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People are not cheaper in space, by no means. Robotic things can be easily prepared well in advance, on planet Earth, where sitting a bunch of programmers by th

People are not cheaper in space, by no means. Robotic things can be easily prepared well in advance, on planet Earth, where sitting a bunch of programmers by the computer is much cheaper than training and sending actual bag of mostly water into space. If you are still not convinced, we have sent a robotic missions to almost every larger body in solar system, yet we are excited today we can send two people to LEO. Just look at costs involved... Humans cannot do anything in space without tools and tools in space is a bunch of electronic signals that are either processed locally or sent to Earth. The things people do in space is either trivia (yeah, have fun with this ball of water in zero-G) or studying behavior of human body and mind in space to be able to send more humans to do the same. We have learned how to do very complicated things without humans involved. Hovering a craft in Mars atmosphere? Orienting craft with extreme precision? Running complicated manouvers at the ends of solar system? Look at missions which are only possible because we can send a craft on decades' long journey. If people were necessary we would not be able to do anything of that. Any human mission is limited to short hops from Earth to Moon, maybe Mars, until we advance our science and technology way, way past current level. Sending people to space isn't really advancing science (except studying how people fare in space). It is another token achievement. There isn't physics we are learning IN ORDER TO or BECAUSE we are sending people to space. Physics is advanced by physicists. There might be some technological advancement necessary to send humans that would not be necessary for robotic missions, that's all, really. Take a close look at what people in space are doing. Find anything that requires humans in space? Don't get me wrong. I am all for human presence in space. Just be realistic about why we are doing it.

gowld 6y ago
Humans can fix a broken spacecraft better than robots. That's one of the main reasons we've sent humans up. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/servicing/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/servicing/index.ht... Would it be cheaper to build a replacement scope and launch it instead?
- lmilcin 6y ago
  We can send half a dozen robotic missions for the price of one carrying people. Just send two spacecraft for redundancy. As to Hubble, that is pretty bad example. If people were present with Hubble they would be able to do exactly nothing. Everything was prepared on Earth and only then sent to space. Also, the cost of servicing mission was almost as much as it would cost to make a copy of Hubble. The cost of servicing mission was reported 250M and the cost of sending Hubble was reported 4.7B but from what I remember most of this was R&D, making software, tools, developing plans, etc. A lot of spare parts for Hubble were already available (it is typical to have copy of everything on Earth for debugging and so on). Robotic missions have the option of being scrapped and sent again which is not really an option for human missions.

gowld 6y ago

Humans can fix a broken spacecraft better than robots. That's one of the main reasons we've sent humans up. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/servicing/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/servicing/index.ht... Would it be cheaper to build a replacement scope and launch it instead?

lmilcin 6y ago
We can send half a dozen robotic missions for the price of one carrying people. Just send two spacecraft for redundancy. As to Hubble, that is pretty bad example. If people were present with Hubble they would be able to do exactly nothing. Everything was prepared on Earth and only then sent to space. Also, the cost of servicing mission was almost as much as it would cost to make a copy of Hubble. The cost of servicing mission was reported 250M and the cost of sending Hubble was reported 4.7B but from what I remember most of this was R&D, making software, tools, developing plans, etc. A lot of spare parts for Hubble were already available (it is typical to have copy of everything on Earth for debugging and so on). Robotic missions have the option of being scrapped and sent again which is not really an option for human missions.