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Here we go again... Why I remember almost 6 years ago, after the Virgin Galactic crash, when we debated the merits of humans in space. https://news.ycombinato

Here we go again... Why I remember almost 6 years ago, after the Virgin Galactic crash, when we debated the merits of humans in space. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279 Anyway, I think I lost and people were confident that Virgin Galactic would soon be back. I’ll just repost one of my summary thoughts. The entire thread is worth reading. It’ll probably be repeated in some form today. “ Someone dying is devastating. Trying to conquer space a handful of people at a time is the slow and dangerous way of accomplishing this task. We should be building machines to explore the solar system. This can be done for a fraction of the cost, time, and it will allow him to allow us to iterate quickly. In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now than if we move slowly trying to reduce the risk in order to keep humans safe.“

taneq 7y ago
> "Someone dying is devastating." But it's not. We're more than happy to throw human lives at most things. Any sufficiently large civilian project (much less anything military) will have a greater-than-zero expected death toll from accidents, on-the-job medical issues, etc. And arguably this is the right way to make the omelette (although we've definitely improved in the past few decades: https://www.forconstructionpros.com/blogs/construction-toolbox/blog/12096401/looking-back-on-the-worlds-deadliest-construction-projects https://www.forconstructionpros.com/blogs/construction-toolb...). It's only when we get to space travel that we suddenly become shy about the human cost of progress. It's big and dramatic and failures are very public. Arguably we should be willing to take much greater risks at this point to establish ourselves as interplanetary.
- yongjik 7y ago
  I think the difference is that most other things have a point other than having a human being in the scene. So if we're building an airport, a crane collapses, and workers die, we mourn and move on. (And hopefully find out what went wrong so that we don't repeat the same mistake.) And the final constructed airport has its uses, so in a morbid way, their deaths were not in vain. On the other hand, there's no other point in human space exploration: almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper. So the point is literally to have a human being there, and having the human die there is not just a risk, it negates the entire premise of the project. No one will plan an Olympic opening ceremony with a non-negligible chance of someone dying on stage. Why? Because the entire purpose of the Olympic is to show off your country, and if someone dies while half of the world is watching, you have failed your project. Same thing.
  - Joe-Z 7y ago
    >almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper ... and far more inefficiently. I can't find the article right now, but a while back there was a submission on here which argued that sending robots into space instead of humans is a bit of a fallacy. Because the state of robotics and their capabilities is far from what could be achieved by sending a human. There were comparisons like the Apollo astronatus bringing back half a ton of moon rocks whereas Mars probes can only sample tiny amounts of soil. Also one of the Mars rovers (Opportunity? I can't remember the names) in its years of service only covering a few kilometers, something a human could do within a day. EDIT: It was Opportunity and its mission lasted 15 years. Impressive nonetheless, but boy is it slow ;)
    - saberdancer 7y ago
      You are right but it's comparing apples to oranges. If you compared missions of comparable weight you would find that capability of robotic missions increased many times over current missions, reason is that any human mission would be much more massive than current unmanned missions. This is especially true for long range manned missions where crew needs food, water, shielding and space to survive long term in space, for a robotic mission distance is just time. What robots cannot do well is be flexible in their mission. This is something that humans excel.
      - Joe-Z 7y ago
        Fair point. I guess the best solution would be to just further develop both: Manned and unmanned missions. Also I think the psychological effects of having actual humans doing this stuff on the people staying back home should not be underestimated. Would we have an Elon Musk today[0] hadn't we landed Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969? [0]Or at least SpaceX, this guy's endeavours are all over the place :D
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        I'm not sure what the net tonnage of robot missions we've sent to mars to date is but that level of knowledge we've acquired is on the same order as what we'd get from a couple humans spending a week there with a bunch of tools and scientific instruments. Humans ability to improvise lets us quickly identify what is of interest and study it saving us from having to send multiple iterations of robots. For any given fixed distance (e.g. mars) at some point there's a crossover where sending some people up there to go kick rocks is actually cheaper than sending a series of robots that kick rocks in progressively more detail. I'm not sure if we've reached that technology point yet but as space flight gets cheaper and cheaper it will eventually happen for the moon and then for mars.
carlosdp 7y ago
I mean, we have already been exploring the solar system with machines, for a good while. Humans are much more capable today (and for the foreseeable future) at conducting a wide range of tasks in space than the machines we can currently send up. It could be argued it would be faster to send humans up to build the infrastructure for more humans now (in the near future) than it would be to wait for robotics to get advanced enough to build that infrastructure for us in space environments.
- melling 7y ago
  We accelerate the development of our machines and iterate faster with the extra money saved by not sending humans. At some point in the future, our machines will do most of what we can. The advanced robotics, etc will pay an extra dividend on earth too.
- bobajeff 7y ago
  Are you trying to tell me that in the era of Boston Dynamics' Spot Mini and Waymo/Tesla Autopilot we couldn't come up with robots capable of building space infrastructure for us?
  - bhhaskin 7y ago
    Those are really good examples of exactly why we can't. All of those just have really good marketing behind them. Spotmini at this point is kind of just a neat toy. It doesn't really do anything. It is definitely not autonomous and requires human intervention. Self driving cars are a bit of a pipe dream unless there is a massive breakthrough in actual A.I. they don't work outside of ideal conditions. Driving in rain, snow, sunrise, sunset are all out of reach for the most part. As they lack human intuition and they can't react on the fly. For example there is no way it would be able to navigate a parking lot that needs to be repainted. But humans do all the time.
- noelsusman 7y ago
  What can a human in a spacesuit accomplish on the moon that a machine can't? It's a genuine question, though I'll admit my initial answer is not much.
njarboe 7y ago
Someone dying is devastating if you have a connection to that person. People die every second and if everyone was devastated by every death then the world would grind to a halt. The first people going into deep space dying would be devastating to billions because billions of people will feel a personal connection to the person dying. This is a grave thing causing so much pain, but hopefully space travel can become a boring activity like landing a rocket has after 80 successful ones. If people aren't going to space it not being conquered. Explored, but not lived in. About 270 men left on the Magellan expedition and 18 returned. Some people are willing to take that kind of risk for the right kind of project/adventure. I give my best wishes to those who wish to try.
- melling 7y ago
  Yes, that was covered six years ago too. The Alaskan fishery example is a modern comparison. We retired the Space Shuttle because it was too dangerous. One accident every hundred flights. We live in a different world than we did hundreds of years ago. One accident will require a review board and many expensive changes. Flights will be grounded. The point that I really want you to get is this: “In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now”
  - NikolaeVarius 7y ago
    NASA/US Govt retired the space shuttle since it was extremely expensive to operate and there was funding competition for next generation vehicles/missions. Safety might have had a impact, but it was not the reason the shuttle was retired.
    - melling 7y ago
      Yes, the Shuttle was expensive and Project Constellation was going to replace it. We’d only be without orbital capabilities for a few years. https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/163092main_constellation_program_overview.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/163092main_constellation_program_ov... Unfortunately, that was canceled 10 years ago. That was superseded by Orion?
blueprint 7y ago
I wouldnt worry about those who dont understand why we must immediately become spacefaring. They're obviously on the "wrong side" of history as environmental pressure will make unarguable.
- DangitBobby 7y ago
  I'm more in the "humans are much less competent than you seem to think" camp. No amount of needing to get off the planet is going to make us able to live on Mars (or a similarly unfriendly planet). It's entirely possible that you will find yourself on the wrong side of history, where any publicly funded endeavor that didn't go directly or indirectly towards saving our current planet will be retroactively seen as futile and a gigantic waste of resources and brain power.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  This is obviously false. Any technology that could allow humans to live anywhere but on earth (the moon, Mars, space stations, generation ship, you name it) would be infinitely more applicable on an environmentally devastated earth up to any degree of devastation. Living on Mars would be much harder than living on the earth after an all-out nuclear war with the worse effects of global warming present, in the aftermath of a small asteroid strike. In fact, diverting much needed resources from saving what can be saved of the climate for the pie-in-the-sky (literally) goal of having a minuscule handful of human beings possibly live a scant few years off the Earth in 20 years time is lunacy.
  - njarboe 7y ago
    We have more resources than we know what to do with. Negative to zero interest rates all over the place. The problems on Earth are not being solved or worked on due to political problems not resource limitations. Plus total current space related expenditures are probably 0.05% of global GDP. Global GDP is ~$85 trillion would mean a space spend of $42.5 billion. Sounds about right.
    - tsimionescu 7y ago

taneq 7y ago

> "Someone dying is devastating." But it's not. We're more than happy to throw human lives at most things. Any sufficiently large civilian project (much less anything military) will have a greater-than-zero expected death toll from accidents, on-the-job medical issues, etc. And arguably this is the right way to make the omelette (although we've definitely improved in the past few decades: https://www.forconstructionpros.com/blogs/construction-toolbox/blog/12096401/looking-back-on-the-worlds-deadliest-construction-projects https://www.forconstructionpros.com/blogs/construction-toolb...). It's only when we get to space travel that we suddenly become shy about the human cost of progress. It's big and dramatic and failures are very public. Arguably we should be willing to take much greater risks at this point to establish ourselves as interplanetary.

yongjik 7y ago
I think the difference is that most other things have a point other than having a human being in the scene. So if we're building an airport, a crane collapses, and workers die, we mourn and move on. (And hopefully find out what went wrong so that we don't repeat the same mistake.) And the final constructed airport has its uses, so in a morbid way, their deaths were not in vain. On the other hand, there's no other point in human space exploration: almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper. So the point is literally to have a human being there, and having the human die there is not just a risk, it negates the entire premise of the project. No one will plan an Olympic opening ceremony with a non-negligible chance of someone dying on stage. Why? Because the entire purpose of the Olympic is to show off your country, and if someone dies while half of the world is watching, you have failed your project. Same thing.
- Joe-Z 7y ago
  >almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper ... and far more inefficiently. I can't find the article right now, but a while back there was a submission on here which argued that sending robots into space instead of humans is a bit of a fallacy. Because the state of robotics and their capabilities is far from what could be achieved by sending a human. There were comparisons like the Apollo astronatus bringing back half a ton of moon rocks whereas Mars probes can only sample tiny amounts of soil. Also one of the Mars rovers (Opportunity? I can't remember the names) in its years of service only covering a few kilometers, something a human could do within a day. EDIT: It was Opportunity and its mission lasted 15 years. Impressive nonetheless, but boy is it slow ;)
  - saberdancer 7y ago
    You are right but it's comparing apples to oranges. If you compared missions of comparable weight you would find that capability of robotic missions increased many times over current missions, reason is that any human mission would be much more massive than current unmanned missions. This is especially true for long range manned missions where crew needs food, water, shielding and space to survive long term in space, for a robotic mission distance is just time. What robots cannot do well is be flexible in their mission. This is something that humans excel.
    - Joe-Z 7y ago
      Fair point. I guess the best solution would be to just further develop both: Manned and unmanned missions. Also I think the psychological effects of having actual humans doing this stuff on the people staying back home should not be underestimated. Would we have an Elon Musk today[0] hadn't we landed Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969? [0]Or at least SpaceX, this guy's endeavours are all over the place :D
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      I'm not sure what the net tonnage of robot missions we've sent to mars to date is but that level of knowledge we've acquired is on the same order as what we'd get from a couple humans spending a week there with a bunch of tools and scientific instruments. Humans ability to improvise lets us quickly identify what is of interest and study it saving us from having to send multiple iterations of robots. For any given fixed distance (e.g. mars) at some point there's a crossover where sending some people up there to go kick rocks is actually cheaper than sending a series of robots that kick rocks in progressively more detail. I'm not sure if we've reached that technology point yet but as space flight gets cheaper and cheaper it will eventually happen for the moon and then for mars.

carlosdp 7y ago

I mean, we have already been exploring the solar system with machines, for a good while. Humans are much more capable today (and for the foreseeable future) at conducting a wide range of tasks in space than the machines we can currently send up. It could be argued it would be faster to send humans up to build the infrastructure for more humans now (in the near future) than it would be to wait for robotics to get advanced enough to build that infrastructure for us in space environments.

melling 7y ago
We accelerate the development of our machines and iterate faster with the extra money saved by not sending humans. At some point in the future, our machines will do most of what we can. The advanced robotics, etc will pay an extra dividend on earth too.
bobajeff 7y ago
Are you trying to tell me that in the era of Boston Dynamics' Spot Mini and Waymo/Tesla Autopilot we couldn't come up with robots capable of building space infrastructure for us?
- bhhaskin 7y ago
  Those are really good examples of exactly why we can't. All of those just have really good marketing behind them. Spotmini at this point is kind of just a neat toy. It doesn't really do anything. It is definitely not autonomous and requires human intervention. Self driving cars are a bit of a pipe dream unless there is a massive breakthrough in actual A.I. they don't work outside of ideal conditions. Driving in rain, snow, sunrise, sunset are all out of reach for the most part. As they lack human intuition and they can't react on the fly. For example there is no way it would be able to navigate a parking lot that needs to be repainted. But humans do all the time.
noelsusman 7y ago
What can a human in a spacesuit accomplish on the moon that a machine can't? It's a genuine question, though I'll admit my initial answer is not much.

njarboe 7y ago

Someone dying is devastating if you have a connection to that person. People die every second and if everyone was devastated by every death then the world would grind to a halt. The first people going into deep space dying would be devastating to billions because billions of people will feel a personal connection to the person dying. This is a grave thing causing so much pain, but hopefully space travel can become a boring activity like landing a rocket has after 80 successful ones. If people aren't going to space it not being conquered. Explored, but not lived in. About 270 men left on the Magellan expedition and 18 returned. Some people are willing to take that kind of risk for the right kind of project/adventure. I give my best wishes to those who wish to try.

melling 7y ago
Yes, that was covered six years ago too. The Alaskan fishery example is a modern comparison. We retired the Space Shuttle because it was too dangerous. One accident every hundred flights. We live in a different world than we did hundreds of years ago. One accident will require a review board and many expensive changes. Flights will be grounded. The point that I really want you to get is this: “In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now”
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  NASA/US Govt retired the space shuttle since it was extremely expensive to operate and there was funding competition for next generation vehicles/missions. Safety might have had a impact, but it was not the reason the shuttle was retired.
  - melling 7y ago
    Yes, the Shuttle was expensive and Project Constellation was going to replace it. We’d only be without orbital capabilities for a few years. https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/163092main_constellation_program_overview.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/163092main_constellation_program_ov... Unfortunately, that was canceled 10 years ago. That was superseded by Orion?

blueprint 7y ago

I wouldnt worry about those who dont understand why we must immediately become spacefaring. They're obviously on the "wrong side" of history as environmental pressure will make unarguable.

DangitBobby 7y ago
I'm more in the "humans are much less competent than you seem to think" camp. No amount of needing to get off the planet is going to make us able to live on Mars (or a similarly unfriendly planet). It's entirely possible that you will find yourself on the wrong side of history, where any publicly funded endeavor that didn't go directly or indirectly towards saving our current planet will be retroactively seen as futile and a gigantic waste of resources and brain power.
tsimionescu 7y ago
This is obviously false. Any technology that could allow humans to live anywhere but on earth (the moon, Mars, space stations, generation ship, you name it) would be infinitely more applicable on an environmentally devastated earth up to any degree of devastation. Living on Mars would be much harder than living on the earth after an all-out nuclear war with the worse effects of global warming present, in the aftermath of a small asteroid strike. In fact, diverting much needed resources from saving what can be saved of the climate for the pie-in-the-sky (literally) goal of having a minuscule handful of human beings possibly live a scant few years off the Earth in 20 years time is lunacy.
- njarboe 7y ago
  We have more resources than we know what to do with. Negative to zero interest rates all over the place. The problems on Earth are not being solved or worked on due to political problems not resource limitations. Plus total current space related expenditures are probably 0.05% of global GDP. Global GDP is ~$85 trillion would mean a space spend of $42.5 billion. Sounds about right.
  - tsimionescu 7y ago