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I’ve never understood the idea that humans should be doing space exploration. Especially given the proof that robots and machines are demonstrably better and mo

I’ve never understood the idea that humans should be doing space exploration. Especially given the proof that robots and machines are demonstrably better and more suitable for these kind of tasks by such a degree that they dominate off-planet sensors-effector combinations. Making space exploration comfortable for humans instead of creating TARS like intelligent machines (possible in our lifetimes imo) foundationally limits and constrains the ability and scale of exploration. Seems entirely egoistic and anthropocentric. Is there any alternative reason - other than stated - as to why humans should be considered the best candidates for these tasks?

nout 2y ago
If these robots find a good target and make it habitable, then you would still need to send humans at some point, right? But then you sort of wasted all these thousands of years by doing robots first, you might as well send humans too.
bee_rider 2y ago
Humans generally do things out of their own self interest (which for a lot of people includes improving the living conditions of their descendants). So, if humans aren’t going to colonize space, we’ll either need somebody who… just sort of likes colonizing space with robots? Like as a hobby I guess? Or maybe we’ll have robots at some point capable of working in their own self-interest.
dwaltrip 2y ago
Because they want to. We see mountain, we climb it. Space is no different.
- mmooss 2y ago
  I wonder if space exploration will turn out to be no different than mountain climbing. There's nothing useful on the mountain, we can't live there, it's purely exploration, sport, and a feeling of achievement.
  - dwaltrip 2y ago
    There's an entire universe out there, we will definitely find some useful stuff.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      We may never solve the distance problem, for example, so all we may end up with is telescope images of the useful stuff. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, by the way - we definitely should.
  - jajko 2y ago
    You clearly don't do mountaineering :) By far the most motivating part of high dangerous mountains is the internal journey of climbers to have confidence in your own skills and training to overcome any obstacle that can happen. Then facing an unpredictable challenges, trusting your teammates if you are not solo, overcome them or knowing when to retreat to safety. Facing semi-continuous fear of death, not getting hampered it but calmly assessing it and acting accordingly is a great skill for any aspect of life. Overcoming oneself mentally, pushing and redefining our own limits (normal folks have them mentally set very low compared to actual threshold) is the gist of it. All this and much more while being mentally degraded to 10-20% of capacity at sea level. in environment where 1 mistake can be easily the last one. Physical capacity is also greatly reduced, and you climb very steeply or almost vertically, with 10-20kg backpack, sometimes more. Doing this even for weeks without break. Summit push can be easily 48-72h 100% effort without a sip of water, any food nor sleep, after all I've written. I wouldn't even call this 'sport', you don't call early Antarctic expeditions a sport, do you. I don't see why almost all of this and much more shouldn't be present in space exploration, just environment will be a bit different (but views on myriads of stars remain).
deleted 2y ago
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nout 2y ago

If these robots find a good target and make it habitable, then you would still need to send humans at some point, right? But then you sort of wasted all these thousands of years by doing robots first, you might as well send humans too.

bee_rider 2y ago

Humans generally do things out of their own self interest (which for a lot of people includes improving the living conditions of their descendants). So, if humans aren’t going to colonize space, we’ll either need somebody who… just sort of likes colonizing space with robots? Like as a hobby I guess? Or maybe we’ll have robots at some point capable of working in their own self-interest.

dwaltrip 2y ago

Because they want to. We see mountain, we climb it. Space is no different.

mmooss 2y ago
I wonder if space exploration will turn out to be no different than mountain climbing. There's nothing useful on the mountain, we can't live there, it's purely exploration, sport, and a feeling of achievement.
- dwaltrip 2y ago
  There's an entire universe out there, we will definitely find some useful stuff.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    We may never solve the distance problem, for example, so all we may end up with is telescope images of the useful stuff. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, by the way - we definitely should.
- jajko 2y ago
  You clearly don't do mountaineering :) By far the most motivating part of high dangerous mountains is the internal journey of climbers to have confidence in your own skills and training to overcome any obstacle that can happen. Then facing an unpredictable challenges, trusting your teammates if you are not solo, overcome them or knowing when to retreat to safety. Facing semi-continuous fear of death, not getting hampered it but calmly assessing it and acting accordingly is a great skill for any aspect of life. Overcoming oneself mentally, pushing and redefining our own limits (normal folks have them mentally set very low compared to actual threshold) is the gist of it. All this and much more while being mentally degraded to 10-20% of capacity at sea level. in environment where 1 mistake can be easily the last one. Physical capacity is also greatly reduced, and you climb very steeply or almost vertically, with 10-20kg backpack, sometimes more. Doing this even for weeks without break. Summit push can be easily 48-72h 100% effort without a sip of water, any food nor sleep, after all I've written. I wouldn't even call this 'sport', you don't call early Antarctic expeditions a sport, do you. I don't see why almost all of this and much more shouldn't be present in space exploration, just environment will be a bit different (but views on myriads of stars remain).

deleted 2y ago

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