I perfectly understand the metaphor but machine already replace human in factory on earth, why do you think human can work in the 10x times worse condition in space???
also if you born poor in earth, many people would take a chance to do space industry at all in the future despite the risk
We simply have different outlooks. I'm not going to argue it. I see exploitation (in a negative sense) where you're more optimistic. I truly hope you're right!
Before we had machines to put in our factories, we had hordes of dead laborers. Regulations are written in blood. Then we had company towns and truly brutal police enforcement.
Why will humans work there? Partly for the reason you gave: poverty. That makes them particularly expendable, offering themselves to the 'chance' as you say.
edit: My bias is obvious, I work in SRE - not development. I don't create things, I deal with the fallout of creation. It's a lot like that.
wdym exploitation, space company would not having a hard time to pay their employee the same reason oil company do
also human is expensive, if fleet of human slave is cheap then we outsource all of our work to china and india. but that don't happen we build a trillion dollar industry (AI and robotic) to make all of that
When I look at the power dynamics between employee [on a spaceship] and an employer, pay isn't the utmost concern. Not even the trendy replacement, scrip. Nay, performance reviews and how it might relate to oxygen availability.
I don't see a collaborative trip through the cosmos, I see a very unhealthy relationship with danger to boot
This may be all the more reason for robots, but again: humans take no engineering. Just a few minutes and a lot of tries (heh, sex joke). They'll literally pay for themselves.
RE: outsourcing, I don't know what you mean/where you are. That's exactly what's been happening, here. Consistently. For decades. Many ventures can happen.
its more easier to setup 1 billions self replicating robot in space than setups 1 billions human living conditions infrastructure because back to square one turns out water and plant is more rare than metal in space
also human is fragile, weak, costly, too long to make it productive.
it takes 15+ year for human to be any useful at all (and not counting experience)
do you think these space corp would just sit 15+ year revenue of upkeep going to waste only the next day human employee die because some dust near light speed particle hit the station???
nooo, slavery human space is not practical because is not cost effective economy wise
But right now, we don't have working practical self replicating robots, but we do have humans. The cost of the 15+ years is externalized, you can just lure a desperate already-grown human with shiny promises, give them some training, and ship them off.
Yes, you have to ship them oxygen and food, which is expensive, but it's a solution that exists and works with todays technology (minus some well-defined engineering), while the robots aren't ready yet.
we talking about space colonization at this point, jensen huang literally have an wall-e robot now
also space is vast and empty, even with spaceship that has near light speed it still take years to even reach the destination not even counting do extract resources or back go to earth
The machine is great at doing one specific, repetitive task.
Humans are currently much, much better at doing varied, unexpected tasks. We will at some point likely get more universal robotics, but right now I think there's a very good chance we'll get humans to Mars before we get the robots to work.
