So if you are a dork like me, you may has been paying attention to the "Obama's new Space Program" news. Well, it does relate to a couple of my favorite things, robots and space (which is what my research is about). There are a lot of people that are mad that President Obama would favor Robots in space over going to the moon, again, with people. What most people don't understand is that traveling in space is dangerous. Not only does bad stuff happen in the launch but there is radiation, bone and muscle loss. I mean, I know that sending humans in space is exciting but we just don't have the technology right now for a safe flight to Mars. Click on the link to read about the radiation dangers.http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/2122/how-safe-is-travel-to-mars
Also most people don't even know that we have something called "The International Space Station (ISS)" where astronauts from all over the world do experiments (switch out people every few months). They are helping medical science and doing work to better understand how humans will react to a long space mission...maybe to Mars. However, it takes time to figure out ways to correct the affects of long term space travel. The one cool thing is that we are sending up Robots..ROBOTS..to the Space Station to help with the experiments. Check out how human it looks. He looks buff (picture and link included)
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=30604
My point it: I would love to send humans in space (and by the way we are sending them to Live In Space on the ISS), but I do not want a premature Mars mission where everyone gets cancer and has a hard time getting back and I also do not want to go back to the Moon, just for the hell of it. If we were building an amusement park there like Futurama, then that would be another story.
What do you think? Do you think Obama made the right decision?
I was watching Neil deGrasse Tyson on Colbert and the only slightly convincing reason he gave for continuing humans in space vs robots was that it inspires children to become scientists. He might have even whipped out some statistic like 85% of scientist say they wanted to be astronauts when they were a kid. He also said that whenever they have an astronaut at the science museum, it's the one "celebrity" that brings out the public, even if they don't know who he is. It's a good argument, but I'm not sure it outweighs the danger. Then again, the 'nauts know what they're getting into and some jobs are just plain risky. Robots are cool tho!
ReplyDeleteI guess that is true. I kind of wanted to be an astronaut but then got over it once I realized that it was dangerous and they were all from the military (at the time). I really, really wanted to go to space camp though.
ReplyDeleteWe can still go to adult space camp. However Gina, I don't want to ruin it for you.....but if we go to space camp, we will not accidentally get shot up into space with Joaquin Phoenix.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Robots vs. Humans debate I side on the James Cameron future. I vote for Avatars not Terminators. When is that going to happen. Isn't it safer if we have Avatars?
Who cares about the moon and mars, let's explore the the deep blue on earth....SeaQuest style.