Posted on 09/25/2005 6:45:25 AM PDT by KevinDavis
NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin met last week with reporters and editors at The Post. Here are some of the questions and answers:
What can humans learn in space that robots couldn't?
The thing that you can learn with humans in scientific enterprises are all of the things that you didn't send the robot to find out. With a human you're doing the opportunistic plan, the uncorrelated observation. You know, you see this over here and that over there, and you put them together.
When you know what question you want to ask and what measurement you want to make, it's almost always to your advantage to do that robotically or, at most, use the human to put the thing in place. There's no question about it. When you don't know what you don't know, when you don't know what the questions are, we do very poorly at attempting to figure out what those questions ought to be by using robots.
But the goal isn't just scientific exploration . . . it's also about extending the range of human habitat out from Earth into the solar system as we go forward in time. . . . In the long run a single-planet species will not survive. We have ample evidence of that . . . [Species have] been wiped out in mass extinctions on an average of every 30 million years.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It's not necessary for things to be too big for private enterprise for them not to get built. When certain things are needed for the public as whole... but not necessary for business to operate, or considered to much of an expense to as not to be worth it then it might, and I say might, be for the general benefit of all including extended profit for those businesses in time.
Reread the quote above. "Not too big, but not profitable" is case #2. You need to prove ((either #1 OR #2 is true) AND (#3 is true)) about something in order to prove that it should be done by government. You've asserted "#2 not #1", but you haven't proven that #2 actually applies in the case of roads. If you ever do prove it, you will only need to prove #3--which is where I've got you; you aren't likely to succeed at proving #3.
The Constitution says you're wrong about that.
now if we could return to a STRICT constructionist viewpoint I would be all for it: if ti is not mentioned in the Constitution then it *SHALL* be legal; but I doubt that would go over here.
I'm with you. We won't go there, but that doesn't make it not right!
But I'll do you the courtesy of pretending to take your comment seriously.
In the seventies, the space program got seriously sidetracked because a powerful astronaut personality had a certain agenda concerning the legacy of pilots. His orientation was flying, not exploration--and he wanted to keep it that way. His admirers were legion, and they signed on to that agenda and we got the Space Shuttle and the Space Station and we did so much riding that Russia starting selling rides to multimillionaires. Did we learn anything? Did we go anywhere?
The only new and exciting stuff went "under the radar" in the form of astronomy research, robotics, probes, and nifty cameras. I pointed out (new stuff) that we did a very cool and complicated and brilliant thing with "Deep Impact."
Now the same old pilots are trying to turn the focus, yet again, back to Rides to Nowhere at Ruinous Cost. There is no good reason to go back to the moon. There are lots of good reasons to ratchet up our robotics technology and start sending out probes by the hundreads. What we learn would enrich our satellite infrastructure and provide lots of spinoff goodies.
The bad news--the human body cannot tolerate long months and years in space. We just can't go right now...but we can send eyes, and hands, and ears and brains into space. I want to go right now. Let the silly pilots go play with Rutan and get out of the way of MY ride...
Interestingly, your very argument was made in a different way by Slayton and Shepherd and their chums in the seventies. Public interest in Apollo fell off sharply after the first Moon Landing. The answer was--getting lots more bodies into Space going shorter distances and creating the Space Station. This became an end in itself rather than exploration--what I keep harping on--the ride. When the public doesn't dread death and fireworks, they do not tune in to the Shuttle.
I perceived a great interest in the little Martian probe, however much fun was made of it by those who want a human around in order to experience the Ride vicariously--maybe a better job would be to anthropomorphize the probes. The probes have a huge advantage in exploration--we don't have to bring them back.
Your point was refuted before you even made it. Maybe you should have read the article in the first before you decided to troll the thread.
Beyond preliminary surveys or investigations into places where man physically can not go (Jupiter) robots are a waste of time.
Shrug. Saying you've refuted doesn't mean you've refuted, or even disputed.
. Robots are better than astronauts, no matter how many little boys long to fly. Robotics are the next Big Thing--
Not only that, but robots are better than doctors and surgeons. They already operate on you, with long-distance guidance from the next room, in today's hospitals. Instead of slicing you open like a fileted trout to get at your gall bladder, they have little camera-worms that go through small incisions. Voila. You're back to work practically the next day, instead of spending a week in the hospital nursing a huge scar. And we got here by the technology nurtured by the space program...now it's time to turn around, do it again, and leapfrog into all kinds of new ways to manufacture and farm.
When the "Deep Impact" probe was aiming its bullet at the moving comet, the "mother ship" the size of a washing machine was sending the bullet instructions to keep the aim true. The "bullet" had tiny little rocket navigators controlled by the other craft. Nothing but a computer brain could have managed such a thing.
Useless? Flyboys are useless.
It was supposed to be robots and man together arm in arm throughout the solar system. I don't know what happened, but the original plan was a spiral thing rather than a PERT, and that is gone; robots seem to have disappeared also. Little has been done in the contract area with respect to robots--a couple of university contracts. I have been watching the robot contracts with special interest--janitorial and utility services have been more the order of the day, and the janitors aren't robots.
Those "robots" are in no way autonomous, and therefore aren't robots.
You would help your point if you had any idea what you were talking about.
And the Deep Impact machine/robot/computer was most absolutely autonomous. It was over 150 MILLION miles away from earth, the bullet was traveling at 18K mph at an object moving 100K mph. There was no time for any humans to holler "yahoo!"--the hardware and the software made the decisions (designed, of course, by brilliant engineers)
I'd really rather see pictures of the solar system 200M miles away than listen to some guy gush over how much he's enjoying the view of EARTH.
Yeah, I know. What gets me to the point of not expecting any follow-through from FedGov promises is that Sputnik excitement in the 50s. That was my time. When was Sputnik, 1958? By 1972 it was just over. That's only 14 years, and my career in space, which I undertook as a patriotic thing rather than go into the career field that I could have--and written my own ticket--was over, along with about 300,000 other techies who hit the street at once. Thanks to Nixon for being blind as US Grant, but also to the DC politocos who proved by example that our FedGov can see and plan only until the next election or lobbyist--whichever comes through the door first.
But you were talking about robots removing a gall bladder. That will be impossible for the foreseeable future.
Deep Impact had a very specific task to perform that had absolutely no need for human judgement. You keep pretending that is a great accomplishment for robotics, but the reality of it is that is standard fare for robotics.
People like you who continually posit a humans vs robots argument really need to open your minds. Robots and humans are complementary, not competitive. The overlap is actually quite small.
Obviously, gall bladder surgery is directed by surgeons and augmented by technology. But there are new surgeries beginning where the surgeon no longer has to be in the room--he directs from a computer screen. It doesn't require a muscular imagination, or even original thinking, to picture a future where the augmentation is far greater and the mechanical "eyes" and "hands" in stellar distance. Deep Impact was directed and designed by engineers, and no pilot had to be in the spacecraft. It was a bravura episode in space history.
Part of my "harping" is my acute disappointment in the small ambitions of pilots, compared with the potential of bringing every eye in the world into innermost space. As I said, I'm not impressed with some bozo rhapsodizing over his incredible view of Planet Earth. I want to see comets and Saturn and Pluto.
We could go there, if the flyboys would just bug off.
Smugness and arrogance, always an attractive combination.
Deep Impact was directed and designed by engineers, and no pilot had to be in the spacecraft. It was a bravura episode in space history.
We've been using robotic spacecraft for nearly sixty years. Deep Impact was utterly commonplace.
Part of my "harping" is my acute disappointment in the small ambitions of pilots,
Pilots? What a small mind. Manned space isn't about pilots and never has been. It is about putting scientists on the scene to investigate. Pilots have not been necessary from day one. You are confusing marketing with purpose.
The other problem is that you confuse the reality of manned space as it exists with the motives of its proponents. People aren't satisfied with manned space as it exists and it isn't what anyone imagined it would be.
The one thing that people want that NASA has been wholly unable to deliver is progress. Even now NASA is proposing to simply redo Apollo. NASA has no vision for infrastructure, no vision for establishing mankind in space.
Manned space can and should be about putting scientists in places where we can learn. That can't happen until we start doing things differently. Robots can easily replace pilots, but they make abysmal scientists.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.