A future for manned space exploration

[Seret]

With the passing of Neil Armstrong i'm reminded of an interesting statistic: no human has left LEO for 40 years. So is there a future for manned space flight, or have us meatbags had our day?

Setting aside the romanticism and flag-waving having a real live human set foot on other worlds, is there any good reason to send people instead of machines? Seems like we've managed rather well for 40 years sending machines, and they're only going to get more capable. The harsh environments and long durations of space flight just seem much more suited to machines than humans.

[Suzaku]

There generally is nothing that a person can do in a mission that a machine can't do for a far lower cost. Not to mention oxygen, food, etc.

[hebdomad]

I think we do need manned missions beyond low earth orbit. We don't have to land on any planets yet, but we do need to push human existence beyond just one rock.

[Seret]

we do need to push human existence beyond just one rock.

Sure, but human existence on another rock would be largely dependent on logistical support from this rock. The idea of a completely self-sufficient outpost in space or on another planet or moon is well beyond our capabilities. It would take a colony with hundreds or thousands of people with an enormous manufacturing and technical infrastructure, all of which would have to be shipped up there. The investment in time and money required for that kind of thing would be mindboggling, so unless there was an imminent threat to Earth it wouldn't be worth doing.

[RedDwarfIV]

Stephen Hawking advocates colonies.

[togfox]

We need an insurance polcy. Humans will explore when the time is right.

[Endeavour]

We need manned space flight because otherwise space flight will die off. Ever notice how the current robotic missions don't even make the news? People don't care about robots.

[Seret]

We need manned space flight because otherwise space flight will die off. Ever notice how the current robotic missions don't even make the news? People don't care about robots.

Is space flight dependent on public interest though? There are three main kinds of space mission: military, scientific and commercial. Commercial doesn't depend on public support at all, if something makes money it'll get done. Likewise military, it has it's own agenda. Science only needs public support in terms of there being a budget for it, but even with zero public support there will be a certain pool of funds available.

The times of space being a publicly-funded endeavour are diminishing anyway. Most activity in space is business these days, and that'll only get moreso.

[Suzaku]

We need manned space flight because otherwise space flight will die off. Ever notice how the current robotic missions don't even make the news? People don't care about robots.

Extra Extra! Read all about it! Astronauts starve to death on first manned mission to Mars after a sandstorm sweeps the supply module to an unknown location! 7 month emergency supply journey is too late, astronaut cannibalism imminent.

[Warshawski]

Extra Extra! Read all about it! Astronauts starve to death on first manned mission to Mars after a sandstorm sweeps the supply module to an unknown location! 7 month emergency supply journey is too late, astronaut cannibalism imminent.

Wouldn't happen. For starters, no self-respecting space agency (all of whom know about Mars' sandstorms) would ever leave their modules just laying out in the open. At least not for long. One of your first priorities would be to bury them in Martian earth, simply to ward of radiation. Being semi/fully underground tends to diminish the effects of sandstorms.

Plus, have you never heard of a footing auger? It's like a drill, except the whole mechanism drills into the ground to basically bolt you to it.

I fully support manned missions/colonization to/of other planets and moons. As a matter of fact, Elon Musk of SpaceX says his company will land people on Mars in the very near future.

Manned spaceflight isn't dead; it's just getting started.

[comham]

The US gov't cut funding to the NERVA program in the 70s specifically to avoid having to fund a future mars mission and a continually expanding space programme, as I understand it. Catastrophic lack of vision there.

With the recent competitions and incentives, and Planetary Resources mining bid, the space race seems to be kicking off again.

[Seret]

Manned spaceflight isn't dead; it's just getting started.

It's got a lot of catching up to do. The robots are kicking butt. Which do you think it's faster and easier to progress the technology of: robots, or manned flight? I think the machines are holding all the aces tbh: they're immensely cheaper, more suited for the environmental conditions, more flexible, don't mind the long timescales of spaceflight, and nobody minds if they explode.

[comham]

Manned spaceflight has a more profound cultural impact though. It's one thing to have curiosity record an emission spectrum of a mars rock, it's quite another to see a video of an american and a russian playing golf on the moon.

And, more long term, the end goal is surely to have large, self-sufficient manned colonies off-earth. Imagine the psychological, sociological, environmental and technological developments that would come from an endeavour.

[Warshawski]

It's got a lot of catching up to do. The robots are kicking butt. Which do you think it's faster and easier to progress the technology of: robots, or manned flight? I think the machines are holding all the aces tbh: they're immensely cheaper, more suited for the environmental conditions, more flexible, don't mind the long timescales of spaceflight, and nobody minds if they explode.

True. But as the first space race showed, technology and capabilities expand exponentially when there's a clear goal at the end of the tunnel, whether that be a "my-space-manhood-is-bigger-and-more-potent-than-yours"-fest like the 60s race or the "Ooh, money" race this one looks to be shaping into, what with all the private companies getting in on it now.

And whereas it is, yes, cheaper to put probes and rovers in orbit/on the ground first (that'll probably become standard procedure for anything we land on!), landing on a strange new world has a far greater impact on the minds of the human race. Very few people will remember what Curiosity even was; there probably isn't a person on Earth that doesn't at least recognize the name of Neil Armstrong, even if some of them can't quite remember why they know the name... and Curiosity happened only a few weeks ago; Neil Armstrong walked on the moon 43 years ago.

[Nikolai]

There generally is nothing that a person can do in a mission that a machine can't do for a far lower cost.

Um... wut? Seriously?

If you want to compare apples to apples, consider the return of science on the unmanned versus the manned programs to the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The manned program cost more, yes, about a hundred times more -- but it returned far, far, far more than a hundred times the science. Steven Squyres, scientific leader on the MER Mars rover missions, was often referenced after he pointed out that the Mars rovers could do in a day or more what it would take a trained geologist a minute or so to do. (And that excludes other things that humans do that, for machines, is simply impossible.)

Ultimately, the entire point of space exploration is to find new places to live (as well as develop the technologies needed to live there). After all, we know there are (albeit rare) catastrophes that could wipe out all human life if it continues to exist on one planet, and that we're rapidly inventing more and more ways to do serious damage to our species' livelihood with nowhere besides Earth to conduct our tests. That enterprise -- vastly increasing the odds of human survival (and the survival of other kinds of life) by spreading out -- is doomed to be left with certain fundamentals left permanently untested if humans never try.

[Seret]

And, more long term, the end goal is surely to have large, self-sufficient manned colonies off-earth.

That would be nice, but nobody actually has that on the agenda any time soon. Our technology is nowhere near making that possible. We'd need a massive revolution in our ability to manufacture and handle wastes to make it feasible.

We've already got the technology we need to explore the whole solar system, or know what we need to do it. We'll have visited and examined all the planets and most of the moons in the next hundred years. We don't need to send humans to do any of that, we can do it all from Earth.

Beyond that, you start looking at exoplanets or colonies in space. IMO, human beings in their current form are only suited to living in one place: Earth. It doesn't make much sense to try and live on worlds that we aren't adapted for. What might make sense in the far future is to try and find planets that are close enough to Earth that you can adapt a new form of the species to live there, then beam that genetic code to the new world and have the machines that we'd already sent to pave the way grow them from scratch. Biotech is going to be amazing in a few hundred years time. I don't see sending actual bags of meat whizzing around as a realistic prospect. It's difficult enough over short distances within the solar system, but once you start heading further out it just takes too long for a human-carrying vessel to be sensible.

Besides, once we've developed AI to a high enough point the distinction between biological human and machine human may become less important. The machines we send will be the product of human civilisation, and if they were advanced enough to be self-aware and granted equivalent rights to us then they arguably would be human. I fully expect that in the future humans will become more machine, and machines will become more human. We're all cyborgs already, in that parts of our immune systems were manufactured (vaccination), and artificial body parts are relatively common.

So I don't think we should necessarily view our machines as somehow lesser than or different from us. They're an extension of us, and we'll merge a lot more closely in the future.

[comham]

That would be nice, but nobody actually has that on the agenda any time soon. Our technology is nowhere near making that possible. We'd need a massive revolution in our ability to manufacture and handle wastes to make it feasible.

Chicken and egg problem. We gain that technology by attempting the lofty goal of off-world colonies. Projects like biodome just don't fire the imagination as much as "5 year colony on mars"

[Seret]

Um... wut? Seriously?

Yes. That's why it's being done that way. The early space program only focussed on so much manned flight because the robots of the time were rubbish. Just look at things like Almaz and MOL, they actually were planning on using humans to do the job of a spy satellite. As soon as the technology caught up with the objective, the humans quickly got designed out.

the Mars rovers could do in a day or more what it would take a trained geologist a minute or so to do.

But at what cost? The Mars rovers are doable with current budgets, manned Mars missions aren't.

Ultimately, the entire point of space exploration is to find new places to live

No, that's only one of the objectives. There are others: study the solar system and it's history, search for resources to bring back to Earth, try to find life on other worlds and study it, etc.

Edited August 27, 2012 by Seret

[Seret]

Chicken and egg problem. We gain that technology by attempting the lofty goal of off-world colonies. Projects like biodome just don't fire the imagination as much as "5 year colony on mars"

Indeed. The problem in the meantime is: where's the money coming from? You're going to struggle to fund a project that has no payoff within the lifetime of anyone alive today.

[comham]

Indeed. The problem in the meantime is: where's the money coming from? You're going to struggle to fund a project that has no payoff within the lifetime of anyone alive today.

Well, of course. That's why we're having this discussion instead of watching the 4th annual martian ping pong tournament.

Space programmes don't have direct pay-offs. Almost no science/engineering programs do. We need to seriously ramp up space funding because it's clearly the right thing to do. Hikes in military budgets go unopposed but when it comes to NASA there's so much hemming and hawwing.

[Seret]

Space programmes don't have direct pay-offs. Almost no science/engineering programs do

I disagree, all engineering is done for a good reason, and most science is done because it's expected that a practical application will be found, if one's not already apparent. Most science is done by corporations, who are definitely looking for a return.

Space programmes absolutely do have a return anyway. Most launches are commercial satellites. Science often has to tag along just to get a look in.

We need to seriously ramp up space funding because it's clearly the right thing to do.

Hmm. Clearly? To whom? Space nerds? The man on the street? Most people are pretty unclear when it comes to the actual benefits of a space program, and will probably mention something vague about frying pans when you ask them. There are a lot of other things to do with that money that are also "clearly the right thing to do". You can't do them all, so there will never be enough money to do everything we want. Democracy being what it is, the public's more pressing needs will always get funded first.

Personally I'd love to see space budgets boosted. Not necessarily because it's "the right thing", but just because space exploration is cool. I am of course, a massive nerd, and am excited by things a lot of people find really dull.

Hikes in military budgets go unopposed but when it comes to NASA there's so much hemming and hawwing.

That's unfortunate, but rational. Failure of a space mission has little practical impact on a nation's future, defeat in war can be catastrophic.

[Nikolai]

Yes. That's why it's being done that way. The early space program only focussed on so much manned flight because the robots of the time were rubbish. Just look at things like Almaz and MOL, they actually were planning on using humans to do the job of a spy satellite. As soon as the technology caught up with the objective, the humans quickly got designed out.

Okay. But we're still not at the point where robots can replace humans in exploration, and won't be without an as-yet-unknown leap in computing. (Reconnaissance is, arguably, a form of tourism, insofar as we know salient characteristics of what we'll find even before we look. That is, by definition, not exploration.)

Moreover, insisting that machines might be as capable as humans in the future is not a reason for humans not to go now.

But at what cost? The Mars rovers are doable with current budgets, manned Mars missions aren't.

Point taken. But the assertion I was replying to was not that we do robotic missions because we can afford them (and not their manned counterparts); the assertion was that robots can do everything humans can do, and at a fraction of the cost. That simply isn't so, even though we can't afford the full cost (and doing what we can afford is better than doing nothing at all).

No, that's only one of the objectives. There are others: study the solar system and it's history, search for resources to bring back to Earth, try to find life on other worlds and study it, etc.

Yes, certainly, you're right. But in terms of the destiny of our species, it's certainly the most important (hence the "ultimately"). If we want to list secondary objectives of space exploration, we could be here all month.

[Seret]

Okay. But we're still not at the point where robots can replace humans in exploration

We've been at that point for decades, which is why robots have replaced humans in space exploration. The last manned space exploration mission was Apollo 17. Every mission to explore new places since then has been machines. I wouldn't call pottering around in Earth orbit "exploration", we've been there before.

Point taken. But the assertion I was replying to was not that we do robotic missions because we can afford them (and not their manned counterparts); the assertion was that robots can do everything humans can do, and at a fraction of the cost. That simply isn't so

There's no one robot that can do everything a human can, but for a narrow range of tasks you can build a robot that does those jobs as well or better than a human, for a fraction of the cost and risk.

[Nikolai]

We've been at that point for decades, which is why robots have replaced humans in space exploration.

I'd say that's a vast oversimplification. Simply because exploration can be done doesn't mean that people care or want to pay the bill.

Do you think the man on the street knows what Apollo 17 found that other missions did not? Do you think the man on the street could name anything discovered by the Apollo missions? Do you think the man on the street cares?

Like it or not, NASA runs on PR, not on pragmatism. The fact that its budget is limited and robotic exploration is all we can afford does not even imply that robots can do what humans can.

There's no one robot that can do everything a human can, but for a narrow range of tasks you can build a robot that those jobs as well or better than a human, for a fraction of the cost and risk.

Sure, for a narrow range of tasks. But I'd argue that those tasks are a mere subset of the tasks needed to conduct thorough exploration.

[comham]

That's unfortunate, but rational. Failure of a space mission has little practical impact on a nation's future, defeat in war can be catastrophic.

Yeah, except we're talking about NASA, and America doesn't need its military for self defense. It needs it to meddle in other countries, a singularly unhelpful purpose. Israel or Eritrea, perhaps, need their armies to keep existing. America's army is just for imperialism.