James Cameron on Earth's Deepest Spot: Desolate, Lunar-Like

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2. Was Cameron's Deep Dive as Useless as Manned Space Flight?

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27671/?p1=blogs


Does Enceladus harbor life? Maybe we'd know by now if we weren't so busy sending meat sacks into the harsh vacuum of space.

Ninety-nine percent of what we know about the solar system came to us from unmanned probes. There can be no argument about comparative value of sending humans to other worlds, at least from a scientific perspective, because our relatively cheap, versatile, expendable robot spawn will win every time.

Indeed, had we spent the money we wasted on the shuttle program on unmanned probes, we would probably know already, for example, whether or not there is life in the watery oceans of Enceladus. Watching astronauts eat space food while weightless is great and all, but wouldn't you rather know whether or not we're alone in this universe?

It's worth asking whether the same logic applies to filmmaker James Cameron's just-completed dive to the deepest place on the planet -- the Challenger Deep. During the expedition, the hydraulic pump on the submarine's sample gathering arm failed, which means Cameron failed to bring back anything of scientific value.

In addition, by Cameron's own account, he saw nothing while on the bottom of the Challenger Deep