As everyone is busy wrangling whether the future of human spaceflight will be dictated by either the public or private sector, which destinations will be targeted, and which architectures will take us there- I’m going on record that all of this is moot for “human” spaceflight is going to take on this form of telepresence for the forseeable future.

Why?  Because it provides solutions to both problems which plague human spaceflight at present- cost and risk.  

Robots do not breathe, they do not eat, and they cannot die. 

However, while this has obviously always been the case, these points alone have not been sufficient in overcoming the fact that robots have also been slow, much less capable, clumsy creatures with little to no adaptibility.  Over the years as I heard stories of the trials and tribulations of Earthbound personnel working to resolve issues on distant robotic spacecraft I could not help but feel a sense of frustration.  From the Engineers in the 90’s attempting to use repeated fast-forward and rewind operations to free the frozen magnetic tape record on Galileo which had been continually bombarded by Jovian radiation to the Mars Exploration Rover engineers whom crossed their fingers for windstorms to clear the dust on the energy generating solar panels when a brief brush of a human hand with a broom would have more than sufficed.

Steven Squyres whom was made semi-famous (at least in aerospace circles) by the overwhelming success of the aforementioned Mars Exploration Rovers, famouly mused in an interview that despite the accolades of his robots, humans to Mars was a more desirable scenario for exploration because a human can accomplish in one minute what a rover does in an entire day.

Yet, huge amounts of capital have and are being poured into overcoming these limitations.  When I was in graduate school the mode of thesis presentations in the computer engineering field were in applications of remote sensing- working in harsh environments where humans cannot or prefer not to (due to cost and risk).  From unmanned aerial vehicles which can wage war wihtout the political and miliarial ramifications that come from the loss of a pilot to track-bound snowmobiles measuring the thickness of the ice shelf, there are many terrestrial examples of the rapid progression of this technology.  Next time CNN or Fox News shows a video clip of the Deepwater Horizon oil plume, take notice of the upper-left portion of the video feed and you will see the “name” of the submersible robot-worker, which without, the rate of the flow would not have been stemmed at all.

Jump back to Robonaut and you will see yet another leap in technology.  One in which the sensory data of the robot to a remote operator and the dexterity of a remote operator to the robot can be transmitted in a more accurate and complete form than ever before.  Increasing the ability and efficiency of these beasts while continuing the lack of requirements that come along with sustainment of biology.

In an industry where upmass is king of costs, if you can replace food, water, air, heat shields, parachutes (the robot isn’t coming home) and all the other environmental life control systems then you greatly reduce mission cost.  And loss of payload due to critical mission failure, while however unfortunate, does not carry the ramifications that come along with human passengers.

There will come a day when launch technology encounters a radical innovation that removes the exhoribant expense of putting mass in orbit, and when it does, humans in space will immediately become a more viable option.  But until it does, and we are relegated to riding a flame to orbit, Robonaut and his cousins are going to be the ones nestled underneath the nosecone.