Public Opinion About Space Exploration - Crewed Versus Robotic Missions?

Etzioni wrote the 1964 book The Moon-Doggle that questioned the scientific value of putting astronauts on the moon and criticized NASA for favoring expensive manned missions over cheaper, more productive robotic missions. This complaint has been a common one in the scientific community from the 1960s onward.

It is very expensive to send explorers into space, particularly human ones. Robotic spacecraft can accomplish more for less money, but they lack the glamour of human explorers. Machines do not give television interviews from space or get ticker tape parades when they come back. Astronauts do. Human explorers inspire young people to be astronauts and encourage voters and politicians to keep funding space travel. NASA knows that machines simply do not reap the same public relations benefits as human astronauts.

Astronomers and physicists fought throughout the 1970s and 1980s for large, sophisticated observatories to be put in space to gather data about solar and galactic phenomena. Time and again funding for their programs was slashed, because NASA needed more money for the space shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) programs. NASA's Great Observatories (including the Hubble Space Telescope) eventually did make it into orbit.

Although smaller and weaker than what scientists originally wanted, these observatories are considered some of space science's greatest triumphs. The Hubble Space Telescope alone has captured thousands of images of celestial objects and greatly advanced human understanding about the origins and workings of the universe.

In 2004, however, NASA announced it would let Hubble fall out of orbit before the end of its useful life. The observatory needs an altitude boost that only a space shuttle mission can give it, but NASA is reluctant to risk astronaut lives for such a purpose. Since the 2003 Columbia disaster the Agency has been hypersensitive about shuttle safety issues. Also, NASA has switched its focus to President George W. Bush's new space travel mandate. This plan calls for devoting shuttle missions to finishing the ISS as soon as possible and then retiring the shuttle fleet. Bush wants NASA to concentrate on developing new spacecraft for long-distance flights to the Moon and Mars.

The Hubble telescope decision met with disapproval from many astronomers and space scientists who were once again disappointed to see human missions given priority over robotic ones. In April 2005 a new NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin, indicated the agency is rethinking its decision to cancel the servicing mission. He instructed NASA engineers to begin preparing for such a mission in case the funding and opportunity for it become available. However, there was no money included for an HST servicing mission in NASA's 2006 budget request.

Two of the most outspoken critics of human spaceflight are physicists James Van Allen and Robert Park. Van Allen is an astrophysicist credited with discovering the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth. Park is a physics professor at the University of Maryland. Both were very vocal in 2004 in their opposition to the plan presented by President George W. Bush to send astronauts to the Moon and to Mars.

In an interview with radio show Democracy Now! Allen explained his opinion of human spaceflight: "I'm a critic of it in terms of the yield of either scientific results or any results from the human space flight program that's been very meager" ("Bush's New Space Program Criticized over Costs & Nuclear Fears," January 15, 2004). In an article for the journal New Atlantis, Park also advocated robotic space travel over astronauts ("The Virtual Astronaut," winter 2004, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/4/park.htm). He speculates that Christopher Columbus would have sent out a drone (an unmanned vessel) to search for the new world, if he had the technology. Park maintains that "the great adventure worthy of the twenty-first century is to explore where no human can ever set foot."

Following the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters in 1986 and 2003, respectively, Gallup asked whether the United States should concentrate on unmanned missions or also include manned missions. (See Figure 9.5.) In both polls a significant majority of the respondents expressed support for manned missions. The percentage actually increased from 67% in 1986 to 73% in 2003. Obviously Americans want human explorers to venture into space.