As NASA aims to stay on the moon, private firms are racing to be the first to go where no company has gone before.

  • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The same reason robots are not building homes or doing the dangerous work in steel mills etc.

    Robots suck at novel situations and humans are much much faster.

    The rovers on mars have been amazing and have spent years extending our knowledge of the planet.

    But a human geologist in a space suit on mars with a rock hammer would have gained more insights in one week than multiple rovers and and the dozens of people supporting them back on earth have done in decades.

    We chose rovers for mars because getting humans there is very hard. The moon is an a couple of orders of magnitude easier to get to.

    The whole goal is to set up a permanent human presence on the moon.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      still seems like we could improve the technology and have a jump start given getting rovers to the moon is a couple of orders of magnitude easier than getting humans there. We could have them be doing something. anything. to prep an area for something like ten years now since we had the whole back to the moon thing. Would have been even better if we had been doing it ever since we got to the moon especially since the tech would be more advanced from trying.

      • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        still seems like we could improve the technology

        How? Nasa has been building rovers for 20 years. I think they know what they are doing. If they could make what you propose, they would already have.

        getting rovers to the moon is a couple of orders of magnitude easier than getting humans there.

        And completely useless for the mission of human habitation.

        • HubertManne@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          The how is they would have been working on it. If its not in the plan they can’t make what is proposed because they are not trying to. I just disagree that it would be completely useless.