...Or even one? asks James van Allen, the famed physicists who brought to us the Van Allen Belt. in the 1950s. no, it's not some sliming device for bored housewives, it's that radiation belt up there that makes life possible on this rock.
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"My position is that it is high time for a calm debate on more fundamental questions. Does human spaceflight continue to serve a compelling cultural purpose and/or our national interest? Or does human spaceflight simply have a life of its own, without a realistic objective that is remotely commensurate with its costs? Or, indeed, is human spaceflight now obsolete?" van Allen writes.
Van Allens call for discussion is prompted in part by NASAs grounding of the remaining space shuttle fleet following the Columbia accident, while the agency takes steps to improve their safety. Also, the scientist notes that President Bush has put on the table "a far more costly and far more hazardous program" to return humans back to the Moon and for sending astronauts to Mars and worlds beyond.
Supporters of human spaceflight "defy reality and struggle to recapture the level of public support that was induced temporarily by the Cold War," van Allen charges."Almost all of the space programs important advances in scientific knowledge have been accomplished by hundreds of robotic spacecraft in orbit about Earth and on missions to the distant planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune," van Allen writes. Similarly, robotic exploration of comets and asteroids "has truly revolutionized our knowledge of the solar system," he adds.
He then goes on to say that he thinks it's questionable whether manned flights and the risks therein are worth the expenditure of talent and so forth; and that analogies to explorers of the 15th and 16th Centuries might be a little overblown.
- Art Neuro
3 comments:
Well he does make a good point doesn't he? Our probes have been highly succesful & many advocate we should continue with robots as we move into mining and asteroid defence. I am still sentimental about living in space. I really think we have to spread beyond 'this rock' or face eventual extinction.
In the mean time though I concede Van Allen's point that most things do not require human presence but I think that some of the demands of prospecting, farming, mining and Science on Mars and the Asteroids will benefit from human presence because of the shorter decision loops.
Hope so anyway
I think part of the problem is that we're sending them on the wrong missions to date. Like, Orbit, good. Moon, good. Low orbit with shuttles going up and down at immense risk... very bad. And even that doesn't really make the ledger in the favour of not sending people up. They've just got to go somewhere better than a shoebox in LEO to do highschool science experiments.
I think this is what I warned about when I wrote how dangerous exploration was and how we will be judged by the choice we make when faced with disaster.
People die. Some bravely and purposefully. Some foolishly. Some kicking and screaming. Some slowly wheezing.
People die. Yet I am not my father. Or he his father.
People die. And I will never regret my moments of love.
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