Why might a planetary recon craft need to be manned?

The story situation is that a generation ship is headed to another solar system where there are several planets in the star's habitable zone and once the ship arrives, it will approach these planets one by one and examine them to see whether they're suitable for colonization.

I'm assuming such a ship would have sophisticated antennae and sensory equipment to examine the planet's atmosphere and topography in great detail. So if that's the case and the people of the ship find an intriguing planet and want to examine it more closely before they start the colonization process, is there any reason why they might want to send a manned recon craft rather than an automated one?

I ask because my story idea requires four people to man a recon craft much like they do with the Ranger craft in the movie Interstellar, and I know that that movie had people wondering why they didn't just send unmanned recon craft with robots instead of risking people's lives. Fair question.

I think the reason given in the movie is that humans' fear of death enables them to improvise more than any robot could. I'm not sure, though, that that's a satisfactory answer. So again, given the story situation I outline above, are there any reasons why a generation ship might want to send a manned recon craft to a planet instead of an unmanned one?

posted almost 8 years ago

Arbutus‭

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