by Dennis Meredith.
On the moon, the CADRE lander, to be launched this year, will touch down with a unique task. It will lower down three briefcase-sized rovers that will work as a team. Coordinating via a radio network, they will roll across the lunar surface, using cameras, navigation sensors, and ground-penetrating radar to map the terrain in 3D. The CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) robots will plan their strategy with no human intervention.
On Saturn’s supercold moon Titan, the Dragonfly rotorcraft, to be launched in 2028, will fly through the nitrogen atmosphere and methane rain, scanning the terrain and choosing landing spots to drill into the ice and analyze Titan’s chemistry. Looking like a bobsled with propellors, it will maneuver autonomously, its AI brain enabling it to make decisions without instructions from scientists on Earth.
These craft comprise only two of the ingenious menagerie of artificially intelligent robotic explorers envisioned by space scientists. The multi-armed ReachBot could explore Martian caves, using its telescoping spined appendages to grasp the walls. The all-terrain DuAxel robot could hoist itself up and down treacherous, rock-strewn Martian hills via detachable wheeled axles, mapping and gathering samples. And, the multi-legged Freeclimber could use Velcro-like grippers to scale the steepest Martian mountains, recording its explorations.
On the frozen Jovian moon Europa, a nuclear-powered cryobot could drill through the ice with its heated tip, gathering samples for analysis. Once it breaks through to the moon’s subsurface ocean, it could release a swarm of micro-swimmers, small fish-like robots that would venture forth to sample water and search for life.
On Venus, a solar-powered plane could sail through sulfuric acid clouds, depositing a rover to gather samples on the 450-degree Celsius surface and generate propellant from the Venusian atmosphere to power its return to Earth.
None of these robots has lungs that could be choked by swirling lunar or Martian dust; muscles and bones that would be weakened by weightlessness; or organs that would be damaged by radiation. So far, almost all astronaut missions have been limited to Earth orbit, where the planet’s magnetic field shields against the far more hazardous, even lethal, radiation of deep interplanetary space.
None requires a livable temperature or a constant supply of air, food, and water. None requires the gargantuan amounts of fuel and supplies necessary for human missions. And, unlike humans that come in only one basic model, they can be designed for a specific mission.
They can readily survive the hazards of radiation, weightlessness, disease, toxic chemicals, and psychological trauma—revealed by scientific studies on organisms from cells to humans—that astronauts would endure in deep space. NASA itself has recognized the severe, unsolved “Red Risks” of deep-space travel, and researchers have conceded that they cannot reliably estimate the medical risk of deep-space exploration missions.
Despite these overwhelming obstacles, advocates of human space exploration have offered rationalizations that turn out to be deeply flawed. They are basically vague, hand-waving arguments; and when their merits are closely examined, they lack substance. One might compare them to hollow chocolate Easter bunnies—appetizing on the outside, but with nothing on the inside.
For example, advocates assert that human spaceflight inspires students to become scientists or engineers. However, a National Research Council report on human spaceflight cast doubt on this rationale, concluding that: “The path to becoming a scientist or engineer requires much more than the initial inspiration.” Of such inspiration, the report noted that “it is difficult to separate the contributions of human and robotic spaceflight.”
Advocates have also claimed that spinoffs from the human space program have proved its economic worth. But would these technologies have been more cost-efficiently developed by robust funding of research and development, without the massive overhead of a space program? As the NRC report pointed out “. . . even if NASA’s human spaceflight activities have had a substantial favorable effect on US technical, industrial, and innovative capabilities, it is difficult or impossible to ascertain whether similar effects could have resulted from similarly large R&D investment by other federal agencies.”
Advocates have also pointed to the jobs created by the human space program. But so would the same amount of money expended on infrastructure, environmental restoration, basic research, and countless other endeavors in which the product was not literally shot into space.
Instead, of a massively expensive, and in the end inevitably tragic, human program, deep-space exploration should be mounted by neuronauts—artificially intelligent space probes collaborating with scientists. Exploring exotic realms from Martian caves, to Europa’s oceans, to Venus’s murky, superhot atmosphere, the data they gather could be used to create a Virtual Cosmos that would enable all of humanity to experience the wonders of our solar system. This sensible space program would be far more realistic and productive, as artificially intelligent robotic space probes become the technological and sensory extensions of humans.
NASA and private companies are already extensively developing and using AI for space exploration. They are using AI to land rockets, dock spacecraft, assist astronauts, manage maintenance, design spacecraft and missions, navigate satellites, analyze data, track space debris, monitor astronaut health, detect planetary geological features, and recognize patterns in astronomical images.
Abandoning the unrealistic plans for human deep-space travel would enable us to chart a path to space that will also be infinitely more cost-effective. Imagine the prodigious exploration possible if the immense cost of the human space program—almost half of NASA’s budget—were applied to robotic explorations. And imagine how inspiring and educational those explorations would be if the world’s peoples could join the experience through virtual reality technology.
A neuronaut exploration program avoids the pipe-dream-planning and rush to space driven by advocates. Rather, it proceeds rationally, building a foundation of knowledge that will create the most benefit from space for humankind.
Dennis Meredith is the author of “Earthbound: The Obstacles to Human Space Exploration and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence.”
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