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> I used to work on the Mars Rover program. I just need to thank you for that and hope that you're still somehow involved in making us a more-than-one-planet s

by K0SM0S 8y ago

> I used to work on the Mars Rover program. I just need to thank you for that and hope that you're still somehow involved in making us a more-than-one-planet species. I don't really care whether it's another planet, a space station or whatever else can ensure our survival past this beautiful blue aqua ball. On topic, there is no debate that robotics is the key to exploring space, magnitudes of orders faster and farther than we could in flesh and blood. We could —and probably will— swarm this whole solar system or even close stars with armies of tiny (dare I say nano) drones. A human being is a sniper bullet — one big shot, extremely powerful and focused. A swarm of robots is a fragmentation grenade — small impacts in all directions of space. If you needed to blast/repaint a whole room and only had one shot, which would you use?

lisper 8y ago
I left NASA almost 20 years ago, in no small part because I came to the conclusion that trying to "make us into a more-than-one-planet species" is a fundamentally misguided goal. This is not to say that I do not believe in the value of space exploration. I absolutely do. But I think it's a mistake to try to send our DNA into space. We should be trying to send our ideas into space because they are a lot more robust and flexible than our DNA. I also think that we ought to define our identities by our ideas more than by our DNA. It is merely an accident of history (and a reflection of misguided priorities IMHO) that we developed space-travel technology before we developed AI. But that seems to be in the process of correcting itself. It has been 50 years since we landed on the moon. I predict that in another 50 years the idea that a human can do anything better than a robot in space will be as laughable as the idea that humans can play chess better than computers.

by K0SM0S 8y ago

lisper 8y ago

I left NASA almost 20 years ago, in no small part because I came to the conclusion that trying to "make us into a more-than-one-planet species" is a fundamentally misguided goal. This is not to say that I do not believe in the value of space exploration. I absolutely do. But I think it's a mistake to try to send our DNA into space. We should be trying to send our ideas into space because they are a lot more robust and flexible than our DNA. I also think that we ought to define our identities by our ideas more than by our DNA. It is merely an accident of history (and a reflection of misguided priorities IMHO) that we developed space-travel technology before we developed AI. But that seems to be in the process of correcting itself. It has been 50 years since we landed on the moon. I predict that in another 50 years the idea that a human can do anything better than a robot in space will be as laughable as the idea that humans can play chess better than computers.