Space, the painfully expensive frontier

[jeriendhal]

All right, with Atlantis on its final flight and Discovery and Endeavour making their last runs later this year, we're going to have a mumble-mumble years gap in the USA until the next manned spacecraft, either Orion or more likely something else goes into service, leaving us using the Soyuz Taxi Service to the ISS for the foreseeable future.

But the question is, why are we going? What's up there for us that can't be just as easily done with robot probes? Yeah, going to Mars to look at rocks ourselves might produce data more quickly than with remote controlled probes, at an order magnitude greater expense and with the possibility several human being dying very far from home. So why go at all?

[Poll #1565947]

Comments

[kodi]

You forgot "hubris."

[scarfman]

I think "national prestige" covers that.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

I was about to say the same...

[kodi]

Well, I just don't. I wish you'd give me a little more to go on as to why you think the two are equivalent. Do you believe that any undertaking to increase national prestige is necessarily an example of hubris? Do you believe that any undertaking by a nation founded on hubris must necessarily be an attempt to increase national prestige?

Perhaps what I'm misunderstanding is who the "we" is in the question posed. Sure, if the "we" is "The Government of the United States of America," then perhaps hubris and "national prestige" are necessarily entangled, although even then I don't think that's the case. Is it that space exploration is so inherently prestigious that any exploration motivated by pride must also be motivated by national prestige?

I don't know; I'm obviously outnumbered on this one, and I apologize for casting aspersions on the quality of the poll, but I respectfully disagree that "national prestige" and "hubris" are synonymous, here.

[secoh.livejournal.com]

I lol'd