Does anyone know what the utility of sending humans in space is, beyond what you can do with probes? Every time I read about a human space program I am struck by what seems like a massive amount of risk on part of the human to do something that can be done with a probe if a little bit more investment is made automating these systems. I know some people have an interest in learning how to perform habitable space flight , but I just don’t see the point of that or even a space colony. The human is a terrible earth animal to go into space. We need expensive environmental controls, we are quite large, and space is amazingly hostile outside the magnetosphere. You have Apollo astronauts reporting seeing flashes; thats from space based radiation hitting their retinas after leaving the protection of the magnetosphere. That same radiation is bombarding their DNA. We report significantly higher levels of cancer from flight attendants, imagine the rates from regular astronauts if human space flight becomes a routine practice. And for what exactly, pride, ego, I’m not sure, because I can’t imagine a situation where you need a human hand in outer space and not a mechanical one.
Super long term, the stakes are the continued survival and existence of the human race, once increasing solar luminosity renders this planet uninhabitable, in a billion or two years.
Short term, heck, I'd take the risk just to experience microgravity for a good while. Tourism and pleasure itself is utility.
As for this NASA project: the unspoken subtext for doing this is that the US doesn't want China to in effect own the moon uncontested.
The first animals in the fossil record aren’t even a billion years old. Intelligent life is probably merely be a temporary phenotype seen on earth anyhow, like countless others that developed, came to dominance, and then disappeared over millions of years. Planning for something a billion years down the road, using current resourses to boot, is a little bit mad.
And if the situation is dominance on the moon over China, a remote operated lunar base is far better than anything human staffed. A battle could happen and all the highly trained operators on earth are fine when their crafts meet their end. For a space based human army, however, when you lose your craft you lose highly trained operators as well as that massive investment you made placing them and maintaining their presence in space. A remote army therefore always wins, since it has a massive thermodynamic advantage of deploying cheap and light cargo into space versus people and the support they need.
Not the parent poster, but they could have added uncharted Oort cloud object collisions, extra-solar system objects, quasar/interstellar jets, nuclear war, runaway climate change, mega volcano/caldera eruptions, bio-engineered runaway viruses, and probably a few other potentially life ending events for humanity that would bring that 'billion' number down by several orders of magnitude for likelihood of our extinction.
Near term, if something goes wrong with those probes, they're a lot easier to fix when humans are lightseconds or lightmilliseconds away than when they're lightminutes or lighthours away - and human personnel can typically do the job better and easier anyway if they're present.
Medium term, moving as much industry as possible off of Earth is a vital release valve for mitigating our destruction of Earth's biosphere. No other celestial body (to our current knowledge) has any biosphere whatsoever, and only a small number could even hypothetically support one. Strip-mining the Moon or Mars or Ceres or the umpteen-bajillion asteroids and gas giant moons entails no demolition of rain forests, no extinctions of animal species, no displacement of indigenous peoples.
Long term, moving as many humans as possible off Earth permanently resolves the risk of us destroying it. The end-game is for Earth to be a preserve, allowed to heal from the wounds we've inflicted upon it over the centuries.
I think art is as good a comparison as we'll ever get. Sending people to space is good for the spirit. But it's probably not going to be a positive financial return on investment. Which is OK, though it does behoove us to wonder if we'd get better inspiration from other, more earthbound projects.
The Curiosity rover went slowly because it was designed for data collection, not for speed. (That, and the fact that it had to get to Mars, which put severe weight limits.)
Astronauts covered a lot of distance but they didn't do a lot of science. Though to be fair, they weren't there to do science. They were there to plant flags, take selfies, and maybe bring back some souvenirs so that science could be done back on earth. They didn't even send up a scientist until that last mission.
The rover there was primarily to establish ownership. Having done that, they stopped.
A team of humans might improve the efficiency of the robots, by repairing them faster and doing some other work locally. But for the same cost you could send up an awful lot of robots.
Apollo 17 brought back 200 pounds of lunar material, including the deepest core samples we have of a planetary body, but you characterize that as “souvenirs”.
Name a robotic mission that has brought back more than 200 pounds of “souvenirs” from another world.
Eventually robotic missions will get there, but more often than not they will be as a vanguard for human exploration and settlement, because even though I put aside human motivation for arguments sake, in the real world humans have a deep desire to explore that cannot be placated with data from a probe.
Its not like its physically impossible to design some sort of remote operated vehicle that can return with 200 lbs of material if these are within the mission parameters. That’s what I am getting at. Not that the missions were insignificant or the results poor, but that today especially considering present technology over that from 60 years ago, there doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason to put a human at risk in outer space over designing a remote vehicle to perform the same procedures you expect the human to do.
I feel like in the limited set of possibilities of a human in space operating bespoke space based equipment, they aren’t much different than a robot with a given set of programming and plausible alternatives to take given certain outcomes. A human in space is still going to do probably only a few different protocols even in an emergency situation, protocols that need to be remembered and rehearsed and carefully followed, while you are perhaps taking on multiple G’s and scared for your life with little time to think.
Think of it this way, the only advantage a human might have in space over a human on earth with an xbox controller or a predefined program for a robot is to do something in the event of a communications failure. However, a communications failure in outer space for a human mission probably means the mission has critically failed in some way and the humans are probably doomed without a link to mission control.
> Does anyone know what the utility of sending humans in space is, beyond what you can do with probes?
Looks to me you're trying to express your disapproval of human space exploration, but you are veiling it as a question. We are friends here on HN, no need for rhetorical detours.
> I can’t imagine a situation where you need a human hand in outer space and not a mechanical one.
I suppose you imagine that robots can do everything that humans can do. Maybe in theory, but in practice it's not even close.
On earth I agree with your second paragraph, but not in space. Humans can’t do anything and everything in space. They are limited to what is possible through the tooling, and in an emergency they aren’t going to be operating off the cuff but following carefully rehearsed emergency procedures anyway.
I just haven’t heard an argument that its worth the risk to life having some utility inherent to a human in space, that you cant otherwise get with some sort of remotely operated device. Unfortunately a lot of the decisions with the apollo mission wasn’t necessary purely scientific, it was designed to achieve military and political objectives too, so its hard to say if having astronauts were strictly necessary. Or if they were necessary with the technology of the 1960s, its hard to say if that would continue to be true today given advances in both robotics and computing.
Till 3 years ago they did not have vehicle to transport bodies to orbit but counted on Russians to do the orbit taxi for 10 years.
So US living mission to the moon will not happens as never happened out of Kubrick's movies reality series...50 years ago...
At the moon landings they left behind a mirror anyone can use to shine a laser against that was used to calculate the speed of light between the earth and the moon. I’m not sure why so many people are so insistent the moon landings are fake when you can prove they aren’t with a telescope and a fucking laser
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 53.0 ms ] threadShort term, heck, I'd take the risk just to experience microgravity for a good while. Tourism and pleasure itself is utility.
As for this NASA project: the unspoken subtext for doing this is that the US doesn't want China to in effect own the moon uncontested.
And if the situation is dominance on the moon over China, a remote operated lunar base is far better than anything human staffed. A battle could happen and all the highly trained operators on earth are fine when their crafts meet their end. For a space based human army, however, when you lose your craft you lose highly trained operators as well as that massive investment you made placing them and maintaining their presence in space. A remote army therefore always wins, since it has a massive thermodynamic advantage of deploying cheap and light cargo into space versus people and the support they need.
Medium term, moving as much industry as possible off of Earth is a vital release valve for mitigating our destruction of Earth's biosphere. No other celestial body (to our current knowledge) has any biosphere whatsoever, and only a small number could even hypothetically support one. Strip-mining the Moon or Mars or Ceres or the umpteen-bajillion asteroids and gas giant moons entails no demolition of rain forests, no extinctions of animal species, no displacement of indigenous peoples.
Long term, moving as many humans as possible off Earth permanently resolves the risk of us destroying it. The end-game is for Earth to be a preserve, allowed to heal from the wounds we've inflicted upon it over the centuries.
The Apollo 17 rover covered 20 miles in 4 hours.
Ego and the human spirit aside, humans are better at exploring than robots, even with 50 years of advances in robotics.
Astronauts covered a lot of distance but they didn't do a lot of science. Though to be fair, they weren't there to do science. They were there to plant flags, take selfies, and maybe bring back some souvenirs so that science could be done back on earth. They didn't even send up a scientist until that last mission.
The rover there was primarily to establish ownership. Having done that, they stopped.
A team of humans might improve the efficiency of the robots, by repairing them faster and doing some other work locally. But for the same cost you could send up an awful lot of robots.
Name a robotic mission that has brought back more than 200 pounds of “souvenirs” from another world.
Eventually robotic missions will get there, but more often than not they will be as a vanguard for human exploration and settlement, because even though I put aside human motivation for arguments sake, in the real world humans have a deep desire to explore that cannot be placated with data from a probe.
I am willing to wager a human mission will not receive the same pushback, even if it's 10x the price.
The human angle here cannot be ignored.
Humans innovate, adapt, and overcome.
Think of it this way, the only advantage a human might have in space over a human on earth with an xbox controller or a predefined program for a robot is to do something in the event of a communications failure. However, a communications failure in outer space for a human mission probably means the mission has critically failed in some way and the humans are probably doomed without a link to mission control.
Looks to me you're trying to express your disapproval of human space exploration, but you are veiling it as a question. We are friends here on HN, no need for rhetorical detours.
> I can’t imagine a situation where you need a human hand in outer space and not a mechanical one.
I suppose you imagine that robots can do everything that humans can do. Maybe in theory, but in practice it's not even close.
I just haven’t heard an argument that its worth the risk to life having some utility inherent to a human in space, that you cant otherwise get with some sort of remotely operated device. Unfortunately a lot of the decisions with the apollo mission wasn’t necessary purely scientific, it was designed to achieve military and political objectives too, so its hard to say if having astronauts were strictly necessary. Or if they were necessary with the technology of the 1960s, its hard to say if that would continue to be true today given advances in both robotics and computing.