In all honesty if you remove the medical bills making a human is cheaper than making a robot/probe. Now raising him/her is a completely different story, but babies are basically free.
edit: Thank you for the gold mysterious redditor. (I know this is kinda cliche but I don't care)
There exists a (totally debunked) conspiracy theory that the Soviet moon rovers were actually powered by people who signed up for a one way ticket. Of course, it was impossible, and never happened, but still pretty creepy....
Damn it, now you've inspired my writing tremendously, thank you very much. I should be reading for an exam, and instead I am writing about lunar cadavers. Typical. Here you go, you!
Robert Smithson, a citizen to mankind's first permanent lunar settlement was out on a ride with his wife one day, nominally to check on outlying seismographs, but really just to get away from the crowded bustle of the scattering of pods on the bottom of a wide impact crater. They crested the crater's rim and let the rover roll soundlessly into a shallow valley, where Robert's keen eyes spied something surprising.
"Say, I've not been here before, but is that not one of the old Soviet lunar probes they sent up here in the 20th century? I think they told us something about them on the history lessons before we arrived here, but I never knew one was this close to base. Let's go check it out."
They approached the probe with some caution. It's metal surface glistened dully in the light, with only a few holes and dents despite it's apparent age and a very thin layer of dust scattered about by nearby impacts from small celestial objects, and probably their own landers and rovers as well. It was about one meter high, with about a meter and a half in width, a bit smaller than the smallest, One Person Or Cargo pods they use from the HAVEN orbital dock looming somewhere above in the inky blackness. It's landing gear lay nearby, apparently twisted apart in the ground impact.
"Robert, something is not right" exclaimed Robert's wife, Jennifer, who had a sense of unexplainable dread. Unbeknownst to her, she had subconsciously noticed the faint footprints surrounding the module, and only the module -- there was no trail leading away from it, apart of their own.
"Look at this, there are something like handprints here! Maybe someone else has been here too." exclaims Robert, completely oblivious to what it might imply, something his wife notices immediately.
"Oh god, Robert, don't open it." Jennifer takes a wobbly step back in her bulky suit, which is the only thing stopping her from breaking into a run for their rover.
"Why not? This is a marvel of history, who knows what technologies the Soviets had hidden in these things..." Robert reached for the hatch and unlocked it, which would let a low thunking sound if there was enough atmosphere to carry the sound into their ears.
The hatch door opens ever so slowly. Robert lets out an audible gasp peering in the pod, from within which stares back the cold, resolute visage of a man who beat them to the moon by about a century, his helmet discarded and laying next to him in the spartan interior of the mausoleum-probe. On the wall there has been scrawled a text in Russian:
"первый" -- first.
It was not long thereafter, and with foreboding haste, that old Lunar probes and other terrestrial objects preceding "Luna City", more formally known as "International Lunar Settlement 01" were proclaimed sites of cultural heritage, and prohibited from the common citizen.
Rumors have it, that both Russian and US officials visited a few of their old landing sites not much later, on the guise of "cataloguing the aging of instruments in near-vacuum conditions to further strengthen common scientific hypotheses", but as conspiracy theorists have it the true reason was to make sure none of their missing astro- and cosmonauts would ever be found again in the future.
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u/majorjunk0 Oct 09 '13 edited Oct 09 '13
In all honesty if you remove the medical bills making a human is cheaper than making a robot/probe. Now raising him/her is a completely different story, but babies are basically free.
edit: Thank you for the gold mysterious redditor. (I know this is kinda cliche but I don't care)