Since last year, NASA has been berated rather acrimoniously for their shifting of focus to manned space programs from the unmanned ones. The harangue NASA is facing is not without grounds: its action can bring about many ramifications.
With financial constraints, NASA has been trying very hard to cut down on expenditures. Unfortunately, this entails the withdrawal of many present and future pivotal space programs that otherwise will have contributed significantly to science. In line with President Bush’s policy and objective of sending humans back to the moon since Neil Armstrong last stepped on the moon’s soil, and eventually, colonizing Mars, NASA has put unmanned space programs on hold, some indefinitely, just to pave way for manned space programs. Many of the promising unmanned space programs have thus never make it through the drawing board.
With tight budget, it is utterly inconceivable as to why NASA do so. After all, manned space programs are costlier than the unmanned ones. They have so many shortcomings that their sole raison d'être is the pride of sending humans to space. NASA justifies it by saying humans have the cognitive abilities necessary to facilitate space exploration which in many ways are much better than remote control. In other words, it would have been better to have a human on Mars making decisions on the spot rather than relaying instructions to and fro between Mars and Earth, which could take twenty minutes altogether, even at the speed of light. Competition is also one of the factor, notably China’s success in its Shen Jou rockets and numerous other space programs. China has thus exerted an invisible pressure on NASA to keep up with the space race. NASA can not afford to lose out as it was the pioneer in sending humans to the moon.
Manned space programs have numerous severe circumscriptions. Like fish being constricted to living in water, humans could not live nor move freely in space. Such physical limitation means only a limited number of research and experiments can be done. To overcome those circumscriptions, voluminous funds have to be allocated to design new life support systems, space suits (new fabrics and materials), and not to mention space food and waste recycling systems. At the cost of 100,000 pounds per kg, the fuel also entails a gargantuan bill. Contrary to manned space programs, unmanned space programs are not bound by such constrictions. The Viking satellite, which has been in space for 26 years, has just wended its way out of the boundary of our solar system. Traveling at velocity close to 100,000 kilometers per hour, the satellite is currently the farthest any man-made object has ever been to. Despite having completed its primary tasks and objectives, it could provide valuable information pertaining to the Oort Cloud structure and system as well as the macrocosm outside of our solar system. As no humans are involved, the satellite can continue to run for as long as its plutonium power source can allow. Funds for creating human support system can thus be channeled to create better space instruments.
To sum it up, it is impolitic for NASA to withdraw the many unmanned space programs that promise valuable results for the sake of glorifying humans’ endeavor through such unproductive manned space programs. Even using the funds to buy each and every starving African child a cup of instant noodle would have been way better than to imprint a boot print on Mars soil.