| Legobricks |
December 9th, 2016 9:39 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by gimmepie
(Post 9507465)
Robots are [...] are less valuable than human lives.
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I wonder about that. Of course the worth of a human life can be viewed through the lens of sentimentality, but the sort of people eligible to go into space are those willing to take the risk; danger shouldn't be a reason not to send them. In practical terms, however — does the cost of a whatevernaut's training, wages and support exceed that of a robot's design, construction and maintenance? I suspect they're quite similar in standalone investment, and that manned missions are significantly more costly overall purely on the basis of the increased mass of life support. One should, I think, therefore consider the value of manned missions versus robotic missions, not robot 'lives' versus human lives.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gimmepie
(Post 9507465)
They take longer to do things too.
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Which means what? Most of space exploration is travel time. The fact that robots can just as easily spend two years reaching and achieving orbit around an asteroid as two months speaks more in their favour than against it. The things they are, however, are more clumsy and either poor at or completely unable to make split-second decisions (ie. react). A purely robotic attempt to do something extravagant like terraform Mars might (ironically, in this example) benefit greatly from instead directly involving humans, but for any foreseeable mission within the scope of what we've beeing doing for the past four decades: even if human working pace is desirable, it is so much more desirable to not go to the great trouble involved with bringing humans along that I don't see matters changing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Razor Leaf
(Post 9507473)
However, robots lack a key capability that is required in space exploration and, indeed, all of science: they cannot observe. By "observe" I don't simply mean take recordings - I mean look at things and evaluate them. In science, "observation" refers to taking an action and looking at its effects without expectations of what you'll see. Ergo, you aren't "looking" for any particular thing; you're simply seeing what happens. If you don't give a robot something to look for, it won't see anything; they have to be told to monitor particular variables but if you try to tell them to just look for interesting stuff, they'll have no idea what they're meant to be doing and will either record every tiny insiginificant event or won't record anything at all. You need unbiased, unexpecting thought and reasoning to observe properly. For this, we require independently-thinking humans. So while robots can prove that things are possible and safe, we won't make any actual progress without the human getting directly involved.
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What 'things' would they be looking at? A human mission does, what, bring some instruments to the surface to take readings? And a robotic mission does... the same thing. The devices we use to take measurements of any kind are already machines we've designed to look for specific criteria and we're working through them in either case. If you've got a robotic rover on some celestial body and it can send a video feed back for you to observe for unusual things yourself before directing the rover toward them, what more would you need?
Quote:
Originally Posted by LegendChu
(Post 9510707)
Humans are also more mobile
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Not exactly. Humans require significant infrastructure to support their biological needs. At that point they would be significantly more mobile given suitable transportation, but until that point robots are the only thing that is mobile at all beyond an hour's walk from a landing site.
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