A vote for the robots.

The news today is filled with the 40 year anniversary of the moon landing, a date most of us living then will never forget. I remember being glued to the set in Tulsa and hearing, "A small step for man, a giant leap for mankind." Exciting. We had beat the Soviets who had outdistanced us in the late 50s with Sputnick and had fulfilled the dream of John Kennedy that an American would walk on the moon. Humans had reached the moon and were to return safely. JSC exhibited moon rocks.

We lived in Pasadena, Texas from 1975 until 1994 and one of the interesting places nearby was the Johnson Space Center, and the church I pastored had a number of JSC employees, a few of them at fairly high levels of administration. Sid Jones used to bring me the little folders each JSC staff member had that outlined the schedule of events for the Shuttle flights and descriptions of the experiments that were conducted on them. By the 80s with the ecnomic slumps we faced, discussion of things like Mars exploration died down and that program was put on hold. Hanging on a wall here is a framed small American flag which flew on one of the Shuttle flights.

Though there's talk today about reinstituting the Mars program and beyond that Venus, no one seriously thinks the world economy or the national budget will allow it. I can remember being invited to a social gathering with a number of Space Center people. Someone, a rocket engineer from Chicago whose name I forget, brought up the subject of an article in the journal Science arguing against manned space flights and touting the use of robotics. He said that a huge percentage of the cost of space exploration went into providing safety features for getting humans to and from space targets like the moon or Mars. Billions could be saved and about the same science acheived with non manned space vehicles. The room froze and it was apparent that this poor fellow was preaching to the wrong congregation. The Johnson Space Center staff launched into vigorous reasons why space exploration had to be manned, most of their arguments more political than scientific.

After many years of reflection, and other articles read, I vote for the robots. The science of robotics has developed to the point where we can do almost as much, or as much, as we can with sending humans into space. Robotic gadgets can go to the target and come back with the samples we seek and high grade data. If a blip takes place, we've lost a replaceable machine not a person and far less money than would be required for human flight.

Let's hear it for the robots.