Comments on: Astronauts 2: Robots 0

By: Derek

Derek — Tue, 26 May 2009 05:13:49 +0000

Let’s remember that robots in low Earth orbit could be controlled directly by humans. We’re not talking about Mars rovers here. People seem to infer that a robot Hubble repair mission would be fired off and the robots would have to deal with every problem using some kind of sophisticated machine intelligence. They’re a few hundred miles up, for Pete’s sake! If medical technology is good enough to allow telesurgery across oceans, a well designed mechanical proxy could probably perform many repairs better than an astronaut. After all, it could provide a 360-degree view, ultra-high-resolution vision, a few extra hands, etc. Of course such robots have not been a big area of research for NASA, probably because they can lob up meatbags for $500M a pop. But I bet if they invested the cost of a shuttle launch or two in service robots, the results might be impressive. Look how far flying drones have come in only a few years? They are poised to replace airborne human pilots in many scenarios.

By: The last fix | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

The last fix | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:38:36 +0000

[...] and you really, really don’t want anything to go wrong. Even something as trivial as a sticky bolt can derail months of preparation and millions of dollars of investment. There is a very slim margin [...]

By: gopher65

gopher65 — Sat, 16 May 2009 23:12:14 +0000

Gavin: IIRC, 3 pairs of gyroscopes were replaced. 2 of the new sets fit just fine, but the 3rd one couldn’t be wedged into the hole. Instead they had to use a backup, one that had previously been extracted from Hubble 10 years ago, taken to the ground, refurbished, and now sent back up.

I haven’t heard any official explanation yet, but my personal guess is that the slot that they fit into warped a little bit over time, and that the old gyros had warped with the slot, so they fit, but the new ones were straight as an arrow (like they should have been), so they didn’t fit. Just my guess.

By: Gavin Flower

Gavin Flower — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:31:44 +0000

Hmm…

“While the astronauts successfully extracted the gyroscopes, a pair of the new ones simply would not fit in.”

I am very surprised that the new ones had not been designed accurately enough to fit in the Hubble! Was it that that they could fit, but they wee too big to insert through the access hole?

By: Ellipsis

Ellipsis — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:28:34 +0000

It’s true. I’m not sure which is more likely — I had always thought the overpopulated one, but looking at a list of birth rates by country now I’m not so sure. (I had thought that even in rich countries it averaged a little bit over 2, but looking at the list, the U.S. seems more the exception than the rule.) Ask a sociologist, I suppose!

By: Neal J. King

Neal J. King — Sat, 16 May 2009 21:01:31 +0000

Ellipsis,

It has often been noted that the birth rate declines in societies as people become more affluent. So a future alternative to your over-populated vision would be a richer but less populous Earth.

By: Ellipsis

Ellipsis — Sat, 16 May 2009 19:50:54 +0000

I actually think the primary argument for human spaceflight (rather than, say, sending replacements every time something breaks) is the really really long term one, i.e. that (even though there are of course problems with making predictions this far into the future) somewhere in the range of 300 to 3000 years from now, I think it is unavoidable that overpopulation will be at such a point where the extreme challenges of forming a colony elsewhere actually are competitive with the difficulties of having no outlet for excess numbers of people on Earth. While people may occasionally whine about overpopulation now, this isn’t even remotely close to being this level of a problem, but eventually, looking at the extreme long range, it will be, and we will need to have things to such a point where we can get _large_ numbers of people off then.

By: greg

greg — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:11:07 +0000

I for one am very happy that the Hubble Space Telescope was designed for in orbit servicing and repair by humans. The human race continues to reap the benefits from this decision. For this type of operation, the chances for mission success are so much more likely with humans in the loop. These Hubble servicing missions are the best use of the Space Shuttle by far.

In orbit robotic repair? A lot easier said than done. A whole new infrastructure would have to be developed – and paid for – and tested. Maybe someday. I prefer the odds of success the way they are doing it now.

I’m all for a vigorous and generously funded robotic planetary mission program (the planets are very far away) but for near earth space ops (low earth orbit, the moon, nearby asteroids, space station) the human in space makes a lot of sense.

By: mk

mk — Sat, 16 May 2009 14:51:09 +0000

@Dave…

As I believe Julianne suggested–and forgive me if I misread– but if the telescope had been designed to allow for robotic repairs, the problems would be different. More robotic repair friendly if you will.

And as I suggested by that quote above, if we didn’t design the Hubble to need maintenance by humans we wouldn’t be spending all that doe to repair it. We’d just replace it.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 16 May 2009 14:33:49 +0000

@julianne: I’m not sure I understand your point here. Robotic missions don’t take the people on the ground out of the loop, and they certainly don’t do our contingency planning for us. For the most part, the AI on these things is limited to fault protection, ie, keeping the robot itself from getting hurt.

If an actuator hits a pre-programmed torque limit, it just stops actuating until a person tells it to do something else (in this case, that would be incrementally raising the torque limit until the bolt came free). So I think in all likelihood, the only difference between manned vs robotic here would have been that the robot could deliver the torque to the bolt with more precision and reduce the risk of accidentally shearing the head off the thing.