Zukunft des Weltraums: Könnten Roboter menschliche Astronauten wirklich ersetzen? –
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7keddnj31o
Zukunft des Weltraums: Könnten Roboter menschliche Astronauten wirklich ersetzen? –
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7keddnj31o
7 Kommentare
From the article
>Robots can contribute to that scientific research, with the ability to travel to locations inhospitable to humans, where they can use instruments to study and probe the atmospheres and surfaces.
>“Humans are more versatile and we get stuff done faster than a robot, but we’re really hard and expensive to keep alive in space,“ says Dr Weinersmith.
>In her 2024 Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital, author Samantha Harvey puts it more lyrically: „A robot has no need for hydration, nutrients, excretion, sleep… It wants and asks for nothing.“
>But there are downsides. Many robots are slow and methodical – for example on Mars, the rovers (remote-controlled motor vehicles) trundle along at barely 0.1mph.
>“AI can beat human beings at chess, but does that mean they’ll be able to beat human beings in exploring environments?“ asks Dr Ian Crawford, a planetary scientist at the University of London. „I just don’t think we know.“
>He does, however, believe that AI algorithms might enable rovers to be „more efficient“.
We’ve already had a number of robots exploring space. Without them, there would be NO WAY to explore the sun’s corona, the surface of Venus, the surface of Titan, or below the cloud tops of Jupiter and Saturn.
Yes, but will we want them too? We generally seem to value space exploration as a collective achievement. We still want to get someone to Mars eventually despite already exploring it with rovers.
Already did in the 90s.
Getting infrastructure to keep a team alive at even somewhere as close as Mars would take multiple launches, even for the largest currently in development launch vehicles. That’s multiple launches, multiple launch windows of delay, and then you have a small team of humans there for the time between one launch window and the return window.
Instead you could put down multiple tons of rover and lab equipment in the very first launch, start doing science years earlier, and keep doing science for a decade or more later, using the same launches.
No competition. You want humans here as much as you want horses drawing carts through the city.
They absolutely should. Advancements in telepresence, computation and data storage means we can reduce risks surrounding the harshness of space exploration
Human astronauts make the whole process more complicated
The only argument for human exploration is that of bragging rights
Send a bunch of advanced robots first, adjust and develop safely then send human crews when a majority of risks have been eliminated
This almost feels like a hostile takeover of the human species. Of course without all the biological limitations of humans, robots will be far more efficient and cheaper.
What’s the end goal here. Robots become so efficient that humans don’t need to be around anymore and they continue to takeover the galaxy without us.
Robots controlled by a human in a body suit interface, wearing virtual reality goggles.