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From: leech@cezanne.cs.unc.edu (Jonathan Leech)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Are We Exploring Space? (was Re: Fourth Shuttle?)
Message-ID: <11154@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 13 Dec 89 20:52:24 GMT
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In article <14994@bfmny0.UU.NET> tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes:
>enthusiasts embrace it.  Bootprints are a prestige frill, good for
>melodrama and TV specials, but a suited human is a poor data gatherer,
>and the billion-dollar labyrinth of supporting technology it takes to
>get him there is an astonishingly inefficient investment for the data
>returned.

    Someday I'd like to see some economic analysis backing up this
frequently made assertion.  It may be true for a subset of interesting
missions and means, but I don't think it's valid to generalize as
above.	Marginal mission cost/#scientific papers from the Apollo and
Luna programs would be an interesting number, for example.  I suspect
Harrison Schmidt was a better data gatherer than Luna 16 by any
criteria.  And there's clearly some desire to have humans operate
their own experiments in LEO, witness Spacelab.

>Everyone seems to want to kick Moondust around, but I notice very few
>proposals to send human crews on a Solar Polar mission or out to explore
>the heliopause!

    Robots are better suited to remote sensing missions than in situ
exploration, so I don't find this especially surprising.  But even for
these types of missions, there are many times when having humans
available would be useful - diagnosing the Voyager scan platform
without lightlag delays cutting into the Saturn encounter data, then
fixing it; reorienting the Phobos probe after losing Earth lock;
quicker response to targets of opportunity all come to mind.  Then
there are all those remote sensing experiments conducted from Skylab,
Shuttle, and Mir.  Sending up the oceanographer (oops, forgot his
name, Jean something) is one of the better examples.
--
    Jon Leech (leech@cs.unc.edu)    __@/
    ``Those what cannot remedy the past can pretend to repeal it."
	- Attributed to Santa Ana by Howland Owl