Human space journeys are awe-inspiring but risky and immensely expensive. Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees argue that science calls for leaving space exploration to AI-guided robots, since robots range more widely and see more than any human can. Humanity's future in space must await decisions based on results from our ever-better machines.
In The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration, they challenge the three most commonly cited rationales for putting humans in space ... As scientists, the authors don’t have much patience for arguments based on vague impulses. They are cool to the idea that colonizing space has much intrinsic value to humanity, at least in the near term ... At its heart, The End of Astronauts is an argument about return on investment: For the cost of a single human expedition to Mars, the authors point out, NASA could launch dozens of uncrewed missions ... In all, their book is a readable and useful contribution to this longstanding debate ... But, while The End of Astronauts makes compelling arguments, the authors mostly focus on a single type of space exploration: missions conducted by large government agencies. As anyone who has heard the name 'Elon Musk' knows, that model now faces free-market competition ... The End of Astronauts doesn’t fully address NASA’s dysfunction ... In the days when budgets for space exploration were strictly limited by what taxpayers would bear, it made sense to intensely focus on getting the biggest scientific bang for our federal buck. The End of Astronauts makes a solid case that robots win that debate almost every time.
Our heroic authors take a firmer grip on their cudgels to explain why we should give up on manned space exploration. No, the moon is not rich in helium-3, harvesting it would be a nightmare, and the technology we’d need so we can use it for nuclear fusion remains hypothetical ... For anyone seriously interested in space exploration, this slaughter of impractical ideas in The End of Astronauts will be welcome. Space sciences have for years been struggling to breathe in an atmosphere saturated with hype and science fiction. The superannuated blarney spouted by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos — who basically just want to get into the mining business — isn’t helping. Yet for the rest of us, who just want to see some cool stuff, will no crumb of romantic comfort be left?
Goldsmith and Rees provide plenty of data to back up their arguments, and balance optimism with logic ... It lands as a provocative primer on the future of space travel.
