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Russia, Japan aim to establish permanent bases on the Moon
- Paul_S 14y agoWe should stop sending humans into space and start sending lots of robots but first we need to create better robots. There's no reason or advantage of a human being there. Well, that's not really true now but only because robots still suck too much and it's only a matter of time.
- nitrogen 14y agoHere's a simple solution to your problem: stop caring what people who want to go into space spend their money on. Sure, when you ignore all the important variables, sending only robots to space appears much more rational. But those same variables, when ignored, make pretty much all of humans' favorite endeavors seem irrational.
- geon 14y agoThere is a long way left before a robot will be anywhere near as good as a human. First of all, we need better mechanics. The mars rovers are a great example. They work really well until they get stuck in the dirt. Something like that should ideally not be possible. We might solve that problem soon enough, but doing stuff in space is problematic if you rely on teleoperation. Even on the moon, the delay makes it difficult to control anything as unpredictable as a rover with wheels on a rocky and dusty surface. Mars is obviously even worse. On Jupiter, you'd have a delay of over two hours before you see what your commands did. Obviously, we need autonomous robots. To make them even close to as useful as a human, they need pretty strong AI. We simply don't have that technology yet (if ever). I think the best solution would be to send a human operator to monitor and command a larger number of semi-autonomous robots. If we can get the operator to control a robot Avatar-style, he won't even need to leave the space craft. He could stay in orbit, removing the need for any sot of landing/take off vehicle, considerably reducing the risk of getting stranded.