men in space

I have noted before that I am extremely excited about the New Horizons Pluto flyby that is coming in the upcoming weeks.  Something that I've taken note of is that, while some people express some interest when I mention it, most people they don't seem to have too much interest at all.  I sort of get it.  It's a bit of a nerdy topic, and if you're not naturally interested in planets and moons and such why would you care that we're going to see pictures of another dwarf planet.  To me, this just seems like such a big deal, but I do not decide what should or should not be a big deal.  After some contemplation, I think I understand where my interest departs from mainstream.  I'm more interested in the planets than the astronauts.

Every once in a while I will hear a line of thinking that states that the United States has slouched in the space race since the seventies when we sent men to the Moon.  The rationale goes that we haven't even put together a credible plan to put a man on Mars three or four decades since we stopped visiting the Moon, and we do not even have the equipment to get a man to the Moon today.  This must mean we're stagnating in space.  This line of thinking makes me think the real thing that interests a lot of people about space isn't space, but is rather astronauts.

Honestly, I don't know why so many people focus on sending men or women to the Moon or to Mars.  I don't understand why sending a person to another planet is much more exciting than sending a lander/rover to a nearby planet or a probe to a further-away planet, for those of us who are not astronauts.  In both scenarios I am not on the planet, but I am experiencing it through pictures. In both scenarios very similar scientific data is gathered about the planet.  Why should I care if a human set up that camera on the surface or it is attached to a rover controlled from the earth? All that does is increase the gravity of mistakes made on the mission.

The U.S. has not slouched in space in the last few decades.  In the time since the first man landed on the moon we have sent robotic equipment to gather pictures and measurements to all of the planets, at least one comet, and a few asteroids.  This year alone there are two missions that will send back details about dwarf planets (Ceres and Pluto).  Multiple Mars landers have already sent pictures from the planet, and performed tests to determine the compositions of areas of the ground.  A lander was also sent to one of Saturn's moons that returned images and measurements of a cool and alien world.  Complete maps have been created of all of the three other inner planets' surfaces.  Two spacecraft have been sent into the heliosphere (the area where the Sun's influence gives way to the galaxy's influence), and one more is on it's way.  This says nothing of what has been photographed and detected by telescopes in recent years.

This is a great time to be alive if you're a space nerd like me who is unconcerned with whether we get our Mars data from a rover or a human!  That would be me.