Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Somebody said, "you don't send a robot to Paris to taste the wine."

Do you taste wine by having someone else drink it?
Sawyer — (archived)

I'd rather have a better 100's better virtual experience through an unmanned probe than a costly and limited retelling from a lucky astronaut. Can an astronaut see gamma rays, xrays, ultraviolet, infrared, neutrons,...? Is he tasting lunar rock or just looking at it just as we can look at it with 3d virtual technology.

Imagine if we had spent the few paltry billion we've spent on unmanned probes on the manned program. We would have no pictures of mars, no rover analysis of rocks on the surface, no pictures of the volcanoes on IO, or the cryvolcanoes on the outer moons. We wouldn't have close up veiws of the rings of saturn, or know about the lakes of Titan.

And having spent that paltry billion on the manned program what would NASA show for it, more cost overruns and a few more shuttle flight to the ISS?

Let's get real and do side by side cost comparisons of the bang for the buck.

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