[ExI] Meat v. Machine

[Samantha Atkins]

On Dec 31, 2010, at 9:57 AM, spike wrote:

> 
> On Dec 31, 2010, at 3:00 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 11:04:54PM -0800, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>> 
>>> Well now we don't have the heavy lifters we had before.  
>> 
>> We're only trying to deliver a number of small parcels.   Each smaller
> than the one before.
> 
>> Not if you want to do any space or lunar processing and manufacturing or
> house any human crews at all.- samantha
> 
> Ja, the two schools of thought are talking past each other.  The presence of
> meat-form humans creates a long list of bottlenecks which will remain as
> persistent as herpes.  Humans in space are too preoccupied with mundane
> tasks such as trying to stay alive and get back home.  Real space progress
> is in assuming away the chimps and going towards making the machines
> smarter, smaller, lighter, more durable and more capable.  

Until human level AGI (about 3 decades out seems to be current consensus), humans are needed.  Given that we need space based resources before three decades from now we must build out human support local space/lunar infrastructure.    

You need a lot of high mass initial equipment to lift from the gravity well in any any case to have a basis to built from this side of mature nano-assembler seeds which are at least 5 - 6 decades out.     It is a good question what the minimal amount of lift needed is given the current tech state of the art over time.  The amount of mass you need to lift from earth in inversely proportional to the sophistication of the technology.     But it is today quite substantial.   

- samantha