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Leave Space to Robots

President Obama would be well-served by removing costly manned exploration goals

By Nick McMaster, Newser Staff

Posted Jan 24, 2009 2:58 AM CST

(Newser) – Barack Obama is poised to chart a new direction for America’s exploration of the final frontier, writes the Economist. While George W. Bush supported continuing manned space exploration in the tradition of the previous century, Obama is considering scrapping some of NASA’s planned upgrades to the space shuttle program. This would leave space exploration to the robots, an idea the Economist heartily endorses.

Obama may devote part of the space budget to scores of new satellites for monitoring earth, a “domestic policy” that gets another thumb-up from the magazine. But the recent discovery of methane on Mars shows that humans cannot completely abandon the galaxy’s outer reaches. With robots currently “better and cheaper” than ever, unmanned missions are the perfect way to keep exploration going for less money.

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Data confirms there is methane in Mars' atmosphere, and while it's possible the gas is produced by biological sources, it behooves us to send robots, not humans, to find out, the Economist writes. (NASA)

An engineering model of the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory, dubbed "Scarecrow," makes its way down a hill in the "Mars Yard" at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. (NASA)

Unmanned vehicles are a much cheaper, safer way to explore outer space, writes the Economist; President Obama would do well to cut manned missions, given other priorities back on Earth. (NASA)

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Robots ... can work tirelessly for years, beaming back data and images, and returning samples to Earth. They can also be made sterile, which germ-infested humans, who risk spreading disease around the solar system, cannot. - the Economist

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Leave Space to Robots