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Nobody from the 1960's will ever believe that for almost the entirety of the decade of 2010, the United States will be without manned space flight capability...
by hliyan 9y ago
Nobody from the 1960's will ever believe that for almost the entirety of the decade of 2010, the United States will be without manned space flight capability...
- aardvark291 9y agoIt turns out that manned space flight capability just isn't very useful.
- sterlind 9y agoTaking a page from Seveneves, what is the minimum set of robotics required for parity with the general-purpose abilities of a human astronaut? Humans can repair electronics, perform assembly in space and run a wide variety of experiments. Automation works, but it's hard to make as general-purpose.
- greenhouse_gas 9y agoIt's much cheaper (and safer) to throw away a satellite than to develop and fly a shuttle.
- sterlind 9y agoI'm in agreement with you there. but launching a new satellite for every task rapidly gets expensive. could you imagine the ISS being assembled by satellites alone? humans are good at assembling and maintaining things. asteroid mining will provide an impetus to develop assembly robots capable of matching human flexibility and autonomy. we're not there yet, though.
- njarboe 9y agoUntil people want to go to space and especially other planets. Get the cost down and many people will pay their own way. This is Elon Musk's goal for SpaceX. Tim Urban gives a good explanation here[1]. [1]https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colon...
- hollerith 9y agoMaybe so, but as far as I know no one in the 1960s guessed that weightlessness would prove as harmful as it actually is to human health.
- djsumdog 9y agoAnd if we do get people to Mars, they will need to live underground for most (almost all) their time there. They will most likely die (and live) there. In the fictional Red Mars book by Kim Stanley Robinson, astronauts who had maxed out their radiation exposure often weren't allowed to continue missions.
- greglindahl 9y agoAnd will they believe that it was not a technology problem? Dragon's first flight was in 2010.