Ethicists Tell NASA How To Weigh Hazards Of Space Travel

On 4/6/14 2:11 AM, Al Globus wrote:

> For space settlement, robots, machines, and people are all part of the
> system. Take any out and you are either toast or it isnt settlement.
>
> For example, consider a rotating space settlement. Suppose you need to
> do some repairs on the exterior. It is rotating to provide 1g on the
> interior, which means a bit over 1g on the exterior trying to throw you
> out into the cosmos. This is a fantastically dangerous place to work.
> I.e., its a robots job.
>
> There are plenty of other examples.

OK, all true; it's possible I overstated my point. :) My real point is
just that I don't buy the "we should send robots instead of people"
argument, or even the "send robots first to make everything nice and
comfy, and THEN send the people" argument.

The only way to get people living in space is to send people to live in
space. They will certainly take their gear (including robots) with
them, but we don't need to wait for BETTER robot tech to make it
possible. We could do it today. (We could have done it decades ago,
for that matter, at least from a technological point of view.)

Best,
- Joe