Men in Space?

NASA Hurtling out of the conflagration at 78 seconds are the Challenger's left wing, main engines (still burning residual propellant) and the forward fuselage (crew cabin).

When I am asked about the case for sending people into space, my answer is that as a scientist I'm against it, but as a human being I'm in favour. Practical activities in space - for communications, science, weather forecasting and navigation (including the marvellous GPS system) - are better (and far more cheaply) carried out by computers and robots. I am nonetheless an enthusiast for space exploration as a long-range adventure for (at least a few) humans . The next humans to walk on the Moon may be Chinese - only China seems to have the resources, the dirigiste government, and the willingness to undertake a risky Apollo-style programme. I hope Americans or Europeans will sometime venture to the Moon and beyond, but this will be in a very different style, and with different motives.

The kind of vibrant manned programme that I'd one day like to see will require changes in techniques and style. First, costs must come down. Present procedures are as extravagant as air travel would be if the plane had to be rebuilt after every flight; the Space Station is cumbersome and inflexible. Second, there must be an overt acceptance that the enterprise is dangerous. A role model for the future astronaut is not a NASA employee, nor even a military test pilot, but someone more in the mould of Steve Fossett, the wealthy 'serial adventurer' who, after several expensive failures, succeeded in his solo round-the-world balloon flight. He has (like our own Richard Branson) a craving for arduous challenges , and is now trying to beat altitude and endurance records for gliders.

NASA Touring the Johnson Space Center on a familiarization tour, from left to right, are backup Soyuz 4 Commander Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, a Russian cosmonaut; Soyuz 4 Space Flight Participant Mark Shuttleworth, a South African businessman who flew to the International Space Station.

In each venture, Fossett must knowingly accept a risk of at least 1 percent. Were he to come to a sad end, we would mourn a brave and resourceful man, but there would not be a national trauma. We would know that he willingly too the risks, and it was perhaps the way he wanted to go. Future expeditions to the Moon and beyond will only, I think be politically and financially feasible if they are spearheaded by individuals prepared to accept high risks. American financier Dennis Tito and the South African software magnate Mark Shuttleworth each spent 20 million dollars in return for a week in the International Space Station. A line-up of others was willing to follow them, even at that price. Such people won't, in the long run, restrict themselves to the role of passengers passively circling the Earth: they will yearn to go further.