Cheap Astronomy - Dear CA Ep. 110: Robots And Us

The 365 Days of Astronomy

Robots are doing it for themselves.

Dear Cheap Astronomy – What kind of robots will we send to other star systems?

This questions assumes any interstellar travel from Earth will be undertaken by robots rather than us, This is a reasonable proposition given that going to the nearest star would take at least forty years assuming you can achieve speeds in the order of ten percent of the speed of light, which is a pretty big assumption.

Dear Cheap Astronomy – Do we really need to send humans into space?

Well yes, we really do. Cheap Astronomy is a big advocate for getting robots, our manufactured progeny out there, but the technology isn’t yet good enough for robots to replace the role and function that people will play. They robots will be able to do all those things one day and on that day us humans can just stay home and let them get on with it, but before then there’s a gap that needs to be filled – and there is some growing urgency to get on with it soon.

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