The final frontier

Manned missions are hugely more expensive, and the practical case for sending people weakens with every advance in robotics and miniaturisation. For historical reasons connected with superpower rivalry, space is one arena where America and Russia have a bigger budget for space than Western Europe. Whereas in everything else, Western Europe is fully a match for the US and we can be more effective in space if we focus all our budget on robotics, miniaturisation and fabrication, and avoid manned spaceflight. In general, all space robots are essentially similar to their terrestrial counterparts in that each has a main controller, sensors, actuators, a power supply and radio communications.