go until it's as safe as commercial aviation then we can do it frequently.
> Sending humans sounds cool but we shouldn't go until it's as safe as commercial aviation then we can do it frequently.
That's almost asking for it never to happen at all. Air travel has a safety rate of 1 fatality per 2 billion passenger miles, making it one of the safest modes of transport out there. When Europeans first started exploring the Americas, the fatality rates were much higher, and people simply went in knowing that what they were doing was risky, but also fundamentally really cool.
Fatalities per distance isn't a very good metric for safety. Otherwise, you could send 3000 humans 1 light year away and as long as 1 passenger survives, it's safer than air travel per billion passenger miles. Fatalities per trip makes for a better comparison as the vast majority of the risk for space travel, like with air travel, is on takeoff and landing.
Which one would inspire more people to pursue a career in aerospace? Which one would result in more legends? Do we care about the small robot that burned in Martian atmosphere because someone used kilometers instead of miles?
We need robots to pave the way, but we also need manned expeditions to bring back stories.
Which one would inspire more people to pursue a career in aerospace?
And just many aerospace companies do you know of that are desperate to hire people because there isn't enough talent?
The aerospace industry has many challenges, but last I heard an undersupply of people who would love to build planes and space probes was not one of them. It's a demand problem, not a supply problem.
How many famous astronauts can you name? The first couple of people will get some fame. We will generate a lot more high-tech careers with the other path in both aerospace and robotics, which will also apply on earth.
You don't think the Mars rovers inspired a few people to become engineers? The path that I am describing will create more astronauts in 100 years because the technology will advance quicker. We can experiment with new technologies and ideas.
Your cell phone has more computing power than the Space Shuttle. Human space flight advances too slowly.
We need to apply Moore's Law then insert humans after we're farther along the curve.
You have a good path, but humans have different flight requirements than probes. If we tailor spaceflight development to robotic probes, the technologies required for human flight may never be developed.
Pathfinder inspired me to be an engineer. Before then, I had no idea what I wanted to do. After that, I went to college to be an engineer and specialized in robotics.
but we shouldn't go until it's as safe as commercial aviation
I would not put the goal that far away. There are people taking a ~5% (nowadays; this used to be much higher in the early years) fatality risk to climb Everest. I expect we would get plenty of capable volunteers for that risk on a Mars mission, and I also think we should pick the best and send them.
I'm in space robotics and albeit I believe that huge advances will be made in this area, we are still not anywhere close to human capabilities. Why else do you think, the Japanese are sending dozens of their people to lethal work at Fukushima?
I do believe though, that remote controlled and partly autonomous robots are already capable of helping humans on a mission like Mars exploration and colonization.
This is not to mention all the very successful robot programs like Voyager I/II, Spirit/Opportunity etc. But those are smal scale projects in my mind. They are cost efficient, but I doubt you could do what you could do with humans, just because you put the same amount of money behind it now. Of course, there could be breakthroughs in AI tomorrow that change that game. But putting a human on the moon is doable for decades now and its about time that someone has the balls to do it.
disclaimer: Elon Musk is my hero and I'm a hopeless fan boy.
I think everyone understands that robots aren't as capable has humans.
The idea is to improve their usefulness. For example, the ability to mine planets and asteroids. The plan is to send people to Mars and do what tasks that a robot can't? Having people do mining on Mars, for example, will be very costly and dangerous.
Of course machines aka robots have to do the mining. But I believe you need humans in place to plan and control effectively.
I think the real dispute is about the goals of space exploration. A lot of scientist only want to collect data. That is very important but space exploration is about something else, too. Its about expanding the human territory. You don't have to like the idea. But me and many others do and even think it is a necessary long term.
Sorry to belabor this but if we go agile, things could change quite rapidly.
Consider that within 10 years, we might be sending 52 private flights a year, containing robotic explorers, to various destinations in the solar system. One of them discovers valuable resources (e.g. gold, "precious metals", 1000 caret diamonds, etc). Now private industry has a reason to build a business in space. They need to get the resources back to earth. Private funding goes up exponentially for robotics, factories in space, and probably human space travel. VC money might even move from social to outer space. :-)
I think we all agree we eventually want humans in space.
However, as I previously wrote, I believe there will be a lot more people traveling, perhaps living, on Mars in 100 years, if we use the "agile" method now.
We went to the moon over 40 years ago. It only took two accidents to really slow the process down. Now the US' plan for human space flight is to pay someone else.
You might be right about your "agile method" but I would bet on the other horse. How realistic is it, to take mined material back to earth for a profit? I can't think of any material even if prices for transport would see a landslide.
Also, I don't agree that Apollo was killed because of Mission # 1/13, if thats what you mean. Apollo was most of all stopped because it had done its purpose, showing the world that the US was superior to the UDSSR. Why exactly the few remaining missions, where killed puzzles me though.
There's nothing valuable enough to profitably mine from asteroids. Even if we discovered an asteroid of pure gold it would not be worth the energy required to bring it back to earth.
Sending robots is agile space exploration. Release early, release often. We can lose a few robots and use more experimental technology quicker. Sending humans sounds cool but we shouldn't go until it's as safe as commercial aviation then we can do it frequently.