From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Thu Sep 22 2005 - 16:31:36 UTC
>From Paul Glister's Web site Centauri Dreams:
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/2005.09.18_...l#1127332694978
Man or Machine on the Outer Planets?
New technologies, rarely foreseen by 'futurists,' often change everything.
Just as science fiction could not predict the PC, so visionaries like Arthur
C. Clarke could not predict the developments in electronics that would make
his idea of geostationary relay satellites practicable. Yes, Clarke dreamed
up the idea of such satellites, but he was talking about manned space
stations handling the abundant telecommunications traffic that was to come.
In a mere 15 years, it would become possible for radio technology to bring
Clarke's ideas to fruition, just as Earth observation, astronomy and
military reconaissance would be performed by unmanned satellites.
Now we speculate about proposed manned expeditions to Mars, but is the
future human or robotic as we push into the outer Solar System? Bob
Parkinson tackles the subject in an essay in the March/April issue of the
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. Consider the march of
machinery in the years since the first manned spacecraft. People are still
in low Earth orbit (other than the still unduplicated Moon landings), but
every planet except Pluto has been studied by robotic probes, and the New
Horizons mission will leave for Pluto as early as this January.
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