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<blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 7559154" data-attributes="member: 710">I don't believe a generation ship would be fully automated, though. You have a human crew aboard. Why waste even more resources on complicated robots that also need maintenance if you could juts use the people that are already aboard?You need to supply the crew with air, food, water and heat already. If you add tons of maintenance robots, you now need spare parts, repair tools for repairing the robots and what not, in addition to the spare parts and repair tools these robots would need to repair the ship itself.Humans also have the advantage that their ability to self-repair and self-replicate to compensate damage and losses isn't some hypothetical scientific or engineering advancement away- it's what have, right now, and we have had since we exist. Likewise, our abiity to improvise and devise tools to adapt our environment to work for us doesn't require some new AI breakthrough. We can already do that, right now, and we've been doing that for millenia. There are certainly tasks you will use robots or drones for, but it would be a complete waste of resources to let them do everythig, or even the majority, of tasks aboard the ship. Even the possibility of having robots that could do all that without steady human intervention is hypothetical.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mustrum_Ridcully, post: 7559154, member: 710"] I don't believe a generation ship would be fully automated, though. You have a human crew aboard. Why waste even more resources on complicated robots that also need maintenance if you could juts use the people that are already aboard? You need to supply the crew with air, food, water and heat already. If you add tons of maintenance robots, you now need spare parts, repair tools for repairing the robots and what not, in addition to the spare parts and repair tools these robots would need to repair the ship itself. Humans also have the advantage that their ability to self-repair and self-replicate to compensate damage and losses isn't some hypothetical scientific or engineering advancement away- it's what have, right now, and we have had since we exist. Likewise, our abiity to improvise and devise tools to adapt our environment to work for us doesn't require some new AI breakthrough. We can already do that, right now, and we've been doing that for millenia. There are certainly tasks you will use robots or drones for, but it would be a complete waste of resources to let them do everythig, or even the majority, of tasks aboard the ship. Even the possibility of having robots that could do all that without steady human intervention is hypothetical. [/QUOTE]

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