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Humans should not be going to the moon at this point in time for exploration. We should focus on robots going to the moon - spending that money on developing ro
by maxklein 17y ago
Humans should not be going to the moon at this point in time for exploration. We should focus on robots going to the moon - spending that money on developing robots will have a much larger benefit than spending the money trying to keep a human safe. We'll develop advanced controlling and communication systems for this.
You can send a robot to the moon and leave him there - a human has to come back. That's an uneccessary expense.
When we have enough robots on the moon they can build the structures neccessary to support human life there.
- ErrantX 17y agoIndeed this is the logical choice. But the beauty of humanity is we prefer to reach for extraordinary things. I bet a large number of people would still love to send manned missions to the Moon.
- dantheman 17y agoEveryone loves the idea of it, just not the cost.
- waterlesscloud 17y agoRobots are not better at exploration, they are just cheaper. Those are different things.
- maxklein 17y agoA human controlled robot on the moon is much better at exploration than a human. Humans have to do things like eat and shit.
- waterlesscloud 17y agoIf we'd had a human on Mars for the last 5 years, they would have covered many, many, many times as much territory as the robots have, and in far more detail. Yes, it would have been incredibly expensive, but it would have been infinitely better from a science perspective. Which is my point.
- ricree 17y agoA human on mars could certainly have covered more territory than the robots did, but the expense would have been several orders of magnitude more. Had those billions been spent on robotic explorers, they would also have outperformed the relatively cheap robots that we actually have on the surface.
- dantheman 17y agoFor the same cost, would robots have provided more data? I bet they would have.
- waterlesscloud 17y agoNo. Robots are still very much special purpose, humans are still very much general purpose.
- dantheman 17y agoBut how many special purpose robots can you send up for the purposes that a human will do?