Planetary Society is Both For and Against Human Spaceflight
+100 RT @starstryder: RT @SciBry: The highs and lows of the last week remind us why the future must be in robotic, not crewed, space flight.
— Emily Lakdawalla (@elakdawalla) November 12, 2014
Keith’s note: Looks like the Planetary Society’s Emily Lakdawalla is not a fan of putting people in space – she endorsed this anti-human spaceflight tweet by a factor of “+100”. This is kind of odd given that the Planetary Society pushed NASA and the White House to adopt the crewed Asteroid Retrieval Mission. Also, since she has endorsed this tweet, just what are the “highs and lows of the last week” ? SpaceShipTwo and Antares? What is the connection between an unrelated airplane control surface issue and a rocket engine malfunction with a ten year old robot landing on a comet? And how could any of this point to deciding factors as to whether its better to send humans or robots into space? Her follow up tweet is below. In essence it says we can send robots instead of humans because they are humans or we are them. Huh? We (they) are not – no more than your car or your cellphone is you.
Robotic spaceflight IS human spaceflight. We ARE these machines. They are our eyes. @starstryder @SciBry
— Emily Lakdawalla (@elakdawalla) November 12, 2014
I think there’s always going to be some risk / cost / reward trade-off here. Robots will increasingly replace humans where the risks are high and/or robots can do the job cheaper, but you’ll still have people climbing Everest or walking on the Moon or Mars. I’d expect UAVs to replace many if not most combat aircraft in the future, and Robonaut may do most of the spacewalks some day.
Or a robot that is more functional and less humanoid. UAVs and other robotic vehicles don’t have a humanoid robot pilot sitting in a traditional cockpit. The robot vacuum cleaner doesn’t come with a humanoid robot maid. A space maintenance robot doesn’t need a spacesuit.
What an incredibly asinine statement to make. This is a transportation system. Using that logic it would have to be applied across the board to all transportation systems that suffer accidents.
Amen Vlad!
In all fairness, this was Emily’s follow-on Tweet:
Robotic spaceflight IS human spaceflight. We ARE these machines. They are our eyes.
Robots are not humans any more than your car is you.
What if you could see the road and horizon through your car’s headlights and tail lights, and taste the breeze through its front grill? Wait…we can do that, with cameras and spectrometers.
Is that so much less compelling than listening to another human, usually an engineer/pilot, try to describe what it’s like (which is where we could be stuck for many years to come)? Many ISS astronauts have tried, with limited results.
So … I should have sent my BGAN, Iridium phone, and my laptop to Everest Base Camp and stayed home – and said I was there because by stuff is there?
Yet Steve Squires has been quite successful in personalizing the Mars rovers. You might also wish to read what Robert Ballard has said on this subject. https://www.ted.com/talks/r…
I’m glad you had the chance to go to Everest. For the actual explorers “being there” can be a unique experience. But for those of us who have to stay at home, my personal view is that robotic and human exploration are complimentary; neither is intrinsically superior. I am not sure that my sense of presence on Mars (or near Jupiter, Saturn, Titan and soon Pluto) is any less real watching via the rovers and probes than it would be watching humans.
I went to Everest to provide Education and Public Outreach for my friend Scott Parazynski as he became the first astronaut to summit Everest. The only way then – or now – to do that is to have people on site. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Frankly, if you could control your equipment remotely (nearly) as well as you did at basecamp, it would have made little difference to my experience of the expedition.
You’ve rightfully celebrated it.
Have you been back again? No.
1. Have you ever been there? No.
2. Am I making plans to go back? Yes.
“It would have made little difference to my experience of the expedition.”
Really? I mean the stories of human explorers make for some of the best literature and stories. I really doubt that Interstellar would be near as popular if it was about a robotic mission.
I think you’re looking too clinically as to what the average person sees in space exploration. It’s not the science (semi-full disclosure, I work on robotic spacecraft), it’s the excitement of going somewhere. If it were only the science, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say people would seriously question why we are paying billions to see rocks on other planets when we haven’t even fully explored our own.
If you want excitement on your own dime, by all means have at it. If the cost can be reduced enough, I’d be happy to go myself.
But if you are asking me to pay for your trip with my tax dollars, and the same knowledge can be discovered at a fraction of the cost with the robotic system, then it’s hard to justify sending people. As Robert Ballard points out, given the actual resources, far more of the undersea world can be explored by robots than by humans.
From Jurassic park III
“Dr. Grant: I have a theory that there are two kinds of boys. There are those that want to be astronomers, and those that want to be astronauts. The astronomer, or the paleontologist, gets to study these amazing things from a place of complete safety.
Erik: But then you never get to go into space.
Dr. Grant: Exactly. That’s the difference between imagining and seeing: to be able to touch them. And that’s… that’s all that Billy wanted.”
Altho Grant was being a little unfair – many an astronomer longs to travel into space – it points out the dichotomy.
I, for one, want to walk on the Moon (and be an astronomer there that studies the huge planet up in the sky).
An equally inane comment from her. We are not machines, we are not cars or airplanes. Telescopes are not our eyes, they are a tool. Microscopes also are not our eyes, but just another tool.
The argument of robotic vs human spaceflight will continue on regardless. Thank goodness it’s not an either or. Both are needed. Robots simply can not do everything a human can.
And vice versa.
And I suspect if a human were with Philae he or she could fix that harpoon in no time.
As has been stated better many times by those smarter than I am, exploration should be a combination of human and robotics. It wastes everyone’s time and energy to argue about whether one is better than the other. We need both to explore space long into the future.
Her comment is yet another reason why I cancelled my Planetary Society membership years ago!
Besides being somewhat of a schizoid thing to say, it is depressing that the response by the Planetary Society to the SS2 loss is to shrink from the challenge.
There is a vast range of opinion within the group (as all complex and important issues do). She appears to be speaking with her own supportable view (altho not one I agree with), but the “official” position of the Society is:
The Goal Is Mars: The Planetary Society’s Submission to the Committee on Human Spaceflight
The Planetary Society strongly supports human exploration of space. The planet Mars is the goal. There, humans will explore efficiently and make discoveries that would utterly change the world. While our robotic missions accomplish remarkable and often astonishing things on Mars, they are precursors in exploration. Astronaut researchers on Mars will make discoveries and create stories that will be shared by all humankind for generations to come…
Although some of the details have changed over the last five years, the core principles and recommendations outlined in The Planetary Society’s report, Beyond the Moon: A New Roadmap for Human Space Exploration in the 21st Century still apply in 2013….
The Benefits of Human Spaceflight are Incalculable…
… when humans are flying in space, organizations sharpen their focus and do their very best work to support their comrades – fellow citizens of Earth. It is a unique and especially productive use of a society’s intellect and treasure.
The effect of humans in space is obvious when one compares the public’s response to human achievements on the Moon with the achievements of robotic missions, which may have accomplished somewhat more scientifically but with enormously less inspiration. The Soviet Union’s space agency was the first to land a spacecraft softly on the Moon and to drive a rover across its surface. It was the first agency to photograph the far side of the Moon. They accomplished the first robotic sample return mission from another world. They put spacecraft in the atmosphere and on the surface of Venus. Nevertheless, it was the Apollo human landings that changed the world. The exploits of the astronauts are writ larger on the pages of history, because the human stories are so compelling for us.
While the robotic planetary science program accomplishes remarkable and often astonishing things, there is a great deal more waiting to be learned by sending people to Mars. When an astronaut is engaged, the whole world is engaged. NASA’s Curiosity landing was watched by millions of people around the world. A human mission will be watched by billions. When we explore Mars, two remarkable things will happen: we will make discoveries that require the unique skills and capabilities of the human brain, but we will also have an adventure. People everywhere will share in both.
Keeping humans in space is the ultimate expression of an advanced civilization. Not only does it require heavy and constant investment in technology, engineering capability, and industry, it demands cooperation by tens of thousands of people in a complex hierarchy. The sheer complexity of the mission binds people together peacefully, both at home and abroad.
Few endeavors elicit so much pride, inspiration, and optimism. Astronauts inspire countless millions of people to pursue careers in high technology, engineering, and science. While robotic spacecraft can be anthropomorphized in their adventures, human astronauts need no such conceptual leap. They represent the best in us as they push the boundaries of our species farther into space….
What If We Do Not Accept the Challenge of Human Spaceflight?
The ramifications of not accepting the challenge of human exploration of space – particularly Mars – are troubling. It is the key to our nation’s future in innovation. If we terminate or curtail human spaceflight, we are condemning our progeny to live their lives with less. Other countries with robust space agencies will find themselves leading the world in innovations and technology. Their superior economies will outperform that of the U.S.
There are the deep and important cultural implications if we don’t explore. What does it say about a society that forever looks down at its feet? Worse yet, what does it say of a society that looks down knowing full well that it could look up and out, yet chooses not to? Are we prepared to be the first generation to declare exploration to be more trouble than it’s worth? How do we explain to our progeny that we just decided to stop?
Science, exploration, and technology are inseparable. One leads to the other. Science is a beneficiary of human spaceflight but it is not the primary motivation. Many of the great human explorations of the past – including the Apollo missions to the Moon – were undertaken primarily for cultural or political reasons but still resulted in revolutionary scientific advances and new capabilities. Countless discoveries will remain unknown if we walk away from human space exploration. …
Unlike Emily, Bill Nye, Planetary Society CEO, provided words of encouragement for commercial spaceflight on the last Planetary Radio episode after the Antares and SpaceShipTwo destruction. http://www.planetary.org/mu…
This just makes me sad. Why can’t we celebrate the successes and mourn the failures together without bashing one side or the other.
Most of you know by now that I am a pro-SLS/Orion guy. Yet when commercial space succeeds I am glad. When Orb-3 failed and SS2 crashed I felt awful and wanted both companies to fix the problems and come back stronger.
There is too much crud going on in this world already. Lets celebrate our successes in space be they robotic, manned, New Space, Old Space, or whatever.
For sustained science and exploration, robots – designed, built, and controlled by humane beings – go where we can’t, see and hear what we can’t, and report back. For public outreach and public relations, there in the manned program with its space stations, singing astronauts, and promise of futuristic golf clubs.
Sounds like the Planetary Society allows for differing opinions among
its members and staff. When did that stop being a good thing.
What debate? She basically said the aurguments and debate was over… those two accidents was a done deal and the jury came in..
Robby the robot NOT Robert or Roberta astronaut.
I didn’t use the term ‘debate.’ She has one opinion and it appears Nye and Friedman have different ones.
I happen to agree with her opinion.
Space Exploration –> Robots
Space Exploitation –> Humans
I don’t entirely agree with her, simply because I think you can get so much more by having humans much closer to the destination, even if it’s vastly more expensive. Even just having people in orbit around, say, Mars would be a major boon to planetside exploration, since they could control rovers in real-time. But I understand the attitude, especially since we can send robots places we can’t send humans and take risks that would be unacceptable with human craft.
Honestly, if I could sacrifice the manned program in order to get half of its existing and projected funding directed towards planetary science and robotic space exploration, I’d do it. Right now the manned program’s main use is to keep NASA’s overall funding level and heft alive.
It’s generally considered in good taste that if you are going to call someone’s argument absurd that you do it in the thread where they will see it as opposed to just happening upon it.
Yes, of course you could send multiple probes for the cost of a human mission in the same we could have had multiple probes for the cost of one Curiosity. My point, which I framed using a similarly fallacious argument to the original Tweet, was that humans can do more in space than robots can and do it better. Trust me, I help build these things. I know what the limits are and how much work goes into something that a human could do so easily.
As I said in my original post, I’ll leave it to those smarter than I am to make the point more clearly:
“One could ask whether it is necessary to send humans to Mars to answer this question. Despite having devoted my career to exploring the solar system with robots, I am a strong advocate of human exploration, particularly at Mars. Humans have an extraordinary ability to function in complex environments, to improvise, and to respond quickly to new discoveries. Robots, in contrast, do best when the environment is simple and well understood, and when the scientific tasks are well defined in advance. Because the capabilities of humans most surpass those of robots in complex environments, the exploration value that humans add is in proportion to the complexity of the environment to be explored. And there is no planetary environment where humans can operate in the foreseeable future that is more complex than the martian surface.”
— Steve Squyres in his testimony to Congress
http://www.spaceref.com/new…
If you think he’s absurd, too, let me know. I’ll get you his email and you can tell him yourself.
In the future, robots will become increasingly capable. During the past decade, it has required months or years for robots on Mars to accomplish the pre-planned science that a human might have accomplished in minutes. The unexpected science has not been accomplished at all…
Going forward, there is no reason that the cost of human spaceflight must remain extraordinarily high, as it has been thus far. Diverse technology improvements can change this. And there is no reason that humans and robots should not work together to explore the Solar System — as they did with the Moon in the 1960s. Moreover, by definition only humans can achieve the goal of settlement of space — but they will NEVER do so without vastly more capable and more affordable robotic colleagues. The argument put forward that robotic space flight IS human spaceflight is sad and false. Today machines are only tools, and soon enough they may be colleagues. But, humans are humans, and machines are not.
I enjoy television greatly, the internet as well; despite that, I enjoy still more to go places myself — where it is worth the going, and when I can do so.
We should be working together to lower the cost of human space flight, and delighting together in the accomplishments of the robotic explorers that go ahead…
I have thought that when we finally put boots back on the ground and we walk the paths the rovers took will it be ..
“wow looked what we missed”
“look what we drove over!”
“man it was right there were the rover was”
Robots can and do explore. Robots can’t colonize. We need HSF to learn how to be able to survive colonization.
From the depths of the ocean to the farthest reaches of our solar system, the urge to explore and the ingenuity to do so is remarkable. I can’t get away from how there is something about the composition of this first pic from Philae that reminds me of one of “Alvin’s” first pics of an undersea hydrothermal vent. In one case the operator is bare inches away from the target, in the other, tens of millions of miles. Either way, the explorers are human and the robots we send are in a sense our ambassadors.
Should Ms. Lakdawalla, in a moment of enthusiasm or…through her status as an employee…the Planetary Society in general be accused of some sort of institutional hypocrisy for not being total and complete adherents to some singular view of “The Dream?” I don’t think so. Nor do I think that the old robots-vs-manned space argument can even be characterized as a debate these days. In a sense, they are two unique branches of a pathway that leads outward.
Yes, in all likelihood in 50, 100 or a 1000 years people will live and work on Luna, Mars, and the asteroids. But the first entities to arrive at these places will be robots who report back not just to scientists but the public who support them via tax dollars. I celebrate what our astronauts and cosmonauts do aboard the ISS. But when it became apparent to me that in my lifetime I would never again see humans venture beyond Earth orbit, I decided to actively and enthusiastically follow the many robotic missions that are ongoing throughout the solar system. These machines, conceived and controlled by dedicated men and women, venture outward into mystery. Yet in my mind’s eye I can certainly see a gloved human hand sampling Martian soil or gathering the material of a comet. But until that far-flung day arrives the bulk of us armchair-astronauts here on Earth will rely on our mechanical avatars to bring us wonders just beyond the orbit of our lonely planet.
Enthusiasm or even a strong, focused opinion by one person on the advantages of robotic exploration is not hypocrisy nor does it diminish The Dream. It may be one of the things that ultimately keep it alive.
Iron Duke wrote: “HSF is the end, not a means.”
I would have to disagree. We are talking about a transportation system. It would be like saying Flying an airplane is the end not the means. Driving a car is the end not the means.
Human space flight is not more or less then moving people’s brain cells from point A to point B.
Do we debate over the gazillion things people get in their car and do? The automobile transportation systems provides the means to do whatever task humans are doing.
It is the same with boats/ships, airplanes, trains, trucks…
As space transportation is moved into the commercial sector .. like EVERY form of transportation and it is industrialized with multiple, competitive players who have achieved economy of scale, that 200 mile verticle drive into LEO will be taken by thousands of people for thousands of different reasons…
THAT is the end… fulfilling mutiple desires’wants’needs utilzing a commercial transportation system.
Sending a human to LEO, or the Moon, of Mars has great value. But that value is not infinite, and does not justify unlimited spending. Humans can be productive explorers anywhere that the value of their presence exceeds the cost of sending them. With commercial crew that may finally be the case in LEO.
SLS/Orion is far more expensive. The cost of human spaceflight to the Moon or Mars with this technology greatly exceeds its value. If we really want to go, we must first develop more practical ways of doing so.
As to robots, they are not standing still. The development of artificial intelligence is an adventure as fascinating as the exploration of space, and it’s only a matter of time before the two concepts are combined.
I believe a human in a few days could have accomplished as much as Curiosity has in a few years.
Some bad things happened, but they are fixable. It would be good if Antares could head out out to sea as soon as the towers are cleared. It would not have fell on the pad. The 2nd stage should have had the nozzle ejected rather than being blown into many pieces. This is the only solution I have come up with to use SRBs for HSF. I read a suggestion of blowing the dome. That would still have many pieces heading for the spacecraft. If the whole nozzle was ejected the thrust would nearly drop to zero. The core would shutdown, the capsule eject, the whole first stage would drop into the ocean and the capsule or DC would be in the clear.
Here is a question: What are we suppose to do? stay in this planet (8 billion plus and growing) until we all get wipe out by our mistakes (nuclear weapons, global warming, you name it) ?,nature revenge (a pandemic, pick your decease, Yellowstone blowup)? a cosmic catastrophe (until the sun turns into a red giant? an asteroid hit us). I believe that any of you are thinking of other options. it can be in a million years, or next year.
Why do we have to be pen up, the eight billion of us, and let the robots have the fun?
BTW: with the level of communications (24 hour TV, and internet) the world feels more like a family suffering from cabin fever after a week of snow in the middle of nowhere and not being able to get out. A the family noticed that they are running out of supplies.
Alvaro
My concern with the comment from a person like Emily Lakdawalla, is that she is not the only one. There are a lot of people with decision making powers that agree with her. They are from the left and from the right (different reasons, but arrive to the same conclusions).
They believe that robots are more cost efficient, that the money from HSF will go by default to those robotic programs.
Unfortunately there are people with decision making powers who believe that that money should be invested to solve the problems of the world. The main problem here is that they are split on different ways to solve the problems of the world.
And there other people who believe that trying to solve their problems by the previous people, is just meddling in their life, and they will prefer to fight you.
in other words, don’t believe that the money saved from eliminating HSF will go to your robotic program, or will fix the world problems, but most probably will create some enemies in the way.
In certain ways, I believe that the problems of the world will never be solved, they just become irrelevant when new problems shows up. That is why sending humanity out into space will guarantee that our old problems will become irrelevant.
Alvaro