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August 01, 2005
Why they go
The following op-ed piece was published in the Washington Examiner, Wednesday, July 27th, 2005. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Why they go
By Michael Huang
Not too long ago, it was conventional wisdom that astronauts were national heroes, boldly going where no one had gone before. But conventional wisdom changes and the current consensus is that humans in space are obsolete, superseded by cheap and versatile robots that go farther than humans can. Unfortunately, this new conventional wisdom, although persuasive, is a half-truth.
It is true that for many space missions, robots are better than humans. For satellites that orbit the Earth and for probes that explore extreme or remote environments, robots are the right choice.
But on other missions, humans do a better job than robots. No matter how cheap robots become or how capable their functions, there are missions that only humans can do.
The servicing or repair mission is a case where humans are often better than robots. When a shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope was canceled, a robotic mission was proposed as a substitute. But studies showed that the human mission, if conducted safely, would provide the best outcome for the telescope. (NASA will look at the results of the shuttle's Return to Flight before deciding whether the human mission will go ahead.)
The missions that only humans can do have been given many names — colonization, settlement, "extend life to there," "permanent human presence in space" — but they all refer to the same idea: Humans should live beyond Earth, just as we live on Earth today, and just as our ancestors lived in the savannas of Africa. When our ancestors went out of Africa to explore and settle the rest of the world, they encountered strange and hostile environments. But they used technology — fire, shelter, clothing, tools — to survive and eventually prosper in the cold climates. Our spacefarers are carrying on the tradition, except today they are using the technologies of rockets, spaceships, spacesuits and life-support systems. Humans struggle to survive beyond Earth, but we are learning and improving all the time, and someday we will survive and prosper on other worlds.
The mission of colonization, when completed, may protect the human species from one of the worst disasters imaginable: a planetary extinction event, such as the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the many others that have occurred in Earth's history and will occur in Earth's future.
We should not assume that we are immune to these events, or that we will prevent every one using our intelligence and technologies. In fact, our intelligence may make a catastrophic event more likely, due to our invention of weapons of mass destruction. Putting humanity and life on many worlds, not just one, could be the act that ensures a hopeful future for the species and for life itself.
For all these reasons, humans must continue to go to space. In response to the question "Humans or robots in space?" conventional wisdom should answer, "Both." NASA has embarked on voyages of exploration using both humans and robots. Why do they go?
For us.
Michael Huang runs "Spaceflight or Extinction" at www.spaext.com.
Posted by apsmith at August 1, 2005 06:38 PM
