What are the advantages and disadvantages of sending astronauts to space?

The main advantage of manned exploration is that you have human intelligence on the spot to deal with the unexpected, whether that's equipment failure or a scientific find. A glitch like an antenna that won't deploy might be a minor repair task rather than a mission-crippling failure. Also, a person on the spot can observe and evaluate much more efficiently than the people back at Mission Control can, and can adapt to new conditions. It also eliminates the time-lag problem. Remote-controlled vehicles like the Mars rovers have to move slowly and deliberately because their controllers on Earth see what happens several minutes after it does. Compare that to the Apollo lunar rovers leaving a roostertail of dust as they rolled along.

There's also the increased sense of achievement. We have a natural desire to explore, and sending robots to do it for us is emotionally less satisfying. The first humans on Mars will catch the attention of the world, while by that time another robot rover will hardly be noticed.

The disadvantages are that it's dangerous and a lot more expensive. You need to provide life support and a ride home, while all the robot needs is a little electric power. Mission failure means that people die, which is apt to shut down the program for a long time - look what happened with the Space Shuttle. When they lose a Mars probe, they just try to avoid that problem on the next mission.

Certainly the best advantage is learning. If we're going to survive as a species, we *need* to send people into space. Learning how to survive on minimal supplies, with limited amounts of energy has direct application to the people here on Earth - we're going to NEED to know how to do those things, especially with a population approaching 6.5 billion.

Disadvantages - it's expensive. It's dangerous. It's hard on a person's life to leave the home they've known all their lives for months at a time on a space station.

No, the ISS is very important indeed. Which is why the five largest space agencies in the world are funding and participating in this project. We ARE trying to colonise the sea bed as well, there are many experiments going on worldwide in this field. If we all shared your pessimism we'd still be living in mud huts, and we'd never have left Africa, let alone Europe.

Advantages:

1. Collect data about other planets

2. Discover new things

3. Discovery of new things=advancement in our technology

4. Finding a planet that has the possibility of human habitation

5. Getting better aquainted with our solar system and its properties

6. Finding proof of living beings on other planets

Disadvantages:

1. Death, explosion of space shuttle, etc.

2. Possible Contamination of other planets with our research

3. Pollution

Advantages would be adding a personal touch to the knowledge and other elements, as well as more public support for a manned mission than a simple probe or other spacecraft.

However, realistically, a manned mission would not be that much more effective for gathering data and information, and would be much more expensive, dangerous, and difficult.

The only disadvantages to manned missions are the additional expense.

Space exploration is the only worthwhile thing this country spends money on since the 1940's.

You can try new manufacturing processes. With out gravity affecting the results, they have been able to make new metal alloys (light and heavy metals mix easier) and grow super crystals faster that can have many uses from computers to lasers. Also, if you need a total vacuum, its only a couple of inches away.

The human race to survive has to reach and colonies new worlds, if we don't send humans into space we risk dying out as we consume and exhaust the resources the Earth provides.

The advantages,they can collect more data,and pick and choose more accurately.

The disadvantages,it's is very dangerous and people get killed.

Adavntage : They have the best time flying around without no gravity !!!!

Disadvantage: If there fuel runs out =)