Robots vs Humans for Space Exploration

[Admin]

Not a video, but a 29 min pod cast. It talks about the debate of humans vs robots when it comes to space exploration.

http://www.planetary.org/radio/show/00000208/
(skip the first ~2 minutes to cut right to it)

I realize we are a little biased . . . but what do you guys think, from the point of robotics engineers/hobbyists, would be better for exploring space and other planets? Why?

[Arislan]

I would think that both together would be the best choice. Maybe a high robot-to-human ratio like in "Silent Running"

[JesseWelling]

I think different levels of Teleoperation is best. Robot sees a rock. Comunicates to you that it sees a rock. What should the robot do? You tell it. It does it's thing, while you do yours. That being said, teleoperation is easier when there is low latency. But good AI can make up for higher latency.....

Just like all issues in life.....there is a gray area that never makes things simple

[sdk32285]

Im working on a Lunar Project now where some degree of AI is critical since the south pole of the moon has very intermitant line of site satelite communications. Because of this we need to use that time to recieve data from the rover and use minimal time to ishue it new commands.

There is another project going on at CMU where they have multiple robots trying to build a single structrue. They have logic to complete the entire process, but when ever it gets stuck/confused it just starts yelling for a human to tell it what to do.

[JesseWelling]

sounds pretty human like to me 

[azy]

I heard that Obama was planning a manned mission to one of the NEO's (near earth object/asteroid/comet), that would be cool...send that golf ball into orbit. If we can haul one of these rocks or a comet back to earth orbit it will make a brilliant space station & Missile launch pad vs and incoming City Killer asteroids.  A little while back we tracked an impactor on radar, 4 hour warning. Luckily it didn't hit any residentail areas. Every year at least one meteorite hits the earth with enough force to take out a skyscraper & once every 10 years something big enough to destroy a village. We have been lucky so far most impacts go unnoticed in the sea or uninhabited areas.

Ive been writing material for a book "golfers guide to the solar system", always wanted to play gold on an asteroid.

I got nothing against Human space exploration, in fact I'm all for it. However it is expensive and dangerous. Great PR when manned mission work, bad PR when the don't come back. We have a huge energy crisis coming up over the next 25 years, sort of peak everything will swiftly follow. That's gonna screw everything up for everyone. I wanna see that anti meteorite station up and running before 2030. The last thing we need as the pumps run dry is a big rock falling on us while we are on the back foot ! both these threats are bigger than most people realise

As the robots get better and better, humans are gonna seem less relevant in space activities.  Space is a pretty good environment for a semi smart robot to sniff around in.

[blackbeard]

Well one of the biggest arguments for human exploration is that the rovers on mars move very slowly. In reality this isn't a real issue since a robot can run almost indeffinitely and we can send as many as we want. Of course it would be nice to try and send a person to see what's up but robots are disposable enough to check for space monsters just in case.

[Oller125]

Funny thing is that when I saw this post when it was bumped I had just written a blog post related to this which can be found here. http://themindofoliver.blogspot.com/2010/11/space-colonisation.html
I think personally that robots should arrive first, organise the base for humans to arrive and then help a little afterwards.

[azy]

we went to the moon to prove to ourselves that we could do it...that and cold war propaganda

Astronomy has gained a lot of public support and interest, get pretty pictures back (data for the eggheads so they can model planets, stars etc)

Satellites for cumincation and spying.......obvious rewards there.

Funny how that multibillion dollar space station gets a "yah whatever" reaction from peeps on the ground. Still its good practice and messing around for stuff we will want to do in the future.

Robots will pretty much take over space exploration, and wont be toolong before they will be good enough to start building things like moonbases. Space stations don't need to be built in space....they are built on the ground and hauled up into orbit.I'm not too bothered if its an android or a human walking round mars, yeah be cool for it to be a human but when you look at the costs and dangers you quickly see robots are way ahead. they don't have to come back for one thing. If you offered me a free trip to the moon or mars id prolly turn it down flat from a danger point of view, though every fibre in my body would be gagging to go. I'm no shrinking violet, sadly, the dangers of space travel will be with us for a long time to come.

500 or so people have gone into space , 1 in 30 died add a zero in my favour and id be much happier to go

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_have_gone_into_space_to_date_and_what_are_their_names

when the space age started it was a tale of "rockets and men" we didn't have robots back then, now its a tale of Rockets, Robots and Men.....in that order

The work of robotic engineers may be less glamorous, but its saving human lives and providing cheaper if slightly hamstrung solutions for the exploration of space