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> We'd probably have more then zero people on the moon today. Unfortunately the opposite could also be true - loss of interest to space research, because, hey,

by avmich 8y ago

> We'd probably have more then zero people on the moon today. Unfortunately the opposite could also be true - loss of interest to space research, because, hey, they don't make anything perceivable... In the awesome game "Bazz Aldrin's Race Into Space" if both (human) players try to perfect the technology, to avoid costly failures with human flights and stop flying for a while, at some point budgets get slashed and the game stops. I suspect it could be a possibility in the real world. Fortunately, by now we both depend on space enough and have enough technology to keep flying.

vkou 8y ago
The benefit of using robots is that failures are less costly, and that you don't have to stop flying if a mission fails.
- avmich 8y ago
  Robots do have a lot of benefits in space. Lots of them weren't obvious in 1950-s, but robots came a long, long way since then. So apparently did manned spaceflight. Tito, Shuttleworth, Olsen, Ansari, Simonyi, Garriot, Laliberte flights demonstrate it's much more within reach now than before. Same could be said regarding private makers of rockets, spacecrafts and even space stations. Not only we see the push to increase the new industry, with new services to humanity and new taxes to governments - we're actually learning to do things in the environment (the learning itself happens there) which is quite different from where we evolved in. And when we talk about actually living in space - including doing really complex things, like unexpected actions across the specter of what might be needed when you're actually trying to be successful for long periods of time - many robotics specialists, last time I've checked, admit that human flights are actually less costly than robotic ones. In other words, if you want to have a big enough exploration program for space, you ought to include people into that. Fortunately flying to space becomes easier as we learn more.

by avmich 8y ago

vkou 8y ago

The benefit of using robots is that failures are less costly, and that you don't have to stop flying if a mission fails.

avmich 8y ago
Robots do have a lot of benefits in space. Lots of them weren't obvious in 1950-s, but robots came a long, long way since then. So apparently did manned spaceflight. Tito, Shuttleworth, Olsen, Ansari, Simonyi, Garriot, Laliberte flights demonstrate it's much more within reach now than before. Same could be said regarding private makers of rockets, spacecrafts and even space stations. Not only we see the push to increase the new industry, with new services to humanity and new taxes to governments - we're actually learning to do things in the environment (the learning itself happens there) which is quite different from where we evolved in. And when we talk about actually living in space - including doing really complex things, like unexpected actions across the specter of what might be needed when you're actually trying to be successful for long periods of time - many robotics specialists, last time I've checked, admit that human flights are actually less costly than robotic ones. In other words, if you want to have a big enough exploration program for space, you ought to include people into that. Fortunately flying to space becomes easier as we learn more.