BobG said:
It's hard to say there's a real tangible benefit to having a manned space program. Early on, it was the image of man in space that gripped the public's imagination and made it possible to fund unmanned programs. Now, there's a base of unmanned programs, both government and civilian, and they have established their worth well enough that they'll continue regardless of whether or not there's a manned space program.
I have to agree on this, that a manned space program is more for PR than anything practical, and if anything, the focus on it may be diverting money from programs that could deliver more useful information. It's very limiting to only go as far as man can travel and safely return. If you really want to explore space and not just appease the TV viewers, unmanned craft seems the way to go. I'm not overly enthusiastic about the international space station project either. I see no need for it and really don't think it's worth the expense to keep sending people into space. People like to think "Oh, how cool would it be to someday vacation in space?!" But, in reality, is it worth all this expense for 1) a new tourist attraction and 2) one that requires years of training to visit and weeks to months of recovery time once returning? You may have all noticed that astronauts don't just walk off the shuttle when they've been on these extended missions, they get carried off.
If the idea is to someday find another place to colonize in space (do we really need this?), then we're doing it arse-backward to start building space stations and manning space travel before we even know where we're going to send people from there. NASA should spend their money working on the robotics that can accomplish missions without men on board, and then at least the robotics could be useful to those of us on Earth as well. And if the real objective is to explore and learn more about space and the universe we live in, then it seems that could be accomplished far more effectively with missions that can go beyond the limits of where men can go.
Of course, as a biologist, I'd rather see all that money being spent on research focusing on keeping our own planet habitable rather than giving people the idea we'll just make this one disposable and when we've used it all up, we'll find another one to live on. Though, for skeptics of evolution, the founder effect on anyone attempting to colonize space sure should become quickly apparent, if reproduction can occur at all in microgravity (I wonder about everything from whether an ovum would make it into the oviduct or float off into the abdominal cavity, to whether sperm would know which way to go, to whether the fertilized embryo would make it to the uterus and implant properly, and would the embryo/fetus develop normally, to whether the fetus would be positioned correctly for delivery, whether women's abdominal muscles would remain strong enough for a vaginal delivery without the aid of gravity, etc.).
