President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond

Will people really pay 10 times the total revenue of
the super bowl to watch an astronaut drill a hole in a
rock?

I'd be impressed by a HEALTHY "living, thinking, well
educated person of presumably high intelligence" going
back to a hot shower afterwards and leisurely study
the results in a field lab.

To me healthy means radiation shielding, artificial
gravity, independent food supply, and the hot shower
to shake off the stress. I'm proposing we do all of
the mundane unglamorous setup robots *before* the
astronauts show up or at least try to. Human drama in
space only sells once. Robotic technology has
thousands of applications.

Cheers, Thor

"Why bark when you can buy a dog?" - Mark Twain

--- Martin Ravell martin.ravell@...

I want to say something I've been thinking while
reading all these posts about the pro's and con's of
manned versus robotic exploration.

The highlight of the recent spate of robotic mars
missions has been "Mars probe drills hole in rock".

Do you think that the headlines from a manned mission
will bother to report that one of the astronauts (or
maybe Chinese equivalents as the case may be)
drills a hole in a rock?

Of course not. A living, thinking, well educated
person of presumably high intelligence is going to
accomplish and order of magnitude more than some
remote control buggy with a spectrometer. Sure the
cost will be higher but aren't the rewards worth the
expense? The general public cannot get excited
about a toy on a distant planet. The human drama
aspect of a manned mission alone will be worth money
given the right exploitation.

Regards
Marty

Feel free to flame away as this is a sensitive topic.