I, Robot Lover.

• Author: Riggs, Mike
• Position: BOOKS - The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration

IF THE VAST potential of outer space excites you but the cost of exploring it does not, The End of Astronauts is for you. The book imagines a future where frugal humans can have their cosmic cake and eat it too--as long as they don't mind robot bakers.

Notwithstanding their provocative title, science writer Donald Goldsmith and astronomer Martin Rees are not pessimistic about or opposed to space exploration. They just think robots should do most of the work, because robots are less needy than people, gentler on extraterrestrial ecosystems, and cheaper.

In keeping with their preference for cold machines, the authors are unmoved by the tautological romanticism that says we should go to space in order to go to space. They wave off President John F. Kennedy's famous 1962 declaration that we "choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Goldsmith and Rees are likewise unconvinced by the argument that human beings are hard-wired for space exploration. And they wonder why, if a multiplanetary existence is humanity's "destiny," we must rush to accomplish that goal now.

Stern actuaries, Goldsmith and Rees bring up such irritating considerations as cost. They note that the Hubble Space Telescope, which has captured pictures of a supernova 650 light years from Earth, could have been replaced seven times for the same amount of money that America and Europe spent on five manned repair missions. Choosing manned missions over satellite launches, they say, "reminds us that our 'sunk costs' prejudice would prevent us from choosing the replacement option so long as the repair option, even if somewhat more expensive, remained viable." As they note elsewhere in the book, such cost comparisons seldom include a ledger entry for the dollar value of an astronaut's life.

The authors are equally unsparing in discussing the International Space Station, "probably the single most expensive artifact humans have ever made." Yes, they say, it has produced "scientific and technical results," but "its return on investment has been far less than the payoff from robotic missions." The space station has been orbiting the Earth for 30 years and is now old hat, which is why it captures headlines "only from a malfunctioning space toilet in 2019 or from stunts such as the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's rendition of a David Bowie song with guitar accompaniment in 2020."

If they have it in for the space...