Americans should be increasingly worried about losing the space race to the robots, NASA Administer Charles Bolden told Congress on Thursday.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden appears in front of the Senate. NASA photo by Paul Alers
Speaking in front of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Bolden reported that robotic space exploration is nearly seven to ten years ahead of America’s human space program. He said that recent budget constraints and the ending of the shuttle program will surely cause more setbacks unless Congress acts to curb the widening gap.
“If we continue to underfund NASA’s human space program, we will find ourselves slipping further and further behind the robots,” Bolden said. “Just this last week, another weather satellite was launched, bringing the number of currently active non-human missions to 92.”
Bolden told the committee that while they will send an astronaut or two up to the international space station now and then, the scheduled launches of the Mars Science Laboratory, a rover to look for evidence of life on Mars, and NuSTAR, an X-ray telescope which will study Black Holes, are proof that the robots are clearly winning the space race against humans.
According to Bolden, the once-heralded human space program has been overtaken by automated rovers exploring other worlds, highly complex satellites looking into deep space and robotic spacecraft investigating comets, asteroids and even the outer planets. The best humans can do is to grow beans in free-fall aboard the International Space Station and this is what has worried those who hope to maintain human dominance in space.
But it was this summer’s launch of Aquarius, a satellite designed to survey Earth’s oceans that brought calls for a congressional investigation into why the American people are lagging so far behind their electro-mechanical rivals.
An artist's conception of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover rubbing it in as it cruises along the surface of ANOTHER PLANET! Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Bolden was asked to speak before the committee on the status of our human space program and what he believed the robots’ intentions were in space. Florida’s Bill Nelson (D), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and Science, started the hearings by asking Bolden if he “wouldn’t put it past the robots to keep sending their automatons into the vast reaches of the solar system so as only to embarrass humankind.”
Bolden said he was reticent to say anything on the record because “there is no doubt that they [the robots] know I’m here speaking to you.” But when pressed, he said that while robots were clearly superior in space exploration, he felt fairly confident “that living breathing Americans could close the gap” but said that such endeavors needed to be fully funded.
“They are killing jobs for our astronauts,” said Senator Mark Rubio (R) representing Florida, a state that is clearly impacted by the cancellation of the Constellation human space program in February, 2010
Studies supporting Senator Rubio’s claim have shown that jobs for middle class space explorers are disappearing because technology is rendering their skills obsolete but Senator Mark Warner, Democrat from Virginia and member of the subcommittee, believes those conclusions are a smokescreen for the real motivations of the automatons.
During Bolden’s appearance before the committee, Warner charged that he believed that the space race had broader implications than just near term unemployment challenges. He warned that if Americans do not fulfill their destiny of populating the outer solar system within the next 100 years, “a robot will be there greeting us with ‘beep beep boop boop’, when we finally do arrive.”
“We cannot concede outer space and put our future survival at risk,” Warner said.
It is clear that automated spacecraft currently have a technological advantage over humanity, able to scour the far reaches of space in a resolution and electromagnetic spectrum orders of magnitude beyond human capability. Plus, their ability to sustain the dangers of the cold vacuum of space and deadly cosmic rays as well as complete tasks such as spectra-analysing comet dust a million times faster than any human could has its advantages.
But while supporters for human space exploration concede the deficiencies as compared to the robots, critics have charged that NASA is part of the problem. Regardless of how aggressive human space exploration becomes in order to catch up, NASA will always send automated machines alongside humans.
“Such is the nature of space travel,” Bolden said. “Until we no longer need computers and spaceships to get into space, I’m afraid we are stuck with them.”
Warner closed the hearing, lamenting that he “guess[ed] the best we can ever do is tie those dirty cyber-pioneers to our own astronauts so we can keep an eye on them.”
“The American people would not allow themselves to be beaten by a bunch of mechano-nauts,” he added.
JB Goodbody frequently has thoughts in his head that makes him smile. Were they made public at the moment they poofed into existence, without some form of structured outlet such as satire, these thoughts would cause significant distress among his friends, family and coworkers. This is why he is here. 
