

Ask HN: What will come first? - brendonjohn

A robot that's able to coexist with human culture<p>or<p>Self-sustaining human life on Mars?<p>...I have intentionally put the question in layman's terms. For what sounds like a ridiculous question, I'm seriously proposing it. I'm not interested in what the majority thinks, but the reasoning for how your decision came to be.
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byoung2
Space travel since the 1940's to present has progressed from unmanned rockets
to a permanent orbiting space station with a few moon landings in between.
We've got the basics as far as technology goes to possibly get to another
planet in the next 50 years, but considering we haven't figured out
sustainability here on Earth, we wouldn't be able to get to a level of self-
sustainability in the Martian desert. It is possible that population pressures
here on Earth will become so severe that we will be forced to develop new
technology to address food/water/shelter shortages that will help in a quest
to colonize Mars.

Computers, on the other hand, have come what seems like a much longer way
since the 1940's. From electric abacuses to devices that affect every facet of
our lives. Computers are getting smarter, smaller, faster, and cheaper year
after year. A modern smartphone is many times more powerful than the most
powerful desktop from just a few years ago. Amazon has $2/hour EC2 instances
that rival the fastest supercomputers from just 20 years ago. The ubiquitous
nature of computers makes it more likely that industry will spur innovation in
computers. It is quite possible that increases in computing power enable
artificial intelligence at a level where we could have walking, talking
robots, possibly indistinguishable from humans within 50 years.

Of course the most likely scenario, given recent success with Mars rovers, is
that when robotics advances to a point where robots have sufficient
intelligence and maneuverability we send them to Mars to build the
infrastructure necessary to support a future human colony.

