Yeah, but humans are impatient. Each rover has only a select set of tools. It can’t adapt to what it might find. It has to wait for another rover to be sent. To automate modifying the rovers will take a lot of hands on experience. Then ideally they could just ship up parts to be swapped in.
HubertManne@piefed.social 6 days ago
thats kinda the point of automation. if that is our main focus then we improve the technology which is what we got out of the original space race. all the technology that made the endeavour eventually succeed. sending humans just sucks up expense and resources and slows down reall tangible and useful progress.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Right, but sending them say to the moon, to perfect the tech, then sending the tech to further places will drastically speed up the process. The moon is at least not too far away. Mars isn’t terrible either. But the overhead is high compared to the distance. So being able to iterate without a launch (human presence) is a big win. If we were talking saturn, then the gains start to diminish. So perfect it on the moon, maybe mars if there is some reason it is drastically different, then use it elsewhere. Maybe even send some outside the solar system. Though without significant improvements in propulsion, there isn’t a lot of point to sending outside the solar system.
HubertManne@piefed.social 5 days ago
yeah I would also like to see trying out some other things on the moon. like a space elevator can be done without even the modern materials we have today and would let us vett that stuff. I do think we should send some stuff farther afield like probes or attempting asteroid drilling or capture but only if it can be done relatively cheaply. major stuff I agree would be best to perfect close by and then add it to the repetoire to send farther out.