NASA To Drastically Cut Mars Mission Funding

All of which could have been done cheaper with unmanned rockets.

The only really significant thing the manned space program has done in 20 years is fix the Hubble. That was pretty awesome, and you couldn't have done that without a manned program. But according to the numbers on Wikipedia, building the Hubble cost around $2.5 billion, whereas the Shuttle program cost around $170 billion. For the cost of two shuttle missions you could have built a replacement Hubble.

Astronauts are basically a PR stunt, a way of literally putting a human face- and in particular, an *American* face on space exploration. Putting a man on the moon was a PR stunt, a way to show off America's power. The Saturn V was a monument to the power of the United States in the same way that the pyramids were a monument to the dynasties of the Egyptian pharaohs. I'm not arguing that this kind of stuff is meaningless. On the contrary, it's really important. The space program is a form of soft power that compliments the aircraft carrier. The aircraft carrier projects power in the form of threat; the space program projects power in the form of inspiration. The aircraft carrier says we're more powerful than the other guys, the space program says that we're ultimately about something more than just brute force.

Here's my argument: the manned program has outlived its usefulness as an instrument of soft power. When you're flying Lord British and the dude who developed Microsoft Word on the ISS, the manned space program has degenerated into a form of adventure tourism for the superrich. That doesn't inspire the nation, and it doesn't inspire the world. The unmanned program, however, continues to project what's best about the United States as a country- our ingenuity, our creativity, our daring, our need to explore, and our refusal to settle for second place. I'm not arguing we should give up on space- I'm saying we should double down on the unmanned program, because that's where the real exploration, inspiration, and science is all happening.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/pkOjzjHh_Wg/nasa-to-drastically-cut-mars-mission-funding

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