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Robots and Humans in Spaceflight: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel

Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy. Robots and Humans in Spaceflight: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel. “Extra-terrestrial Relays”. Wireless World article by Arthur C. Clarke, October 1945, envisioned geosynchronous telecommunications satellites.

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Robots and Humans in Spaceflight: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel

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  1. Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy Robots and Humans in Spaceflight: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel

  2. “Extra-terrestrial Relays” • Wireless World article by Arthur C. Clarke, October 1945, envisioned geosynchronous telecommunications satellites. • Proposal essentially a space station with people aboard. • A forward-thinking spaceflight advocate failed to anticipate the electronics/ digital revolution then beginning.

  3. The von Braun Paradigm • Human Earth orbital flights. • Winged reusable spacecraft. • Permanently inhabited space station. • Human lunar exploration. • Human expeditions to Mars.

  4. Expectations Supporting Human Spaceflight

  5. Piloted versus Robotic Missions • Since humankind first began exploring beyond Earth, a debate has raged over whether or not to send humans into space or to rely on robots to explore beyond the protective environment of the Earth. • Automated instruments are less expensive and have become more capable. • Humans can make judgments on the spot that machines cannot.

  6. Robots as Human Helpers • Robots almost always depicted as helpers to humans, always subservient. • Perspective arose from public fascination with machines characteristic of industrialization. • Developments in electronics outpaced disappointing efforts to advance the technology of human space flight.

  7. Robots as Human Threats • Longstanding fear of robotic devices spelling doom of humankind. • Massive science fiction literature on the subject. • Film Examples: • 2001: A Space Odyssey. • Terminator series. • Blade Runner. • The Matrix trilogy.

  8. “We Don’t Give Ticker Tape Parades for Robots” • Robots have undertaken the majority of all space exploration missions. • Some with astounding results: • Voyager 1 and 2. • Mars exploration. • Debate rages over sending humans, yet support for human spaceflight is strong.

  9. NASA’s Official Position: Humans and Robots Will Explore Space Together • “A great part of the unmanned program…is a necessary prerequisite to manned flight.” PSAC, 1960. • “NASA will send human and robotic explorers as partners.” NASA, Vision for Space Exploration, 2004. • DEXTRE, the robot installed on the ISS in 2008, is tele-operated from inside the station or from the ground. It has no “positronic” brain.

  10. “Is Human Spaceflight Obsolete?” • “My position is that it is high time for a calm debate on more fundamental questions. Does human spaceflight continue to serve a compelling cultural purpose and/or our national interest?... Risk is high, cost is enormous, science is insignificant. Does anyone have a good rationale for sending humans into space?” James A. Van Allen

  11. Robotic and Human Capabilities: Still Not Comparable • “The planned NASA robotic mission [to Hubble Space Telescope] is less capable than the previously planned SM-4 shuttle astronaut mission…the mission risk…is significantly higher for the robotic mission.”(Space Studies Board, The National Academies, 2005)

  12. Serious Near-term Human Spaceflight Scenarios End with Mars As currently envisioned, human and robotic space travel says more about the past than the future.

  13. Methods of Interstellar Travel • Variance between the proximity of the inner planets of the Solar System and the challenges of reaching extra-solar spheres is extreme. • Four Methods: • Faster than light speed (warp drive or wormholes). • Multigenerational spaceships. • Suspended animation. • Extremely long-lived species.

  14. Four Phases of Space Exploration • Humans venture into space in a classic exploration mode (inner solar system, based on outdated terrestrial exploration models). • Robotic technology enhances capabilities with increasingly autonomous machines (whole solar system, possibly beyond; based on industrial analogies and servitude). • Electromagnetic/remote sensing investigations of extra-solar system regions (galactic neighborhood and beyond; based on modern physics). • Human and robotic space exploration components/capabilities begin to merge (based on bio- and nano-technology).

  15. Are Homo Sapiens Just One Stage in the Evolutionary Process? • Natural evolution (Time Machine, Planet of the Apes, Heinlein’s Orphan of the Sky). • Self-induced transformations. • “Cyborgs and Space,” Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline, Astronautics, 1960. • NASA Cyborg Study, 1963. • Transhumanism (artificial intelligence and nano-technology). • Extraterrestrial influence (through contact). • Childhood’s End; 2001, Arthur C. Clarke • If humans exist long enough to engage in extensive space travel, they are likely to evolve in ways that make survival of the original species highly unlikely—and it could happen sooner rather than later.

  16. Is a Possible Merger of Humans and Machines in Spaceflight Coming? • Human spaceflight seems to be limited to the inner solar system, especially if envisioned as it has been traditionally. • Robotic spaceflight seems at present capable of exploration of entire solar system, and possibly beyond. • A post-human space program may be possible based on bio-engineering, nano-technology, and cyborg concepts.

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