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> You get access to rare materials that can be immensely valuable. Why would you want to send humans to get it? Space is really inhospitable for humans, but ma

> You get access to rare materials that can be immensely valuable. Why would you want to send humans to get it? Space is really inhospitable for humans, but machines seem to like it just fine. Offshore oil and gas mining is rapidly being automated, and if they could, they would eliminate humans from the process altogether. Nobody wants to go out and live on a frozen windblown metal can full of industrial machinery, in the middle of an ocean, that could sink at any time. That's why you have to pay people a lot of money to do it. After you get over the romantic narrative of space, it really doesn't sound any more appealing than the oil platform. I mean, sure, I'm curious. But I wouldn't want to live there.

cortesoft 6y ago
> but machines seem to like it just fine. I think you are underestimating the challenges they have to overcome to get machines to work in space.
- hk__2 6y ago
  > I think you are underestimating the challenges they have to overcome to get machines to work in space. Even if it’s hard, it’s still a lot easier than getting humans to work in space.
  - akiselev 6y ago
    You don't understand the challenges. Sending humans up with semi-automated machines would actually be a lot easier than fully automated machines. The human race's entire experience so far has been with machines in 1g. We have almost zero experience making self repairing factories in any gravity. We have zero experience mining in low or zero gravity. It might take several generations of engineers and miners in space to figure out all of the problems, slowly automating each step at a time through trial and error like we've been doing for centuries. The critical point you're missing is that any mining and processing equipment will require their own life support that will already be able to support humans. Machines are significantly more complicated without a gas to convect heat away from all surfaces, they'll need massive fluid handling and filtering systems for lubricants and cooling fluid, the mining operations will need tons of oxygen and scrubbing for their chemistry, and clean water will be required by pretty much every process. The only way we'll pull this off is by using our existing experience on this planet and that requires the same conditions that support life. That sounds like I'm exaggerating but we've already spent more than a generation in space studying the effects of zero-g and we just barely got a working 3D printer on the ISS a few years ago. No advanced mining, processing, or other manufacturing equipment to speak of beyond lab scale R&D devices. We have one lab capable of continuous zero g research and a few 747s capable of achieving it a a few minutes at a time.
    - runarberg 6y ago
      The problems you list seem to apply to both fully and semi automatic machines. E.g. wouldn’t human operated mining equipment need just as much lubrication as pre-programmed ones? We never explored the surface of Mars, or landed on an asteroid before we had our machines do it, but we managed it anyway with the human operators still on Earth.
      - cortesoft 6y ago
        I think the difference is that humans can fix problems and adapt to changing conditions a lot better than machines currently.
        paulryanrogers 6y ago
        Humans plus Earth-like environment. Remember that micro environment has to go with them everywhere, and they die within minutes without it functioning within relatively narrow constraints.
        thu2111 6y ago
        But there'll still be humans. Just not necessarily physically at the mine or factory. All you really need is a robotic chassis that has sufficiently good AI to use hands and follow basic instructions, perhaps helped by a guy in a VR suit back on earth or in a nearby spaceship. Perhaps aided by simulations to ensure low latency - things in space should be easier to simulate without the outside world interfering much.
        yellowapple 6y ago
        > perhaps helped by a guy in a VR suit back on earth or in a nearby spaceship. Definitely not "back on earth". Lag is an issue with VR as-is with mere milliseconds of it, and you'd be calling for minutes of latency there. And "in a nearby spaceship" would, definitionally, involve getting humans most of the way there; might as well get them all the way there at that point.
  - Benjammer 6y ago
    Is it really that much easier to build space robots to cover as much breadth of function as one astronaut-engineer in a space suit?
    - hk__2 6y ago
      > Is it really that much easier to build space robots to cover as much breadth of function as one astronaut-engineer in a space suit? No, but it’s tremendously easier to fly these robots there than doing the same with humans. We can afford to let robots “die” on Mars; humans not really.
foota 6y ago
I think you've answered your own question, which is an easier place to operate? A (admittedly salty) static platform a couple hours helicopter ride away, or a radioactive vacuum that requires years of planning to reach and which by the way is minutes away even by radio? The fact we've yet to automate so much here with such large incentive to do so is evidence we're not there yet.
Rebelgecko 6y ago
I don't know much about the intricacies of asteroid mining, but human beings are very capable entities. As great as machines like the Mars rovers are, there's no comparison. A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. When I was reading the daily diaries of one of the rover drivers, it was incredible how much effort and thought went into the most trivial activities. A simple sounding task like "go look at that rock 20 meters away and take a picture of it" would be a multi-day effort, whereas it would only take an astronaut a few minutes
- dgritsko 6y ago
  Do you have a link to said "daily diaries?" They sound fascinating, but this is the first I've heard of them.
  - zidel 6y ago
    https://marsandme.blogspot.com/ https://marsandme.blogspot.com/ is Scott Maxwells blog about driving Spirit + Opportunity
    - dgritsko 6y ago
      Awesome, thanks!
- Chathamization 6y ago
  > A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. The estimates I've seen for a human mission to Mars are about 100-500 times the budget for Curiosity. So even if astronauts could accomplish things 52X faster (and I'm skeptical they would), it still wouldn't be as cost efficient. And that's even before you factor in the fact that the Mars Rover is going to be doing work on Mars much, much longer than a human mission would (Curiosity is going on 8 years). Human space exploration is a solution in search of a problem. People don't seem to be rationally looking for the best way to get certain information from Mars or for the best sources of materials that could be obtained with future technology (there are many overlooked terrestrial ones) and soberly deciding that astronauts are the best answer. They seem to start out with the goal of defending human space exploration, and then searching for problems to try to justify it.
smnplk 6y ago
>> After you get over the romantic narrative of space, it really doesn't sound any more appealing than the oil platform. I mean, sure, I'm curious. But I wouldn't want to live there. You are already living in space. :)
zzzzzzzza 6y ago
If anything the oil platform is much much more appealing. You can go diving and see a bunch of sea life. That's part of why as a human I'm more excited by sea steading than space exploration.
- babesh 6y ago
  Would it be exciting to terraform a planet or go to another star system and observe life there?
  - antepodius 6y ago
    Would it be exciting to live in a tin can and do maintenance on air purifiers for 20 years?
    - jotm 6y ago
      As long as Earth streams memes :D But yeah, it's not for everyone. Imo, it would be pretty exciting to continuously enlarge some sort of habitat somewhere. In case there's no way to return to Earth, would definitely need a steady supply of drugs of all kinds and good doctors, otherwise suicides would become the number one cause of death soon enough.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  We can do both. We should do both, as both will provide technology for creating and maintaining artificial, closed environments for long-term habitation. (Though in all honesty, I want to see both happen because I loved both Star Trek and SeaQuest DSV as a kid.)
rtkwe 6y ago
There's still no real substitute for having a person on site to do work when machines breakdown or get stuck and the problems with trying to use machines in their place get worse as the time lag between the machine and it's operators gets worse. Even on modern automated oil rigs there are people driving, repairing and monitoring the systems locally. Really we're pretty far from semi-autonomous systems for stuff like mining, we're just starting to get problem solving working in AI just look at the DARPA challenge for how far we are from being able to assign relatively small tasks to resolve problems.

cortesoft 6y ago

> but machines seem to like it just fine. I think you are underestimating the challenges they have to overcome to get machines to work in space.

hk__2 6y ago
> I think you are underestimating the challenges they have to overcome to get machines to work in space. Even if it’s hard, it’s still a lot easier than getting humans to work in space.
- akiselev 6y ago
  You don't understand the challenges. Sending humans up with semi-automated machines would actually be a lot easier than fully automated machines. The human race's entire experience so far has been with machines in 1g. We have almost zero experience making self repairing factories in any gravity. We have zero experience mining in low or zero gravity. It might take several generations of engineers and miners in space to figure out all of the problems, slowly automating each step at a time through trial and error like we've been doing for centuries. The critical point you're missing is that any mining and processing equipment will require their own life support that will already be able to support humans. Machines are significantly more complicated without a gas to convect heat away from all surfaces, they'll need massive fluid handling and filtering systems for lubricants and cooling fluid, the mining operations will need tons of oxygen and scrubbing for their chemistry, and clean water will be required by pretty much every process. The only way we'll pull this off is by using our existing experience on this planet and that requires the same conditions that support life. That sounds like I'm exaggerating but we've already spent more than a generation in space studying the effects of zero-g and we just barely got a working 3D printer on the ISS a few years ago. No advanced mining, processing, or other manufacturing equipment to speak of beyond lab scale R&D devices. We have one lab capable of continuous zero g research and a few 747s capable of achieving it a a few minutes at a time.
  - runarberg 6y ago
    The problems you list seem to apply to both fully and semi automatic machines. E.g. wouldn’t human operated mining equipment need just as much lubrication as pre-programmed ones? We never explored the surface of Mars, or landed on an asteroid before we had our machines do it, but we managed it anyway with the human operators still on Earth.
    - cortesoft 6y ago
      I think the difference is that humans can fix problems and adapt to changing conditions a lot better than machines currently.
      - paulryanrogers 6y ago
        Humans plus Earth-like environment. Remember that micro environment has to go with them everywhere, and they die within minutes without it functioning within relatively narrow constraints.
      - thu2111 6y ago
        But there'll still be humans. Just not necessarily physically at the mine or factory. All you really need is a robotic chassis that has sufficiently good AI to use hands and follow basic instructions, perhaps helped by a guy in a VR suit back on earth or in a nearby spaceship. Perhaps aided by simulations to ensure low latency - things in space should be easier to simulate without the outside world interfering much.
        yellowapple 6y ago
        > perhaps helped by a guy in a VR suit back on earth or in a nearby spaceship. Definitely not "back on earth". Lag is an issue with VR as-is with mere milliseconds of it, and you'd be calling for minutes of latency there. And "in a nearby spaceship" would, definitionally, involve getting humans most of the way there; might as well get them all the way there at that point.
- Benjammer 6y ago
  Is it really that much easier to build space robots to cover as much breadth of function as one astronaut-engineer in a space suit?
  - hk__2 6y ago
    > Is it really that much easier to build space robots to cover as much breadth of function as one astronaut-engineer in a space suit? No, but it’s tremendously easier to fly these robots there than doing the same with humans. We can afford to let robots “die” on Mars; humans not really.

foota 6y ago

I think you've answered your own question, which is an easier place to operate? A (admittedly salty) static platform a couple hours helicopter ride away, or a radioactive vacuum that requires years of planning to reach and which by the way is minutes away even by radio? The fact we've yet to automate so much here with such large incentive to do so is evidence we're not there yet.

Rebelgecko 6y ago

I don't know much about the intricacies of asteroid mining, but human beings are very capable entities. As great as machines like the Mars rovers are, there's no comparison. A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. When I was reading the daily diaries of one of the rover drivers, it was incredible how much effort and thought went into the most trivial activities. A simple sounding task like "go look at that rock 20 meters away and take a picture of it" would be a multi-day effort, whereas it would only take an astronaut a few minutes

dgritsko 6y ago
Do you have a link to said "daily diaries?" They sound fascinating, but this is the first I've heard of them.
- zidel 6y ago
  https://marsandme.blogspot.com/ https://marsandme.blogspot.com/ is Scott Maxwells blog about driving Spirit + Opportunity
  - dgritsko 6y ago
    Awesome, thanks!
Chathamization 6y ago
> A human astronaut could probably accomplish as much in a week as a Mars rover can in a year. The estimates I've seen for a human mission to Mars are about 100-500 times the budget for Curiosity. So even if astronauts could accomplish things 52X faster (and I'm skeptical they would), it still wouldn't be as cost efficient. And that's even before you factor in the fact that the Mars Rover is going to be doing work on Mars much, much longer than a human mission would (Curiosity is going on 8 years). Human space exploration is a solution in search of a problem. People don't seem to be rationally looking for the best way to get certain information from Mars or for the best sources of materials that could be obtained with future technology (there are many overlooked terrestrial ones) and soberly deciding that astronauts are the best answer. They seem to start out with the goal of defending human space exploration, and then searching for problems to try to justify it.

smnplk 6y ago

>> After you get over the romantic narrative of space, it really doesn't sound any more appealing than the oil platform. I mean, sure, I'm curious. But I wouldn't want to live there. You are already living in space. :)

zzzzzzzza 6y ago

If anything the oil platform is much much more appealing. You can go diving and see a bunch of sea life. That's part of why as a human I'm more excited by sea steading than space exploration.

babesh 6y ago
Would it be exciting to terraform a planet or go to another star system and observe life there?
- antepodius 6y ago
  Would it be exciting to live in a tin can and do maintenance on air purifiers for 20 years?
  - jotm 6y ago
    As long as Earth streams memes :D But yeah, it's not for everyone. Imo, it would be pretty exciting to continuously enlarge some sort of habitat somewhere. In case there's no way to return to Earth, would definitely need a steady supply of drugs of all kinds and good doctors, otherwise suicides would become the number one cause of death soon enough.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
We can do both. We should do both, as both will provide technology for creating and maintaining artificial, closed environments for long-term habitation. (Though in all honesty, I want to see both happen because I loved both Star Trek and SeaQuest DSV as a kid.)

rtkwe 6y ago

There's still no real substitute for having a person on site to do work when machines breakdown or get stuck and the problems with trying to use machines in their place get worse as the time lag between the machine and it's operators gets worse. Even on modern automated oil rigs there are people driving, repairing and monitoring the systems locally. Really we're pretty far from semi-autonomous systems for stuff like mining, we're just starting to get problem solving working in AI just look at the DARPA challenge for how far we are from being able to assign relatively small tasks to resolve problems.