Reference no: EM131223982

Human space exploration is exciting. Robotic explorers can venture great distances from Earth without concerns for safety. Robotic space exploration is much less expensive. Should space explorers be human, robotic, or both? As a start, discuss your views including whether one is more appropriate now and another at a later time when technological improvements and innovations have been realized.
Read NASA articles concerning robotic vs. human space exploration and some of the benefits of the space program by browsing through the NASA websites https://www.nasa.gov/ and https://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/MedicalBenefits/main.html.

Keep in mind, however, on January 14, 2004, President Bush gave a speech in which he announced the cancellation of the Space Shuttle program. One issue that John McCain (R-Ariz.) joined by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and David Vitter (R-La.), raised was that "Once the space shuttle is retired, Russia stands to possess the only means of transporting astronauts to and from the space station." Currently that is the case - the United States is no longer able to launch its own astronauts to space. So now what?

According to space agency representatives, some astronauts will simply stay on the ground to help with the planning and design of future missions and vehicles. Others will accept rides aboard Russia's Soyuz space capsules to and from the International Space Station (ISS ), where they'll work.

According to Chris Buckley, ISS Flight Controller since 2006, "On March 14, 2011 NASA made a deal with the Russian Space Agency (RSA) for 12 trips to ISS at $753 million ($63 million/seat). This new set of trips will support US astronauts through 2015." Russian Soyuz spacecraft now ferry astronauts to and from orbit and apparently will do so until private U.S. spaceships become available or NASA has the funds to develop future missions and space vehicles. These efforts cost money, though.

"NASA's budget has generally been approximately 1% of the federal budget from the early 1970s on, but briefly peaked to approximately 3.3% in 1966 during the Apollo Moon program. Recent public perception of the NASA budget has been shown to be significantly different from reality; a 1997 poll indicated that Americans who responded thought on average that 20% of the federal budget went to NASA.

The actual percentage of federal budget that NASA has been allocated has been steadily dropping since the Apollo program and as of 2012 the NASA budget was estimated to be 0.48% of the federal budget. In a March 2012 meeting of the United States Senate Science Committee, Neil deGrasse Tyson testified that "Right now, NASA's annual budget is half a penny on your tax dollar."

NASA's 2015 budget was less than half a percent of the federal budget (0.45 percent to be more accurate) per professional astronomer and writer Phil Plait. He stated,
"To give you a sense of scale, take a one dollar bill, and a pair of scissors. They'd better be sharp: Slice off a sliver just 0.7 mm wide off the end-that's about 1/40th of an inch. That's the total amount of NASA's budget compared with what we spend overall. A slice that narrow won't even reach the ink printing on the bill."

Since NASA is paid for by tax dollars, its budget is made public as are all of the space photographs and information/data gained through its missions. For example, all Hubble photographs are free for public use, including you. However, this would not be the case if the Hubble Space Telescope was privately owned and controlled.
2016 Update -

According to The Atlantic science archive dated Dec 17, 2015: NASA is About to Have Its Biggest Budget in a Decade! If Congress passes the spending bill it's now considering, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will be able to spend $19.3 billion next year, an increase of more than $1.3 billion over 2015 funding levels. That's $700 million more than the funding requested by the White House. "Everyone who supports space exploration should be very pleased with this, if it passes," said Casey Dreier, the director of advocacy at the Planetary Society.

2016 will be a busy year for the U.S. space agency. If all goes well, the geological mission InSight will land on the surface of Mars, the robotic orbiter Juno will reach Jupiter, and OSIRIS-REx will launch from Earth. OSIRIS aims to eventually touch down on the surface of the asteroid Bennu, spend almost two years there, then send a capsule home to this planet with asteroid samples. All three of these missions are planetary-science missions, housed in the only NASA division which visits worlds beyond our own. The New Horizons probe that visited Pluto this year was also a planetary-science mission. Dreier noted that the 2016 budget restores historically normal levels of funding to NASA planetary science, which had seen its budget sliced by 25 percent in the early part of this decade.

Because of those previous cuts, no new planetary-science missions will fly from the end of 2016 to the beginning of 2020. Dreier said this was"the longest gap in planetary science in at least 20 years."At the end of that period, as well, the one-year Juno mission at Jupiter and the 11-year-old Cassini-Huygens mission at Saturn will draw to a close. "For the first time since the early 1970s, the U.S. will not have a robotic presence in the giant planets of the outer solar system" at that time, said Dreier. After 2020, NASA is expected to launch new robotic missions to Mars and Europa, a moon of Jupiter believed to be more amenable to life than other worlds in the solar system. (A Congressional report attached to the 2016 budget encouraged NASA to make the Europa mission a rover, rather than a lander or an orbiter.)
However, "NASA is perennially underfunded. People say it has 20 pounds of missions in a 10-pound bag. The nation asks it to do all its stuff and then gives it half the money that it needs."

Testimony says NASA lacks the financial resources and technology to do the mission, (by Eric Berger.)

For the last half-decade, NASA has resolutely declared that it has embarked on a Journey to Mars. Virtually every agency achievement has, in one way or another, been characterized as furthering this ambition. Even last summer when the New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said it represented "one more step" on the Journey to Mars.

A 2014 report titled Pathways to Exploration, considered possible pathways to Mars. Testimony from John Sommerer, a space scientist who spent more than a year as chairman of a National Research Council technical panel reviewing NASA's human spaceflight activities summarized that panel's work. "While sending humans to Mars, and returning them safely to the Earth, may be technically feasible, it is an extraordinarily challenging goal, from physiological, technical, and programmatic standpoints," Sommerer testified. "Because of this extreme difficulty, it is only with unprecedented cumulative investment, and, frankly, unprecedented discipline in development, testing, execution, and leadership, that this enterprise is likely to be successful."

Bolden and other top officials have said the agency could achieve its goal with the agency's existing budget, plus inflation. But for the agency's exploration programs, the total funding available comes to about $180 billion over the next 20 years. Spending only that amount would require abandoning the International Space Station next year, which NASA has no intention of doing.

Members of the House science community seemed disinclined to substantially increase NASA's budget. Sommerer told Congress that the nation either needs to commit wholeheartedly to a Mars mission, or the agency should stop stating it is on the course to go there with humans. "It might be better to stop talking about Mars if there is no appetite."

Another panelist, Tom Young, the former director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and former president and chief operating officer of the Martin Marietta Corporation, agreed that NASA does not currently have a clear pathway to Mars. Young said he favored continuing with a mission to Mars but that following such a course required hard choices and narrowing NASA's focus. The agency cannot both have a flourishing program in low Earth orbit with the International Space Station while also trying to mount a Mars exploration program, he argued. NASA hopes to develop cost-cutting methods along the way, possibly including harvesting water ice on the Moon, to make Mars more affordable.

Despite the lack of a well-defined pathway, NASA's Bolden warned in late 2015 that the space agency was "doomed" if Congress or the next president refocused the space agency's human spaceflight goals away from Mars. Two of the three experts who testified favored a more pragmatic approach, focusing on stepwise exploration by moving from low-Earth orbit to cislunar space (the space between the earth and the orbit of the moon) nearer the Moon and then to the lunar surface itself. This would allow NASA to both achieve meaningful exploration goals and engage the burgeoning private space sector, which has been hungering to develop lunar resources.

Please browse through the [PDF]fiscal year 2016 - Nasa:

www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/NASA_FY2016_Summary_Brief_corrected.pdf. Since NASA is publically funded, its budget proposals are available to the public as well as its photographs and the knowledge gained in space exploration. Consider the fact that his may not necessarily be the case for a privately held space agency.

Discussion - What should be the future of the US Space Program? Should the US Space Program become privatized or be supported by tax dollars? Should it be discontinued completely and the money spent for programs here on Earth? (Check out the technological advances that are a direct result of human space flight such as cordless tools, invisible braces, water filters, ... from sites such as https://www.problem-solving-techniques.com/US-Space-Program.html or https://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/ten-nasa-inventions.htm) and include these in your discussion of the future of the US Space Program.

If you think the US Space Program should be continued, consider the suggested articles explaining the technological advances we utilize in everyday life that came about as a direct result of human space flight (you might be surprised). Discuss whether the US Space Program should be continued as is. Would an international Space Program (much like the European Space Agency) with the USA simply one of the member be a solution to this issue?

If you think the US Space Program should continue, how can it be funded? As one former class member suggested, perhaps mining (think metallic asteroids) could be a source of funding.

Be creative in your thinking. Discuss the technological advances that have come through the Space Program, especially medical advances - are they worth the investment? Should the US Space Program be discontinued? If not, should there be human exploration or just robotic exploration of the Solar System?

Second post should be made by Oct 1. Remember, you should cite only reliably published, high-quality mainstream sources.