> Russell McMahon wrote:
>> Time after time after time this sort of thing makes the case for 
>> manned presence in space on leading edge missions to the maximum 
>> extent possible.

& Robert Rolf wrote:

> You're kidding, right?

No. absolutely not.
Your response to my assertion does however make the pount that people 
will hold differing extreme views on all sorts of things and no amount 
of facts will change their minds :-). This applies to both of us, of 
course.

You see everything I wrote as examples that destroy the point I was 
trying to make. I see everything that you wrote in rebuttal as making 
my point beautifully and destroying your point. Without a mutual 
rose-tinted-glasses-exchange we are both obviously never going to 
agree - and this is the case for the manned versus robotic experts.

I will address a few only points, mainly where we agree. For the rest, 
if anyone's interested, look at what robert wrote and see if you can 
see how I can see it supporting and not destroying my perspective.

I agree, as you said, (and as I had already said) that manned missions 
are either far dearer to get a presence at a certain point or can go 
far less far for the same cost. [It's what happens once you get the 
presence present that counts]. I agree (as I already said) that manned 
missions have the opportunity for tragedy rather than just disaster. 
Beyond that I disagree on about every point :-).

It is indeed all too often people who mess things up rather than the 
equipmen. )After all, more or less by definition, equipment does what 
equipment does and it's the people who have to define this properly). 
BUT when people emss things up it usually takes another peson to 
unmess it. machines that haven't been progeammed to unmess things 
aren't up to it by themselves and are generally not very good at being 
used remotely to unmess themselves.

In areas like Challenger and Columbia where you cite people as the 
problem, you simultaneously note that other people were well aware 
that what was being done was wrong. (The MIR docking collision was 
another such case). The problem is often 9as in all these cases) the 
intrusion of "politcis" and bureacracy into decisions that should be 
enginerring decisions alone. In many of ther other cases that you cite 
you also note that the engineers were prevented from doing what the 
engineers wanted to do and knew should be done. All this has nothing 
to do with the ability or even desire of people to do it.

Let's look at only two of your responses.

IF the high gain antenna jammed once it may indeed be going to jam 
many times as you say, and it may not. Typically it's the initial 
unfurling or pointing that goes wrong. A human can fix it once or many 
times as required. A human can also probably work out what's wrong and 
fix it so it doesn't keep jamming. A number of missions have been 
degraded because it can't be fixed the necessary once.

Your response to my "Mars rover stuck on (pathetically small by human 
standards) rock" and "receiver not working on channel 2" problems was 
effectively that the problem MIGHT be so complex that a human couldn't 
fix them. That's always possible, but in a realistic scenario, it's 
more likely that something relatively simple has gone wrong which can 
be fixed. Even a terminally complex problem may be able to be worked 
around by human ingenuity.

As none of this will not convince anyone who can't see the clear truth 
[ :-) ] already, I may as well stop now :-)



            RM





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