The Astronomer Royal is a peculiar British position with no official duties and an salary of £100 per year, which makes him somewhat less important than the royal gardener. Nevertheless, the Astronomer Royal tends to get quoted in the press with some frequency,because of his impressive-sounding title.

Often, these quotes concern space travel. Why the press expects an astronomer to be an expert on space travel is a mystery. It’s like asking an oceanographer about ships, a geologist about trucks, or a meteorologist about aircraft. But, for some reason, reporters seem to think that studying the stars makes a scientist an expert on space-vehicle engineering.

In January 1956, Astronomer Royal Richard van der Riet Woolley made the infamous statement that “space travel is utter bilge,” which appeared in Time magazine less than two years before Sputnik shook the world.

The current Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees, is known as a long-time critic of human spaceflight. In 2010, he told the Guardian that human spaceflight was a waste of time because Martin Rees wasn’t interested in it. “It’s hard to see any particular reason or purpose in going back to the moon or indeed sending people into space at all,” Rees declared.

Lately, it seems, Rees is trying to moderate his statements. In a new article, Steve Connor, science editor of the Independent, writes:

Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, has explained his own schizophrenic attitude to human space exploration. As a scientist and practical man he is against on the grounds that it is a waste of money – you can get more bang for your bucks by sending probes and intelligent robots into space.

But as a human being, he is in favour. By sending living, breathing sentient beings like ourselves into space we can come closer to the shear thrill and danger of travelling to a far-away place we can only imagine.

Okay, Rees is not an expert on computer technology. Those so-called “intelligent robots” have far less computing power than an iPhone. They depend on radiation-hardened chips which are closer to an old-generation PC, which Rees’s office might have thrown out, than Star Trek’s Commander Data.

Unmanned probes are indeed cheaper, for many missions – but not all. Space Adventures, for example, is offering circumlunar flights in a Soyuz capsule for $100 million per seat. NASA’s unmanned lunar orbiters cost about $500 million. In the near future, suborbital missions will be available for $100-200,000 per seat. At those prices, it may be cheaper to send a human operator than to automate an experiment.

Whether humans are cheaper than automation is something that can only be decided on a case-by-case basis.

In the past, automated missions were almost always the winners, in purely economic terms, due to the high cost of human spaceflight. That cost is going to be dramatically reduced in the near future, however, so old assumptions and prejudices are no longer valid. Whether government space agencies like NASA send humans to Mars is still unknown and, perhaps, ultimately irrelevant. More important will be the thousands of space explorers, including professional and citizen scientists, who are enabled by the new, low-cost commercial spacecraft.

Written by Astro1 on May 28th, 2013 , Citizen Exploration

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COMMENTS
    Derek H commented

    I’m a big fan of humans in space exploration but you’re going to have to make that case based on our flexibility and adaptability, not on cost. At the end of the day, launch costs are all about the mass being sent up and whenever you send humans, that mass includes not just the human him/herself at 50-100 kg but the food, air and water and life support systems necessary for said human.

    You’re comparing per seat costs on multiple passenger flights to total mission costs for a single payload. What you need to compare is the cost of the data brought back because we can launch quite a few cube sats (or now phonesats) for the same lift mass as that human.

    Where humans excel is in taking advantage of unanticipated opportunities. The Genesis Rock is a prime example of this — indeed, the example chosen for the HBO mini-series “From the Earth to the Moon” to show why it was worth sending men to the Moon instead of just robotic probes:

    145:33:38 Scott: Okay, Jim. There’s a good pile of rocks right here.
    145:33:42 Irwin: Hey, look at that light colored rock with…

    145:33:44 Scott: Yes.

    145:33:45 Irwin: …it almost looks like a white vein on top of the other rock!

    145:33:47 Scott: Yeah, look at that! How about that, We’ll get that one.

    145:33:51 Allen: Get it now.

    145:33:52 Irwin: It’s a…

    145:33:53 Scott: Yeah. It’s a breccia. It’s a dark gray rock that looks like a…Actually it looks like a big pinnacle with a small gray and white breccia on top of it. The pinnacle is about 6 inches across and 4 or 5 inches high. On top of it is about a 2- to 3-inch subangular frag with a light gray or medium gray matrix, and about 20 percent white clast in it. Very unique. It stands out…(Laughing) it’s amazing! Okay, Jimmy. Let’s gather some data.

    145:34:30 Irwin: You’re going to sample that, right?

    145:34:31 Scott: Yeah.

    Reply
    May 29, 2013 at 9:08 am