Let humans, not robots, explore moon
When President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, making a return to the moon official United States government policy, an old argument reared its ugly head. Do human beings need to go back to the moon? Aren’t robots just as capable of exploring the lunar surface as human astronauts and at a cheaper price? The argument is as old as the space age when scientists such as James Van Allen and politicians like the late Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wisc., were making it. A modern version of the argument was offered in Salon by Keith Spencer in a piece, entitled somewhat alarmingly, “Trump’s Sinister Plan for NASA.”
“There is a rule of thumb regarding robot missions and human missions: In general, robots can achieve the same amount of science as a manned mission could, at 1/100th or even 1/1000th the cost. Mars missions like the Curiosity rover attest to this: Sending a human to do the robot’s job would have cost billions more, mainly because you’d have to carry around the life support systems — food, water, oxygen, bedding, medical equipment — in addition to the rest of the scientific equipment.”
Oddly enough, a great part of the scientific community disagrees with that premise. Dr. Paul Spudis, one of the most renowned lunar geologists on the planet, offered a rebuttal in Air and Space recently. His argument, based on his experience as a scientist, is that no substitute exists for a field geologist interacting directly with the moon’s environment. In that way, an understanding can be gained of the moon’s geology in a few hours of field work that a robot cannot hope to obtain.
Indeed, a 2005 study by the British Royal Astronomical Society concluded that a combination of humans and robots is required to fully explore and understand the environment of a planetary body. The science, to use a much-abused phrase, has been settled.
Moreover, as the cost of space travel continues to decline, thanks to the work of such commercial space entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, sending human explorers to the moon, Mars or wherever will not be quite as expensive. The ability to use lunar resources, such as water ice trapped in craters at the moon’s poles, will further reduce the cost of maintaining human beings on Earth’s nearest neighbor. The same water can be refined into rocket fuel, further reducing the cost of space travel.
Scientific exploration, while being of great value, will not be the only thing human beings will do on the moon. A number of companies, such as Moon Express, are keen to start mining the moon for its resources and to start the basis of a space-based industrial revolution. Robots will do much of the repetitive work for lunar mining. However, human beings will still be needed for tele-operation and repairs of those cybernetic servants. And let’s not forget the idea of lunar tourism, as depicted in Andy Weir’s recent novel, “Artemis.”
The most famous commercial space entrepreneur of them all, Musk, weighed in on the concept of humans going back to the moon in a recent tweet: “It is high time that humanity went beyond Earth. Should have a moon base by now and sent astronauts to Mars. The future needs to inspire.” Musk is that rare combination of a pragmatic capitalist and starry-eyed visionary. He has melded the two qualities to create reusable rockets that could eventually service bases on the moon and colonies on Mars.
Musk also puts his finger on the overwhelming reason for going back to the moon: to inspire. The 21st century, filled with terrorism and political rancor, has thus far been a most uninspiring era. Nothing could change that for the better quite like human beings exploring, working and living on the moon. It would be a great start to at last fulfill the promise of the space age, something that has been too long deferred.
Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration titled “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.