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Space Robotics

What's the Best Ways for Humans to Explore Space? (noemamag.com) 95

Posted by EditorDavid from the one-small-step dept.
Should we leave space exploration to robots — or prioritize human spaceflight, making us a multiplanetary species?

Harvard professor Robin Wordsworth, who's researched the evolution and habitability of terrestrial-type planets, shares his thoughts: In space, as on Earth, industrial structures degrade with time, and a truly sustainable life support system must have the capability to rebuild and recycle them. We've only partially solved this problem on Earth, which is why industrial civilization is currently causing serious environmental damage. There are no inherent physical limitations to life in the solar system beyond Earth — both elemental building blocks and energy from the sun are abundant — but technological society, which developed as an outgrowth of the biosphere, cannot yet exist independently of it. The challenge of building and maintaining robust life-support systems for humans beyond Earth is a key reason why a machine-dominated approach to space exploration is so appealing...

However, it's notable that machines in space have not yet accomplished a basic task that biology performs continuously on Earth: acquiring raw materials and utilizing them for self-repair and growth. To many, this critical distinction is what separates living from non-living systems... The most advanced designs for self-assembling robots today begin with small subcomponents that must be manufactured separately beforehand. Overall, industrial technology remains Earth-centric in many important ways. Supply chains for electronic components are long and complex, and many raw materials are hard to source off-world... If we view the future expansion of life into space in a similar way as the emergence of complex life on land in the Paleozoic era, we can predict that new forms will emerge, shaped by their changed environment, while many historical characteristics will be preserved. For machine technology in the near term, evolution in a more life-like direction seems likely, with greater focus on regenerative parts and recycling, as well as increasingly sophisticated self-assembly capabilities. The inherent cost of transporting material out of Earth's gravity well will provide a particularly strong incentive for this to happen.

If building space habitats is hard and machine technology is gradually developing more life-like capabilities, does this mean we humans might as well remain Earth-bound forever? This feels hard to accept because exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit... To me, the eventual extension of the entire biosphere beyond Earth, rather than either just robots or humans surrounded by mechanical life-support systems, seems like the most interesting and inspiring future possibility. Initially, this could take the form of enclosed habitats capable of supporting closed-loop ecosystems, on the moon, Mars or water-rich asteroids, in the mold of Biosphere 2. Habitats would be manufactured industrially or grown organically from locally available materials. Over time, technological advances and adaptation, whether natural or guided, would allow the spread of life to an increasingly wide range of locations in the solar system.
The article ponders the benefits (and the history) of both approaches — with some fasincating insights along the way.

"If genuine alien life is out there somewhere, we'll have a much better chance of comprehending it once we have direct experience of sustaining life beyond our home planet."
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What's the Best Ways for Humans to Explore Space? More

What's the Best Ways for Humans to Explore Space?

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  • With Science (Score:3)

    by jhoegl ( 638955 ) on Monday November 10, 2025 @08:51AM (#65785436)
    Duh
    • Science? Really? There's a lot of soft-brained, unscientific and technophilic pseudo-religion in the article.

      Let's work with the argument's load-bearing phrase, "exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit."

      There are so many things to criticise in that single statement of bias. Suffice it to say there's a good case to be made that "provincial domesticity and tribalism are prevalent inherited traits in humans", without emotional appeals to a "spirit" not in evidence.

  • One Way Trips (Score:5, Interesting)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Monday November 10, 2025 @09:14AM (#65785442)

    Send humans with a terminal illness, but healthy enough to make the trip, so that you don't have to fund a return trip.

    This cuts the costs way down, simplifies the mission parameters and allows the volunteer humans to do something meaningful with their lives.

    As someone with a terminal illness, I can say that I would volunteer for a mission to Mars. No problem.

    • For that matter, I have heard that there are healthy people out there who would like to volunteer for a one way trip.

      • True. But I think the pearl clutchers would take issue with sending healthy people to their death.

        Society is full of people who can't mind their own fucking business.

        • Robots are a tool, no mater how sentient like they become. The do as they are programmed to do (even "AI"). We should explore space with robots for knowledge where appropriate. We should also send robots that are "smart" to kick-start a habitat / city, and prepare for humans to arrive. Then the humans land on what is essentially a city-wide installation. Build it, and they will come, so to speak.

    • Is if they got too ill or died before they completed the mission or even before they arrived. Also eventually there'll be one person left on their own with no one to care for them. Would a cyanide pill be provided?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Send lawyers and politicians, nobody will complain.

      • Yes but we will need people who will tell us the truth about what they see, not what they would like to see or what they think those listening would like to believe.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Sorry to hear you have a terminal prognosis.

      I'm not sure there are enough terminally ill but still fairly healthy people who also have the right skills and mindset though. When you think how few people manage to become astronauts... And they would want to be extremely sure that your condition is stable and you won't deteriorate during launch g-forces, in zero-g, en-route, or shortly after arriving. A lot of the work is quite physical. Even in Mars' lower gravity, those suits are heavy and bulky and stiffer

    • We all have a terminal illness. You are not going to be around in 100 years.

      • I'll be lucky to make it to the end of the year. Maybe six months, tops.

        • I assume you're being serious, and if so, I'm sorry to hear that. You are much more acutely aware of the shortness of life than most.

          At age 24, I suffered a brain hemorrhage due to AVM. I was literally seconds away from death, but was spared because the excess blood found its way to my spinal column, relieving the pressure on my brain. It completely changed my life. Ever since then, I have lived my life with intensity, understanding that today is a gift, and tomorrow many never come.

  • We don't need to explore space right now, we need to repair our biosphere.

    There's nothing in space that will help us do that in time to actually do it.

    If people want to spend their own money doing it that's fine, although then there's a conversation to be had about where that money came from.

    • If we move enough people off the planet, the biosphere could repair itself.

      • If we move enough people off the planet, the biosphere could repair itself.

        Let's start with the people who think that there is a planet B that we could move people to. It would increase the average IQ.

        • Why do they have to move to a planet?

          • Why do they have to move to a planet?

            Because Biosphere didn't work. Or are you just planning to rob Earth of the resources needed to build and maintain space colonies? That's an even shittier plan.

            • I think if we re-thought out the game of Civilization, but for colonizing the moon and mars, we may see that there is a way to have 5-10 humans controlling 10's of thousands of robots. It seems like the first step is to seal off a bunch of caves, or build bricks for buildings, or both. Perhaps creating a machine that could round up and process materials for a huge 3D printing machine for enclosures. Run that to build spaces. Collecting huge stores of water ice may be a step, and have them next to process

              • The game alpha centauri is a lot more applicable here. However what you are talking about requires future technology. You would need self repairing machines for that. While this is arguably semi-feasible (design machines to be more modular and therefore serviceable by robots which could swap modules) they don't exist yet. And once they do we will be too busy dealing with the upheaval from the destruction of service jobs to think about colonizing other planets or moons.

                • What you call destruction of service jobs, I would call the introduction to the age of plenty, and the end of the age of scarcity. There shouldn't be an "upheaval", but I know there will be. The haves are too good at dividing the have nots for them to stop. That said, I still have plenty of time to think of that, plus thinking about colonizing the moon and mars. I even spend an occasional day or two thinking about colonizing a few moons around the gas giants in the outer solar system. Sometimes even

                  • What you call destruction of service jobs, I would call the introduction to the age of plenty, and the end of the age of scarcity. There shouldn't be an "upheaval", but I know there will be. The haves are too good at dividing the have nots for them to stop.

                    You debunked your own comment, there's nothing for me to do here :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tragedy ( 27079 )

      We don't need to explore space right now, we need to repair our biosphere.

      There's nothing in space that will help us do that in time to actually do it.

      Some of the technologies that would enable space exploration could also help us with the goal of repairing our biosphere though. Among our issues here on Earth is our reliance on fossil fuels. Hydrocarbons for energy make little sense pretty much everywhere we might go in space, however. All that energy storage potential for hydrocarbons is completely reliant on a massive supply of free oxygen being there for the taking. That means that basically all technology used for space either needs to not burn fossil

      • Some of the technologies that would enable space exploration could also help us with the goal of repairing our biosphere though.

        Yes, but we could also develop the same technologies and then not spend the money going to space, and instead implement them here, and think about space exploration once we're sure we have a future.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tragedy ( 27079 )

          True, but there are all sorts of things that we could do, but we don't because, well because we just don't. There are a number of things that come to mind. One is that novel solutions to problems often come from someone scratching an itch. The problem is, they have to notice the itch in the first place, but the problem domain of, well, basically saving the Earth, is broad and it is hard to see the forest for the trees. The problems to solve for space exploration can be much more focused, and I think that do

  • 2 different things (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 4im ( 181450 ) on Monday November 10, 2025 @09:30AM (#65785458)

    1) Robotic probes. To explore "far away" stuff, there is, for now, no reasonable alternative.

    2) Manned missions to the Moon, later to near-Earth asteroids, including a permanent habitat.
    The reasoning being, unlike for the ISS in Earth orbit, there are local resources to be used,
    and these habitats would be close enough for help from Earth if things go sideways.

    Once we've learned how to do #2 properly, we can go on to places farther away, such as Mars.

    You've got to learn to walk before you run.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      2) Manned missions to the Moon, later to near-Earth asteroids, including a permanent habitat.
      The reasoning being, unlike for the ISS in Earth orbit, there are local resources to be used,
      and these habitats would be close enough for help from Earth if things go sideways.

      What are people going to be doing on these missions that couldn't be automated? All of this emphasis on manned missions to the moon and mars lately just seems like pushing for cool photo ops and in the case of Mars the right to call "firsties" on landing a person there first. In other words, it seems to me like it's all being done for publicity and not for anything more practical.

      It takes quite a bit of extra spacecraft to support humans in space in terms of life support and living space and that costs moun

      • There is a huge difference between having a little robotic rover trundle over the Lunar service, and having some scientists present, with a lab. Though I imagine a lot of that research will mostly be useful for further human exploration of them Moon or space, so it might seem a little self-serving. But it may well drive down the cost of human space exploration.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          I'm asking in my post specifically what this value is that you're suggesting. Would you care to be more specific?

          I doubt we need people to get soil samples (or something similar) back to earth anymore if that's the direction your mind was going.

          • You were comparing manned missions to automated missions. The only practical result of either is science; it will be a long while before we'll see something practical being done in space. Manned mission are more expensive but they can yield way more science as well. I think we ought to at least try and get something of a moonbase established. That is attainable, and will give us a much better idea of what we can expect should we want to venture further out in a manned mission. That experience in itself

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by skam240 ( 789197 )

              Manned mission are more expensive but they can yield way more science as well.

              You keep making these super nebulous claims in regards to the value of manned missions while I keep asking for specifics. I'm starting to think you don't understand what you're talking about and are just making stuff up that sounds good to you. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

              If you want practical, however, space exploration has little to offer anymore, except some spinoff tech perhaps.

              The only thing "practical" I'm asking for is cost effectiveness. If the same thing can be done via automation odds are it's massively cheaper when it comes to doing things off world. Meanwhile I can't think of anything that we would cur

      • If the end goal is to colonize Mars, then we have to start sending people there at some point, if nothing else then just to get a better understanding of the many problems people will run into on Mars. The question is of course, are we even remotely ready to start sending people?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          Sure, at some point. We're so far out from colonizing Mars being realistic I don't see the value in sending people right now though. That planet is hostile as hell to human life, it's just less hostile then our other options in the solar system. Colonizing it won't be practical until well after everyone alive today is dead.

      • What are people going to be doing on these missions that couldn't be automated?

        I was going to say "write poetry" but that can be automated now, so...

        Seems like all we're good at is stinking up the place.
        https://www.vox.com/science-an... [vox.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 4im ( 181450 )

        The answer is quite simple: human experience. And, not having all our eggs in the same basket.

        As for the first part: you can look at wonderful pictures of Saturn or Jupiter, as taken by Hubble, JWST or one of the probes that went there. You can also look at these planets, using your own eyes, through a telescope. Pictures are nice, but that live view is something totally different. Same if you look at a cloud cover from above vs. the pictures you can get from a drone. Space exploration goes far beyond prett

  • ... are way more stupid and/or pointless and more expensive I'd say exploring space should be one of our global scientific priorities. Perhaps even more so than yet another collider for even smaller sub-atoms or yet another Tokamak that goes nowhere. I'd perhaps even make that a new sort of quasi-religion, since the benefits from work on this is likely only to pay out when todays generations are no more.

    As for saving this planet and keeping it livable for humans: We can do both and then thousands of other things on top of that at the same time. And we should absolutely do all that while we still have an advanced scientific high culture.

    • I'd say exploring space should be one of our global scientific priorities

      I am not opposed to some space exploration and science, but I'm pretty cynical about the prospects that we will discover something really amazing or valuable in our solar system. There's a whole lot of nothing in space and a whole lot of nothing in our solar system. Nothing even remotely habitable or useful for sustaining any kind of organic life - let alone human life - in our solar system except Earth.

      And the stuff that is something is way too far away for any kind of meaningful exploration.

      I'm all fo

  • I reject the premise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Monday November 10, 2025 @09:41AM (#65785490) Journal
    The title summary is titled "What's the best ways for humans to explore space?" The article talks a bit about exploration - citing the repair of the Hubble by human astronauts - but then makes an unmistakable pivot to "extending life beyond Earth". In other words: is starts off with exploration, but then spends most of its time talking about colonizing the solar system and beyond, and how we lack the self-sustaining (i.e., not Earth-bound) technology to support that at present.

    The author may have a point, but I reject the premise that exploration requires self-sustaining technology that's not depending on our Earth-bound infrastructure. Exploring is not the same as colonizing. They are related, for sure, but should not be conflated. If all we do for the indefinite future is schlep stuff to the Moon or Mars for brief visits, or establish bases entirely reliant on Earth...so what? Is exploration itself a worthy endeavor?

    Think of Shackleton - he was exploring Antarctica, and brought literal boatloads of materiel and equipment with him to do so. He wasn't pretending, or intending, to stay. Today we have a number of semi-permanent outposts in Antarctica, and they are entirely dependent on supply chains to the outside world. Everything at South Pole Station (except for water) had to be brought in from somewhere else. This includes people: there are no permanent inhabitants, and no one has ever been born in Antarctica. If we take the author's viewpoint, the entire endeavor in Antarctica is bunk, because we haven't been working towards self-sustaining colonies. I don't buy it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      "Everything at South Pole Station (except for water)"

      And air. Even both of these would have to be brought in or somehow manufactured on other planets.

    • You are demonstrating a perspective that is pretty terrestrial-centric.

      Shackleton was able to explore Antarctica because it was relatively easy to return (with "relatively" being comparable to, say, returning from the moon or Mars).

      At some point in the evolution of human exploration, we are going to visit places that are so far away from Earth that ferrying materials back and forth will be simply infeasible. At that point, we'll need to learn how to exploit resources that are local to the destinations we v

    • Barring pretty exciting advances in biotech(along with either the psychology or...less wholesome methods...of keeping people on-task when they learn that their 4-century lifespan will be dedicated to a period of drifting through nothing and a life sentence studying the surfaces of Kuiper belt objects inside a tiny habitube or something) you are going to hit a line where (human) exploration is not going to be readily separable from human colonization; just because shipping times become prohibitive: Anywhere
    • So the underlining premise is that we can't just explore for the sake of exploring because nobody's going to pay for it.

      We have to colonize just like we did hundreds of years ago because in order to get the kings, well the CEOs now but they're basically the same thing, to fund the whole thing we need to offer them the possibility of a reward. A payoff for them.

      I suppose we could fundamentally reorganize our entire civilization so that we did not need the blessings of kings to do cool stuff but I thi

  • Sustaining life to understand alien life? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chas.williams ( 6256556 ) on Monday November 10, 2025 @09:49AM (#65785502)
    I don't understand that comment. It seems completely orthogonal. It's not going to provide any more of a common reference than any number of other things that an alien civilization would have experience with. It's more likely that we would have radically different technological approaches, since space-faring is a highly complex problem with numerous possible solutions.

    • It will a provide a better point of reference, due to shared experiences. For example, what happens if the third or fourth generation of space-faring humans start having genetic issues caused by the increased radiation in space? If we see that happening to us, we will better understand when it happens to other species.

  • Multi planetary species only exist in science fiction stories.
    Send robots.
    And fix things here that require humans.

  • They are good at warfare's hostile environment. They are good in space.

    We've done amazing things with Voyager, with planning and engineering. Comms is hard, but maybe we can fix that with something like starlink, launch a bunch of small signal repeaters in between, or do something quantum ....

    AI is coming on, we've got plenty of physically similar environments undersea to start training survey, mining and tunnelling bots.

    Why we invest so much in human like robots eludes me. We can make human shaped things f

  • Once trips to LEO become a solved problem and cost effective (Starship etc.), we should focus on mining asteroids and bringing stuff back to earth/moon. This could jump start a new space race based on pure greed and advance our civilization further. Just as the previous gold rush did for the US. Once people/companies/government see it as profitable, there will be a significant amount of participants that will want to optimize the process further. Start with rare earths, gold, platinum, titanium etc. things

  • All man-in-space stuff is just vanity.

  • uh, both, dummy ? (Score:3)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Monday November 10, 2025 @12:41PM (#65785940) Homepage Journal

    Obviously, sooner or later we will want to do things that require our physical presence. And be it because the ping time to Mars really, really sucks.

    Robots are way easier to engineer for space than humans, even though space is so unforgiving that that's not trivial, either. The same is true for other planets. Building a robot that works well in 0.2g or 5g is an engineering challenge but doable even with today's tech. Humans... not so much.

    But let's be honest here: We want to go out there. The same way humans have found their way to the most remote places and most isolated islands on planet Earth, expansion is deeply within our nature.

    So, robots for exploration to prepare for more detailed human exploration to prepare for human expansion.

    And maybe, along the way we can solve the problem that any spaceship fast and big enough to achieve acceptable interplanetary travel times (let's not even talk about interstellar) with useful payloads is also a weapon of mass destruction on a scale that makes nukes seem like firecrackers.

    Has What If? already done a segment on "what happens is SpaceX's Starship slams into Earth at 0.1c" ?

  • I come down on the side of Tsiolkovsky: “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” Especially when we are making a fetish of fouling the cradle.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      I come down on the side of Tsiolkovsky: âoeEarth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.â

      A baby in a cradle is the wrong analogy -- a better analogy is an internal organ inside a body. Yes, you can (with advanced technology and at great expense) remove the internal organ from the body and keep it alive externally for some time, but it's going to be unpleasant for everyone involved, and sooner or later the disembodied organ will wither and die, unless it is returned to the environment it was specifically evolved to live within.

  • The best option is obviously self-replicating Von Neumann probes. Specifically the American variety named Bob and not the Brazilian ones.

    • Echoes of Earth by Sean Williams and Shane Dix (first book of the Orphans Trilogy) explains a similar scenario to the Bobiverse books, but it is darker and perhaps a little more cynical on the hard scifi parts.

  • Simple as. By the time we reach another one with a habitable rock, we will have significantly diverged. Communication will take so long it'll be like keeping in touch with someone back in the 1400s. You probably can't even realistically send gifts/supplies/etc., since it'll arrive generations later. Timekeeping between societies (from hours to days to years) will be nearly impossible to link up. Cultures will change. Bodies will adapt. Humans have already adapted in a crazy number of ways for all the enviro

  • The Weinersmiths (of SMBC fame) wrote a good book analyzing the problems of space exploration and especially colonization. It's worth a read, and is a lot more realistic than the sci-fi fantasies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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