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Self driving terraforming robots would be an excellent testbed for AI technologies. What is the reason for pushing humans again?
The discussion around humans vs robots in space in historically deep conversation with scientific, technical, and philosophical aspects. Do not simply brush it off without understanding the context.
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It wasn’t supposed to last only 90 days, the initial mission specifications were for a 90 day mission. While it’s an engineering marvel no one thought that it would last only 90 days if it successfully landed and deployed, the 90 days was a minimum figure for the design and also the initial operating budget for the mission.
I too get annoyed at seeing this fun fact. It's really hard to engineer something that will last 90 days. It's much easier to overbuilld it, which fulfills the requirement of 90 days. It was designed to last as long as possible within the given weight and size budget.
The 90 day figure is simply the time period for which NASA asked for money to operate the thing no one is going to ask for 2, 5 not to mention 15 years worth of operating budget you usually get a few months at the time and extend it based on your needs.
https://xkcd.com/1504/
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The discussion around humans vs robots in space in historically deep conversation with scientific, technical, and philosophical aspects. Do not simply brush it off without understanding the context.
that doesnt answer my question
Furthermore, many methods that are currently classified as "AI" act because of very complex and often opaque emergent behavior, and we often have a hard time (or don't know at all) why a CNN for example behaves as it does, or even how exactly it behaves. Do you want something that you neither understand nor can predict to perform a crucial job in your space mission?
And it was supposed to last 90 days...
It wasn’t supposed to last only 90 days, the initial mission specifications were for a 90 day mission. While it’s an engineering marvel no one thought that it would last only 90 days if it successfully landed and deployed, the 90 days was a minimum figure for the design and also the initial operating budget for the mission.
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that doesnt answer my question
AI doesn't work nearly as well as you seem to think it does. For something as excruciatingly difficult as a space mission, humans have proven to be well up to the task. The headline of this article here is one illustrative data point. Furthermore, many methods that are currently classified as "AI" act because of very complex and often opaque emergent behavior, and we often have a hard time (or don't know at all) why…