Human Or Robot Space Exploration?
NASA Scientists And Engineers Working On The Mars Rover It is beginning to look like the future of space exploration is being mapped out. Even though there have been great strides in developing faster craft, that are capable of exploration with humans aboard and work is being done on plasma shields to guard against radiation, this does not seem like the way we are going to go. Everyone raves about the Mars rovers and how long they have lasted. Don't get me wrong that is quite an achievement. Other robotic craft such as Voyager that have photographed Mars and other planets have also had a high degree of success, but here is the problem, maybe they have been too successful. I say this because the more successful a robot craft is, the more NASA scientists think of it as the way to explore the universe, thus limiting the opportunity for boots on the ground. Humans were meant to explore. What would we have learned if we had robots back in Columbus's time and used them to explore the new world? Would we have had problems with the indigenous population? Think of it this way, what if some alien race was exploring earth and used robots instead of living creatures. Would that create an atmosphere of hostility between them and the natives? Would you want some alien contraption coming up to you and looking you over? Probably not, this would probably scare the heck out of you. This most surely means that if our robots were to encounter animal or intelligent life, using a robot would hinder our understanding of them. Robots may be okay to use on some world devoid of life, but I am not so sure even of that. The further out you go, the longer it takes for a radio signal to reach one of these machines, so if there is some sort of instruction that is needed and some robot machine is on a distant planet, even in our own solar system it might take over a year for a signal to make a round trip, thus really hampering the ability of the robot.
Next Generation NASA Robot One of the problems with robot explorers is that are yet to have intuition. They are the original go by the book guys and can't change that even if they wanted to. What do you think would happen if a robot we sent to some alien planet walked up to intelligent life and that life somehow got part of its body caught in a tread, or a gear? Do you think that this would be viewed as an attack? If you think not, do you think that the alien life might be very angry and in pain never the less? Machines can be unpredictable. There are probably over a million people that have been hurt in some way by a machine, so we can not really say that there is no danger in using a robot. An intelligent being might get something as simple as an electrical shock from a robot. There is one thing going for robots, well maybe more than one, I have to be fair: On the other hand: 1. they can not make decisions that they weren't programmed for
Neural Network Processor In the 1950s and 1960s, robots were all the rage in science fiction movies. They were pictured as having a sort of evil intelligence most of the time, but there were exceptions such as RobbyThe Robot, which went on to become one of the most famous robots of all times. His initial appearance was in the movie Forbidden Planet which also featured a spaceship and crew that was the inspiration for Star Trek. Robby was not a real robot, because he had a human inside him, so he was really a robot suit. The point is that these robots were assigned far more intelligence than is even possible today. With budgets the way they are, it is not looking good for man as far as human exploration of the universe goes. There is talk about a planned mission to Mars that might be manned, but then you hear that it would be 30 to 40 years in the future. There was talk about going back to the moon, but that was canceled. If manned exploration does happen again, it doesn't look like it will be attempted by the United States, but rather by one of the Asian countries such as China, or maybe India. They have much smaller space programs than us right now, but they are growing, while ours is going nowhere. When the United States landed on the moon, everyone in the world was excited. It was thought at the time that this was the first step and that we would soon be exploring the other planets. Boy did we get a had as they say. Not only was the moon exploration program ended after a few flights, but we the people were blamed for it. The government had said that they ended the moon flights because the public was no longer interested in them. The truth of the matter is that if the government would have announced a flight to Mars, everyone on this planet would have been very excited. One thing that I never understood is why do NASA flights hinge on lack of interest by the public. The truth is that almost all the stuff that is launched is not really followed by the general public. Sure a few follow these things, but not very many. I say the heck with using robots, send men to Mars, or even back to the Moon. Hey President Obama, we ARE interested in space exploration, let's start it up again. Let's not leave it up to soulless sterile machines. Man has a basic need to explore and I believe he should be given that chance. |
