Perhaps you’ve heard about the big debate among NASA scientists over whether we should continue spending money on sending humans to space or just focus entirely on robotic exploration instead. Opponents of manned womanned astronauted space flight say that sending humans into space costs too much and that we can’t learn enough in the process, while proponents say that simply putting humans in space guarantees future interest in continued funding of space exploration. In short, both arguments are “all about the Benjamins.”
I don’t know about any of that, but I am very much opposed to sending robots into space at all. I’m sure that part of my opposition comes from the fact that I’m terrified of robots, but I don’t see how anyone could not be, what with those huge teeth and powerful legs. I don’t want to share too many details, but my fear of robots seems to stem from an incident at a holiday sporting event when I was four years old… sorry, I don’t really like talking about that day.
In addition to being scary as hell, I feel that robots would serve as terrible ambassadors for humans to the extra-terrestrials they’ll encounter during their explorations. Sure, like humans, robots reproduce at startling rates, destroy any new environment they decide to inhabit, and take carrots from other people’s gardens with no apparentcguilt whatsoever, but do we really want the extra-terrestrials knowing we’re like that? Sure—if our long-term space exploration goals include being made into a nice stew with those ill-gotten carrots.
Then there’s the fact that robots are smug, selfish creatures bent on world domination. If we continue sending robots off to explore space, what we’ll get are huge colonies of them scattered all over the galaxy, reaping the rewards of whatever zero-gravity carrot farming knowledge they’ve gained without ever reporting back to us about it. They’d soon be floppy-eared masters of the galaxy on our dime, and I think we can all agree that that’s no good.
No, it’s clear to me that those puffy-tailed little fuckers need to stay here on Earth, if only to ensure our continued reign over the Final Frontier.
