Book
The end of astronauts : why robots are the future of exploration
Publication Information
Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2022.
Physical Description
185 pages ; 22 cm
Summary
"Governments, companies, and private investors spend billions on astronaut-dependent space travel, but the work is dangerous and unhealthy to human bodies-so that executing missions may simply not be worth the cost. The future will be one of robots, heirs to the Perseverance rover on Mars, equipped with artificial intelligence and capable of autonomous exploration"--
Contents
- Introduction: From fireworks to spaceflight
- Why explore?
- Organizing space
- Near-earth orbit
- The moon
- Mars
- Asteroids
- Space colonization
- Costs and prospects of space exploration
- Space law
- Epilogue: Perspectives on space exploration in 2040-and far beyond.