Has the aspiration to Hollywood level materialism slowed down technological progress?

[Bohandas]

Population control mostly isn't a thing. As societies become wealthier, the rate of having kids decreases. Anyone who can contemplate going to space is already sufficiently wealthy that this is basically a non-issue. If anything, keeping reproduction rates up while also maintaining the level of technological society may be the harder problem.

Why on earth would we need to keep reproduction rates up if we have a technological society?

[Vahnavoi]

Because people still die in a technological society, and if people reproduce sufficiently below replacement rates, you get a situation where number of people is too small to maintain said technological society. Furthermore, lot of the drivers behind what's naively called "progress" are reliant on population growth and population density.

If we were talking of anything other than humans, this is where a biologist would go on a rant about K versus r reproductive strategies, Lotka-Volterra-equations, etc.. Both viability and necessity of space colonies, or any colonies for that matter, is rooted in the idea of growing populations.

[Bohandas]

I am aware that a certain minimum number of people is required, but as automation goes up that minimum goes down

[Vahnavoi]

Yes, but increasing automation is only required in large part because there are more people. There is no realistic situation where degree of automation keeps going up while human population growth rates drop below zero for extended periods. Arguably, the only situation where that happens is the speculative one where automation overtakes humans entirely and humans become obsolete physically, intellectually and culturally.

[gbaji]

This is a false dichotomy.

...

Land frontiers used to be presented with the same romance that space did: here is the New Place,the place where if you take personal risk you can prosper in a way you could by staying in your current position. The empire will be enhanced; civilization will lurch forward; you will benefit. In practice every frontier closed with most of the resources being delivered to a tiny number of entities that could back up their claims with money, guns, or the money and guns they were given by a nation that needed a proxy; the periphery either defers to the center or becomes a center, either way it picks its tiny number of winners and everyone else loses.

That people don't care attend to science about space is an understandable reaction to the fact that space offers them very little relative to what they need--money, time, stability, a breathable atmosphere that deflects most radiation. The effort that was conducted has been turned into continuations of existing power structures: satellites for nations, satellites for companies...but the individual is downstream, being granted those conveniences through services that charge money or by governments that require compliance. To the extent we have power in space, it is owned and controlled, accessible only through a valve.

The optimistic, always-forward-looking future-in-space vision of the past created the present in which people are uninterested in all those things. The problem isn't that the hoi polloi didn't put in the effort, it's that what was promised was ad copy; ad copy gets old and oversaturated; ad copy serves the person who paid for it. Technological progress happened...but the progress didn't fundamentally change the world in ways that people were told it would, that it would make their lives less precarious: instead new technology has been adapted to create new forms of precarity paying the same rentier system. New things just keep become the same thing: ownership and control. Nostalgia and consumerism are the ways people cope with not feeling like there's an alternative.

Talk about a False Dichotomy. All of those negatives you listed, folks with guns and money taking things, centers being strong by taking from the edges, winners and losers, individuals being "downstream" of services, etc... exist whether we expand frontiers as a species or not. There is no "alternative" choice where everyone just sits where they are, living in peace and harmony. Whenever someone makes an argument like this, I always ask "Ok. What's the alternative?". Human nature is what it is, and will do what it does. We can either be what we are *and* expand our horizons, and our knowledge, and our capabilities over time. Or just sit around doing the same thing we always did, and never go anywhere. But if you think the latter choice will somehow reduce inequity, or hostility, or greed, or whatever, you really really need to make an actual case for that.


Why spend resources on space exploration? Because one day, a big bright light will appear in the sky and everyone on Earth will die. Or, if we are particularly lucky, a really really big but less bright light will gradually grow in the sky until we're burnt to a crisp by our own sun. Fact. Not a matter of "if", but "when". And that will be the end of humanity.

There is *only* one way to avoid this fate. And that is via space travel (or some means to travel off our planet, since I don't want to leave off teleportation type stuff here). Um... Whatever. It's a lot of investment in a lot of expensive stuff, but if we don't do it, we are dooming our own future. And we have limited resources on this planet with which to actually achieve the technological advancements required to do this. Any decision to "spend stuff for us today" versus "spend it on technology that will help save humanity in the future" is pure selfishness IMO. It's always couched in terms like "there's so much we could be spending this on to solve problems here on Earth right now". Um... Hate to burst your bubble, but there will never be an endpoint to "problems here on Earth to solve" (well, I suppose the "big bright light" will eventually "solve" them, so there's that). That's not a valid argument, it's a dodge (and yet another false dichotomy).

Think about every "problem" you've ever heard of, where you look at actions of people in the past and think "if only people back then hadn't done <whatever> and destroyed <whatever> we wouldn't have to deal with <some other whatever> today". Every time you hear someone say "We inherited problemA, or problemB, or problemC from our parents/grandparents, so we should not do the same to our children and grandchildren", it makes sense, right? Now stop and think about what some future generations will think when they realize they live on a planet without enough resources to ever be able to obtain spaceflight, and they look back at past generations who did have those resources, but chose to squander them in the pursuit of short term issues/causes or even "make our own lives a little more comfortable today". What do you suppose they will think of us?

I'm not saying to sacrifice everything for this. Not even close. But we should absolutely not abandon this, especially not for the "we don't have enough resources" argument. We will never have more resources available to us to pursue this than we have today. Every single year we spend just living and breathing and consuming resources to do so, is a reduction in that total amount. Each successive generation will have fewer resources to divide up and a harder choice than we do.

That's why we should commit at least some resources continously to the goal of space travel. There is literally nothing more important in the long run.

If you wanted people to care about space, you'd have to convince them it's not going to get stolen from them and sold back to them...like everything else.

If it's no different than "everything else", why not do it anyway? Is "everything else" going to save humanity? We're doing that other stuff anyway, right?

Not viable in the long term. Most of the population could use birth control but that just means that proportionally more of the following generations will be descended from [redacted] like the Duggars, the Octomom, and John & Kate, and as a result with each generation people become less and less inclined to use birth control, and more likely to give birth to multiple children at a time, all other things being equal

Eh. I don't think either social/environmental or genetic inheritance really works like that. Certainly not on a large scale.

But once we can avoid the necessity of every trip going up/down through the earth's gravity well, things get way better. Transporting fuel back to earth is...almost futile. Centralizing fuel in a depot that remains in orbit is far better, so ships can carry out consecutive missions without ever returning to earth.

Yeah. I've been arguing for years that we should be abandoning the idea of "shots" (moonshot, marsshot, etc), in favor of building actual infrastructure in space. Transport things from earth to a location in orbit. Then move things from there to other locations. Learn how to assemble things in space. Build actual "space ships" to move around in space (from orbit to moon or elsewhere). You can literally build a box with rockets on it, if you don't have to launch or re-enter with it. And once you have that, you can start moving things around in space relatively easily and cheaply (relatively speaking anyway). You shed all that weight for the structure to withstand launch or re-entry forces and the ships themselves can be a lot lighter as well.

Lots of advantages to this sort of thing. But so far seems as though very little actual action. Which is a shame.

[Mechalich]

Why spend resources on space exploration? Because one day, a big bright light will appear in the sky and everyone on Earth will die. Or, if we are particularly lucky, a really really big but less bright light will gradually grow in the sky until we're burnt to a crisp by our own sun. Fact. Not a matter of "if", but "when". And that will be the end of humanity.

There is *only* one way to avoid this fate. And that is via space travel (or some means to travel off our planet, since I don't want to leave off teleportation type stuff here). Um... Whatever. It's a lot of investment in a lot of expensive stuff, but if we don't do it, we are dooming our own future. And we have limited resources on this planet with which to actually achieve the technological advancements required to do this. Any decision to "spend stuff for us today" versus "spend it on technology that will help save humanity in the future" is pure selfishness IMO. It's always couched in terms like "there's so much we could be spending this on to solve problems here on Earth right now". Um... Hate to burst your bubble, but there will never be an endpoint to "problems here on Earth to solve" (well, I suppose the "big bright light" will eventually "solve" them, so there's that). That's not a valid argument, it's a dodge (and yet another false dichotomy).

It's not a dodge, it's a matter of prioritization. Successfully spreading Homo sapiens out enough to evade the impacts of a gamma ray burst or supernova or similar massive event involves getting at least as far as the next star system, and probably several star systems with some dispersion. We are not even close to being able to meet the technological challenges of accomplishing that. The ability to launch even a viable interstellar robot probe is probably a century away, never mind one carrying flesh and blood humans. Therefore, it makes considerable sense to prioritize retaining Earth's habitability and preventing societal collapse across the course of that century. This is especially true given the possibility of a major state change in the nature of humanity that might make space travel exponentially easier, such as digital uploading or biological immortality.

There are strong arguments that, due to the overall population curve, this century is a critical moment to arrest problems here on Earth, after which those problems are liable to easy as the Human population stabilizes and/or falls.

Now stop and think about what some future generations will think when they realize they live on a planet without enough resources to ever be able to obtain spaceflight, and they look back at past generations who did have those resources, but chose to squander them in the pursuit of short term issues/causes or even "make our own lives a little more comfortable today". What do you suppose they will think of us?

None of the resources necessary for spaceflight are exhaustible. Things like precious metals and rare earths can always be reclaimed and recycled. Nuclear materials like uranium can be hypothetically exhausted, but uranium is abundant and we are nowhere close to overusing. The only nominally essential inorganic resource on Earth that is under any actual threat of depletion is Helium.

Even fossil fuels, which can't be exhausted but can be depleted faster than they form, are not even close to exhaustion. In fact, as extractive technologies continue to advance, the amount of recoverable reserves continues to increase. Various debates about ceasing their use, which forum rules forbid discussion of, are not centered on depletion, but upon the externalities of continued usage.

[Bohandas]

Eh. I don't think either social/environmental or genetic inheritance really works like that. Certainly not on a large scale.

I think you mean not on a short-term scale. But I'm not talking on a short term scale. I'm talking about gradually, over millennia, but crawling steadfastly along in that direction nonetheless

[Vahnavoi]

Expecting current humans to have any predictable effect on survival of our species in the case of our sun turning red or a lightspeed gamma burst cooking half the planet is completely ridiculous. These are speculative far-off existential threats, not realistic problems to solve; worrying about them is like worrying about what gift you'll get on your 1,000,000th birthday, when statistically you'll be dead by your 200th due to some accident even if you're biologically immortal.

[gbaji]

It's not a dodge, it's a matter of prioritization.

It's a bit of a dodge when your argument for low prioritization is "the folks in charge will be in charge of <new technology>". That seemed to be your primary argument, and I don't find that very compelling for all the reasons I previously stated (ie: That's no different than if we *don't* spend time/money on this).

Successfully spreading Homo sapiens out enough to evade the impacts of a gamma ray burst or supernova or similar massive event involves getting at least as far as the next star system, and probably several star systems with some dispersion. We are not even close to being able to meet the technological challenges of accomplishing that. The ability to launch even a viable interstellar robot probe is probably a century away, never mind one carrying flesh and blood humans.

Sure. And in a century, if we do not spend time/money building that technology and capability, how many years will we be away? Let's also not forget that I'm not just talking about the sun's expansion, but the potential for an extinction level meteor collision, which is far more likely to occur in a shorter time frame. And that source of extinction can be avoided via interplanetary exploration and colonization, not just interstellar. There are other potential hazards as well that exist when the Earth is our only basket outside of those which affect the entire solar system (plagues, wars, etc).

Therefore, it makes considerable sense to prioritize retaining Earth's habitability and preventing societal collapse across the course of that century. This is especially true given the possibility of a major state change in the nature of humanity that might make space travel exponentially easier, such as digital uploading or biological immortality.

Possibly. But I have a fear that if we do that for a century, we'll find some other problems that will occupy us for another cenntury. And so on, and so on. While we often get caught up in the specific issues of the moment, it's sometimes useful to step back from that and look at the bigger pattern. And that pattern is a decision to "do things that benefit us today" versus "do things that benefit us down the line".

I see a lot of the former being used as justification to not do the latter (obviously not going to go into specifics though). Again, those specifics don't really matter much. It's the criteria being used to make the decision that does. I see nothing to indicate that if we spend the next century focusing on fixing social/economic/environmental problems to make things better and *then* go do those other longer term things, that we wont just find new social/economic/envioronmental problems to focus on that said future generation will be just as convinced are absolutely critical and must be solved first before we go on to those longer term things. Rinse, repeat.

I'm trying to step away from the specifics and just look at the pattern itself. And it's worrying.

There are strong arguments that, due to the overall population curve, this century is a critical moment to arrest problems here on Earth, after which those problems are liable to easy as the Human population stabilizes and/or falls.

I agree with the first part, but not the second. There will be no "stabilizes" occuring. It never happens. If you wait for the conditions to be "just right", you'll be waiting forever.

None of the resources necessary for spaceflight are exhaustible. Things like precious metals and rare earths can always be reclaimed and recycled. Nuclear materials like uranium can be hypothetically exhausted, but uranium is abundant and we are nowhere close to overusing. The only nominally essential inorganic resource on Earth that is under any actual threat of depletion is Helium.

It's about those resources available and usable at any given time. And if that argument were actaully correct, you would not be making your argument at all. It's literally about how we divvy up available resources, right? That by spending it on spaceflight, we are not spending them on "something else more important".Why on earth think that's going to change down the line?

Even fossil fuels, which can't be exhausted but can be depleted faster than they form, are not even close to exhaustion. In fact, as extractive technologies continue to advance, the amount of recoverable reserves continues to increase. Various debates about ceasing their use, which forum rules forbid discussion of, are not centered on depletion, but upon the externalities of continued usage.

Sure, but the cost/effort to obtain them gets higher over time. Again. If you're making this "it's not worth the time/effort" argument today, why think that this argument will become less potent in the future, as we've consumed the easier to obtain resources, and have to dig deeper to get those same resources? And (barring some additional changes which are unlikely to occur) our population and the needs of that population will be even higher?

The same arguments you are making right now will be stronger arguments in the future than today. Now, it's possible that some other technology comes along which may make all of this moot. Maybe. We could discover anti-gravity that runs off of kelp or something and not have to worry. Maybe. But even that requires expending the resources into that technology. And argugably, will not occur unless there is a "demand" for researching it in the first place. Spaceflight, and the need to find more efficient means to get things into orbit and beyond pushes for the need to develop better technologies to do so.

So, everything else remaining the same, the best way to ensure that those technologies are developed at some point, is to push forward with the very endeavors that would benefit from their development. If we focus entirely inwardly, on just making this planet a "better place to live", then that will be the focus and not on "getting the heck out of here". It's all a matter of degrees of course.

I think you mean not on a short-term scale. But I'm not talking on a short term scale. I'm talking about gradually, over millennia, but crawling steadfastly along in that direction nonetheless

No. I meant "large scale", meaing "what percentage of the population will this trend occur within?". Trends within populations tend to be far far more affected by the ideals of the larger population rather than what are more or less outliers in the model being examined. And they tend to balance out. The initial argument was that if the largest portion of the population adopts the idea of not reproducing (or significantly reducing reproduction rates), then only the "high speed breeders" will be procuding offspring, and we'll be left with nothing but a population of such people. But those kids will grow up and join a larger society that still teaches the "low/no reproduction" ideology and will be influenced by it. Many will adopt that social ideology. Some will not. Some will follow in their parents footsteps (but likely a small percentage). The effect will balance itself out over time, not spin off into "nothing but high speed breeding folks left on the planet".

Each generation is not gown up in a vacuum. Social inheritance is not limited to the patterns of just parents on children. We get a heck of a lot from the larger society around us as well. The stated model completely ignores that as a factor. And even if it does ignore that, and we see a small percentage of the population breeding rapidly, we should still expect to see overall population decrease in the first few generations. Then, if we assume this effect occurs, an increase in the (now smaller population) for awhile, then the same social conversation occurs and we repeat the process.

Honestly, I think it's a moot point because I see nothing in our modern society that suggests that population growth rates will significantly decrease. A little bit? Yeah. But it's still "growth" anyway (which is what I mean by "significant" here). Cerrtainly, I see nothing (barring some calamity) that will actually act to reduce the overall population on the planet over time. So we're still left with the problem where we have to assume that future generations will have greater consumption needs than we do currently. Which gets us right back to the point I was making, that if you find that "we need to focus on <today>" argument compelling right now, it'll only become moreso in the future.

[Anymage]

Possibly. But I have a fear that if we do that for a century, we'll find some other problems that will occupy us for another cenntury. And so on, and so on. While we often get caught up in the specific issues of the moment, it's sometimes useful to step back from that and look at the bigger pattern. And that pattern is a decision to "do things that benefit us today" versus "do things that benefit us down the line".

I see a lot of the former being used as justification to not do the latter (obviously not going to go into specifics though). Again, those specifics don't really matter much. It's the criteria being used to make the decision that does. I see nothing to indicate that if we spend the next century focusing on fixing social/economic/environmental problems to make things better and *then* go do those other longer term things, that we wont just find new social/economic/envioronmental problems to focus on that said future generation will be just as convinced are absolutely critical and must be solved first before we go on to those longer term things. Rinse, repeat.

I'm trying to step away from the specifics and just look at the pattern itself. And it's worrying.

There are a lot of energies being spent on expensive but ultimately pointless signaling, and many more resources being spent on graft. Those are wastes, but those have been wastes that we've seen throughout human history and there's little reason to expect that they'll stop today. Or that they'll stop when we're in space, for that matter.

If we look at effectively used resources (and effective altruism is a whole rabbit hole you can dive down if you're so inclined), it is worth asking if the kids who have to live with food insecurity/threat of violence/hazardous chemicals while growing up might have advanced scientific knowledge if they'd had a better environment to grow up in. Meanwhile most of the modern advances in space flight have come out of pointless competition from very rich people who wanted to show off that they have rocket ships. Extending humanity's sphere of influence outside earth and it's immediate surface will be important, but prioritizing that over everything else could arguably leave us technologically behind a society that was more broadly invested. For instance, I'm pretty sure that AI will enhance our ability to establish a space footprint due to allowing functioning actors who aren't as reliant on the mass of both our meat and the technologies required to keep that meat alive, and computer advances are only tangentially related to rocketry.

I think you mean not on a short-term scale. But I'm not talking on a short term scale. I'm talking about gradually, over millennia, but crawling steadfastly along in that direction nonetheless

If we haven't intentionally changed our behaviors in the next century or two to the point where the idiocracy future of "the idiots will outbreed the smart people" would have time to come true, climate change will have altered the situation for us and projections based on an unchanging today will be moot. I'm not as optimistic as I'd like to be that we'll make deliberate choices before choices are made for us, but either way we won't just coast. If our future has garbage mountains I'd expect we're less likely to see the on-planet human presence of Idiocracy, and more likely to see the on-planet human presence of WALL-E.

[Mechalich]

Sure. And in a century, if we do not spend time/money building that technology and capability, how many years will we be away? Let's also not forget that I'm not just talking about the sun's expansion, but the potential for an extinction level meteor collision, which is far more likely to occur in a shorter time frame. And that source of extinction can be avoided via interplanetary exploration and colonization, not just interstellar. There are other potential hazards as well that exist when the Earth is our only basket outside of those which affect the entire solar system (plagues, wars, etc).

The chance of an extinction level asteroid collision is incredibly low, to the point that it is quite likely to be lower than that of an extinction level supernova event. Also, a potential asteroid collision event is preventable through various means that are cheaper by several orders of magnitude than colonizing other planets, and work on those methods is ongoing. NASA's Dart mission, just proved this concept last year.

I see a lot of the former being used as justification to not do the latter (obviously not going to go into specifics though). Again, those specifics don't really matter much. It's the criteria being used to make the decision that does. I see nothing to indicate that if we spend the next century focusing on fixing social/economic/environmental problems to make things better and *then* go do those other longer term things, that we wont just find new social/economic/envioronmental problems to focus on that said future generation will be just as convinced are absolutely critical and must be solved first before we go on to those longer term things. Rinse, repeat.

You're imply all problems of this kind are created equal which is simply not the case. For example, any threat that potentially causes a worldwide civilization collapse needs be prioritized over space exploration, because such a collapse inherently precludes any resources put towards space exploration because an advanced civilization is needed to support such endeavors. The overwhelming majority of social/economic/environmental problems don't rise to this level, but Climate Change does.

I agree with the first part, but not the second. There will be no "stabilizes" occuring. It never happens. If you wait for the conditions to be "just right", you'll be waiting forever.

Maybe, but comparative positional advantage based on where society stands with regard to resource distribution does change over time - this is quite apparent from history, with numerous events where the easing of Malthusian pressures resulted in significant societal advances, such as the impact of the Black Death.

Sure, but the cost/effort to obtain them gets higher over time. Again. If you're making this "it's not worth the time/effort" argument today, why think that this argument will become less potent in the future, as we've consumed the easier to obtain resources, and have to dig deeper to get those same resources? And (barring some additional changes which are unlikely to occur) our population and the needs of that population will be even higher?

Except it doesn't, not necessarily, because technology changes. Many resources are actually much more abundant than they used to be and can be obtained at orders of magnitude lower cost. In extreme cases, some resources that could once only be obtained by extraction can now be synthesized from common components, like diamonds.

The same arguments you are making right now will be stronger arguments in the future than today. Now, it's possible that some other technology comes along which may make all of this moot. Maybe. We could discover anti-gravity that runs off of kelp or something and not have to worry. Maybe. But even that requires expending the resources into that technology. And argugably, will not occur unless there is a "demand" for researching it in the first place. Spaceflight, and the need to find more efficient means to get things into orbit and beyond pushes for the need to develop better technologies to do so.

So, everything else remaining the same, the best way to ensure that those technologies are developed at some point, is to push forward with the very endeavors that would benefit from their development. If we focus entirely inwardly, on just making this planet a "better place to live", then that will be the focus and not on "getting the heck out of here". It's all a matter of degrees of course.

If we haven't intentionally changed our behaviors in the next century or two to the point where the idiocracy future of "the idiots will outbreed the smart people" would have time to come true, climate change will have altered the situation for us and projections based on an unchanging today will be moot. I'm not as optimistic as I'd like to be that we'll make deliberate choices before choices are made for us, but either way we won't just coast. If our future has garbage mountains I'd expect we're less likely to see the on-planet human presence of Idiocracy, and more likely to see the on-planet human presence of WALL-E.

The 'Idiocracy' future won't happen, because of a simple principle called regression to the mean. People of lower intelligence don't necessarily have lower intelligence kids. Changes in demographic patterns can potentially shift overall intelligence distribution, a little, especially if there are barriers creating between-group reproductive separation (these exist, though forum rules prohibit mentioning basically all of them), but these effects are fairly modest.

[Bohandas]

Regression to the mean is probably the wrong term. However there likely is an attractor, which can look similar. However if you recall the scenario originally being discussed was population control which constitutes a displacement from the attractor, and the thing I was saying about the duggars et al represents a return to this attractor.

Idiocracy is unlikely, but some degree of temporary overshoot is not impossible; displaced from its ground state, the pendulum swings back the other way.

[Trafalgar]

It seemed like during the 2009-2014 time period society stopped being excited about space travel and was more excited by Hollywood level materialism as evidenced by the reality show boom.



Not only that but infrastructure has crumbled. Large numbers of people are turning to crazy and dumb beliefs. It is one thing to say the Moon landings didn't happen. It is another to say that "Space is fake".

What would American society be like today if it was more interested in maintaining a strong Middle Class that was not afraid to get it's hands dirty, a strong infrastructure, and a big inspiring space program that was putting humanity on the road to achieving an amazing future?

The video you posted is over 10 years old and you are comparing the current state of affairs to 2009. Tyson seems to be advocating pumping money into NASA manned programs like SLS/Artemis.

The reality is since 2009, launch costs to LEO have dropped significantly. USA now has manned space craft again. That was all done through encouraging private spaceflight companies.

I do not think Artemis/SLS is a good idea. It is billed as a successor to the failed and dangerous Space Shuttle Program and no one has shown me why it won't fail and won't be dangerous.

[Ihsan997]

I do not think Artemis/SLS is a good idea. It is billed as a successor to the failed and dangerous Space Shuttle Program and no one has shown me why it won't fail and won't be dangerous.

Could we reduce the risk factor by simply relying on robots to man space vehicles and removing humans from the equation?

[Mechalich]

Could we reduce the risk factor by simply relying on robots to man space vehicles and removing humans from the equation?

Removing humans reduces the risk, but it also reduces the reward, and - in a manner that is regrettably extremely significant - reduces the will to conduct missions in the first place. NASA is in fact quite good at sending robots to the Moon or Mars and continues to get better at it. The problem is that there are limits to what these machines can do, especially in their ability to follow up on any sort of finding that wasn't planned for, and the tools necessary to pursue provided, back on Earth. A robotic probe cannot respond to 'hey, that thing poking out of the rock face looks interesting' with 'I'll get a shovel' in the way humans can and is a long way from being able to do so.

Now, for the foreseeable future there's really only two extraterrestrial destinations where humans can possibly go, the Moon and Mars. Sending humans to the moon is a low-value endeavor except as a testbed for going to Mars, which is basically the purpose of the Artemis program, in a fashion similar to how the Gemini program was a testbed for the Apollo program.

[Trafalgar]

Removing humans reduces the risk, but it also reduces the reward, and - in a manner that is regrettably extremely significant - reduces the will to conduct missions in the first place. NASA is in fact quite good at sending robots to the Moon or Mars and continues to get better at it. The problem is that there are limits to what these machines can do, especially in their ability to follow up on any sort of finding that wasn't planned for, and the tools necessary to pursue provided, back on Earth. A robotic probe cannot respond to 'hey, that thing poking out of the rock face looks interesting' with 'I'll get a shovel' in the way humans can and is a long way from being able to do so.

It's actually easier to make changes to a robotic mission than a manned mission because robotic missions have a much smaller time constraint. Every minute in a manned mission has to be planned because the amount of resources (O2, food, sleep, etc). Plus, because an Astronaut can never go too far from a habitat, the ability to explore is very limited.

For example, the Opportunity Rover operated on Mars for over 10 years. If you are extremely optimistic, we could put a human on the surface of Mars for like two weeks. And how many robotic probes can you send to Mars for the cost of one Astronaut?

Now, for the foreseeable future there's really only two extraterrestrial destinations where humans can possibly go, the Moon and Mars. Sending humans to the moon is a low-value endeavor except as a testbed for going to Mars, which is basically the purpose of the Artemis program, in a fashion similar to how the Gemini program was a testbed for the Apollo program.

The purpose of the Artemis program is the same as it was for Orion/Ares/Constellation/SLS: to keep money flowing to Space Shuttle contractors!

[Batcathat]

Removing humans reduces the risk, but it also reduces the reward, and - in a manner that is regrettably extremely significant - reduces the will to conduct missions in the first place. NASA is in fact quite good at sending robots to the Moon or Mars and continues to get better at it. The problem is that there are limits to what these machines can do, especially in their ability to follow up on any sort of finding that wasn't planned for, and the tools necessary to pursue provided, back on Earth. A robotic probe cannot respond to 'hey, that thing poking out of the rock face looks interesting' with 'I'll get a shovel' in the way humans can and is a long way from being able to do so.

While machines obviously aren't nearly as versatile as humans in some ways, it does seem like you could include a lot of different tools using the space and resources that would've been used for humans and everything humans need not to die. Having some limited ability to make new tools as needed doesn't seem impossible either.

I suspect a big reason to include humans is political – "the first human on Mars" is a lot more impressive than "another (but slightly better) robot on Mars". That said, there are certainly practical upsides to sending humans, too.

[Ihsan997]

The purpose of the Artemis program is the same as it was for Orion/Ares/Constellation/SLS: to keep money flowing to Space Shuttle contractors!

I like how we were all so focused on the little details and then you dump the cold water of reality on our heads.

[DeTess]

It's actually easier to make changes to a robotic mission than a manned mission because robotic missions have a much smaller time constraint. Every minute in a manned mission has to be planned because the amount of resources (O2, food, sleep, etc). Plus, because an Astronaut can never go too far from a habitat, the ability to explore is very limited.

For example, the Opportunity Rover operated on Mars for over 10 years. If you are extremely optimistic, we could put a human on the surface of Mars for like two weeks. And how many robotic probes can you send to Mars for the cost of one Astronaut?

Something I want to note on this: in 10 years, a robot on mars can't actually get that much done, because it can't be operated in real-time. One somewhat feasible mission could be to send a rover and an astronaut to mars, with the astronaut just staying in orbit but remote-controlling the rover in almost real-time to do in a couple of days/weeks what would take years when controlling the rover from earth.

[Trafalgar]

Something I want to note on this: in 10 years, a robot on mars can't actually get that much done, because it can't be operated in real-time. One somewhat feasible mission could be to send a rover and an astronaut to mars, with the astronaut just staying in orbit but remote-controlling the rover in almost real-time to do in a couple of days/weeks what would take years when controlling the rover from earth.

Depending on where they are on their orbits, a radio signal takes 5 to 20 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars. There is absolutely no advantage to having an astronaut in orbit around Mars to control a robot probe, especially when that Astronaut is only going to be there for a few weeks due to food, O2, radiation, etc.

Since 2021, NASA has been flying a helicopter on Mars. I believe the pilot works out of JPL in California and it has flown over 50 times in 2 years. What do you think an astronaut in orbit is going to bring to this?

[Anymage]

Relevant SMBC today.

[Bohandas]

It's actually easier to make changes to a robotic mission than a manned mission because robotic missions have a much smaller time constraint. Every minute in a manned mission has to be planned because the amount of resources (O2, food, sleep, etc). Plus, because an Astronaut can never go too far from a habitat, the ability to explore is very limited.

On Mars this problem could potentially be reduced depending on how much equipment we could land on there beforehand. There must be a way to get oxygen out of the carbon dioxide in the martian atmosphere, but I don't know enough about chemistry to know how energy intensive that would be. There'd probably be problems trying to do it with plants due to the other differences in the atmosphere and the amount of sunlight, even if we brought our own soil.

[Mechalich]

Something I want to note on this: in 10 years, a robot on mars can't actually get that much done, because it can't be operated in real-time. One somewhat feasible mission could be to send a rover and an astronaut to mars, with the astronaut just staying in orbit but remote-controlling the rover in almost real-time to do in a couple of days/weeks what would take years when controlling the rover from earth.

Relevant to this, Opportunity landed on Mars in Jan 2004 and continued to function until June 2018 (exceeding its intended mission length by roughly 60 times). In the course of over 13 years on Mars it traveled a grand total of 28 miles (45 kilometers). That's the distance a human astronaut, assuming spacesuit technology that allowed them to move about at an ordinary walking pace, might conceivably cover in a single day. And this matters a lot with regard to any sort of mission parameter that requires covering a lot of ground, such as examining large geological phenomena and hunting for water veins or fossiliferous rock formations.

On Mars this problem could potentially be reduced depending on how much equipment we could land on there beforehand. There must be a way to get oxygen out of the carbon dioxide in the martian atmosphere, but I don't know enough about chemistry to know how energy intensive that would be. There'd probably be problems trying to do it with plants due to the other differences in the atmosphere and the amount of sunlight, even if we brought our own soil.

There is, and the science is fairly settled on how you can do it (Mars exploration booster Robert Zubin explained the process in The Case for Mars back in the 90s). The trick is sending a nuclear reactor with a supply of hydrogen to Mars and then having it react with the atmosphere to produce not only the oxygen supply needed for a mission, but also the fuel you need to get home. This is why, in The Martian, Matt Damon's character has to go to the site of the next mission - because the return vehicle is already there and fueled up for launch using this method.

Mars, because it has an atmosphere, thin and limited though it is, is actually a lot more accommodating to astronauts because of in situ resources that can be used to support a mission once it lands on planet. For example, the Martian atmosphere does contain water, which can be harvested for use by astronauts. Getting to Mars is arguably harder than surviving there (at least in the short term, the long-term impacts of low gravity environments on humans are unknown), especially with the notable caveat of getting the astronauts there while still in physical shape to move about on Mars (which probably means the spacecraft has to rotate, which is significantly more complicated than not doing that).

[Anymage]

On Mars this problem could potentially be reduced depending on how much equipment we could land on there beforehand. There must be a way to get oxygen out of the carbon dioxide in the martian atmosphere, but I don't know enough about chemistry to know how energy intensive that would be. There'd probably be problems trying to do it with plants due to the other differences in the atmosphere and the amount of sunlight, even if we brought our own soil.

Sending equipment to extract resources and build habitats for future astronauts would by definition be sending robots to do the bulk of the work. I have a feeling that advances in AI would make this technologically feasible by the end of the decade, although economically feasible will remain the bigger question.

The other issue with a human presence on mars or even the moon right now is the lack of people lining up to live in arctic research facilities. Mars is even more remote, the environment even more hostile, and extraction significantly more difficult. The cachet of living on mars might appeal to a lot of people (remember when you had lots of people signing up for a one-way trip, expecting to be funded by a reality show?), but the pool is likely thinned out because you need people with useful skills and who are psychologically able to stay productive even when things get rough and the shine has worn off. Again, don't expect there to be much practical push for mars habitation until robots have been there doing a bunch of work beforehand.

[Mechalich]

The other issue with a human presence on mars or even the moon right now is the lack of people lining up to live in arctic research facilities.

Over 4,000 researchers and support staff operate in the Antarctic every year, with fierce competition for those positions (there are plenty in the Arctic too, but that number is more difficult to estimate).

The major challenge of a manned mission to Mars is the lengthy space flights to get there and back, not the time spent on planet. It takes around 6-7 months for a spacecraft to transit to Mars from Earth and would take an equivalent amount of time to return. Keeping astronauts alive and functional through that ordeal is the big challenge of a Mars mission.

[DeTess]

Depending on where they are on their orbits, a radio signal takes 5 to 20 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars. There is absolutely no advantage to having an astronaut in orbit around Mars to control a robot probe, especially when that Astronaut is only going to be there for a few weeks due to food, O2, radiation, etc.

Since 2021, NASA has been flying a helicopter on Mars. I believe the pilot works out of JPL in California and it has flown over 50 times in 2 years. What do you think an astronaut in orbit is going to bring to this?

5 to 20 minutes is one way, too, so double that for the actual time to talk. And every time the rover moves a bit people back on earth need to wait for new pictures to plan their next move.

That helicopter? Those 50 flights covered just 90 minutes. The astronaut in orbit could do that in a day if the power supply allowed.

[Bohandas]

10 to 40 minutes to get a response is not an acceptable timeframe for issuing commands to a helicopter.

[DavidSh]

10 to 40 minutes to get a response is not an acceptable timeframe for issuing commands to a helicopter.

Then you really must have issues with the autonomous helicopter planned for Titan.

[Bohandas]

Is the current trajectory of this discussion making anyone else think of Metalocalypse?

https://external-preview.redd.it/4fs...abled&0771e877

[Ihsan997]

Is the current trajectory of this discussion making anyone else think of Metalocalypse?

I question the mental soundness of someone who isn’t thinking of Metalocalypse.