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Even when robots can do this, the defiance of our physical limitations is beyond something we should be able to do. It’s the best of us as a species risking our

Even when robots can do this, the defiance of our physical limitations is beyond something we should be able to do. It’s the best of us as a species risking our lives for progress and similarly to something like free solo, even if I’m not capable of doing something so death defying it makes me feel alive to see people who push the boundaries of what’s possible so far.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
That's a fair point. Hell, I'd argue that half the interest in spaceflight (except those of people seeing it all through the lens of an Excel sheet) is because of the idea of sending people up there. That alone makes an occasional manned mission worth it, just to keep the general interest alive.
- runarberg 6y ago
  It is not the 1910s any more. We don’t risk other peoples lives on exploration. Heroic though it might seem, it is ultimately foolish. We are already exploring the solar system with machines. And there is no reason to risk the explorers life for a more limited and more expensive ways to explore.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > And there is no reason to risk the explorers life for a more limited and more expensive ways to explore. In places that can be reached by both, it's the machines that are much more limited. Compare e.g. the distanve covered by astronauts on the Moon in a day with the distance covered by Martian rovers in a year. There's a benefit in local decisionmaking instead of a remote one over a very bad link.
  - jacobush 6y ago
    A machine can not tell us how it felt to be there, and write a poem about it.
    - noizejoy 6y ago
      but a good sci-fi writer can
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        The sci-fi writer does it in hopes one day a historical fiction author will be able to.
  - scarygliders 6y ago
    Exploration is timeless. "Let's see what's out there!" It's human nature.
    - krapp 6y ago
      We already know what's out there, we have telescopes and probes. We're not going to find jungles on Venus or something like that. We're not going to meet the Vulcans.
      - cgriswald 6y ago
        > We already know what's out there, we have telescopes and probes. The entire field of astrobiology is a big giant question mark despite our telescopes and probes. If we'd have sent humans to Mars instead of probes, we'd either have proof of past or present life, or we'd have very convincing evidence that it doesn't or never did exist. And we'd have had that relatively quickly. Here, decades later, we know a lot more, but we don't have this one basic fact.
        runarberg 6y ago
        We are still uncovering where and how life is in Antarctica, and we’ve had humans there for decades. What makes you so sure we would be so much quicker to figure out things on Mars?
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Studying Antarctica is different; we already know life is there, so we're studying the minutiae of "where and how". On Mars, we're yet to answer the two most critical questions: whether there is - or was - life, and if so, how it is related to the life on Earth, if at all. As for figuring this out quicker: an astronaut would be able to leave their ship/base, go find some interesting rock, bag it, bring it back, slice it and observe under microscope, all in time it would take the rover to just drive towards the nearest rock. All it takes for a human to be a better sample collector than most advanced of robots on Earth is a shovel. Robotic missions scale better and may still be more cost-effective, if we built and sent a crewed science ship to Mars orbit. It doesn't have to land, the crew could pilot dozens of rovers remotely at the same time - but this way, with much higher bandwidth (could actually drive FPV looking through a HD camera) and much less lag (which, for Earth-Mars link, is 3 to 22 minutes, depending on relative position of the planets, and that's one way, not RTT). I'd say this is the perfect trade-off until we make more progress on AI front, but it requires manned flights. And if we'll be at the point of sending science ships to Mars, we won't be that far from landing humans there anyway.
  - hesk 6y ago
    Carl Sagan disagrees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      That video never fails to give me chills.
  - cgriswald 6y ago
    People are risking their lives exploring dangerous places on Earth every single day, not least of which, the ocean. They're also risking their lives for much less.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

That's a fair point. Hell, I'd argue that half the interest in spaceflight (except those of people seeing it all through the lens of an Excel sheet) is because of the idea of sending people up there. That alone makes an occasional manned mission worth it, just to keep the general interest alive.

runarberg 6y ago
It is not the 1910s any more. We don’t risk other peoples lives on exploration. Heroic though it might seem, it is ultimately foolish. We are already exploring the solar system with machines. And there is no reason to risk the explorers life for a more limited and more expensive ways to explore.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > And there is no reason to risk the explorers life for a more limited and more expensive ways to explore. In places that can be reached by both, it's the machines that are much more limited. Compare e.g. the distanve covered by astronauts on the Moon in a day with the distance covered by Martian rovers in a year. There's a benefit in local decisionmaking instead of a remote one over a very bad link.
- jacobush 6y ago
  A machine can not tell us how it felt to be there, and write a poem about it.
  - noizejoy 6y ago
    but a good sci-fi writer can
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      The sci-fi writer does it in hopes one day a historical fiction author will be able to.
- scarygliders 6y ago
  Exploration is timeless. "Let's see what's out there!" It's human nature.
  - krapp 6y ago
    We already know what's out there, we have telescopes and probes. We're not going to find jungles on Venus or something like that. We're not going to meet the Vulcans.
    - cgriswald 6y ago
      > We already know what's out there, we have telescopes and probes. The entire field of astrobiology is a big giant question mark despite our telescopes and probes. If we'd have sent humans to Mars instead of probes, we'd either have proof of past or present life, or we'd have very convincing evidence that it doesn't or never did exist. And we'd have had that relatively quickly. Here, decades later, we know a lot more, but we don't have this one basic fact.
      - runarberg 6y ago
        We are still uncovering where and how life is in Antarctica, and we’ve had humans there for decades. What makes you so sure we would be so much quicker to figure out things on Mars?
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Studying Antarctica is different; we already know life is there, so we're studying the minutiae of "where and how". On Mars, we're yet to answer the two most critical questions: whether there is - or was - life, and if so, how it is related to the life on Earth, if at all. As for figuring this out quicker: an astronaut would be able to leave their ship/base, go find some interesting rock, bag it, bring it back, slice it and observe under microscope, all in time it would take the rover to just drive towards the nearest rock. All it takes for a human to be a better sample collector than most advanced of robots on Earth is a shovel. Robotic missions scale better and may still be more cost-effective, if we built and sent a crewed science ship to Mars orbit. It doesn't have to land, the crew could pilot dozens of rovers remotely at the same time - but this way, with much higher bandwidth (could actually drive FPV looking through a HD camera) and much less lag (which, for Earth-Mars link, is 3 to 22 minutes, depending on relative position of the planets, and that's one way, not RTT). I'd say this is the perfect trade-off until we make more progress on AI front, but it requires manned flights. And if we'll be at the point of sending science ships to Mars, we won't be that far from landing humans there anyway.
- hesk 6y ago
  Carl Sagan disagrees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    That video never fails to give me chills.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  People are risking their lives exploring dangerous places on Earth every single day, not least of which, the ocean. They're also risking their lives for much less.