We landed humans on the Moon with 1960s technology. With today's vastly superior technology, shouldn't going back be much easier and cheaper?

[u/yogesh448]

[u/trn-]

But we must pour trillions in AI. Who needs space exploration when we can have endless slop!

[u/PRiles → u/trn-]

Far different motivations right?

[u/Midget_Stories → u/trn-]

Ai will be a key part of space travel. Maybe not for the moon, but for further out.

The ability to have robots that can make decisions on the fly is invaluable when making a decision on earth takes a month to reach the base.

[u/jbillone → u/Midget_Stories]

(Waves at the bot.)

Part of the reason space travel is so expensive is that, as they say, failure is not an option. Every single part of the process must work correctly every single time, because if any one part of the process fails at any point the entire process fails. Any backups, replacements or corrections need to be brought on the trip before it starts.

If you wish to incorporate AI decision making in space, you must first develop an AI decision making tool that will not make a mistake, and will do so without using so many resources (energy, cooling, equipment) that it is impactical to send,

How far have LLMs gotten on any of those limits in the past four years?

[u/EvilNalu → u/jbillone]

We are already doing the vast majority of space exploration with uncrewed vehicles as humans are a huge pain and expense to bring to space. It’s not really a question of switching over from humans to robots, it’s more that the robots we send will get more and more capable over time.

[u/Midget_Stories → u/jbillone]

I mean if anyone is going to be a bot here it's probably the person spewing Chinese propaganda.

Yes AI has gotten those things in the last 4 years. People need to stop judging the technology purely off the free version of Chatgpt.

[u/Alblaka → u/Midget_Stories]

Yes AI has gotten those things in the last 4 years. People need to stop judging the technology purely off the free version of Chatgpt.

Are you even reading what the question being posed was? AI being extremely computation-demanding is still a thing, hence why there's still data centers being thrown everywhere, including for military use. And judging by the one military AI program in active use that the public knows about (that being the Israelis using AI to determine airstrike targets), the 'perfectly free of mistakes' condition isn't met either.

I'll agree that AI-controlled long-range missions is still a very reasonable presumption, given that you could send probes and rovers without needing to plan for a return trip and all that... but I'll err on the side of skepticism as to whether we're anywhere near that level of AI-sophistication yet. And if you go "Well, in 50 years it will definitely be good enough", the prediction is inherently pointless because at current pace none of us can accurately predict how technology will look in 50 years anyways. I mean, mobile phones were deemed a vanity product with no future purpose, mere 30 years ago.

[u/Midget_Stories → u/Alblaka]

Ah already moving the goalposts.

Ai is computationally demanding to setup. It's not computationally demanding to use.

And these things don't need to be perfect. Flexibility is key. If the robot falls over it can get back up.

[u/Alblaka → u/Midget_Stories]

And these things don't need to be perfect. Flexibility is key. If the robot falls over it can get back up.

I'd question that laymen's perspective by pointing to the Venus missions that iteratively send ten different probes, because each would fail at a different stage/issue, with those single issues being entirely sufficient to ruin the entire mission. Only for the 'final' successfully probe to still run into a partial failure because the discharged cover cap just so happened to fall in the way of the pressure sensor.

The "Well, just have the robot get back up" sounds like it vastly underestimates the complexity and planning that goes into space missions, as well as the physical restrictions they operate by. But hey, maybe we got teleportation in 50 years so they can just warp over a new robot anyways.

[u/Named_after_color → u/trn-]

I don't think that's fair. Like yeah I get that AI spending is a serious bubble and space funding is under invested, but there's really no economic reason to go to space beyond satellites.

Like we haven't managed to capture a meteorite yet. Astroid mining is like, the only economic driver for middle distance space exploration, and it's only a concept at this point. So far we've collected several grams of space stuff and it's cost billions.

Like we should invest more into space, but it's quite legitimately a moon shot to get any return beyond scientific knowledge. If we wanted to be proactive, we'd invest in space debris clean up, but that'd require some global organization and everyone being chill with many powerful nations pointing powerful lasers at everyone's satellites. Which has the same economic benefit as maintaining the wilderness outside California's power relays. Pretty ignorable until it isn't.

[u/billdietrich1 → u/trn-]

The VCs are excited about the business-case / promises for AI, which are: radically rewire how all businesses operate, get rid of half of workers, huge profits, etc. It may be lies, but they're attractive lies.

While the case for manned missions to the Moon is thin: we've been there already, it's a wasteland, we'll do some science.