Re: Space travel by humans is not possible now

On 21 Jan, 00:20, jacob navia <ja...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Rand Simberg wrote:

Please provide a single example of someone who "thinks it is the
same," or abandon your latest foolish straw man.

Mr McCall for instance.

Exploration was always done "in person" before robotics existed.
Mr McCall fails to grasp what is the difference now, and naively
proposes sending people to explore, as if those people were going
to some far away continent, not unlike earth.

For instance

<quote>
:
:The ISS needs a constant supply of
:materials from earth to keep it running. All that is impossible
:in a Mars trip.
:

So you take it with you from the start.  All that requires is
planning.
<end quote>

The difficulties of hoarding 2-3 years worth of supplies
for several people and the return trip fuel
somewhere in Mars, when all mankind has been able to do to date
is to land a few KILOGRAMS there, is completely beyond his
grasp.

Just put some people in a rocket and there you go.

He wasn't even *aware* of the problem of landing on Mars for
a really heavy spaceship loaded with a life-support system for 4 people.

Nobody knows how to do that except Mr McCall of course, that just fires
the rockets and lands...

As we have always seen in TV shows and science fiction books.

--
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatiquehttp://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32

I think there is something else at work here too. If you take a look
at technology there is indeed only one sensible conclusion you can
come to. Robotics will give human manual dexterity in a fairly short
time period. To me this is inescapable. There may be non scientific
non commercial reasons for manned space flight. For example the ISS is
the result of an international agreement and I think all parties have
to abide by that agreement. Unilateral abrogation would set a bad
precedent.

I feel I should add that the way Fred and Rand argue would be
completely beyond the pale in any scientific conference. I don't think
that can be denied. Rand is by far and away the more poisonous of the
two.

I am afraid I cannot help but cast my mind to Iraq. Is the reason why
there is so much chaos to do with the way their military is trained? I
cannot help but feel that that that has a lot to do with it. I ask
myself why the Sunnis all joined up with Al Qaeda and followed the
path to destruction. I believe it was due largely to American
arrogance.

In a scientific conference you would be expected to show why an agile
robot with human manual dexterity cannot be built in the near term. I
think anyone would have a hard job at any reasonably respectable
conference. I would be quite prepared to stand up and show how TO
build one. The fact that there is a "robonaut" on the ISS speaks
volumes. One might ask - why not take the next step, why not try to
equip it with AI?


- Ian Parker
.