A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me a link to an NPR article about NASA looking for volunteers to live in a test habitat for a year. (NASA Wants You To Spend A Year Simulating Life On Mars, For Science). I had planned to write about that this week. But I think I’ll leave it for next week. Go ahead and read the article, and I’ll cover the topic in my next post.
Why not this week? Because—Boston Dynamics has released another robot video and Twitter lit up a bit about using these robots on the Moon. And it got me thinking about how we might use robots to prepare for human exploration and ultimately colonization of the solar system, and dare I say—the galaxy.
You may remember a few months ago when the Dancing Robots entertained us (Tripping the Light Fantastic? Take a Robot as Your Wingman). The dance moves were impressive, and the routine was, of course, a joy to watch, particularly if you like ‘80s music.
The latest video, Atlas | Partners in Parkour, highlights some equally impressive acrobatics. The question bantered about Twitter was whether we should take one of these on the Artemis missions to the Moon. We could speculate about their use. Reconnaissance was mentioned. But you could also imagine moving supplies and equipment, assembling machinery, constructing habitats, maybe even search and rescue!
And that brings me back to the topic of who will be first to explore and settle extraterrestrial planets—humans or robots? In his three robot mystery novels (The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and The Robots of Dawn), Isaac Asimov addresses how we colonize other planets. The Spacer camp wants us to send robots to build a human-ready environment and then move in—comfortable, low risk, easy. The Settler camp wants new colonization to be conducted by humans—uncomfortable, dangerous, challenging. I won’t reveal the answer—no spoilers—you’ll need to read The Robots of Dawn.
But we’re already asking a similar question—why do we need to send people on the dangerous mission to explore other planets? Can’t we use robots to do it? And now that we’ve seen what the Boston Dynamics robots can do why not send them (or a version of them)?
In some respects, we’re already using robots to explore. Curiosity and Perseverance are robots conducting activities and completing tasks millions of miles away on Mars in an unbelievably hostile environment. Yes, they’re following instructions, but with no real-time human intervention. But that can’t be all we do. We need to explore and learn, and, yes, we need to understand the challenges before we go—but go, we must. Will we ever really know what another planet is like (or the Moon for that matter) until someone stands there and looks to the distant horizon and wonders what’s over there?
So, what do you say? Ready to head out to the planets and do some exploring? Should we risk people’s lives or just let the machines do it? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.
In future posts, we’ll explore the next step: Colonization.
[Disclaimer: Please accept my apologies for any ads that pop up before the linked videos. They do not reflect my position, nor do I endorse any of the products – it’s just a YouTube thing I can’t get around.]
Loved the robots. Great disclaimer on the ads, too bad you can’t get around them.