Nova made an episode about the secret projects in the USSR and USA to develop spy stations manned by human "astro spies." I think one of the interesting aspects of the projects is how in the US case the NRO (National reconnaisance office) developed unmanned technology which made it clear to policy makers that a manned stations was simply not cost efficient as compared to unmanned satellites. In the Soviet case, they rushed their spy station up to try to help counter the moon landing. However, after only 7 or so manned missions they abandoned the station for the same reasons. It was simply not cost effective as compared to unmanned.

The manned proponents made arguments about how the real time decision making would make the selection and capture of spy targets so much more effective that it would be worth it. One of the big issues was originally the pictures were shot onto film and had to be air dropped from orbit and collected. The digital age led to NRO developing digital pictures that could be transmitted without film, thus largely obsoleting one of the biggest arguments for a manned spy station. Now, no one questions that for reconnaisance unmanned satellites are the way to go. Can you imagine trying to launch dozens and dozens of astronauts up to spy stations to do the equivalent job of what is currently done by unmanned satellites?

I find this stuff very relevant to NASA moon exploration plans. I want to start actually accomplishing real sustainable goals. I do not want to fund some kind of government sponsored climbing of the current Mt Everest. If we had fast tracked exploration of the moon in a realistic manner, we would already be dropping teleoperated rovers all over the place there. Instead we have embarked on another 100 billion dollar boondoggle like the shuttle and ISS.

I want to ultimately colonize off world, but there is a lot of groundwork to be done before that is cost feasible. That groundwork is so clearly better done by unmanned probes, I believe it is absurd to take the other side of the argument. While we are doing an aggressive reconnaisance and prospecting mission by unmanned probes we should use the ISS for the one thing that makes sense by men. That is artificial gravity experiments. Before we colonize Mars or the Moon or go on deep space missions, we need to find out once and for all the health effects of various gravity fields and requirements to mitigate the negative effects. We need to build a structure to produce artificial gravities equivalent to Mars and the Moon, and study the long term effects. If we build a structure with levels of gravity, then we could have test groups that spent most of their time in one field, but then "visitied" another field to see if short duration higher gravity levels would mitigate the effects. This would also be a step towards creating artificial gravity on long duration flights thus eliminated those health issues. Anyway, this should be the biggest priority of the manned space program right now. They should not be doing short hops to the moon for political reasons.

The MOLE (super secret US astro spy project) was literally cancelled overnight. When will our current space decision makers step up and make the right decisions on unmanned vs manned exploration and colonization? Look around, robotic developments are everywhere. Everything from medical robots, deep sea exploration, firefighting, soldiering, flying both combat and reconnaisance, basically anything deemed very dangerous for humans like nuclear plant jobs, cave exploring, etc, etc. Over the next ten years and 100 billion dollars we will finally field a few men on the moon. By that time it could be largely explored by teleoperated rovers. The argument of adaptable men decision making is no more valid than it was for the astro spy project. It is just too costly and gains too little to justify that expense.

Please someone put up a projects diagram showing the milestones and timeline for colonization. Then lets approach that efficiently, which means keeping to a critical path that emphasizes cheap and broad exploration by unmanned probes at the beginning. And it should also emphasize finding out about low gravity effects on men. The (at least initial) way is clear to me.