Edutopia - August/September 2008 - (Page 20)

HeadofClassJScience Bots vs Bods Humans and robots will increasingly compete for interplanetary glory. By Annie Laura Smith fter only a few more ⇓ights into low Earth orbit, the venerable shuttle program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will be brought to an end in May 2010, and the ungainly vehicles that have represented many successes and two dramatic failures will be grounded permanently. Then, after ⇒ve years, if all goes according to schedule, a new design for manned ⇓ight will make its debut. Known as the Ares vehicles, these rockets will be capable of traveling far beyond Earth orbit. The ⇒rst test ⇓ight of the Ares I-X is scheduled for launch in April 2009, and NASA has announced that astronauts will take Ares I on missions to the International Space Station no later than 2015. Ares I and Ares V Moon missions are scheduled to start no later than 2020. But the future is not assured for the Ares program. One of the more terrestrial problems is money. NASA’s budget for the ⇒scal year 2009 is $17.6 billion, but according to Tennessee Democratic congressman Bart Gordon, chair of the House Committee on Science and Technology, NASA’s budget is not enough for what it’s asked to do. A bigger question has arisen in recent years about whether men and women in space are more an expensive, risky luxury than a necessity. Former Republican congressman Nick Smith, at one time chairman of the Research Subcom- A mittee of the House Science Committee, wrote, “These [manned] projects have provided relatively little scienti⇒c discovery compared to the cost bene⇒t of unmanned missions.” Not so, says Chris Culbert, chief of robotics systems at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas, who argues that robonauts should supplement, not replace, the work of humans, whose depth and breadth of performance is beyond current robotics capability. As the bots-versus-bods debate rages, forty⇒ve space-exploration experts met at Stanford University in February 2008 for a two-day conference called “Examining the Vision: Balancing Science and Exploration.” The conference participants concluded that NASA’s program for human exploration must lead to Mars and beyond, and that future administrations must fund NASA adequately to sustain its science programs and encourage international collaboration. And, yes, robots will play a role in those journeys. Though some of astronomy’s most astonishing discoveries have been made by unmanned vehicles like the Hubble telescope and hardy robot travelers such as Voyager and the Mars Exploration Rover, supporters of manned exploration say the lessons learned by prolonged human habitation aboard the Russian Mir space station and the International Space Station form crucial research for establishing a base on the Moon or making a manned trip to Mars. This information matters because NASA is developing powerful new rockets, to be used on the Ares I and Ares V, that can take crews at least as far as the Red Planet. A parallel program of robotic missions, such as Messenger, which sent back to NASA close-up photographs of Mercury in January 2008, will pave the way for humans by making scouting trips ahead of manned missions. (For ⇓ights to places too distant for human exploration, KIDS IN SPACE The Manned Space Flight Education Foundation offers videoconferencing for teachers and students that provides hands-on experience of life in orbit. There is no free launch, but fees are suborbital: $100 for grades K–2, $165 for grades 3–12. Visit the Space Center Houston’s Web site at spacecenter.org/DistanceLearning.html. Also, check out NASA’s educational offerings at spacecenter.org/education.html. Houston, We Have a Birthday As NASA turns ⇒fty, its golden anniversary offers a chance for both re⇓ection on what has been accomplished and planning for what constitutes future success. The ⇒rst half-century of space exploration has taken us from Earth to the Moon, and has put shuttle crews into orbit so often that launches rarely make the news. 20 EDUTOPIA AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2008 http://spacecenter.org/DistanceLearning.html http://spacecenter.org/education.html

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - August/September 2008

Edutopia Contents Up Front Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design: Building on Disaster What's Next Full-Service Schools In the Trenches Moral Aptitude Serious Gaming Behaveyourself.com Media Is the Message The Way of the Wiki A Match Made in Cyberspace Hail to the New Chief Rise of the Robots Disrupting Class As Others See Us Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Moby

Edutopia - August/September 2008

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