Seminar on Space Policy and Society Robots and Humans in Spaceflight: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel
Roger D. Launius, Ph.D. Division of Space History National Air and Space Museum Smithsonian Institution Friday, February 15 2:00-3:00 pm Room E51-095 Abstract: This presentation is based on a forthcoming book that explores the history and possible futures for human/robotic spaceflight. While writing Imagining Space: Achievements, Possibilities, Predictions, 1950-2050 (Chronicle Books, 2001), my co-author and I realized that the one area where all spaceflight visionaries failed to make meaningful predictions was in the rapidly advancing capabilities of robotics and electronics. For example, when Arthur C. Clarke envisioned geosynchronous telecommunications satellites in 1945 he believed that they would require humans working onboard to change the vacuum tubes. In such a situation, it is easy to conceive of the motivation that led people like Clarke and Wernher von Braun to imagine the necessity to station large human crews in space. Some of the most forward-thinking spaceflight advocates, in this instance, utterly failed to anticipate the electronics/digital revolution then just beginning. Humans, spaceflight visionaries always argued, were a critical element in the exploration of the Solar System and ultimately beyond. Human destiny required our movement beyond this planet, ultimately to the colonization of the galaxy as a means of assuring the survival of the species. With the rapid advance of electronics in the 1960s, however, some began to question the role of humans in space exploration. It is much less expensive and risky to send robot explorers than to go ourselves. This debate reached saliency early on and became an important part of the space policy debate by the latter twentieth century. This presentation offers a history and analysis of how we came to the point that we have in human spaceflight, as well as a discussion of the relative merits of human versus robotic space exploration. In essence, I shall suggest that the old paradigm for human exploration-ultimately becoming an interstellar species-is outmoded and ready for replacement. I will specifically look to the future of humans and robots in space and suggest that the possibility exists that perhaps a post-human cyborg species may realize a dramatic future in an extraterrestrial environment. Biography: Roger D. Launius is senior curator in the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. He has written or edited more than twenty books on aerospace history, including Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Societal Impact of Spaceflight (NASA SP-2007-4801, 2007); Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership (University of Illinois Press, 1997); and NASA: A History of the U.S. Civil Space Program (Krieger Publishing Co., 1994, rev. ed. 2001). He served as a consultant to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003 and presented the prestigious Harmon Memorial Lecture on the history of national security space policy at the United States Air Force Academy in 2006. He is frequently consulted by the electronic and print media for his views on space issues, and has been a guest commentator on National Public Radio and all the major television network news programs.
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