4 ms·

I think robots are the better options tbh. 1. They don't need life support that amount to 2000% active mass. Maybe 20% since we can still count solar panel as

I think robots are the better options tbh. 1. They don't need life support that amount to 2000% active mass. Maybe 20% since we can still count solar panel as their life support. 2. They are far far far more sophisticated than what they used to be. Especially with modern processors. We can even embed some level of AI decision making onto these robots so they don't need to call back home for every decision. 3. They are far cheaper and can tolerate far lower safety margin. We can potentially even mass produce them and launch 50 at a time. Imagine if we're just throwing a bunch of rovers on moon and each of them are capable of suicide burn and landing themselves. Maybe 2/10 will fail but we still get 8 rovers that can just roam the moon for fun.

zozbot234 4y ago
Robots are the better option - we send a lot more robots to space than we do humans. But there's nothing wrong with also having some human missions.
- hollerith 4y ago
  There's nothing wrong with having some human missions, but I don't want to help pay for it.
  - btgeekboy 4y ago
    NASA's total budget is approximately one half of one percent (0.5%) of the federal budget. Even at its peak in the 1960s, it never reached 5%. Seems pretty reasonable.
    - hollerith 4y ago
      Since you think it's so reasonable, would you please pay my share? If distributed equally among the US population, it is about $75 a year per person, which of course comes out to about $6.25 a month.
      - whateveracct 4y ago
        I wonder if that's actually your share given your tax bracket though. I'm actually not familiar enough to guess.
      - Aperocky 4y ago
        Now here comes a completely unreasonable (maybe not) idea: Democratized budget. Every year tax payers specify where their tax money goes. 50% of their taxes will go directly where they decreed it be. The other 50% and any debt can be allocated by the congress. There should also be options of "Let congress handle it" and "whatever the previous years makeup was" and options to adjust from there. NASA will probably be better funded, by a huge margin.
        btgeekboy 4y ago
        At what cost though? What programs would suffer funding decreases? This is why we elect representatives. It’s not a perfect system but the average citizen would not have the context necessary to make direct decisions on it.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      I like this approach. If we divide the federal budget into sufficiently small chunks, all the spending is reasonable, and we don't have to worry about deficits and such. Utterly brilliant reasoning!
- avmich 4y ago
  It might be hard to believe, but for space projects bigger than some scale using people is actually cheaper than sending robots. The big reason for that is that the robots are very modest in their overall capabilities. With humans, you can't get cheaper than the cost of sending one, or better few, people, but when you cross that line, you suddenly have a lot of functionality for free.
  - generj 4y ago
    I agree. People underestimate the scientific abilities and flexibility of a highly trained technician, particularly on solid planets and moons. A human living on Mars could operate multiple geographic exploration rovers at much higher speeds than currently (existing rovers get 0.1mph max). This is the benefit of having a 60ms ping time instead of 6-20 minutes. Plus the ability to troubleshoot, clean off solar panels, run slightly different analyses without needing to build it into the probe 8 years ago, assemble sensor stations, etc. Yes the mass budgets for manned missions are titanic. But with even half-way good mission planning we can get more science done than the equivalent mass of robots - at least for Mars and the Moon. Food and life support mass for long trips to the outer planets (or shielding for Mercury) mean robots will win there.
    - m4rtink 4y ago
      Once you get some off Earth mining going, the mass requirements should hopefully get manageable for most places.
krasin 4y ago
I work in a robotics research group. My natural bias is to always praise the robots. If the goal is just to have N robots/rovers on the moon for fun/data collection, then we don't need to send humans to space. If the goal is to bootstrap a profitable space/Moon industrial complex, then we will need a lot of robots (some autonomous and some remote controlled from Earth) and a number of humans in the center of events. Humans are critical for keeping automation working and for adjusting to unforeseen circumstances.
- Aperocky 4y ago
  Agree fullheartedly If the goal is a profitable space industrial complex somewhere other than Earth, than humans probably need to be there, but that seems like way way ahead of what we're thinking of. We're not even close to bootstraping a cluster of autonomous robots on the moon, taking over the basic functions of base operations. Any humans at current stage is basically on sightseeing duty.
  - krasin 4y ago
    > We're not even close to bootstraping a cluster of autonomous robots on the moon, taking over the basic functions of base operations. Any humans at current stage is basically on sightseeing duty. That's not really fair to say that people are there just to observe. For instance, Apollo folks took a lot more of geological samples that Lunokhods did and from a larger variety of places. The difference in mass was about 1000x (almost a ton vs almost a kg), geographical coverage was about 1000x and getting to different features was immensely easier for humans. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample-return_mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample-return_mission
teddyh 4y ago
“If scientific knowledge was all we were after, then the Federation would have built a fleet of probes, not starships. Exploration is about seeing things with your own eyes.” — Captain Kathryn Janeway, One Small Step, Star Trek Voyager Season 6, Episode 8
- Aperocky 4y ago
  Your own eyes uses many neurons to transport the images to your brain where it is processed. Neurons may be hacked so blind persons can see through a device. The abstraction is more easily done by placing a screen in front of the eye so no invasive surgery is needed while images from far away cameras can be presented to the brain. Disclaimer: I don't believe in metaverse and do not work for meta.
  - teddyh 4y ago
    Latency is a killer.
baq 4y ago
A man with a shovel can do in an hour what a moon-grade robot can do in a day, with some luck. (Two months on Mars.) Give the man a moon digger, a moon bulldozer and a mooncrete production facility (with mooncrete mixer trucks) and see what he can do then ;)
darknavi 4y ago
If anyone wants a fun, near future scifi novel that explores this idea more, read/listen to Delta-V by Daniel Suarez.

zozbot234 4y ago

Robots are the better option - we send a lot more robots to space than we do humans. But there's nothing wrong with also having some human missions.

hollerith 4y ago
There's nothing wrong with having some human missions, but I don't want to help pay for it.
- btgeekboy 4y ago
  NASA's total budget is approximately one half of one percent (0.5%) of the federal budget. Even at its peak in the 1960s, it never reached 5%. Seems pretty reasonable.
  - hollerith 4y ago
    Since you think it's so reasonable, would you please pay my share? If distributed equally among the US population, it is about $75 a year per person, which of course comes out to about $6.25 a month.
    - whateveracct 4y ago
      I wonder if that's actually your share given your tax bracket though. I'm actually not familiar enough to guess.
    - Aperocky 4y ago
      Now here comes a completely unreasonable (maybe not) idea: Democratized budget. Every year tax payers specify where their tax money goes. 50% of their taxes will go directly where they decreed it be. The other 50% and any debt can be allocated by the congress. There should also be options of "Let congress handle it" and "whatever the previous years makeup was" and options to adjust from there. NASA will probably be better funded, by a huge margin.
      - btgeekboy 4y ago
        At what cost though? What programs would suffer funding decreases? This is why we elect representatives. It’s not a perfect system but the average citizen would not have the context necessary to make direct decisions on it.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    I like this approach. If we divide the federal budget into sufficiently small chunks, all the spending is reasonable, and we don't have to worry about deficits and such. Utterly brilliant reasoning!
avmich 4y ago
It might be hard to believe, but for space projects bigger than some scale using people is actually cheaper than sending robots. The big reason for that is that the robots are very modest in their overall capabilities. With humans, you can't get cheaper than the cost of sending one, or better few, people, but when you cross that line, you suddenly have a lot of functionality for free.
- generj 4y ago
  I agree. People underestimate the scientific abilities and flexibility of a highly trained technician, particularly on solid planets and moons. A human living on Mars could operate multiple geographic exploration rovers at much higher speeds than currently (existing rovers get 0.1mph max). This is the benefit of having a 60ms ping time instead of 6-20 minutes. Plus the ability to troubleshoot, clean off solar panels, run slightly different analyses without needing to build it into the probe 8 years ago, assemble sensor stations, etc. Yes the mass budgets for manned missions are titanic. But with even half-way good mission planning we can get more science done than the equivalent mass of robots - at least for Mars and the Moon. Food and life support mass for long trips to the outer planets (or shielding for Mercury) mean robots will win there.
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    Once you get some off Earth mining going, the mass requirements should hopefully get manageable for most places.

krasin 4y ago

I work in a robotics research group. My natural bias is to always praise the robots. If the goal is just to have N robots/rovers on the moon for fun/data collection, then we don't need to send humans to space. If the goal is to bootstrap a profitable space/Moon industrial complex, then we will need a lot of robots (some autonomous and some remote controlled from Earth) and a number of humans in the center of events. Humans are critical for keeping automation working and for adjusting to unforeseen circumstances.

Aperocky 4y ago
Agree fullheartedly If the goal is a profitable space industrial complex somewhere other than Earth, than humans probably need to be there, but that seems like way way ahead of what we're thinking of. We're not even close to bootstraping a cluster of autonomous robots on the moon, taking over the basic functions of base operations. Any humans at current stage is basically on sightseeing duty.
- krasin 4y ago
  > We're not even close to bootstraping a cluster of autonomous robots on the moon, taking over the basic functions of base operations. Any humans at current stage is basically on sightseeing duty. That's not really fair to say that people are there just to observe. For instance, Apollo folks took a lot more of geological samples that Lunokhods did and from a larger variety of places. The difference in mass was about 1000x (almost a ton vs almost a kg), geographical coverage was about 1000x and getting to different features was immensely easier for humans. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample-return_mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample-return_mission

teddyh 4y ago

“If scientific knowledge was all we were after, then the Federation would have built a fleet of probes, not starships. Exploration is about seeing things with your own eyes.” — Captain Kathryn Janeway, One Small Step, Star Trek Voyager Season 6, Episode 8

Aperocky 4y ago
Your own eyes uses many neurons to transport the images to your brain where it is processed. Neurons may be hacked so blind persons can see through a device. The abstraction is more easily done by placing a screen in front of the eye so no invasive surgery is needed while images from far away cameras can be presented to the brain. Disclaimer: I don't believe in metaverse and do not work for meta.
- teddyh 4y ago
  Latency is a killer.

baq 4y ago

A man with a shovel can do in an hour what a moon-grade robot can do in a day, with some luck. (Two months on Mars.) Give the man a moon digger, a moon bulldozer and a mooncrete production facility (with mooncrete mixer trucks) and see what he can do then ;)

darknavi 4y ago

If anyone wants a fun, near future scifi novel that explores this idea more, read/listen to Delta-V by Daniel Suarez.