With the 40th anniversary of America putting the first-ever man on the moon being celebrated throughout the media this past week, Stephen Colbert welcomed Bob Park (Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland and career-long critic of NASA and manned spaceflight) to The Colbert Report (@stephencolbert) to discuss why he believes manned missions to planets and the moon is hogwash.

What proceeds is a debate between Colbert and Park about whether NASA should send manned-missions to Mars or stick with the tried and true robots (Colbert loves humans, Parks prefers robots). More analysis after the video:

Though he doesn’t really get to fully articulate them here, Bob Park actually presents compelling arguments for why we shouldn’t have manned space flights in many of his writings. The debate is a heated one in the astrophysics community. The fact is, robots are more efficient and better equipped to do the job and will not allow emotion and poor judgment to cost them accuracy on the mission (and in the worst cast scenario of mistakes, cost them their lives). Still, we should continue the debate and hope for better solutions to the obvious logistical problems of locking a human being in a closet for years in the hopes they’ll be mentally “okay” enough to still do their job.

Below is a portion of Bob Park’s blog post from Friday, July 17th on why he thinks manned space flight is a waste of time and resources:

“MARS: ASTRONAUTS REMAIN STUCK IN 1969.

This is the 21st century. Telerobots have been invented. Our two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are merely robust extensions of our fragile human bodies. They don’t break for lunch or complain about the cold nights, and they live on sunshine. They do suffer the afflictions of age. Their teeth are worn down from scraping rocks, and one has an arthritic foot that he drags behind him. But their brains are still sharp since they are the brains of their PhD handlers. No need to bring them home when they are no longer able to explore, they will just be turned off. Bolden also said he wants to go to Mars. How incredibly old-fashioned! We are on Mars now. This is the 21st century. We have discovered robotics. More than that, we have telerobots. Spirit and Opportunity are merely robust extensions of our fragile human bodies. They don’t break for lunch, or complain about the cold nights, and they live on sunshine. We have been on Mars for more than five years, looking for evidence of water and life. A human on Mars would be locked in a spacesuit with only the sense of sight. Our rovers have better eyes than any human, and we don’t have to take their word it; everyone can see what they see. How wonderfully democratic! Moreover, they have the IQ of their PhD operators back on Earth.”

And there you have it. As you can tell from his post (and from his interview with Colbert), Park has a bit of a reputation for being feisty. He gave the best comeback line in recent memory to Stephen Colbert who suggested that as long as we have toilets in space, astronauts will be fine. Park’s response:

“Until you’ve seen a toilet back-up in zero gravity, you don’t know what ugly is!!”

Indeed.

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Twitter tag: Human Spaceflight