> So, if it were to be as cheap to go into space as to go to St. Louis
Obviously there is a breakpoint at which the cost differential would no longer matter, I agree.
It's just as obvious however, that this breakpoint won't be reached in the near future, or even the forseeable future.
It would require a radically new propulsion technology, which, and this is the sad truth, we don't have. The way we launch rockets today has remained pretty much the same for more than half a century: By burning chemicals in a tube.
As long as that doesn't change, I can pretty much guarantee that the cost differential between doing space-exploration using humans, and doing it with robotic probes, will not look good for good 'ol humans any time soon.
Why is it obvious? Starship, if it succeeds, could reduce launch costs per mass by two orders of magnitude over Falcon 9. For the cost of one SLS launch, Starship, if it meets its cost targets, could launch the mass of a nuclear supercarrier into low earth orbit. The cost to LEO would become similar to the cost of transport to the South Pole.
You will notice we are not using robots at the South Pole.
It could be that for the sort of work we want to do on the south pole a human in a jacket outperforms our current robots, but for the sort of work we want to do on the moon a robot, or our future robot, will outperform a human in a spacesuit.
Good thing the argument wasn't that this will necessarily happen, just that the case can be made that it could happen, and therefore human spacelight is not necessarily a bad idea.
Note that I'm not proposing abandoning robots in space. Your whataboutism assumes a symmetry that's not there.
> just that the case can be made that it could happen, and therefore human spacelight is not necessarily a bad idea
Nuclear war could happen, that doesn't make waging nuclear war a good idea.
> Your whataboutism
Please explain how advocating for useful allocation of resources within a reference topic, without ever leaving said topic, constitutes "whataboutism".
I want space exploration to happen. Right now, the most efficient, most promising, and most fruitful way, including in terms of developing future technology that can one day benefit human spaceflight, is to send robots.
Trying to send people to do a robots work in space exploration right now, is a waste of resources that will, long term, hinder our efforts of becoming a spacefaring species. It doesn't make sense for a tribe that just recently invented small canoues to try and send them across the ocean. It is possible to do so in theory, aka. "it could happen", that doesn't make it a good idea. And every tribe member who drowns during these efforts, is one person less who could father the future inventor of the Galleon.
Obviously there is a breakpoint at which the cost differential would no longer matter, I agree.
It's just as obvious however, that this breakpoint won't be reached in the near future, or even the forseeable future.
It would require a radically new propulsion technology, which, and this is the sad truth, we don't have. The way we launch rockets today has remained pretty much the same for more than half a century: By burning chemicals in a tube.
As long as that doesn't change, I can pretty much guarantee that the cost differential between doing space-exploration using humans, and doing it with robotic probes, will not look good for good 'ol humans any time soon.