Atlantis, yesterday
The timing was out of this world. Last night’s Nature Debate, on the renewed interest in manned space flight, began at exactly the same moment that the Atlantis space shuttle roared into the Florida skies, on its way to fix the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Chair, BBC science correspondent Christine McGourty, apologised on behalf of the panel in case they had to rush out of the talk to cover any problems with the orbiter. In the event, Atlantis reached space safely and the panel went on to give one of the liveliest debates yet seen at Kings Place.
Discussion rarely approached the title subject of ‘racing’ to the moon. The panelists concerned themselves more with the whys and wherefores of human space flight, as opposed to which nations or private companies are most likely to reach the moon first. Kevin Fong, Chair of the UK Space Biomedical Advisory Committee, argued eloquently for manned space travel, while Oliver Morton of Nature took the opposing stance. The two rallied back and forth throughout the evening over the economics and justification for putting meat in the tin cans. As Oliver put it, isn’t it a bit strange to measure our success as a species by how far we can isolate one or two individuals from the greater mass of humanity?
The third panelist, Professor Sir Martin Sweeting of Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, argued from a very different standpoint. Although he declared himself ‘first on the shuttle’ if free tickets became available, he believes that the future of space exploration is robotic for purely technological reasons. In 10-20 years time, gadgetry and telepresence should have reached the point where we’ll all be able to immerse ourselves in imagery fed back from other planets. A virtual experience of Mars for millions, he believes, will be more inspiring and much cheaper than sending a handful of humans to the red planet. Once we’ve all been treated to a dose of that, a follow-on manned mission might then have far less impact (unless something went wrong). At the same time, robotic technology should reach a level of sophistication that would put it on par with a human field geologist, so there would be little to gain scientifically from a manned expedition.
Despite the economic objections, all panelists agreed that we’re very likely to see a manned presence on the moon within the next two decades. Oliver likened the situation to Antarctica. The moon will always be sparsely populated as the only reasons to go there are tourism and science. One aspect the panel did not address was the long term need to access space for the continuance of our species. Might we one day need a manned capability to help divert an asteroid, for example, or could that too be done robotically?
A show of hands concluded that the audience was roughly equally divided for and against manned space flight. I’m firmly in the ‘for’ camp for no good reason I can articulate. The little boy inside me still thinks it’s all very cool.