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Comment by graycat | Hacker News Reader

If we, the US and/or EU, send humans to the moon and Mars, soon we will have humans, maybe a lot of humans, dead on the moon or Mars or floating in space, for maybe some thousands of years. Big, long term embarrassment. Not good.

Thus, I strongly suggest we send no humans to the moon or Mars.

And I strongly suggest we take this opportunity to do the research, engineering, and development of essentially robots to do what we would want humans to do on the moon or Mars. Then we will have dead robots out there, but we won't have to care so much.

If China, Russia, India, etc. want to send humans to the moon or Mars, then they will have dead Chinese, Russians, Indians, etc. out there for thousands of years. Their long term embarrassment, not ours.

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We have a ton of dead humans in the ocean, it isn't considered a national embarrassment, I don't think. Accidents are sad, but their inevitability is something that everyone understands.

I don't think we should colonize Mars, at least given what we've seen there. Currently, it appears to be a big, empty, inhospitable, far away rock. Getting there and then terraforming it would, I guess, require figuring out how to live in space long term, at which point why bother going down the gravity well? Once we've figured out how to live in space... there's plenty of space in space, just stay in orbit (maybe we'll have expensive tourism on planets).

> We have a ton of dead humans in the ocean, it isn't considered a national embarrassment, I don't think. Accidents are sad, but their inevitability is something that everyone understands.

In practice, on the moon or Mars, the dead bodies would just pile up. And otherwise there would be a lot of them in long lasting orbits. Here on earth, we don't have that problem. E.g., using side scan sonar, we just found a US destroyer 3+ miles down, in two pieces, sunk by a shot from the battleship Yamato in one of the WWII battles in the Philippine Sea. We are not bothered by the pile up of the bodies of the dead US sailors. The bodies decompose and don't pile up, and in the case of the ocean are miles deep where it is pitch black, just above freezing, with not much in life.

In my original post, I didn't object to the deaths. Instead I objected to the accumulation of dead bodies that will last for thousands of years.

There is no reasonably feasible way for humans to colonize either the moon or Mars. Big problems include the medical effects of high energy cosmic rays and the low gravity. Other dangers stand to be the highly foreign, restrictive, threatening, and hostile environments, even nearly the best environments we could hope to create. Even if we could get some plants to be healthy on the moon or Mars, we can't get humans healthy there. No practical way. So, we will get piles of dead bodies, and all for nothing -- the moon and Mars are so hostile to humans that there is no way humans could be at all productive on either. Robots? Fine. Humans? No reasonably feasible way, and with a result of piles of dead bodies. Sorry 'bout that. It's not at all complicated.

> and in the case of the ocean are miles deep where it is pitch black, just above freezing, with not much in life.

That's even more true about space. If you're fine with bodies in the ocean, then you should be even more fine with bodies in the literal infinity that is outer space.

(And no, bodies on the ocean floor don't decompose, at least not fully; the cold suppresses a lot of the decomposition processes, and the deeper you go, the fewer the scavengers to pick meat off your bones - bones which themselves have a tendency to stick around for a very long time.)

> If you're fine with bodies in the ocean, then you should be even more fine with bodies in the literal infinity that is outer space.

Yes, space is for us nearly infinity, but getting very far takes a lot of energy. So, the dead bodies will nearly always be in some orbit around the moon, earth, Mars, the sun, etc., frozen, and so expensive to retrieve that they will be there for 1000+ years and, thus, an embarrassment.

Last I heard, a dead whale, several miles down, gets eaten back to just the bones by some specialized worms fairly quickly.

But it's several miles down. On the moon or Mars, there will be a pile of frozen dead bodies right there, fully visible. Such a pile of frozen dead bodies, I don't think that will be acceptable ethically, politically, emotionally, etc. In a word, it will be embarrassing.

The media will have a lot of headlines -- add up all the money, the huge pile of money, and claim that about all we got was a pile of frozen dead bodies, as proof of our folly, that will be there for 1000+ years.

> Yes, space is for us nearly infinity, but getting very far takes a lot of energy.

It takes a lot less once you're in orbit, and...

> But it's several miles down.

There are many thousands or even millions of miles to cover in order to encounter a body in even Earth's orbit, let alone every other body we might explore.

> On the moon or Mars, there will be a pile of frozen dead bodies right there, fully visible.

Have you seriously never heard of cremation? Or burial?

Cremation, burial, they sound like you are assuming some colonization. Well, there won't be any colonization -- humans just can't hope to be in space very long without serious harm from low gravity and high energy cosmic rays.

You just are nearly totally missing just how hostile space is for humans. F'get the science fiction movies and TV shows, all of StarTrek, all of Star Wars, all of Armageddon, etc. and just look at the simple facts, e.g., low gravity, cosmic rays, the distances and energies involved, the lack of resources, etc.

Again, people on the moon or Mars will be in dangerous situations, and there will be a relatively high death rate. Due to the cold, the bodies will quickly freeze. Then in practice, due to the high cost in energy from any alternative, the frozen, dead bodies will be just piled up. There won't be any burials or cremations -- any such implies WAY more in colonization than is at all feasible in practice within the currently visible horizon.

All those artists' sketches of domes of settlements on the moon or Mars are just absurd, for now unscientific nonsense. In fact, now, for a human, any significant time on the moon or Mars or out in space is a death sentence from the medical problems caused by the time in low gravity and exposed to high energy cosmic rays. You seem to be having a just super hard time appreciating these simple, real facts and situations.

Beyond the horizon, assume some new sources of gravity, faster than light travel, warp drives, new sources of energy, etc., and maybe okay, but for now all that is not at all about reality but only fantasy.

Since there won't be any colonization and since the humans won't be very productive, the projects of the moon or Mars bases will be over quickly, and then the observation will be that a huge pile of money killed some people and created some plainly visible on the surfaces piles of frozen dead bodies, and little of any value.

So, the whole effort of humans on the moon or Mars will be seen as just piles of frozen dead bodies as evidence of human folly and will be offensive ethically, morally, politically, etc. and, thus, embarrassing, as I first stated.

Solution: As in the current Mars robots, have some clear scientific objectives, develop some good instruments, and fire the rockets. Develop the robots along with the instruments so that it will be easy for the robots to work with the instruments. If we can have self-driving cars on some city streets, then we should be able to develop some robots effective in space.

How would that work? From earth, send some orders for some work we know the robots are able to do. Then the robot executes as ordered, keeps records, and, within a few hours, sends back the records.

Net, for now and all the way to as far as we can see to a horizon, there is just no significant role for humans in space. Robots? Yes. Humans? No.

In simple, blunt terms, for any human to attempt to do anything significantly productive in space is, from the medical effects of low gravity and cosmic rays, just a death sentence. Sorry 'bout that.

I'm surprised the HN audience won't jump on the opportunity to have a big push in the associated robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, etc.

> Cremation, burial, they sound like you are assuming some colonization.

You don't need a full-blown colony for either of those. You just need a furnace or a shovel, respectively.

> Well, there won't be any colonization -- humans just can't hope to be in space very long without serious harm from low gravity and high energy cosmic rays.

We don't really know that; our only datapoints for long-term habitation are "Earth's surface" and "microgravity in low-Earth orbit". There's a pretty wide range of conditions in between that, and plenty of possibilities for mitigating both; that's indeed one of NASA's objectives in resuming manned lunar missions: to evaluate long-term habitation and actually collect that missing data.

> Solution: As in the current Mars robots, have some clear scientific objectives, develop some good instruments, and fire the rockets. Develop the robots along with the instruments so that it will be easy for the robots to work with the instruments. If we can have self-driving cars on some city streets, then we should be able to develop some robots effective in space.

That's what we already do, and it severely restricts the quantity and quality of science that's able to be done. It's a stopgap until we're actually able to get "boots on the ground".

How is having a dead citizen on Mars an embarrassment ? I'd have thought that it would be pride, even.

How? The person is, uh, did I mention, dead? Since our intention was not to send people out there to die, their death indicates a failure, and that is an embarrassment.

If anyone is a little slow to see the embarrassment, then I'm sure the US MSM (mainstream media) would use the deaths as a grand source of shocking headlines to grab people by the heart and gut, have their eyeballs follow, and increase the ad revenue.

If you like the idea of dying out there, sign up to be one of the first humans on Mars: Your chances of staying there for thousands of years are excellent. And, for your death, I doubt that will take very long, maybe less than 100 hours after you land. That is, for humans, the moon and Mars are dangerous places, wildly, outrageously dangerous.

For a death on the moon or Mars, sending the body back to earth would be expensive. Leaving the body there and adding it to the growing collection of dead bodies will be for thousands of years a grand embarrassment. For a body in space, often retrieving it would be very expensive, so expensive that we are in line to have a large, growing collection of bodies out in space in whatever orbits around whatever masses.

In a little more detail, out there, humans will suffer from high energy radiation, i.e., cosmic rays, and the effects of low gravity. Further, both the physical and social environments will be highly foreign and, thus, very likely harmful.

Yes, soon one proposal will be to gather up the bodies on the moon or Mars, load them into a special rocket, and send them to the sun. That will be an expensive rocket and still do nothing about the bodies in orbits. Let the Chinese, etc. accumulate dead bodies. We in the US will have just dead robots, right, that can be used for spare parts!

Soooooo, here in the US, just take this opportunity to research, engineer, and develop various robots.

We can learn our lesson the easy way (just read what I am writing here) or the hard way. But one way or the other, we are in line to learn our lesson: (A) Sending robots into space is quite doable. (B) Due to the dangers and the really goofy environments, there is no role for humans in deep space now or anytime on the horizon. Sooooo, the humans build the robots and send the robots, not the humans.

The easy way or the hard way, guys.

Following your argument to its logical conclusion, we should cease human activities on Earth too (otherwise, humans will die there - and we can't have that!).

Nope. Doesn't follow. Instead, we get to bury our dead, and they quickly decompose and can be forgotten about. In strong contrast, on the moon or Mars, burial would be wildly expensive, and the bodies would remain frozen and last for thousands of years. Shipping the bodies back to earth for burial or sending them to the sun, very expensive. In practice, we would just let the bodies pile up. That would be a massive embarrassment.

Look, we're not in line to create societies with nice neighborhoods with couples, families, kids, etc. on the moon or Mars, in bubbles, tunnels, or anything. We're not in line to colonize them. Instead, our interests that are at all feasible will be science or military. For the science, we don't really want or need humans and their eyes, hands, or brains -- instead we need instruments, e.g., like we already have doing well on Mars. For what we can use from human eyes, hands, and brains, with some development, we can get that from robots. For the military, as we are now moving quickly just here on earth, even more so on the moon or Mars, we will want robots operating the rockets, weapons, etc. Besides, humans in the necessary bulky space suits are just not very effective at anything, not even just staying alive.

Many bodies remain on or on the way to mountain summits like K2 and Everest. Retrieving them is prohibitively expensive. The conditions ensure that they will remain there in decomposed for centuries. Should we stop going into the mountains?

It’s not an embarrassment to try to achieve an amazing task and fail. The embarrassment is giving up because you’re scared you’ll be embarrassed.

> K2 and Everest

Sport for a few people. Otherwise no gain.

> amazing task

The moon and Mars, all pain, no gain.

There is no gain, utility, worthwhile accomplishment for humans in space except for just a few humans in low earth orbit.

There is nothing "amazing" that we know how to do sending humans beyond low earth orbit: Yes, we can build the rockets and put people on them, but there is essentially nothing they can do out there. Instruments, robots, yes. Humans, no.

The US had some men walking on the moon. While they were there, they accomplished next to nothing. In simple terms, the whole effort was a publicity stunt for US presidential politics. And, all these decades later, no human has returned -- there is a big reason for that, there is no reason for a human up there.

A human needs a space suit, huge, so clumsy the human can do next to nothing productive. Else the human needs a big, complicated space ship (station, bubble, tunnel) where, again, there is not much they can do, amazing or otherwise. Gee, they could take a lot of PDF files along and read about literature, science, ..., whatever.

What we want out there is instruments. If we need more, would want humans to do, we should just develop suitable robots. Otherwise what we want out there is military, where again there is no real utility for having humans there.

Humans just have no real role out there. Sorry 'bout that. Robots? Yes. Humans? No. Simple.

If we send humans, the main result will be collections of frozen dead bodies that will still be there 1000 years from now. That will be a big embarrassment, and all for no good reason.

> There is no gain, utility, worthwhile accomplishment for humans in space except for just a few humans in low earth orbit.

Hard disagree. Current space science, as phenomenal as it is, currently faces rather severe limitations due to the need to deal with latencies between experiments v. scientists on the order of anywhere from multiple seconds to multiple hours, not to mention the bandwidth limitations. Having actual human scientists in close proximity to those experiments would be a massive boon, slashing turnaround times and multiplying output.

Further, Earth can only support us for so long. We need to figure out how to survive beyond it, or else we'll die with it - and I can think of no greater embarassment as a species than not bothering to even try to expand beyond our single planet.

To cut the signal delays, have on the moon or Mars, right where the data is collected, robots, not humans. Humans in big, heavy, clumsy space suits -- not very productive.

Such science is not just aimlessly fooling around, guessing, exploring, trying this and that, assembling experimental equipment with duct tape and bailing wire, adjusting a laser on an optical bench, boiling up something on a Bunsen burner, or anything like that. There's no room for anything ad hoc. Instead, each experiment is planned for, with the instruments designed, built, and tested, and everything done very carefully all in advance. The cost of sending 1 kilogram to the moon or Mars motivates really good planning. A robot? Maybe replace the batteries in a rover, knock the dust of some solar panels (a current need), unpack a supply drop, etc. Uh, we would design the supply drop and the robot so that the robot could easily unpack the supply drop. Construct a shelter, for whatever reason to have a shelter. Load samples onto a rocket returning to earth. Uh, humans in heavy space suits can't do much, and we should be able to build robots that can do as well, usually better, a lot better, for the experiments we plan. Low gravity doesn't hurt robots at all. Robots can be designed nearly immune to high energy cosmic rays.

For colonizing outside of earth, f'get about it: Anything like that is way over the horizon. Energy to get there, way too high. Speed of light, way too low. Low gravity, high energy cosmic rays -- too dangerous.

Right, we'd have some 1950s popular science style big, circular, rotating space city and use the centrifugal force of the rotating to provide artificial gravity. And the space city would be so big and have such thick walls that we could block the cosmic rays. Soooo, we're talking big as in a huge circular thing.

Then that thing, to what end? To go to another planet would first have to go to another star, and that is, as I recall, 3+ light years away, that is, too darned far. The planet hunters might advise us that we should plan for 100+ light years away.

Here's something much easier: Do well here on earth. There're lots of empty square kilometers in Alaska, Canada, South America, Australia, Russia, and Antarctica. Living even in Antarctica would be easy as pie compared with anything available out in space. First rule for the future of humanity: Stay on dry land, or solid ice, nearly at sea level.

I'm not buying the claims that humans are so foolish, evil, destructive, etc. that they have to plan a future on other planets.

Also I'm not talking some science fiction ideas that are way over the horizon. Gee, I too really like Forbidden Planet -- Ann Francis was a dream, sweetheart! And the Krell library and power plant, terrific. But all that for now is at least way over the horizon. Instead I'm talking current NASA, etc. policy, objectives, planning, etc.

Sorry, within the current horizon, there's just no serious role for humans beyond low earth orbit -- the low gravity, high energy cosmic rays, etc. are just too dangerous. If we send a lot of humans out there, they will quickly die, and we will have a collection of frozen bodies that will last 1000+ years, all for next to nothing. Big embarrassment.

> To cut the signal delays, have on the moon or Mars, right where the data is collected, robots, not humans.

The robots require humans to process that data the robots collect. Thus, either the robots need to transmit that data to the nearest humans or return to the nearest humans. That takes a heck of a lot longer when the nearest humans are all the way back on Earth.

> Instead, each experiment is planned for, with the instruments designed, built, and tested, and everything done very carefully all in advance.

That advance planning is necessary specifically because of the sheer distances between the robots and the humans. Cut that distance, and suddenly you don't need nearly as much advance planning for even the most basic of experiments.

> Instead I'm talking current NASA, etc. policy, objectives, planning, etc.

And current NASA is pursuing the feasibility of space habitation for the exact reasons I've described above. They are making do with robotic exploration in the meantime, but it's a stopgap until we do manage to send humans beyond Earth and keep them there.

> I'm not buying the claims that humans are so foolish, evil, destructive, etc. that they have to plan a future on other planets.

I'm guessing you haven't been keeping up with climate science, then? Shit's kinda already fucked, in case you weren't aware.

Yup, would be terrific if humans could be productive and meet the needs you have described. Sorry, humans can't do that.

We can transmit some orders to some robots, have them work for some hours, usually longer, and then transmit the results back to earth. Sorry the speed of light is so slow; ask Congress to do something about that?

The climate on earth is and will remain a total dream land compared with the climate on any place out in space we could reach.

> We can transmit some orders to some robots, have them work for some hours, usually longer, and then transmit the results back to earth. Sorry the speed of light is so slow; ask Congress to do something about that?

Why yes, we can ask Congress to do something about that - that "something" being to invest in manned missions. That's indeed what NASA is working to do and has been working to do for more than half a century.

How familiar are you with the concept of 'cremation'?

It needs oxygen and there's none as gas on the moon and little or none as gas on Mars.

Yeah but get this: we'd bring some with us because we'd need it for other stuff.

People die all the time. It's a natural and (we are pretty sure) unavoidable side-effect of living.

It might be awkward and untidy, but so is pooping. The universe makes no value judgements. It's not embarrassing, it's life.

If I went to Mars and died, meh, no big deal. Sorry about the mess. Feel free to recycle me any way you want, I certainly won't care.

I've read some science fiction where they deal with "bodies in spaaaace" by recycling them in a garden, specifically for human corpses. If you've got a colony in an environment with limited biomass, you probably want to hold onto everything organic. At least your remains can help make oxygen and pretty flowers for the still living.

> Feel free to recycle me any way you want, I certainly won't care.

In practice, you won't be recycled. Instead you will be frozen and just piled up or left in some orbit. Uh, it's cold out there.

And to supply the energy for such recycling, sounds like some human colonization out there. Sorry, there won't be any such colonization. The health effects on humans of high energy cosmic rays and low gravity mean that colonization out there is just not reasonable, in realistic terms, colonization is just not possible.

Some instruments and robots can be productive beyond low earth orbit. There's no reasonably feasible way humans can. In practice, the result of efforts to send humans beyond low earth orbit will be no gains and some collections of frozen dead bodies that will remain frozen for thousands of years. Bummer. Embarrassing.

I agree with most of that. Charles Stross has a great essay on why space travel is horrible, and that robots are far, far better choices for almost any kind of mission. Hauling people around the universe is expensive, they're so fragile and needy. I mean, just look at the infrastructure it takes to keep them breathing.

The SF novel I was thinking of was Niven and Pournelle's Footfall, where industrious aliens have solved all the hard problems of living for long periods in space, including keeping the lights on, getting rid of waste heat, and maintaining a stable ecosystem. They incorporate their dead into a ceremonial garden where they grow flowers or something. It is all very, very sketchy in practice, of course. Kim Stanley Robinson has a more realistic take in his book Aurora (and it's depressing, one of the few books of his I have no intention of re-reading).

But I still don't think dead people in space are embarrassing. Or if they are, that it's a big deal. It's more of a problem with litter, like the tourists currently cluttering up the slopes of Mt Everest.

That they die is not so embarrassing. Instead when they die, in practice they will freeze (it's cold out there) and, due to the high expense of any alternative, just accumulate, pile up, frozen and stay visible for 1000+ years.

Have a look at the history of western settlements in the "new world" and you will find that it was not a healthy enterprise. Disease, injury, starvation etc killed off massive numbers before they either acclimatised or learned how to deal with the hostile environment.

I can't see space exploration being any different. The only difference is that current society is fairly comfortable so the idea of leaving your comfortable home to risk everything on travelling to a new settlement on an other planet is distasteful.

Give it a few years and the situation on Earth may change, climate change, over population or simply the political situation may make travelling elsewhere more attractive.

> I can't see space exploration being any different.

Right, human history with famines, disease, natural disasters, wars, was bloody. But compared with space, the earth has been a total dream land: Protection from cosmic rays. Just the right amount of gravity. Often plenty of water and game. Caves for shelter. Fire for warmth. Simple tools that actually worked well, e.g., could kill a deer, good for eating, especially if have a rock with a sharp edge and a fire -- in space, no deer. As the OP will have essentially to confirm, little or no water. On earth, in lots of places lots of rain -- no rain out there. On earth, rivers and lakes -- none of that out there. Also wood for building material, good fire, housing, tools, weapons, carts, boats, even open ocean sailing -- no wood in space. Animal skins for housing, clothing, shoes, etc. -- no animal skins out there.

With that attitude, we'd all be sitting inside our houses and noone would do anything of interrest or importance.

> sitting inside our houses

No, but the attitude is staying inside the atmosphere of earth, usually on land, and at or close to sea level. That is what we evolved for, and we are effective there. Nearly anywhere else, we're talking super big, thick, heavy, clumsy suits and, still, lots of just outrageous dangers.

> anything of interrest or importance.

Dying on the moon or Mars is not of much of either.

Instead, for the moon or Mars, we can get a lot of interesting and important work from research, engineering, and construction of robots able to do real work on the moon or Mars.

For more work that is "interesting", and maybe "important", I'm busy at it everyday, without considering the moon or Mars.

Actually, so far we've done pretty well with robots on Mars. For our next effort, we need a way to clean dust off the solar panels.

Our robots have given us some really good data on the sun, Mercury and Venus, Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and its rings, each of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, and now the boundary between our solar system and deeper space.

The Japanese have done well with robots getting samples from some asteroids -- with some interesting data, e.g., where at least some of the amino acids could have come from.

For something really interesting out there, how 'bout the results from a really big gravitational wave telescope?

For humans? I'm just fine, close to sea level, on land, in a house, with an Internet connection, just fine right here, thank you. You are welcome to my slot on any rocket to the moon or Mars, very welcome!

I can't tell if this is satire

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