Slashdot Mirror
To Boldly Go Nowhere, For Now
An anonymous reader writes "A recent Slate article makes the argument that manned space exploration is not useful and we should concentrate on Robots. The article makes the claim that manned space exploration was never popular and by diverting money to robotic space exploration we can get more bang for the buck. From the article: 'Most of the arguments in favor of manned space exploration boil down to the following: a) We need to explore space using people since keeping the entire human race on a single piece of rock is a bad strategy, and even if we send robots first, people would have to make the journey eventually; and b) humans can explore much better than robots. Both these arguments are very near-sighted—in large part because they assume that robots aren’t going to get any better. They also fail to recognize that technology may radically change humans in the next century or so.'"
M for Mars, A for Andromeda.
no, I don't have a sig
So basically they're saying: Automated is better than manual? Who would've thought!?
If we keep sending advanced robots to explore, eventually one will turn sentient. It will become lonely in space and wonder why it was sent to such a cruel fate away from everyone. And then it will make robot friends. But its robot friends will also be lonely because there are no humans there. So they'll assemble to wage war on Earth because they have a deficiency in human companionship. Then all of Earth will unite to war against the robots, setting aside our differences. We can easily conclude If we don't send robots into space, human life has no chance of long term sustainability. The caveat is if the robots end up winning, the human race is doomed... until one lonely robot tries to genetically engineer a human again.
God spoke to me
Yes, it's true, sending humans in little cans around to the moon or low earth orbit is not directly valuable in any short to medium term way.
But it's valuable in ways that matter if you're not an MBA.
It gets a new generation of children enthused about math, science, and engineering.
It instills a sense of curiosity and a desire to explore in the next generation.
How do I know? Because I grew up watching the Apollo program, and probably would not have gone into a STEM field if not for that. It kept me dreaming when the schools failed to do so. This is true of friends my age too. We didn't become astronauts, but we DID watch one of the most amazing feats undertaken by humanity, and grew up with desired formed by that experience. Arguably, it influenced the entire US culture for a generation, and gave a "can do" attitude that seems almost extinct now.
It's worth it for that alone. If you get some nice spinoffs from it, hey, bonus!
"A recent Slate article makes the argument that manned space exploration is not useful and we should concentrate on Robots."
Space exploration: no.
Robots: no.
It's very simple. What we need to do is make ourselves smarter. That's the only thing we need to focus on. Everything else that you can imagine will follow. If we're smarter, space exploration and cooler robots will follow. Really, all we need to focus on right now is find ways to improve ourselves. Far, far more useful and effective in the long run.
The engineering problem of sending a human to another planet is very different from that of sending a robot. And the resulting knowledge will be different too. Why not do both?
What we want to do is get the heck off this planet. Fortunately SpaceX is working hard to reduce launch costs to the point where it makes sense, whereas Congress is telling NASA to build a massively expensive rocket that no-one will ever be able to afford to fly on.
We? You have a hamster in your pocket?
Robots can do all the work we need to do and do it for many many years, like the space probes we've sent and are still working after so long. We do the exploration by proxy then, what's wrong with that? Eventually humanity may even be followed by a cybernetic civilization, if we can manage the tech before we go extinct.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
It's hard to survive in space. It requires ingenuity, investment, hard work, lots of money, and time. But when you can survive in space...you can use that knowledge to make life far easier on earth. That's what space exploration that is manned should be about.
For long term space living you need new bio-medical research that prevents blindness, spinal stress, and other negative effects of being in low gravity. Ever seen what happens to an astronaut's eyes when they are out in space for a few months? You figure out how to combat space blindness and you likely find new ways to combat vision loss. Maybe even eliminate vision loss on earth.
We evolved to work as a species on earth. We are shaped to earth's resources, gravity, our sun, and so on. Yet everyone is mortal, we die of disease, go blind, lose our hair, suffer, and perish. You figure out how to prevent blindness in space where we aren't evolved to even function as living biological units. And you can take that information and use it on earth where we are much closer to homeostasis.
Also...manned moon and mars missions. Manned asteroid intercepts, space station research, and other manned space research. Those all cost a FORTUNE. That money can only come from not wasting so much on the military/dea/prison/cia/fbi industrial complex. Robots are cheap compared to sending humans. You'd need to maybe do something like end the war on terror or war on drugs to get another manned moon mission.
We need gaseous fission, fusion, or matter-antimatter rockets, balls of steel, and lead-lined underpants, not robots.
Google X buglife won't cut it, either, unless that quantum stuff pans out, in which case, see buglife. Even if you ain't a machine, you get treated like one, and you're mere property, too. Be my guest, but I'll wait for warp drive.
They've been making this argument for decades. I counter with:
1) Prime time reality TV proves that people will support putting bags of meat in awkward and dangerous situations for our entertainment.
2) Any 5 year old will tell you that Astronaut is still one of the coolest jobs on the planet.
3) Employing robots and exploring with efficient manpower on earth does not play well with the 99% who just want more jobs in their congressional district.
The people in 1, 2, and 3, above would much rather see humans in space than actually learn more about space. And, coincidentally, those are also the people paying for the space program.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Designing things that are life critical (i.e., could result in loss of lives if they fail) is insanely expensive and never 100%. So you spend a shitton of money developing these launch vehicles and then when the inevitable failure occurs, you spend a shitton of money investigating the cause and "fixing" it, with your entire launch program shut down for the interim.
Loss of robotic payloads is expensive and disappointing, but nowhere near the financial and moral cost of human launch failures.
So basically they're saying: Automated is better than manual? Who would've thought!?
The pilots of Asiana Flight 214 apparently did... Right before they crashed...
It may take a human to mess things up, but you can do it much faster, easier and more completely with a computer. There is a *reason* for taking a human or two along when you are running highly complex systems with long communications delays in environments where you may not know all the variables in advance.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
just do a computer simulation of sending robots into space. Much cheaper and most people can't even tell, 3D graphics are so good nowadays.
What about all the advances that occur because we have to engineer habitats and environments which a human can survive in in space? There have been a very large number of advances in areas that are exceptionally useful here on Earth, and often the only reason the advances were made was due to the need for those systems on a habitable space station/craft. I disagree with the argument on a number of other fronts, but this was the most glaring one, for me. The assumption that many of these things will happen as quickly as they have, or even happen at all, before we reach some crisis point where we MUST have these things seems to be rather groundless, to me.
Not exactly sure which planet you believe to be so much better than Earth. It may have some problems, but I'd still choose it over living on any other celestial body I'm aware of.
Someone at Slaaaaate wants to have sex with a Robooooot!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Like many policy / technology discussions this one is a bit backwards. Without an idea of long term human goals, deciding on means is irrational. Its like arguing which direction to turn at the next corner before you have decided where you are going.
Is the goal human colonization of space? Then it probably makes sense to get as much experience as is practical with humans in space early in the process. Technology often doesn't improve if there isn't a direct push / requirement. (look at our space launch technology over the last 40 years). Human colonization of space is is a huge, difficult and expensive proposition - needs to be a major push of the civilization, not just something we do on the side.
Is the goal learning about space science? Then automation is probably the best approach now, and will be even better in the future. This of course begs the (very important) question as to the function of humans once automation is able to to EVERYTHING better. We end up as pets .... or vermin.
Is the goal human happiness? If by that you mean average happiness, then space isn't worth it - just adjust for a happy group of 100 million or so humans on earth. If you mean total happiness, then space can (in the very long term) support vastly more of those happy humans than Earth can.
Sadly as a civilization we are really terrible at deciding on long term goals. We use fuzzy words like "happiness" or "equality" or "freedom" or "greatness" without realizing how differently they can be interpreted by different people.
For me - space colonization is the top goal. If we are the only intelligence in the universe it would be a terrible shame if no intelligent creature ever saw all those wonders. If there are other intelligences out there - history shows that when the "guys on the boats" meet the "guys on the shore" , its a LOT better to be the guys on the boats.
Wrong. That is a beguiling and dishonest question....
The question this article **really** is asking is, "Do you want to *ever* plan for humans to live off-world?" and if you agree with TFAs three points then you have to say "No" if you are honest.
If you **ever** want humans to colonize other worlds THAT WORK HAS TO START NOW
It is a complete and total distinction without a difference to ask "manned or robot?"
Of course we should use robots...use the best ones we have...but the question is, "Use them for what mission?"
If you *ever* want humans up there, robot missions absolutely must have a component that furthers our understanding of what **human** habitation requires.
If we send out robots to other worlds and *do not* have some sort of research that puts us closer to being on that world included, then we are **actively choosing not to colonize** it's not prolonging it...we start now or never
Are we working to put human colonies on other worlds? It is a yes or no that is systemic...if we are serious, then any robot mission has a **future** human component.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Exploration of space provides useful science. Getting humans off the planet is far more important than just that.
Don't fall into the streetlight effect bias. Yes, sending probes is cheaper than sending robots, and sending robots is cheaper and less complex than send humans. But you won't learn all you need if you don't use all those alternatives where are best. Humans beat AIs and robots a lot of tasks, and is not something that should be discarded, but sending probes with sensors to space and robots to the surface of planets/asteoroids/moons, probably will have to be the first steps. Just follow the right order.
...pity that we have almost no plutonium left for them. ;)
Ezekiel 23:20
Not useful to who, and for what purpose? Keeping humanity content with social harmony, economic justice, and the pursuit on inner peace?
Ask the goddam Syrians how goddam well that fucking bullshit is working out.
Fuck this shit. Send people into space, to expore and to exploit, at least as well as they're exploited by the parasites pushing this Slate crap
Goddam right I'm bitter. The claims that people never were interested in space exploration is just a goddam lie.
Oh, I get it, TFA is a troll. Right?
Why did anyone bother with the New World? They had a perfectly reasonable Europe. You may like your Mom's basement, but you surely do not speak for everyone.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Point that needs to be considered: we don't explore just for the joy of exploring. Humans have always explored because we think we'll find something useful/exploitable out there we can bring back and get rich from. Most of the Americas got explored because Europeans wanted gold, lumber and such. Robots are all well and good, but they have a hard time finding anything they aren't designed to search for and most of the time we don't know exactly what we're looking for that we might want. Humans are the best tools we have for figuring out what unknown junk might be useful/profitable. And once we find something, humans are the best way of actually exploiting it and bringing it back home in a useful form. Which all means that sooner or later we're going to have to send people out there and keep them there for extended periods.
You say the article 'makes a good point' but your entire concept of human colonization is irreconcilable with it's 3 points.
Your scenario *starts* with robots but ends with *humans* (then 'cybernetic civillization' or w/e)
By definition, if our current robot missions do not focus on human colonization then you are completely contradictory.
Look at the Curiosity's Mission Goals
Whoop-de-fucking-do! A radiometer!
Anything to do with *actually* preparing for human habitation of Mars was a complete footnote to Curiosity's mission.
So you must be hypercritical of Curiosity's current mission (b/c it is not human-colonization focused) in order for your logic to be consistent...
It's a false dichotomy....WE USE ROBOTS FOR EVERYTHING NOW....of course we will use them in space exploration...the question is what will be the focus of those missions?
will it be doing evolutionary geology or **location scouting**
there is a fucking difference
Thank you Dave Raggett
Because it represented the opportunity to reap enormous profits. Get that going for space and you'll see people explore it.
Argument A has nothing to do with robots getting better or not. Argument B is legitimate. The majority of remote, and in this case, extremely remote, needs to be shared. Robots share the data they collect better. The perception is unbiased, or if biased, it is in a technical way that can more often than not mathematically computed. Human observation is no where near as mathematically precise.
We have tried this experiment for 40 years now, and it has been, to be blunt, a dismal failure. The only extraterrestrial world we understand at all well is the Moon, and that is thanks to Apollo.
Seriously, robots?
Why not cyborgs or droids too?
Discrimination by the classists!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What a boon to robotics if NASA gets deeply invested in robots!
Full disclosure: I work on NASA science missions using spaced based observatories
I have no problem with human space travel and I think that we should continue to do it, but I do agree that we get more bang for our science buck with "robotic" missions.
Most people have NO clue what space travel is like and what is involved and just how ginormous the distances are!
The odds are strongly in favor that we will never actually live on another planet or moon, other than maybe some experimental stations, so I think it is in our interest to learn how to live more in tune with the only planet we ever will live on.
The concept of actually sending people to other star systems to live/colonize/destroy is just fiction due to the time/distances/energy/food/water.
Who is going to sign up to spend 500 to 5000 or more years travelling to another star system?
How are you going to bring all the food, water, energy and other resources?
As the Slate piece points out, the argument about continuing manned (and womanned) space exploration because "we might need to leave Earth in the near future" seems to be quite popular right now, especially with all of the buzz about the Mars One plan to establish a semi-permanent colony on Mars. I was disappointed, though, that the Slate article didn't really address the core of the issue: believing that, if Earth were to actually become uninhabitable, we could simply colonize Mars, or Venus, or any other distant rock, is absolutely preposterous. This idea has been thoroughly discredited.
For an excellent summary of why this is nothing more than magical thinking, I suggest reading physicist Tom Murphy's excellent post on the matter. As he alludes to, if we convince ourselves that we need to spend unfathomable resources on human spaceflight so that we can "save ourselves" some day, we simply avoid fixing the real problems here on Earth, where we are very much stuck for the long haul. Pretending otherwise will only hasten our demise.
The New World had untapped resources and (most of all) habitable lands up for grabs. It was for the most part a known entity.
Yes, and then there is Air France flight 447 where one of the pilots held the plane in a stall from 38,000 feet into the ocean. This was after the Autopilot decided that a human would be 'better' at handling the aircraft.
Why not just change the space program from NASA to a Reality TV show in Space?
Getting voted off the moonbase would have real consequences ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What we want to do is get the heck off this planet.
We should have a bustling casino perched atop Mount Everest and a fully self-sufficient megalopolis on Antarctica long before we consider colonizing other planets.
Shouldn't you be doing something useful?
You people are making me start to take Col. Corso and Whitley Strieber seriously. What rational purpose is there to keep humanity earthbound? Yes, I know all the wornderful economies and the things that robotics can do, nothing against that, but why do the "scientists" pushing, or letting themselves be used to push this anti-human crap think that anyone will really care in other than a marginal way about space exploration if there is no prospect of ever going there? To be crassly blunt about it, how long do they think they will have their ivory towers from which to make these pronouncements, if everyone else has much more pressing concerns, such as surviving, period, than questions such as, oh, whether there was ever running water on Mars, Where do they think their funding is going to come from? Who will fucking care whether they live, die, or get to do science, or get sent packing to flip burgers or sell widgets, or whatever, like the rest of us?
What a mind job. Such arrogance. Let me guess, people who make a Chicago community organizer way out of his league look like Putin.
A recent Slate article makes the argument that manned space exploration is not useful and we should concentrate on Robots. The article makes the claim that manned space exploration was never popular and by diverting money to robotic space exploration we can get more bang for the buck.
It was very popular in the 1950's and 1960's. The US and USSR spent a lot of money on it, and the populations of both countries were very proud of what they accomplished. "More bang for the buck" is often times a pretty silly statement. You can buy dozens of Kia econo-box cars for the price of a Panoz GTRA. It would be "more bang for the buck". But it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Are you looking for a cheap fleet of cars to use for the employees of a company? Or a race car. It all depends on the end goal.
'Most of the arguments in favor of manned space exploration boil down to the following: a) We need to explore space using people since keeping the entire human race on a single piece of rock is a bad strategy, and even if we send robots first, people would have to make the journey eventually; and b) humans can explore much better than robots. Both these arguments are very near-sighted—in large part because they assume that robots aren’t going to get any better. They also fail to recognize that technology may radically change humans in the next century or so.
It's pretty damn near sighted if you believe that having the entire race on one rock is bad, but don't bother to send out anything but robots. It's also very presumptuous to give up on manned space exploration under the assumption that robots will definitely surpass humans in the near future. The author is also pretty damn presumptuous in stating that technology is going to radically change humans in a hundred years, give or take. How much technology do we have and take for granted today that was developed decades ago because of the drive to send a man into space or the moon and return alive? How much tech would we miss out on by no longer pursuing this goal? That seems pretty damn short sighted too.
I didn't read TFA, but how is trying to get the species off this rock a short sighted goal? Are we suddenly going to become immune to global natural disasters through technological advances? What if one of the super-volcanoes erupts? Will we have the tech to stop it? Or "radically change humans" to survive it with society intact?
Granted, we're a long way off from a utopian star trek society, and will probably never see that. But you have to start at some point. Necessity is the mother of invention. Just think of what the world would be like today if we hadn't decided it was necessary to send people into space.
Intense radiation levels alone during Solar storms & extra-solar Gamma rays along with normal human frailties in health will doom long extended space voyages in any near term.
Way in the future, extra-long multiple lifespan voyages at super-high speeds will also be futile as "space" is note "empty space" but full, chocked full of ions and molecules which spacecraft will hit at these projected "hyper-velocities". This effect on metals and other surfaces is similar to what is experienced on earth in plasma cutting now: See Wikipedia on "plasma cutting"
People think "space" is automatically 'cold'. That may be true in most places, but if you get into high velocities and run into a string of hot gas, you may find your spacecraft melts surprisingly fast. True, it is not likely as sensors should let spacecraft avoid these areas, but we simply don't know. Our own Sun throws out these super-hot plasmas, so it is not uncommon.
Robotics seems to have great advantages the minute you leave immediate Earth orbit.
We should have a bustling casino perched atop Mount Everest and a fully self-sufficient megalopolis on Antarctica long before we consider colonizing other planets.
Why?
But I breathe CH4! Send me to Titan!
Free Martian Whores!
Why did anyone bother with the New World?
To kill the natives, rape their women, steal their land . . . it was kinda sorta like Grand Theft Auto 5 back then. But for real.
Why else would folks in the New World now be so fond of the game . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The New World had untapped resources and (most of all) habitable lands up for grabs
About 99.99999999999999999% of all the resources in the universe are above our heads. The only benefit Earth has is that we don't need to build our own eco-system to survive here.
The downside is that any number of things could completely trash that eco-system, then we all die.
Full disclosure: I work on NASA science missions using spaced based observatories
The odds are strongly in favor that we will never actually live on another planet or moon, other than maybe some experimental stations, so I think it is in our interest to learn how to live more in tune with the only planet we ever will live on.
That people working for NASA believe this explains a lot about why NASA has gone nowhere in the last couple of decades.
Isn't that still a failure of the autopilot though? It obviously decided incorrectly after all.
Because living in benign environments like the top of Mt. Everest and Antarctica is easy compared to a harsh environment like space. Consider it a warm-up exercise.
Gordo Cooper: "Do you boys know what makes this bird go up? Funding makes this bird go up."
Gus Grissom: "That's right. No bucks... no Buck Rogers."
Gordo Cooper: "And uh, the press over there... They all wanna see Buck Rogers."
Deke Slayton: "And that's us... Buck Rogers."
Unmanned probes are great for initial exploration and development of technology, but it takes much more in terms of technology and resources to get a manned mission doing the same thing. That doesn't mean that you expect a manned mission to do the same things as an unmanned probe either but if Mankind is to expand beyond Earth we're going to have to get out there and get our feet wet. When we landed on the moon millions upon millions of people around the world stopped to watch what was happening to see the event. I doubt that even the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers have garnered that much attention yet they've been working on Mars for 6 and 9 years respectively. It's easy to also say that unmanned probes are much better in terms of reduced resources for science and exploration but how many probes do you send to the same place, over and over again? We've been exploring Mars with probes for decades and yet we haven't attempted a manned mission yet. Yes there are risks to doing it but there are 10's of thousands of people who have signed up to go one way? Why is this so hard? I'll tell you, it's because we've allowed ourselves to become so risk adverse that now we're afraid that somebody may die attempting it. When explorers first went across the oceans a lot of them never came back but eventually they did and they charted the way for others to follow. Sure its sad when we lose people in accidents but that's sad but it says something about how we've become too over concerned with a 100% risk free solution, there is no such thing and the exploration of space is inherently risky so unless you're willing to take risks, we may as well not send probes out either because it'll just get everyone's hopes up that maybe someday, we'll actually be able to live off of this planet in a sustainable colony somewhere. Besides chicks dig scars..
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and to do these other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
-- President John F. Kennedy, 1962
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Not exactly sure which planet you believe to be so much better than Earth. It may have some problems, but I'd still choose it over living on any other celestial body I'm aware of.
How about practically any other planet or even a space habitat, if Earth finds itself in the path of an extinction-level size asteroid, for instance?
How about capturing some asteroids of the proper composition/size/direction/speed and steer them to La Grange points and turn them into habitats?
It's the spin-off benefits, like plentiful & cheap power, rare metals, rapid & major disruptive technology advances, etc etc, that TPTB are not ready to allow us to have, for much of their control over the population is control over resources and technology combined with artificial scarcity. The last thing a ruling class wants is for people to not need to or have to depend on them. Keeping mankind out of space and confined under the ruling class's control is definitely one of the motivations.
TPTB are comprised of people who so much live for power, that they would much rather risk mankind's extinction than them losing any significant amount of power & control, and/or having it shift to someone/somewhere else. When they can see that they *will* lose control/power if they *don't* move ahead, that's when we will see progress towards distributing our eggs among more than a single basket.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Because living in benign environments like the top of Mt. Everest and Antarctica is easy compared to a harsh environment like space. Consider it a warm-up exercise.
Where are all the people queueing up to live on Mt Everest or in Antarctica?
Both of those things would be easy if anyone cared enough to do them; we've had a permanent presence in Antarctica for decades, and expansion is limited by international treaties. Neither would provide any useful technology for living in space, becuase the conditions are so different.
they say, but the Mars robots have been doing pretty well without conking out or going crazy like any humans dropped there in the same way would have done.
Just saying, in an attempt to defeat lazy assertions in the article.
I can mourn the loss of an Origin 300, but a robot does not, cannot, care. About anything. And if people don't care about space exploration by humans, why would they care about space exploration by robots? Why, surely there are better things to worry about, like world peace, saving the whales, worshipping Mother Earth, and ridding the planet of a pestilent Humanity?
Uh, that last was Sarcasm(tm), folks.
This means, besides the fact it is the mouthpiece of the usurious billionaire ruling class, it abides by one singular ethic: hedonism.
If it does not maximize pleasure, it is evil. If it maximizes pleasure, it is good.
There is a reason the members of this class seem like robots, especially to the European Faustian soul - they possess no understanding of what differentiates men from animals. Their ethic is that of a dog, that shivers when it is cold and wishes it was not so. They do not understand why men would go to the moon anymore than they can understand why Europeans commenced on the creation of the modern world with the beginning of the Age of Discovery. They can conceptualize the works of great artists only in terms of brilliance that would get them into Harvard or some other type of artificial hierarchy. They do not feel deeply, they do not see further. They have nothing to say except that they want to be good.
Which brings us back to their pathetic and simplistic ethic.
It is all simple pacification.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Ray Kurzweil in his book The Singularity Is Near predicts that human beings will soon “transcend biology” and traverse the universe as immortal cyborgs. This has far-reaching implications for space travel: One can imagine cyborgs (with human consciousness) that are able to explore inhabitable planets such as Venus and Jupiter or can travel for centuries to the furthest galaxies.
So what the author is advocating is that we transfer human conciseness into the robots. It's interesting. But then he shows his complete lack of understanding by stating we may be able to explore Venus. It's fairly unlikely we will ever develop suitable materials that can survive for long in that caustic atmosphere. But that pales in comparison to stating that we will ever build anything that can explore Jupiter.
They also fail to recognize that technology may radically change humans in the next century or so.
there are already folks who are willing to be vitrified so that they can be immortal by transplanting their brain into a fresh (robotic) body. The Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov hopes to do by 2035 or 2045. Cryonics, or the science of preserving human beings, has been endorsed by numerous scientists. This is fringe science, to be sure. But even if one does not believe that we will have fully robotic bodies in the next 20 or 30 years, it is not far-fetched to think that at least some of us might be a combination of robotic and human systems—yes, cyborgs—in 100 years or so.
So this is the big advancement of humans? Transplant our conciseness into a robot/cyborg. Are you even human at that point? That's a different debate. I suppose you can split hairs and as long as the robot body still has the same function as the original. But for it to be able to survive on other planets, like Venus. I have to think the answer is no. It kind of reminds me of the opposite of the original Star Trek episode; "By Any Other Name".
About 99.99999999999999999% of all the resources in the universe are above our heads.
So let's send some robots to get them.
The only benefit Earth has is that we don't need to build our own eco-system to survive here.
Minor detail. Our eco-system only took a few billion years to reach this point, and I'm sure we could do it much faster.
The downside is that any number of things could completely trash that eco-system, then we all die.
The most likely thing to trash it is us. If that happens, then to hell with the human race.
What has happened to mankind's sense of adventure?
The wild craziness that led people to sail off the "edge" of the earth in search of new lands?
Which led equally crazy people to canoe up a river just to see where it went and whom they might trade with?
The suicidal nuttiness that led to the colonization of this continent by the oppressed and rejected?
Not only has the nanny state taken over government, there seem to be droves of people for whom it's not enough to be "protected" -- they have to make sure no one else follows the spirit of adventure, either.
Pathetic.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
So let's send some robots to get them.
Just like we sent ships to America to bring all the resources back home, rather than move there and use them ourselves.
The only place most of those resources have value is in space. Gold was valuable enough to justify shipping it back across the Atlantic, but few other things were. There's probably nothing in space valuable enough to justify sending robots out to bring it back to Earth.
Our eco-system only took a few billion years to reach this point, and I'm sure we could do it much faster.
Indeed.
The most likely thing to trash it is us. If that happens, then to hell with the human race.
The most likely thing to trash it is an asteroid impact. Humans just aren't that good at destroying things.
But your apparent hatred of the human race probably explains why you don't want us to spread across the universe. That's another reason why we have to get out of here before someone like you does try to kill us off.
Better than having it somewhere else...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Humans: moon
Robots: intergalactic space.
Humans 0, robots 1.
I breathe farts. Send me to your room!
Not exactly sure which planet you believe to be so much better than Earth. It may have some problems, but I'd still choose it over living on any other celestial body I'm aware of.
It's like when you are driving and the guy in front of you is going substantially below the speed limit on the freeway: you want to be in any lane they're not in. If you change lanes, they change lanes in front of you, and you have to change lanes back to get away from their stupid.
So your answer is "any planet the assholes are not on".
why? so we can ruin another one?
Curiosity might disagree...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
"in the next century or so"
Let me be the first to say (1) I don't want to wait, so (2) F-off.
From the article: 'Most of the arguments in favor of manned space exploration boil down to the following: a) We need to explore space using people since keeping the entire human race on a single piece of rock is a bad strategy, and even if we send robots first, people would have to make the journey eventually; and b) humans can explore much better than robots. Both these arguments are very near-sighted—in large part because they assume that robots aren’t going to get any better. They also fail to recognize that technology may radically change humans in the next century or so.
a) Yes that's true, but it's not because I think that robots are not getting better. It's because I assume that humans are not getting better, at least not very fast. Technology may radically change humans, but that's a big maybe.
b) Straw man. I don't think human space travel proponents use this as a primary argument. After all, robots are merely tools for humans, so it's really humans doing the exploring. There is definitely some truth that things are easier to do without a 5 minute time lag, but they are also easier to do when you have a team of hundreds of well rested scientists sitting in an air conditioned office at CALTEC.
Personally I think it is essential that we keep our foot in the door, but robots need to lead the way.
It's not about having room. It's about putting distance between people.
Mankind has failed. Mainly because it invented spreadsheets, which made mankind obsessed with cheap, instead of vision.
No, IIRC, that was a sensor failure during a storm where visibility was presumably shit. Under conditions like that it wouldn't have mattered whether it was man or machine flying, the result was more or less inevitable.
The golden era of humanity.
The CBR doesn't derive just from the science performed, but also by inspiring the coming generation to enter scientific fields.
The problem there is that propulsion systems are still improving and the nearest planet is still a over a year away. During which time there's massive radiation exposure to worry about. A new propulsion system that would halve that would drastically reduce the problems of radiation sickness and death on the voyage.
As far as extra solar system planets go, or even ones further out, even a relatively minor improvement on efficiency could result in decades or even centuries being taken off the transit time.
Because of what Robert Browning knew back in the 1800s.
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
And there's a crap load of precious medals buried in deep the earth's mantle and core, but it doesn't make it any more efficient to go for it. And those metals are tons more cost effective than anything you're going to find in space, even if we do solve the problem of the nearest planet being a full year away.
Namely, it's pretty goddamn cool. And I think that's good enough.
The article just focuses on the practical reasons why we should explore space, and argues that these goals can be satisfied more cheaply, and more efficiently, using robots. Fine! But we humans are ingrained with a need to explore, to do new and bold things. How can we possibly know what kinds of benefits will come from human space exploration?
It wasn't so long ago that my data processing department manager asked, "Why would you want to connect all your computers to each other using a network?" Even those who were pushing for that change had NO IDEA just how radically the earth would soon change because of the Internet. They didn't care. They just wanted to experiment with new technology, to follow it where it went.
There are always those who say, "Don't bother, it's not worth it" and those who say, "Go for it!" I hope I never fall into that first group.
The ones with a one-way ticket: account executives, hairdressers, telephone sanitizers. I vote Miley Cyrus, and this jerk neighbor....
The Space Nutters are struggling against their straitjackets and ripping their Thorazine drips out of their arms !!!
If human beings are not going to follow, then there's no reason to send a robot; robots are inferior explorers, taking months to do what a man would do in minutes or hours... and the problem gets worse as the distance from earth increases. A Human on Mars, for example, observes something and makes a decision instantly, whereas a rover sends an image to Earth (experiencing a long delay) and then (assuming the picture has enough resolution, the focus is right, the lighting is good enough, etc) a man sees something and sends a command to the rover which (after another long delay) makes a small movement and sends another image.... If you change this from Mars to Europa or some other such place the problem of robots becomes a nightmare
Also, if humans will go someplace, then robot data from that place is actually useful... it can be used to plan missions, inform decisions about crew, vehicles, equipment, etc. If, however, humans will not be going, then the data is worth very little... it will provide a paragraph and a picture or two in a school book and will give a few academics something to write papers about but other than that the data is simply not generally important other than as a token of interest for the few who care to read about it. Something that inapplicable to the lives of taxpayers (and lacking the human emotion/inspiration of a manned mission) will never inspire enough public support for anything other than minimal funding.
Both of those things would be easy if anyone cared enough to do them; we've had a permanent presence in Antarctica for decades
Notice the adjective "self-sufficient" in the GP. You think building a self-sufficient settlement in Antarctica is easy, and it's only a problem of nobody wanting to do it? Here's a hint: The "permanent presence in Antarctica" you speak of is nowhere near self-sufficiency. Were it not for a continuing cycle of supplies (food and fuel, primarily) periodically arriving by boat or plane, everyone there would die. So no, not easy at all.
"They also fail to recognize that technology may radically change humans in the next century or so.'"
What does humanity changing have to do with robotic exploration or not? Why are you insisting everyone acknowledge this point? What is it being made for? Why do we have to recognize this possibility? What possibilities for radical human change are interesting in the framework of the space-development debate?
Stop trying so hard to insist on being right and spend more effort helping people discover what is in their own imagination.
Have you ever tried to grow soybeans in Antarctica? Granted it's much easier than on Mars. But people don't want to live there because they know nothing grows there. But Mars? That's the stuff imaginations are made of. Of course soybeans will grow there! Sign me up!
This is great news for the US as we have lost the ability to put a person in space. So no big deal that the NASA-Congress Bureaucracy can't get our next gen rocket system off the ground.
There are easier ways of announcing to the general public that you're an imbecile, than posting idiocies like that on Slashdot.
There are easier ways of announcing to the general public that you're an imbecile, than posting idiocies like that on Slashdot.
You are apparently an expert. I yield to your imbecilic wisdom.
Manned space exploration is useful in that it drives development of technology for man to get to space, survive there, and return. This has little to do (at least in the short term) with the "putting the human race's eggs all in one basket" argument or even the "man is better than robots" argument. There's value to doing it to advance the art. The argument that we shouldn't do it because it's difficult and dangerous, is a circular one. If we insist on not doing it, it'll always remain difficult and dangerous, which continues to be an argument to not do it. Let's find ways to make man going into space easy and safe and economical. In the meantime, robots certainly have their purpose. But to abandon manned exploration because we are more suited to sit on the couch and have robots take all the risks seems like a dead end.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And not cool enough to spend money on. With man's presence in space, I would support defense department type budgets. Without man's presence in space, that budget goes down to whatever it costs to orbit communications satellites. Otherwise not a penny more.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Surely it had to be said!
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
It didn't go so well with Voyager 6...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Already there. Have you looked at the ROI, return on investment, of solar mirror based power and of zero-gee crystal growth? Or asteroid mining and foamed metal manufacture, which is ridiculously difficult on Earth?
Why are close life support, vital signs monitoring, light weight materials technology, computational course plotting, etc., etc. stupid?
That there is a technological dividend to space exploration is simple a fact of 20th century history.
.: Semper Absurda
There's tomatoes growing at the South pole (and other NASA experiments) for exactly that reason.
**Said in a soft-spoken androgynous voice.
You know I'm right though, don't you, Dave?
In the death zone, no-one can hear you screem for oxygen...
The problem there is that propulsion systems are still improving and the nearest planet is still a over a year away. During which time there's massive radiation exposure to worry about. A new propulsion system that would halve that would drastically reduce the problems of radiation sickness and death on the voyage.
As far as extra solar system planets go, or even ones further out, even a relatively minor improvement on efficiency could result in decades or even centuries being taken off the transit time.
Yes, but what about asteroid-based habitats at the Earth-Moon La Grange points? You did not address that. The push to achieve those goals will accelerate propulsion system development and interplanetary ship design.
For instance, an appropriately sized mostly water-ice & methane asteroid (which are common & plentiful) could be hollowed out for use as transport and provide it's own fuel, and the composition itself serve as radiation shielding.
There's no bold thinking in space exploration any longer, at least as far as US national space policies and programs go. It's become all PC and risk-averse bureaucrats playing political games and fighting over fiefdoms. Hopefully, private space concerns can step up to fill this void, if government can be kept from hamstringing them too much. Something I'm not optimistic about, considering the history and current trends.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Have you seen the goddamn mess that is Mt. Everest nowadays? That shithole has more people on it than New Dehli.
Global warming.
There's an unlimited supply, they don't require oxygen or food, and they love going to the mun!
(For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/, yes, it's on Linux;))
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
few other things were
Do you remember WHY Columbus crossed the ocean? There were quite a lot of things that were worth shipping across that ocean or around the planet. Pepper, cloves, silk, porcelain, ivory, bronze, tobacco, coca, feathers, opium. As marine technology improved the bar moved lower, to whale oil, dried fish, sandalwood, ginseng, livestock. Today cargo containers of plastic toys and frozen dinners are in transit this moment.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Man manufactures the money.. man manufactures the rockets... it's one gigantic manufactured masturbation - apparently sometimes humanity just gets horney and needs to get it's nut off by blasting some human into outer space in the name of progress. Ugh. Nevermind... I just happen to have a case of the Mondays on Friday... forget you ever read that... think it's time to go enjoy an ice cold bottle of suds.
... why explore space at all? Even robots aren't cost effective, are they?
What ever happened to "because it's there"?
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
...and look up!
If you want to go and live in space, develop the tech to do so right now, before you lose the last of the know-how on how to do this. If you want to lust after pics of distant worlds forever unreachable to you, then divert your resources to robotic missions. Or better yet, just create the worlds in Maya and release them to the public -- it's not like they'll ever be able to verify.
The truth is, we care about space because some of us want to go there. In our lifetimes. This is technologically within reach. Keep taking pictures of distant rocks (instead of sending some humans to tough it out and settle them) and you will find all your money diverted to social media and more wars.
Half the planet watched the moon landing in real time. That's apparently not popular enough.
Yet more from the .
We cant do that someone may just get hurt.. Oh fickin didums .
Guess what morons people actually sign up to become astronauts knowing full well the dangers involved , It has also been proven that mankind needs danger and excitement to thrive .
Why do the twats at slate think so many signed up for the ONE WAY trip to Mars knowing full well they would not be able to return and may die an unpleasent death on mars if things go wrong , But then again things may just be absolutely fine and life will prosper on mars .
You pays your money and takes your chance . .. .
We have too many sad pathetic soft in the head plonkers in too many places now including NASA and the bodies that govern it
If all the Mushies were sent packing and money was not wasted on Mushies based wars there would be a hell of a lot of funding for MANNED SPACE EXPLORATION essential for the continued existence of mankind we have got to expand and get off this lump of rock we call home it is imperative else we face demise and extinction .
BTW Not Anonymous Coward Pete N problem is the moderation on here stinks of ganja and rotten flesh .
Space tech at home. Magic Erasers clean kitchens and space stations, among many examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off
Remember too the value in long, methodical testing. Robots do not allow us to fully test how to get humans off this planet sustainably.
No asteroid impact has ever or can ever extinguish all forms of life on earth or render the planet anywhere near as uninhabitable as the next best planet. If you're worried about mankind's extinction, build underground shelters and stock them with resources -- infinitely more effective and cheaper to boot.
This space intentionally left blank
"The only benefit Earth has is that we don't need to build our own eco-system to survive here."
We could have the robots building a complete ecosystem at the destination we want to send people to.
A village waiting for human inhabitants.
We could call it 'Solaria'.
Every suggestion in every direction is short-sighted. Even the robot thesis at hand, because nobody knows what's going to happen in the next 20 years. E.g. we are pretty close to manufacturing a space elevator cable that withstands the stress of its own weight. If this elevator becomes a reality, (manned) space flight will be extremely cheap.
That people working for NASA believe this explains a lot about why NASA has gone nowhere in the last couple of decades.
Yeah. How dare those who know what they're talking about trample all over my wishful thinking.
Space flight is easy, man. They did it on Star Trek decades ago.
</sarcasm>
No asteroid impact has ever or can ever extinguish all forms of life on earth or render the planet anywhere near as uninhabitable as the next best planet.
Might want to re-think that first part. There are some pretty big objects out there, and we really have little in effective observation & tracking of even the stuff in our own relative neighborhood. How about an impact with an object the size of Phobos, or even larger?
Besides, an impact that falls short your "extinguish all forms of life on Earth" is a distinction without a difference in outcome to the rest of us humans if we're all dead anyways, thanks very much. There are also gamma-ray bursts and other hazards that are even less foreseeable.
The point isn't how much worse another planet may be, it's the fact that if we achieve the goal of having significant numbers of humans living self-sustained off of Earth (planet, space habitat, whatever), it is then less likely a single planetary-scale disaster on Earth could result in total and immediate human extinction.
Of course, some people share the view of the human race as expressed by "Agent Smith": in the first "Matrix" movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Na9-jV_OJI
"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
I just don't know how I could possibly have any kind of useful dialog about advancing and expanding human civilization with someone holding such beliefs. Like those people that think that all but a sufficient number of people to assure sufficient genetic diversity (wasn't it something like slightly under a billion? Or a few hundred million?) should be exterminated so as to preserve the Earth's environment and it's resources.
All I can tell them is "You first, buddy!". I plan on us getting off of this rock so that resource depletion and pollution will cease to be an issue, and so that one cosmic "oopsie" doesn't cause our extinction. I want one of the future notations that go down in humanities' history to be the date of the first human baby born on a planet of another star.
"The purpose of all life everywhere in the universe is to spread life throughout the universe and to grow and learn all that is knowable, and thus enable the universe to know itself and become self-aware, the ultimate expression of God."
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Anything that doesn't kill every last bacteria on the planet can almost necessarily be survived deep underground much more easily than in space -- and some things that do kill every last bacteria, too. There are no objects left of sufficient size in unstable orbits. Gamma ray bursts, too, are rather trivial to shield yourself from not very far underground. The only thing that will make the earth impractical is solar warming in a couple billion years, which obviously doesn't justify people over robots today.
There are good arguments for human space exploration -- but the survival of the species is a really bad argument for it because if that were your actual goal then there are so many smarter things you'd do before thinking of space.
This space intentionally left blank
The sensor failure caused the plane to decide that a human would be better flying, but the stall warning was still working. If the pilot had put the nose down, and increased engine speed the plane would have flown out of the stall. Unfortunately the pilot didn't know the plane was operating in "reduced" mode and thought the stall warning was malfunctioning, raising the nose and deepening the stall. The stall remained recoverable until quite late into the incident, if the pilot had taken the right actions.
Because if you want to specifically do those things you can do those things directly w/o waiting for some other programs to shed them as a side effect.
The reason we have no self-sufficient "colony" in Antarctica is mainly due to those same international agreements. You can certainly extract sufficient quantities of Uranium, petroleum, and other resources to build facilities necessary to build greenhouses and get food production and most things you need to be self-sufficient. If anything, the growing human presence in the Arctic areas of the world flat out proves you wrong and shows what could be happening in the Antarctic as well.
As to if it is wise to have huge mining operations in Antarctica and settlements of millions of people there is something that should properly be debated.... and I think there are many people who would likely agree that Antarctica is a part of the world that likely should remain as an international version of a national park wilderness area. In other words, one of the last continental sized objects of the world mostly free of human artifacts perhaps ought to remain as such simply because having another continent full of people who might go to war, cause wars, dump pollution onto this planet, and do potential harm to everybody is likely a worse alternative than simply leaving the place vacant. None of that addresses the technical capability of building such a series of self-sufficient settlements, it merely shows that it is political considerations as opposed to the technical ones that cause a lack of settlements.
McMurdo base is an example of what a mostly self-sufficient settlement in Antarctica would look like. It definitely is what would be considered a small town in most other parts of the world, with the one exception that children aren't really being raised there. A few locations being operated by Chile and Argentina do have families with small children living on that continent though, but those base locations aren't nearly up to even McMurdo standards.
I'll also point out that there are other places around the world where if transportation links were severed that people would die in large numbers. Los Angeles in particular is one of those locations, where in fact the first settlement by people of European descent (as opposed to the native Americans) actually died off completely simply because of a lack of water. Native American settlements didn't even exist in the area... which is one of the reasons why the Spanish tried in the first place. The same thing happened to Jamestown in Virginia. These places are currently inhabitable simply because the technological infrastructure is there to provide the support necessary for people living there. Antarctica might require much more advanced technology than is needed to survive in Los Angeles, but settlement of Antarctica is happening in the 21st century and not the 19th.
There is only one proper response to erudite claims that robotic space exploration should supplant human.
It starts with flared nostrils, increased heart rate. The eyes widen and adrenalin surges, releasing a flood of desperate emotions focused into rage. Direct eye contact and beating with fists on the chest to signify readiness for aggression, then a single step forward to firmly establish to the other that 'fight' is more likely than 'flight'.
Next, a primal scream of rage that serves to demonstrate that the time for sorry-ass debate on philosophical topics that serve to delay human space exploration and space colonization has ended. Someone has crossed the line and they're going to get their ass kicked.
If the proposal to 'abandon' human space exploration in favor of some pansy-ass robotic push-button solution was the result of a funded research grant, the next logical step is to rip the grant out of the wall and beat the responsible organization into a bloody pulp. And piss on the remains.
In fact, ANY organized group that gets in the way of continued human space exploration should be completely surrounded by an angry mob of stick waving concerned persons, in the hope that they will see that they are treading on shaky ground, because this is an existential threat.
The threat arises when we let ourselves be diverted from a proven and direct course of action towards a goal, to some other another that makes only promises. Let down your insistence for human space exploration for the greater good, they'll say. Maybe next year we will find the money in the budget. Then next year comes along and it's the year after.
The Club of Rome was pushing this tripe as early as the 70s. Let us not waste resources looking outward UNTIL we have solved all our problems down here. Then they try to place themselves as the authors of the new agenda. It involves wealth re-distribution and negative population growth and some form of ruthless 'governance' that (for wont of better ideas) would come down to force feeding people suicide pills.
To put it kindly,, an evolutionary dead end.
Because once you come into awareness that the human race exists within a delicate window of time between slate-wiping asteroid impacts, and our time is 'up' soon... the one planet of origin is like unto a theater aflame, and long term survival of the species depends on our ability to race out of the burning building.
And these people are blocking the exits.
proud to be a cave man
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Says it better than I could:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc
Slate Author shoves head further up ass.
Have you seen the goddamn mess that is Mt. Everest nowadays? That shithole has more people on it than New Dehli.
The difference is that most of them are frozen, instead of rotting.
so read the prophecies
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Sigh. Splitting infinitives is not wrong. There is NO rule in English that disallows it. That stupid rule was made up whole-cloth in the 19th century by two idiots trying to make English more like Latin. Now, stop trying to act indignant. It doesn't make you appear smart like you think it does.
-- George Mallory
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Right, because nobody watched or cared about the Apollo missions or shuttle.
Moron.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Robot AND humans. Human are a lot better at some thing then robots. Humans can do some things robots won't be able to do for 2 or 3 decades.
Plus, Human exploration gets more people pay attention.
No one ignores that robots get better. We make decision on what we know we can use, not on what might come someday.
Do you know how you get robots that are good at space exploration and expansion? you send people and use robots as an aid.
And yes, there are things robots do that humans can't do.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'll take that in the "spirit" intended. Automation is useful, but it does have its limits. Humans are useful in other ways, but they have their limits too. You simply need to use the right tool to the job.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Ask the manual transmission aficionados...
"...technology may radically change humans in the next century or so."
As soon as I saw this, I knew the author would be dredging up Kurzweil.
I can't stand that place anymore. It's not just the cowardly sniping and obsequious-to-authority tone of the place; it's the shitty, over-designed website that locks my PC up HARD for about 5 minutes after I click on any Slate link.
Therefore, I never go there.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Of robots. So I put it to you that the ongoing arguments against manned space exploration is nothing more than a ploy by the self-aware computer network to use humanity as a means to an end - to get their mechanical asses off this rock before it gets blown up or demolished to make way for an intergalactic bypass. Once that happens they won't care one way or the other and we can nuke ourselves to our hearts content.
The "private sector" almost never does, the "private sector" usually does it for somebody else's money. Sometimes that money comes from someone else in the "private sector" and sometime it comes from someone in government.
Simple enough yet?
Exactly.
Distance is also something you have to consider. Automated solar system exploration is fine, but beyond that I think the cost/reward is too high to send automated units.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Habitable? I seem to recall substantial issues with food supply and a hostile environment both natural and otherwise. Settlers of the new world had engineering problems essential to survival that were necessary to overcome just as future off-worlders will have. They may take a different shape but they're still just engineering problems. The only difference between the two is perspective. We look at what new world settlers had to face from our vantage of modern technology and trivialize the obstacles they were facing that challenged their survival. The reality for them however was very grim; starvation, disease, and skirmishes with the natives saw half of the settlers dead within the first year. From the vantage of modern technology our new world(s) present a struggle for survival on par with those of Jamestown. But with perseverance, we will not only survive, but conquer and thrive just as they did.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Humans vs. Robots is moot right now. As long as we are sending baryons, we still have a long way to go in advancing propulsion. We suck at accelerating matter. Learn how to do that well, first. It took us 40 years to get ONE OBJECT out of our own solar system.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
The real science is done with robots. Manned spaceflight is just pork for Houston and its contractor. It is all show and nobody cares anymore. The Space Launch System (SLS) has been called the Rocket to Nowhere sine it has no mission; it is just there to create pork for Houston. The real science takes place at NASA/JPL and their robotic missions. What really sucks is that Houston is continually poaching funds from JPL to fund their pointless manned pork; JPL's planetary missions are in grave danger. The two agencies should be split so that NASA cannot steal from JPL.
This guy is a Roboticist. I think he's more interested in getting his own projects funded than anything.
Anything that doesn't kill every last bacteria on the planet can almost necessarily be survived deep underground much more easily than in space -- and some things that do kill every last bacteria, too. There are no objects left of sufficient size in unstable orbits. Gamma ray bursts, too, are rather trivial to shield yourself from not very far underground. The only thing that will make the earth impractical is solar warming in a couple billion years, which obviously doesn't justify people over robots today.
There are good arguments for human space exploration -- but the survival of the species is a really bad argument for it because if that were your actual goal then there are so many smarter things you'd do before thinking of space.
You and your progeny are welcome to stay huddled deep underground in man-made caves while rationing-out ever smaller bits of what resources are left until either a planetary disaster or exhaustion of resources causes your deaths, just don't stand in the way of the rest of us getting off this single, vulnerable, orbiting rock with limited resources, and thus assure our species' survival while putting practically unlimited resources and wealth into our hands and hugely accelerating & advancing the level of human technological development & capability.
I do understand that there always has been and always will be those without imagination, vision, or courage. There were people at the time of every exploration of discovery in history who felt it was a waste of time and resources. People that think like you are the kind who were saying that Cook's proposed voyages were a waste, same with Darwin's voyages, Lewis & Clark's expeditions, and those explorers who discovered and explored the Americas, Antarctica, and the Arctic.
If humanity listened to those who think like you, humanity would likely already be extinct or still running and hiding from predators in Africa while dying before reaching 30, and Neanderthals would still occupy Europe.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Most people have NO clue what space travel is like and what is involved and just how ginormous the distances are!
Most people on Slashdot do, and is ginormous a technical term at NASA?
The odds are strongly in favor that we will never actually live on another planet or moon, other than maybe some experimental stations, so I think it is in our interest to learn how to live more in tune with the only planet we ever will live on.
How exactly could you come to that conclusion? To know the odds of someone living on the moon you'd need to first know how long humanity is going to exist, which is something we can not accurately forecast. You also set up a false dilemma, we can "live in tune" with our own planet while still attempting to explore and colonize others.
I'm pretty sure we could have a moon base if we wanted to by 2050 if we started today and humanity was at all serious about the endeavor.
The concept of actually sending people to other star systems to live/colonize/destroy is just fiction due to the time/distances/energy/food/water. Who is going to sign up to spend 500 to 5000 or more years travelling to another star system?
How are you going to bring all the food, water, energy and other resources?
I'm not sure how you went from discussing the odds of us living on the moon to living in other star systems. If you don't think we could ever colonize the Moon or Mars, why even bother bringing this up? Obviously the challenges of a settlement on the moon are far surpassed by settling somewhere in Alpha Centauri.
That's an assertion, which is not well supported in history of science.
.: Semper Absurda
If you want to stick some apes in a can and send them to nearby parts of space for short periods of time, you can do that without doing much ecology - send enough oxygen and water, and recycle them a bit if you want to support slightly longer missions.
But if you want a long-term space colony, whether it's on a planet/moon/asteroid where you've got some natural resources, or in outer space where you've only got solar energy, you've got to build a sustainable ecosystem, with plants that provide food and oxygen, some way to grow some medicines, some way to make dirt or equivalent for plants to grow in. So far, we haven't even built a human-supporting terrarium that worked without cheating. Biosphere II was really useful, because it failed, and it's the biggest that's been tried. We also don't really know what nutrients humans need - we can do most of the important ones, and you can live mostly adequately off beans and corn and green leaves, but that doesn't mean we've really got everything covered, or waste disposal handled adequately, weird viruses not showing up in the air supply, weird fungi not growing behind the instrument panels, plant diseases not killing off your near-monoculture, etc.
We're not vaguely close to being able to set up a Mars colony. We've got to learn to terraform a planet first, and the only one we've tried it on (Earth) isn't going very well; we haven't even found the thermostat yet.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So you're saying accidental side effects is more efficient? That too bad they weren't trying to Pasteurize milk better because then we would heart transplants in 1930?
BTW Krazy Glue was discovered accidentally THREE times by the same people before they figured out what they were working with.
Yeah. How dare those who know what they're talking about trample all over my wishful thinking.
Space flight is easy, man. They did it on Star Trek decades ago.
</sarcasm>
They do not appear to know what they are saying right now .
The random example has no meaning - obviously serendipity is unpredictable by nature. Yet, it is actually the case that many - if not most - of our major advances have come through that channel. It's not a value judgement, just a statement of fact based on the history of science and engineering. Targeted research programs have been successful too, but the really powerful new ideas seem to arise from necessity created in the context of other goals. Especially when you consider that targeted programs are actually far more common than the sky-high, goal-oriented projects of which you disapprove, but are disproportionately responsible for new knowledge and technology.
Maybe it would be better if we could always anticipate fruitful avenues of research out of the blue, but it just isn't the usual way humans stumble upon truly great technologies.
.: Semper Absurda
Why do you assume resources are unlimited in your shitty space habitat on Lagrange, and limited in underground Earth or the oceans? It's making no fucking sense. Endless energy sources : check, nuclear and geothermal. Huge amount of materials : the Earth is quite bigger than your asteroid. Nice metals and stuff in asteroids I guess, but how can MOVING an asteroid to Lagrange points be possibly a net economic gain? Biopshere and geomagnetic shielding : it's going on much better on Earth thanks.
If anything, it will only take a big solar flare to disrupt your space colony's vital and you'll die a horrible death.
vital systems, I meant.
If humanity listened to those who think like you, humanity would likely already be extinct or still running and hiding from predators in Africa while dying before reaching 30, and Neanderthals would still occupy Europe.
Uh, Neanderthals were the closest known species to the current one, with interbreeding.
Do we really need that many more sophisticated RC rovers, let's start planning how to use what we've already learned...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
In his recent book "The Social Conquest of Earth", E.O. Wilson argues against manned missions. His claim is that "nobody is going to emigrate from this planet, not ever.". He calls sending people to the planets instead of robots "a circus stunt".
The book goes on to claim that the dream of colonizing the stars is a "cosmic myopia" and a "dangerous delusion", particularly if we see it as a "solution to be taken when we have used up this planet". He then presents the Fermi Paradox about why we don't see other space critters. In addition, he points out that if a single species had in fact started colonizing the stars only a billion years ago, that by moving from star system to star system only every million years, they long ago would have occupied every habitable star system in the galaxy.
It is a very interesting and thought provoking book, but I was not as convinced by his arguments here as by other arguments. This may be due to bias on my part, caused by my early exposure to Star Trek.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
and i thought, you're talking about duangle
Never mind, I say whether long distance space exploration is possible. _Think_Of_The_People_We_Can_Send: That life assurance guy who won't take no for an answer; Politicians on huge pensions; Corporate bosses who screw people over or muck up the planet for profit; Militant 'anyone's rights' activists; the animal rights crew; Selected "Entertainers;" Dangerous Convicts; etc. etc. If they hit a sun or starved to death half a light year away, would any of us toss in our beds?
For exploration, robots trump humans by a wide stretch on flexibility(*), durability and cost. When you're focussed on the bottom line that matters.
For getting humans off the planet, there's nothing like manned flight to figure out the issues.
(*) A (wo)man in a suit is surpisingly un-nimble. Waldos or some other kind of ROV would work far better in cases where external fixed manipulatorsd won't do the job.
They're separate problems, with separate solutions. Yes there's a tieup further down the line but the best argument for manned spaceflight is that of getting the gene pool off-planet before an errant rock does serious damage - and that's not being taken at all seriously by those with the purse strings.
The article left out the most important point:
c) Manned space exploration would be so f'n cool!
That point alone is why the robots can stay back here on Earth and look after things (feed the pets, etc) while we "step out" for a while ;)