Robots in Space; Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel

xx, 313, [1] pages. Illustrations. Ink notations on fep, and on multiple pages up to about page 60. No additional in marks or notations observed in the remaining pages. Contents include Acknowledgments; Introduction: A False Dichotomy; The Human/Robot Debate; Human Spaceflight as Utopia; Promoting the Human Dimension; Robotic Spaceflight in Popular Culture; The New Space Race; Interstellar Flight and the Human Future in Space; Homo sapiens, Transhumanism, and the Postbiological University; An Alternative Paradigm?; and Appendix: Inadequate Words; Notes, and Index. Roger D. Launius (born May 15, 1954) is an American historian and author and a former chief historian of NASA. He retired in 2016 as Associate Director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Launius is a consulting historian in air and space history. He has written many books on space flight. Howard E. McCurdy is professor of public affairs in the public administration and policy department at American University. McCurdy is considered an expert on space policy and NASA. In 1998, he was selected to be the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History, a one-year fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum. McCurdy received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Washington and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. Given the near incomprehensible enormity of the universe, it appears almost inevitable that humankind will one day find a planet that appears to be much like the Earth. This discovery will no doubt reignite the lure of interplanetary travel. Will we be up to the task? And, given our limited resources, biological constraints, and the general hostility of space, what shape should we expect such expeditions to take? In Robots in Space, Roger Launius and Howard McCurdy tackle these seemingly fanciful questions with rigorous scholarship and disciplined imagination, jumping comfortably among the worlds of rocketry, engineering, public policy, and science fantasy to expound upon the possibilities and improbabilities involved in trekking across the Milky Way and beyond. They survey the literature/fictional as well as academic studies; outline the progress of space programs in the United States and other nations; and assess the current state of affairs to offer a conclusion startling only to those who haven't spent time with Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke: to traverse the cosmos, humans must embrace and entwine themselves with advanced robotic technologies. Their discussion is as entertaining as it is edifying and their assertions are as sound as they are fantastical. Rather than asking us to suspend disbelief, Robots in Space demands that we accept facts as they evolve.…