Stephen Hawking: Manned vs Robotic Space Missions?

"Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I'm arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before."
Stephen Hawking, Cambridge University

Will unmanned robotic missions be able to detect weird microscopic life-forms they are not programmed to recognize that might be lurking below the surface of Mars, or beneath the murky seas of Jupiter's jumbo moon, Europa?

The answer to this question is at the core of one of the greatest of the ongoing debates in space exploration: the question of man vs. unmanned robotic missions.

NASA currently operates more than 50 robotic spacecraft that are studying Earth and reaching throughout the solar system, from Mercury to Pluto and beyond. Another 40 unmanned NASA missions are in development, and space agencies in Europe, Russia, Japan, India and China are running or building their own robotic craft.

more:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/06/robotic-missions-are-much-cheaper-and-may-provide-more-scientific--information-but-they-dont-catch-the-public-imagination-in.html

That's his Job to push the PR of manned space flight

Manned exploration in particular. The thought of finding a new planet to destroy is ludicrous. We have a planet that is perfect for the continued existence of human life and we insist on trashing it.

The prospect of mining or other endeavors is idiotic at best. Any such mission would consume far more energy than could be returned.

Travel beyond our solar system would require that we achieve speeds approaching the speed of light, and impossible task. The acceleration/deceleration to/from such a speed alone would take decades.

1. we will be hit by a space body that will kill most life on Earth. Probably several times over. The odds of any one year is minuscule but it could as easily be 100 years from now as 100K.

2. The sun will have grown too hot to support life on Earth

In the next million years we could have all sorts of issues from population control to global warming to water issues to food issues. Heck in the next 100 years.

The options are survive or die, and unlike apparently you, I pick survive. Travel beyond the solar system does NOT require light speed, and we can get to half light speed with technology right now e.g. a solar sail.

There certainly are other obstacles, cosmic radiation, space debris coming at you at half the speed of light, etc but they are not "impossible" to overcome.

Hawking is right, humanity cannot put all its eggs in one basket.

Even the good ones. Best not to hang around any longer than necessary...

Is it your impression that manned space flight has the sole purpose of colonization or exploitation of other planets? Nothing else is to be gained?

I would expect by the time we are actually able to colonize an exoplanet we will have matured to a point where we don't pollute everything we touch. If we haven't, I assume manned exploration of space to be a moot point anyway as there probably won't be any humans around at all.

But yes, you are correct. Any such mission we launch now would consume far more energy than would be returned. At least with today's technology; however, a century from now we may have the technology to retrieve the methane from Titan and bring it back efficiently. But that technology won't exist in the future unless we start building upon it now. That's the thing about scientific and technological innovation, it just doesn't happen all of a sudden. All the technology we have today has come about through the inexorable chain of scientific and technological discoveries that have come before it.

If you don't try, you will fail 100% of the time. That is why the space program is important, that is why we must keep the program alive.

We would fall off if that were true. What more evidence do we need to prove the earth is flat?

Fly in the air like a bird??? It'll never happen!

Water on Mars? Hogwash.

Intelligent advanced life on other planets? More garbage. Everyone knows we're the center of the universe!

Used on Earth to prevent pollution. There's so much wrong with what you wrote that I really just don't have the desire to respond to it.

Unmanned spacecraft missions have vastly out paced manned space exploration since the dawn of the space age. It's only a debate in the way the "is water boarding torture" is a debate. It's only not decided in those not willing to see that it's already been long decided.