"The International Space Station is yesterday's technology and its 
stated scientific objectives are yesterday's science," physicist Robert 
Park told a congressional panel in 1997.

Park, a spokesman for the American Physical Society and a professor at 
the University of Maryland, has been a persistent critic of the station, 
but in his remarks to Congress he set out arguments others in the 
scientific community have echoed. Noting that the space station was 
first envisioned in 1984, he said technology had developed exponentially 
since then.

"In particular, telerobotics allows us to couple the creativity of the 
human brain to machines that function unimpaired in environments humans 
cannot endure," he said. "We continue to design better robots - humans, 
by contrast, have not changed appreciably in 35,000 years. There no 
longer seems to be any need to expose humans, willing or not, to space 
environment."