Should Europe Abandon Manned Space Missions?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Demand for Europe space rethink

In re-iterating comments he made earlier this year, Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees has called for Europe's space exploration effort to concentrate on robotic missions, and allow the US and Russia, with their greater financial resources, to get on with the business of sending humans into space. This from BBC News...

The future lies in using advanced robotics, miniaturisation and fabrication, said Lord Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society.

Europe "should try and get a world lead in unmanned exploration", he said.

Spending funds on manned space flights "was not a very good use of money", that should be left to the US, he said.

Three-quarters of Nasa's money was spent "going round and round the earth 35 years after people have already walked on the moon", Lord Rees said.

Nasa has a budget of more than $17bn, in contrast, to the UK civil space budget of £430m and the European Space Agency's $4,500m

The £430 million UK civil space budget translates to roughly $850m, and even when added to Europe's $4,500m, clearly shows that NASA's budget dwarfs their combined budget - but I'm not convinced that Europe and Britain should sit back and rely on others to send up the manned missions. Back to Martin Rees...

Speaking to the BBC during a week-long trip to California to promote the Royal Society, Lord Rees said manned missions were largely irrelevant. These days, no-one gets excited in the way they once did over the early Apollo programme, he added.

The reasons for nobody getting excited are in my opinion, mainly because there is no cogent or clear-cut plan to send people into space rather than on what some perceive to be fairly meaningless Shuttle flights to the ISS, although the fact it has been possible to fix and maintain the Hubble SpaceTelescope, is clearly a huge bonus. If there was a defined programme with a definite schedule to get to Mars, I think there would be plenty of excitement. Lord Rees again...

"What actually makes the newspaper headlines are the marvellous pictures from the Hubble telescope and those of the surface of Mars and Jupiter and Titan, all obtained robotically."

Lord Rees, the professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, said the unmanned part of Nasa's project is - like Europe's - hugely successful.

This, he said, was where the UK should concentrate its energies.

"If I was an American, I would be opposed to a return to the moon and going to Mars," he said.

Ideally, there should be people going to the Moon as well, if only to start construction of facilities that would allow missions to places like Mars to blast off from there - Earth's much stronger gravity field requires a great deal more energy from rockets to be able to escape Earth - although of course the initial costs of building lunar facilities would not be insignificant. But I nevertheless agree that given a choice, Mars is the place to go.

"We in Europe should try and get a world lead in space exploration and applications," said the Royal Society president, who also holds the position of Astronomer Royal.

"Manned missions are hugely more expensive and the practical case for sending people weakens with every advance in robotics and miniaturisation."

Despite his views, though, Europe is pursuing a vigorous human spaceflight policy costing $8bn so far.

Just last week, the European Space Agency unveiled a campaign to recruit the European astronauts of tomorrow.

Britain has also hinted at a change in its long-standing opposition to human space launches following several high profile reports.

One, from the Royal Astronomical Society, suggested the UK's policy has damaged the country both scientifically and economically.

While the notion of a Briton in space could be inspirational for young people, it could also present all sorts of opportunities for business.

In the past, British companies have been denied the chance to bid for high-profile contracts in the human space-flight arena. That looks set to change.

One main difference between the US and Europe at the moment is the vast amount the former is squandering on foreign wars, and it's by no means clear that NASA will continue to enjoy the current level of spending, especially if the wars continue beyond the short-term. Budget cuts have also struck there, with space science missions being particularly badly affected - there was even a recent scare that one of the Mars Rovers would need to be shut down for a while due to a budgetary shortfall of only a few million dollars.

In his essay for TomDispatch, 'War is Hell, But What the Hell Does it Cost?', author William D. Hartung suggests that the current cost of the Afghan and Iraqi wars to the US might be running as high as $3.5 billion per week - which apart from revealing how appallingly the Bush administration has screwed things up since 2001 - and probably before - also demonstrates that where there is a will to raise vast sums of money, a way can probably be found.

Imagine if just $500m - or one-seventh - of that weekly budget was set aside for NASA on a weekly basis for a period of say 5 or even 10 years, (in addition to its current spending) - they could easily get to Mars and run a dauntingly ambitious robotic programme at the same time. Obviously that's not going to happen, but my point here is that I have no sympathy whatsoever with those in governments and funding bodies, who tell us that money cannot be raised for the proper funding of space exploration - or indeed to fix a range of other problems currently afflicting millions of people across the planet.

Whether Europe could afford more space funding is another matter, but my overall opinion is that due to the current uncertainties in the US, Europe has no choice but to pursue a manned space programme, however modest it might be in comparison to what NASA could achieve. And because of the uncertain economic climate in the US, there doesn't seem to be much sense in Europe trying to install its own astronauts into NASA missions, if there is a good chance that those missions get cancelled or repeatedly postponed. If NASA was well down the road to sending a manned mission to Mars, I'd probably be more in agreement with Lord Rees in that Europe could concentrate on robotic missions - but as things stand, Europe - including Britain - should definitely be making long-term plans for sending humans to Mars. A final word from Martin Rees...

"For historical reasons connected with superpower rivalry, space is one of the arenas where America and Russia have a bigger budget for space than Western Europe," he said.

"Whereas in everything else, Western Europe is fully a match for the US and we can be more effective in space if we focus all our budget on miniaturisation, robotics, and fabricators and avoid manned space flight."

He makes a very good case for unmanned missions, and much as many of us would like to see a European manned mission to Mars, financial reality would at the moment seem to demand that exploratory robotic missions are given priority, especially if they can be properly funded. Scarcely a week goes by without startling news, discoveries and images being returned to Earth from any number of robotic missions, both from ESA and NASA - our solar system alone constantly reveals levels of complexity and mystery that were hitherto unexpected, and in that respect we have been very well served by those unmanned missions.

see also :: British Space Policy Gets Revamp

UK Looks To Closer Ties With NASA

European Space Agency (ESA)

'What We Still Don't Know - Are We Real?' - video, with Martin Rees

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time - The Multiverse - audio