AaS! 197: Which is Better, Human or Robotic Exploration?
Ask a Spaceman!
Paul M. Sutter
4.8 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2023
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
What are the advantages of robotic exploration of the solar system? What are the limitations? Is there any situation where human exploration is better? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!
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Thanks to Cathy Rinella for editing.
Hosted by Paul M. Sutter, astrophysicist and the one and only Agent to the Stars (http://www.pmsutter.com).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are forced to play a very difficult game. |
| 0:11.5 | No one person or even company, even the biggest ones, can fund all of the space exploration |
| 0:20.0 | that we want to do. |
| 0:21.3 | It requires big budgets over long time scales with no guarantee of success and no expectation |
| 0:28.6 | of profit or reward or even warm fuzzy feelings. |
| 0:33.6 | Which puts space exploration, and let me be clear here, I mean space exploration in the scientific sense, not in the, oh, we're just going to send people around for the heck of it, or for maybe we can make money off of it, no, just purely scientific space exploration is firmly at the whims of the public. |
| 0:53.9 | Everybody in the world has to chip in a few |
| 0:57.1 | bucks out of their hard-earned money to support it. And by and large, while space exploration |
| 1:02.2 | enjoys a significant amount of public support, that same public is only willing to give so much to the |
| 1:09.5 | effort. Exploration of the solar system is hard. |
| 1:14.0 | And it doesn't really matter how you slice it. |
| 1:16.5 | It's going to be expensive. |
| 1:19.5 | And I wish we had infinite money to do all the things we want to do |
| 1:23.8 | and follow all the curiosities that blossom in our hearts. |
| 1:28.5 | But we don't. |
| 1:33.5 | Yes, all things being equal and with unlimited spacebucks, we would do it all. |
| 1:36.6 | We would simply explore the solar system, all of it. |
| 1:41.0 | It's a big place out there with lots of interesting things to see. |
| 1:42.8 | And we would go everywhere. |
| 1:45.4 | We would do all the things for science, for exploration, |
| 1:52.1 | for fun, for art, too. I mean, if doing interesting things on other worlds just for the sake of it isn't the ultimate expression of human creativity and artistic ability, then I don't know what |
| 1:57.1 | is. But we can't. We only have so much money, only so much budget, only so many human |
... |
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