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Sometimes human livestock is cheaper than automation, especially when the value of life is cheapened. As an example, slave societies don't have industrial revo

Sometimes human livestock is cheaper than automation, especially when the value of life is cheapened. As an example, slave societies don't have industrial revolutions because there's never a need to invest in labour-saving devices. Indeed, the Romans knew of water wheels and windmills but never used them much because you could just buy a few slaves. If slavery hadn't been introduced to Rome, who knows what alt-history would've emerged from the Roman engineering prowess.

dagw 5y ago
The huge difference is that keeping humans alive on earth is really cheap and easy. Air and water is basically free, and with some tiny scraps of land you can basically make your slaves feed themselves via subsistence farming. They don't have to generate much value to be profitable. Keeping humans alive in space on the other hand is stupidly expensive.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > Keeping humans alive in space on the other hand is stupidly expensive. It is now. But the most expensive part of that is shuttling people and infrastructure up the Earth's gravity well. Imagine that our society retains some level of sanity for the next couple decades. In that scenario, we'll continue on the path of expanding to space, starting with a rudimentary cislunar economy. This means near-Earth asteroid mining and in-space construction, which lets us drastically reduce the amount of mass needed to be launched into orbit. That economy would not be independent - it would sell resources mined in space (to be shipped to the surface) and manufacturing services, hopefully moving most heavy industry upwell. In exchange, they'd buy food, organics and specialized components from Earth. Imagine couple decades of iterative improvement on this. Eventually, humans will be able to survive long-term in space with minimum input of terrestrial resources. E.g. almost-closed-cycle greenhouses that can supply a ship with food for a decade until they need restocking with substances that can't yet be created in space. Such capacity allows people to expand further, access more resources and ship them back. What's the value for Earth in this? Continuing the exponential growth past the carrying capacity of the planet. The more industry is moved upwell, the more space there is downwell for habitation, consumption and service economy. Why not robots? Light lag. To me, the challenges we need to overcome to send humans into interplanetary space are easier than those required for fully autonomic, AI-powered robots. If that's true, then we'll have to make interplanetary expansion a mixed human/robot endeavor. The time it takes for a signal from Earth to reach Mars is between 5 to 20 minutes - so 10-40 minutes RTT. This is unacceptable for any kind of serious remote operation, so even if robots do most of the work, you still want human controllers to be on the work site. Once you start sending mixed human/robot on long-duration missions far from Earth, dumber robots operated more directly by humans - and, importantly, serviceable on-site, will be the cheapest option.
- usrusr 5y ago
  That's the key to that belter setting in The Expanse: their continued survival is expensive. They are refused access to all the places where their sustenance could be cheaper and this makes them infinitely exploitable.
DonHopkins 5y ago
In Space Truckers, they hauled square pigs in space, because they could pack them more tightly into shipping containers. Also like The Expanse: shadowy mega-corps, and space pirates! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Truckers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Truckers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgdeaHr5LT0&ab_channel=MoviesBox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgdeaHr5LT0&ab_channel=Movie... Square pigs: http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.com/2018/06/space-truckers-dir-stuart-gordon-1997-i.html http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.com/2018/06/space-trucker... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVH9o7OMAkU&ab_channel=TheMovieLeague https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVH9o7OMAkU&ab_channel=TheMo...
- HeckFeck 5y ago
  > http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.com/2018/06/space-truckers-dir-stuart-gordon-1997-i.html http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.com/2018/06/space-trucker... Both the film and that blog's stylesheet are the embodiment of 'so bad it has to be good'.

dagw 5y ago

The huge difference is that keeping humans alive on earth is really cheap and easy. Air and water is basically free, and with some tiny scraps of land you can basically make your slaves feed themselves via subsistence farming. They don't have to generate much value to be profitable. Keeping humans alive in space on the other hand is stupidly expensive.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> Keeping humans alive in space on the other hand is stupidly expensive. It is now. But the most expensive part of that is shuttling people and infrastructure up the Earth's gravity well. Imagine that our society retains some level of sanity for the next couple decades. In that scenario, we'll continue on the path of expanding to space, starting with a rudimentary cislunar economy. This means near-Earth asteroid mining and in-space construction, which lets us drastically reduce the amount of mass needed to be launched into orbit. That economy would not be independent - it would sell resources mined in space (to be shipped to the surface) and manufacturing services, hopefully moving most heavy industry upwell. In exchange, they'd buy food, organics and specialized components from Earth. Imagine couple decades of iterative improvement on this. Eventually, humans will be able to survive long-term in space with minimum input of terrestrial resources. E.g. almost-closed-cycle greenhouses that can supply a ship with food for a decade until they need restocking with substances that can't yet be created in space. Such capacity allows people to expand further, access more resources and ship them back. What's the value for Earth in this? Continuing the exponential growth past the carrying capacity of the planet. The more industry is moved upwell, the more space there is downwell for habitation, consumption and service economy. Why not robots? Light lag. To me, the challenges we need to overcome to send humans into interplanetary space are easier than those required for fully autonomic, AI-powered robots. If that's true, then we'll have to make interplanetary expansion a mixed human/robot endeavor. The time it takes for a signal from Earth to reach Mars is between 5 to 20 minutes - so 10-40 minutes RTT. This is unacceptable for any kind of serious remote operation, so even if robots do most of the work, you still want human controllers to be on the work site. Once you start sending mixed human/robot on long-duration missions far from Earth, dumber robots operated more directly by humans - and, importantly, serviceable on-site, will be the cheapest option.
usrusr 5y ago
That's the key to that belter setting in The Expanse: their continued survival is expensive. They are refused access to all the places where their sustenance could be cheaper and this makes them infinitely exploitable.

DonHopkins 5y ago

In Space Truckers, they hauled square pigs in space, because they could pack them more tightly into shipping containers. Also like The Expanse: shadowy mega-corps, and space pirates! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Truckers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Truckers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgdeaHr5LT0&ab_channel=MoviesBox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgdeaHr5LT0&ab_channel=Movie... Square pigs: http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.com/2018/06/space-truckers-dir-stuart-gordon-1997-i.html http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.com/2018/06/space-trucker... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVH9o7OMAkU&ab_channel=TheMovieLeague https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVH9o7OMAkU&ab_channel=TheMo...

HeckFeck 5y ago
> http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.com/2018/06/space-truckers-dir-stuart-gordon-1997-i.html http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.com/2018/06/space-trucker... Both the film and that blog's stylesheet are the embodiment of 'so bad it has to be good'.