The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration

192 Pages·2022·2.018 MB·English

by  Donald Goldsmith, Martin Rees

the end of a s t r o n a u t s

THE END
OF
A S T R O N A U T S
Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration
Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees
the belknap press of harvard unıversıty press
Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts & London, E ngland 2022
Copyright © 2022 by Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
First printing
Design by Oliver Munday
9780674276215 (EPUB)
9780674276222 (PDF)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Goldsmith, Donald, author. | Rees, Martin J., 1942- author.
Title: The end of astronauts : why robots are the future of exploration /
Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees.
Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021040946 | ISBN 9780674257726 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Space robotics— United States. | Outer space—
Exploration— United States.
Classification: LCC TL1097 .R44 2022 | DDC 629.47— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2021040946
Contents
  Introduction:
  From Fireworks to Spaceflight 1
1 Why Explore? 10
2 Organi zing Space 23
3 Near-E arth Orbit 31
4 The Moon 49
5 Mars 74
6 Asteroids 94
7 Space Colonization 105
8 The Global Costs of Space Exploration 115
9 Space Law 131
  Epilogue: Perspectives on Space Exploration
  in 2040— and Far Beyond 145
  appendix: timeline of key events in space
  exploration 153
  notes 159
  further reading 175
  acknowle dgments 179
  index 181

Introduction
From Fireworks to Spaceflight
A
stronauts are heroes. They perform technical, en-
gineering, and scientific feats in an environment
of weightlessness even as they must deal with the nausea, disori-
entation, and potential long- term medical consequences of that
weightlessness. They risk cancer and other physical damage from
the assaults of high- energy particles from the sun and the deeper
universe. Astronauts perform excursions from their spacecraft, re-
lying on complex suits of armor that prevent their bodies from ex-
ploding. They rescued the Hubble Space Telescope from failure and
prolonged its lifetime by de cades on five dif er ent missions to up-
grade its instrumentation.1
The authors belong to a generation old enough to remember the
Apollo lunar landings of 1969–1972; we can hardly look at the moon
without being reminded of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Their
exploits, which seem even more heroic as we recall their dependence
on primitive computers and untested equipment, remind us that
humans have traveled into space for more than sixty years, not from
necessity but in response to our desire to send them t here and then
bring them back to Earth.
Future de cades w ill continue to test how much we want, and how
much we need, to send astronauts into Earth orbit, on to the moon,
and to Mars. Preceding any h uman journeys, our robots have ex-
plored t hese locales, scouting distant terrain a fter testing their
launch and landing systems. No one doubts that our ever- improving
machines can perform in space more efficiently, less expensively,
2 · THE END OF ASTRONAUTS
and more safely than humans can. But can they equal human ex-
plorers’ abilities? And does this question miss a more impor tant
issue: how can we maintain public interest and inspiration, or ful-
fill our destiny as h umans, without visiting our celestial neighbors
in person?
Neither of these questions has an obvious answer, not least
because we act in response to emotion as much as to logic. This book
describes current and f uture plans for h uman and robotic investi-
gations, presenting the argument for using only automated robots
and fabricators, at least through the coming de cades, beyond orbits
close to Earth, in order to save public money, to avoid the loss of life,
and to protect the moon and Mars so far as pos si ble from pollution
caused by our activities. The book also examines dif er ent non-
technological motivations for supporting or opposing the presence
of h umans in space. Whether or not readers find themselves con-
vinced as to the soundness of our reasoning, the following chapters
also ofer a survey of our spaceborne f uture.
ROCKETING INTO SPACE
Long before we had coherent plans to send humans into space, we
engaged in hurling projectiles across large expanses, both in war-
fare and for fun. Contemporaneously with the Eu ro pean Middle
Ages, technologists of the Chinese Song dynasty built gunpowder
rockets that sent “nine- dragon arrows” and a “flock of bee arrows”
high into the atmosphere. Gunpowder technology then became the
rocket standard until the modern era. A century ago, the eccentric
engineer and inventor Robert Goddard, inspired as a boy by the
science fiction of H. G. Wells and a student of rocket dynamics as
developed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Rus sia, spent two de cades
creating and improving a succession of several dozen liquid- fueled
rockets, some of which r ose more than a mile above the hills of cen-
tral Mas sa chu setts. Goddard also introduced successful multistage
rockets and in ven ted two- axis guidance systems, gaining a fame
that led the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
to name its space flight center in Mary land a fter him.2
IntRoDuctIon · 3
Goddard’s final years saw his work upgraded to become the foun-
dation of an enormous government efort to transform rocketry
from its experimental stages into the production of rockets with a
practical use. Unfortunately, that government had Adolf Hitler at its
head, and the practical use entailed rockets that could deliver bombs
beyond any defensive capability. U nder the scientific leadership of
Wernher von Braun, the Nazis developed the V-1, an uncrewed jet
airplane, and the famed V-2, a true rocket that carried the oxygen
required to ignite its liquid ethanol fuel. This allowed the V-2 to rise
above most of the atmosphere and to travel at many times the speed
of sound. Although the V-2 had only a primitive guidance system
and often missed its target, its explosive payloads delivered many
fatal blows to the British population, descending so rapidly that its
only “warning” consisted of the explosion itself. (The V-1, also called
the “buzz bomb,” terrorized through the sound that it made before
anyone knew just where it would land.)
After World War II, the most prominent Nazi rocketeers surren-
dered to the Allies, hoping— quite correctly, in the event— that the
Americans in par tic u lar would judge them so useful that their war-
time activities would be overlooked. Under interrogation, von
Braun cited as their inspiration not only the Nazis’ own rocket man,
Hermann Oberth, but also Robert Goddard, saying, “ Don’t you know
about your own rocket pioneer? Dr. Goddard was ahead of us all.”3
Brought to Amer i ca by Operation Paperclip, which resettled about
1,600 Nazi scientists and engineers in the United States, von Braun
helped to launch the remaining V-2 rockets for scientific purposes,
and in 1950 he became the leader of a rocket team at the US Army’s
Redstone Arsenal in Alabama that developed new rockets with
liquid- fueled engines for military use.
In October 1957, the Soviet Union stunned the entire world, and
a complacent Amer i ca even more, by launching Sputnik, the first ar-
tificial satellite of Earth. Americans suddenly realized that their
chief e nemy had gained superiority in producing rockets that could
not only send satellites into orbit but also carry nuclear weapons
from one continent to another. To the public, and presumably to
leaders in Washington, the United States desperately needed highly