Question: do you think that you could go to space at any time

Conor McGinn answered on 28 Feb 2016:

Hey,

I’m really not an expert on space. But I know its not a great place to send people. Maybe people will go to space in the future – but over the next 20-30 years I doubt people will be doing much real science. It will be mostly for publicity and space tourist.
For science, exploration and research missions robots are far better suited that people for space travel and exploration in my opinion. Let me give you some reasons:
* when we send people, we need to design shuttles to have oxygen for the astronauts to breathe. The shuttle needs food/water and also lots of space for the astronauts to move around. If the engineers didnt need to consider people, they could make the shuttles cheaper and perform better.
* when astronauts leave the atmosphere gravity stops acting on them. this causes their bones to weaken. People can only spend very short periods in zero-gravity before this becomes a problem. So its hard to see how astronauts will be able to leave earth for long periods of time.
* if a shuttle blows up and kills people, it is a big problem. With robots its not an issue. Therefore robots can be sent on more dangerous missions than humans with better chances of success and lower risk. For example there has already been a whole bunch of robots on Mars – you should definitely check this video out. Its an animation of how the most recent rover landed on the Martian surface – its so awesome!