http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/moon-magnet.html

Human.

Next week: Ginger vs MaryAnn.

However, for government to do the job, they need public support, which generally means good press (read sensationalism). Otherwise, science makes Americans yawn. If you make a video game out of controlling the robotics, or doing a launch, or somesuch, then suddenly, Americans get interested. And yes, we need heroes.

Indeed. The ISS crew would be hungry sans Progress modules. I have a great video of the Jules Verne docking procedure. Smooth as silk. But as Napoleon was fond of saying, “no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” You can’t count on everything being nominal.

Where humans are needed is where things do not go as planned, e.g. the landing of at least two of the Apollo craft. Docking to an existing structure isn’t the same thing as creating a structure. Not always. Things will go wrong. Waldos will break. It’s nice to have the ability to effect repair if need be. I think as complexity increases, so does the need for oversight. Specifically, this would apply to larger structures like solar power satellites. Especially the first ones.

I think I agree with much of your overall point. Certainly fixing a Hubble is more expensive overall than launching a new one. However, that said, the point was to learn how to do this and demonstrate the ability, which would have cost the same regardless. Mere accounting tricks don’t tell the entire story.

Garbage.

If America needs heroes – it would be cheaper to crank out a few heroes by awarding the Medal of Honor to living soldiers that legitimately did enough to warrant the award. Only dead guys who flopped on a grenade or allowed his unit to be ambushed by Taliban inspire few..

As is, for support – we have a public that knows we get tremendous benefit from unmanned near-Earth orbit satellites. Economic benefits, military benefits, scientific benefits so great that the public has no problem investing in that.

As we transitioned away from hugely expensive manned flight and the discoveries and real exploration are done by robotics….the more literate part of the population has thrilled to Hubble, the Rovers, Chandra, our deep space robots. Part of the reason NASA has not pushed the PR on unmanned to the masses is that much of the management and direction of NASA is dominated by “former Astronauts” who wish to keep manned exploration as the “marquee event” where the bulk of the resources go with very little public, commercial economic, or scientific benefit.
(Just as if you asked a bunch of helicopter pilots to design and run a future Army, you could be pretty sure what that Army would look like….)

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G Alston – We now *know* how to build big stuff in space and make it run. We’ve done it. Sorry robot fans. Humans are needed for these things, and space is acually useful. It’s a matter of applying technology; i.e. it’s now about engineering.

Not true. We, the Russians, and Japanese have craft that fly and dock robotically. Robots that have done repairs – simple stuff autonomously, more complicated tasks under the direction, even waldo-ing, of a ground controller. We can build big stuff if we want using only robots. Lack of human workers is not an impediment in space. If something breaks, a human might, just might be able to improvise a fix on certain components in less time than it takes to design and launch a robot…but not as cheaply.
Even the ballyhooed Hubble repairs that “vindicate” the usefullness of men is space, turn out when you factor in the shuttle and manpower costs as well as replacement components – to be more expensive than building and launching a better Hubble.

The Mars manned expedition? Even humans on the moon when so many unresolved life support issues exist to enable a stay longer than a few days?
We have gotten more science about Mars already from orbiters and ground probes – for one 500th the cost – than a manned expedition could ever deliver.
Even in the future a few Martian sample return rockets, complete with excavating, sample collecting rovers, a core driller – and with a return payload of 500lbs – would have a cost of under 25 billion for 3 locales mined and samples returned vs. 1.3 -1.4 trillion for two astronauts to plant a flag, make a speech, and return with the same goodies from one spot.
One bennie of Mars is it’s low escape velocity means a very small rocket could do the job.
Of course, it would be even cheaper to examine stuff in situ and not bring it back. Even microbes if they ever find any.

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myth buster:
Here’s a good reason to go back to the Moon: Helium-3, which costs $23,000/ounce, is abundant on the Moon, though it is scarce on Earth. It is an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion, because it creates no neutron flux. That’s why we should go back. We mine Helium-3 and sell it.

We haven’t even figured out how to make deuterium-tritium fusion work with energy breakeven, let alone even begin to consider the far higher temp and confinement time needed for HE-3 fusion – which is best explained as 5 times more difficult in terms of temperature and confinment power/time, with far less margin to energy breakeven.

The reason it is mentioned is the “magic, ideal solution” to anti-nuke, anti-any radiation people that want the perfect energy solution.

D-T requires a nuke reactor to make tritium and then you have that dastardly fusion neutron that can make new uranium fuel, thorium fuel – fission some U-238 or make steel and other fusion reactor components radioactive. All things anti-nuke folks just hate.
The only reason it costs 23,000 a – gram I believe, not ounce…is that it is scarce and only valuable to scientists doing experiments.

Boost the supply with billions put into space mining and if fusion is still not deemed practical with HE-3 or any other high-value use, all you end up with are happy scientists paying a heck of a lot less for their nuclear and cryogenic experiments.

ALmost everything we take for granted in the modern world was generated by NASA and military needs — computers, the internet, all of it. Robotic explorers. Robotic aircraft. Fuel efficient aircraft using new materials. GPS. Funding NASA is one of the few sane things that we spend money on in this country.

And I say this despite my conviction that NASA is a money sucking black hole like any other agency. At least this black hole gives something back. If it were up to me I’d fund them at about 50x what they now get. By my calculation NASA returns about $10 for every $1 invested.

“Vision” is most easily maintained in small communities without outside interference. One definition of Congress is “outside interference.”