Humans Versus Robots in Space Exploration and Colonization

Abstract

In his article, “Should Space Travel be Human or Robotic? Reasons for and against full automation for space missions,” Maurizio Balistreri explores the ongoing debate regarding whether space travel, exploration, and extra-terrestrial colonization should be the domain of humans or robots. Balistreri explores both technical and normative arguments for why extraterrestrial ventures ought to be wholly robotic or human, ultimately taking no explicit side in the debate. However, in this article we argue that by even posing the question in this binary fashion, Balistreri and others are making a mistake at the outset. We show that there are certain missions and aims which require humans and others that plausibly may be undertaken solely by robots, but for all missions and aims there is likely to be some degree of human-robot pairing. More than this, we show that the question should not be whether space travel, exploration, or extra-terrestrial colonization ought to be generally human-centric or robot-centric, but rather that each and every mission should be examined on its own, as the values and disadvantages of humans versus robots are apt to be highly specific to the realities of particular discrete missions.