NY Times: Is Manned Spaceflight Obsolete?

[T.Neo]

At least as long as there are still wires in spacecraft.

There'll probably be exposed mechanics anyway. And I seriously doubt wires and pipes will disappear from engineering anytime soon...

Yes, but there are bound to be alloys and properties that are unique to non-terrestrial processes. micro-g crystals and readily available hard vacuum are the most often described.

Sure.

micro-g production processes I can understand, but not hard vacuum. We can make vacuum on Earth. And even if making such a hard vacuum is an expensive process, it'll be far less expensive then launching to and maintaining an orbital factory.

And even then, it limits spaceflight industry to LEO.

 

[Urwumpe]

Still, try to have micro-gravity for long times on Earth.

Microgravity allows building special metal alloys and crystals, that would be impossible to be created on Earth.

 

[Ghostrider]

There is an incentive to develop real space tech, to prevent bolide impacts. Such impacts if big enough could destroy civilisation. And even the small ones pose a risk- while they may be similar to perhaps a hurricane or earthquake in damage, they are predictable and perhaps preventable, which the latter disasters are not; something can be done to save lives and money.

This doesn't interest private industry at all. Should an extinction event-level bolide be speeding towards Earth the shareholders' reaction would be: "Well, the world is about to end. Let's fire all the R&D staff, technicians and workers and enjoy the dividends!"

 

[T.Neo]

This doesn't interest private industry at all.

Wouldn't matter, since they'd probably have their behinds kicked into gear by their respective government trying to maintain their regime...

 

[Eagle]

Obsolete implies that manned spaceflight was ever more practical than unmanned spaceflight. It completely missed the entire reason why people are trying to make manned spaceflight practical to begin with.