Ask HN: Why not use androids to colonize Mars initially and then humans later?

3 pointsposted 15 hours ago
by amichail

Item id: 42259049

9 Comments

gregjor

10 hours ago

Humans will not go to Mars and live in cities built by androids. All of that is fantasy and hype.

If we had the technology required to colonize Mars, or even the moon, we could fix the problems we've created on this planet. We could colonize the oceans. We cant't "terraform" anything, we don't have androids that can build anything, we don't have a plan for getting lots of people to Mars, or keeping them alive. That's all fantasy and self-serving stock pumping.

WheelsAtLarge

13 hours ago

Mars colonization is still a distant goal. With so much of the world unexplored, it's hard to imagine humans living on Mars in our lifetimes. But it makes sense to use robots to pave the way. Japan is already using robots to help with the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Who knows, maybe one day we'll see androids on Mars.

okasaki

15 hours ago

Because Androids don't exist?

amichail

15 hours ago

They are already being developed at Tesla.

gregjor

10 hours ago

You mistake a few faked demos of remote-controlled mannequins for actual working android robots. The point of the Tesla robots comes down to pumping the stock, not colonizing Mars.

Watch videos of state of the art actual robots and try to draw a line from their actual abilities to building a city. On Mars. In an environment with no infrastructure, no people to repair them. Pure sci-fi fantasy at this point.

talldayo

13 hours ago

Humans are ready now, and already fill the operational requirements without the famous "Elon truth stretching" maneuver that we've all become so intimately familiar with.

timeon

15 hours ago

> as humans would arrive at Mars

Why would humans go there in person?

talldayo

15 hours ago

Why use androids at all? Bipedal robots are accident prone and difficult to repair. A wealth of effort would be wasted housing and maintaining a transient race of robo-people that would one day be obsoleted to make room for humans. Even then, it's doubtful how effective the anthropoidal form is on a body of mass with 38% of Earth's gravity. You might prefer other options.

When you weigh the risks involved with sending robots that have a limited motor manipulation, range of motion and independent ingenuity, you might as well just spend a few bajillion dollars sending an astronaut do it. You can very feasibly sustain a small population of people on life support, and if they were aided by additive manufacturing tools that could leverage Mars' natural resources then I'd consider that a much more realistic colony moonshot.

RGamma

14 hours ago

Or why not allocate those bajillions to fix our own planet's problems first?