an historical overview of robots versus humans in spaceflight: technology, human evolution, and interplanetary travel

Paper number

IAC-08.A5.2.10

Author

Dr. Roger D. Launius, Smithsonian Institution, United States

Year

2008

Abstract

This paper explores the history and possible futures for human/robotic spaceflight. One area where all spaceflight visionaries failed to make meaningful predictions was in the rapidly advancing capabilities of robotics and electronics. For example, when Arthur C. Clarke envisioned geosynchronous telecommunications satellites in 1945 he believed that they would require humans working onboard to change the vacuum tubes. In such a situation, it is easy to conceive of the motivation that led people like Clarke and Wernher von Braun to imagine the necessity to station large human crews in space. Some of the most forward-thinking spaceflight advocates, in this instance, utterly failed to anticipate the electronics/digital revolution then just beginning. Humans, spaceflight visionaries always argued, were a critical element in the exploration of the Solar System and ultimately beyond. Human destiny required our movement beyond this planet, ultimately to the colonization of the galaxy as a means of assuring the survival of the species. With the rapid advance of electronics in the 1960s, however, some began to question the role of humans in space exploration. It is much less expensive and risky to send robot explorers than to go ourselves. This debate reached saliency early on and became an important part of the space policy debate by the latter twentieth century.

This paper offers a history and analysis of how we came to the point that we have in human spaceflight, as well as a discussion of the relative merits of human versus robotic space exploration. In essence, I shall suggest that the old paradigm for human exploration—ultimately becoming an interstellar species—is outmoded and ready for replacement.

I will specifically look to the future of humans and robots in space and suggest that the possibility exists that perhaps a post-human cyborg species may realize a dramatic future in an extraterrestrial environment.

Abstract document

IAC-08.A5.2.10.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-08.A5.2.10.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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