Louis Friedman Says Humans Will Never Venture Beyond Mars (scientificamerican.com)

MarkWhittington writes: Dr. Louis Friedman, one of the co-founders of the Planetary Society, is coming out with a new book, "Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the Stars," an excerpt of which was published in Scientific America. Friedman revives and revises a version of the humans vs. robots controversy that has roiled through aerospace circles for decades. Unlike previous advocates of restricting space travel to robots, such as Robert Park and the late James Van Allen, Friedman admits that humans are going to Mars to settle. But there, human space travel will end. Only robots will ever venture further.

Comments

Smart man

[Anonymous Coward]

Options for humans traveling outside of our solar system are what?

Some kind of FTL travel
Immortal crew
Prolonged stasis
Generations of crew

Not looking good for humans at this point.

Re:Smart man

[The Real Dr John]

Everything that has been listed here is straight out of sci-fi movies and books. I am a neuroscientist, and I have a very strong sense from what I know that human cryogenics isn't going to work. The brain of a frog is so completely different from that of a human. It may be possible in the distant future, but I wouldn't bet on it. I really would love to see how you test whether humans can be frozen solid (which is what it would take) and be thawed out and be just fine, you know, like a frog or a carp. Frogs and carp evolved to be able to freeze solid, humans did not. Cryogenics is not about "suspended animation", it is about freezing living material solid at -80 or lower. I am not volunteering, but other /.ers are welcome to give it a go.