Lets Send AI Astronauts, Not Humans, to the Moon
Following the success of the Artemis II mission, many kids were inspired to go to the Moon. As responsible adults, we should inform our kids that although a trip to the lunar surface sounds like fun, the experience would be worse than touching asbestos since lunar dust is sharper than shreds of asbestos.
The rocky surface of the Moon was shattered into sharp powdery and highly abrasive dust generated by asteroid impacts over the past 4.5 billion years. The lunar dust resembles tiny glass fragments, and poses severe hazards to astronaut health. Any construction project of a sustainable lunar base will inevitably raise dust from the lunar surface. This dust will not settle down quickly because the surface gravity there is about one-sixth of that on Earth.
But there are more risks involved in spending a long period of time on the Moon. Owing to the absence of a lunar atmosphere, variations in surface temperature are not moderated and shadowed regions are vastly cooler than regions illuminated by sunlight or by Earth-shine. The coldest temperature ever recorded on the Moon is 24 degrees above absolute zero, measured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in permanently shadowed regions within the Hermite Crater near the lunar north pole (as reported here).
Cosmic-rays pose another major health hazard for lunar astronauts, with doses 200 times higher than on Earth, potentially triggering cancer, radiation sickness, and cognitive damage. The Moon’s lack of atmosphere and magnetic field allows energetic particles from the Milky-Way galaxy and the Sun to reach the lunar surface directly. The interaction of cosmic-rays with the lunar soil creates neutrons and gamma-rays which add to the total dose.
The Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field do not only shield the human body from cosmic rays but also from micro-meteorites which burn up before reaching the ground. On the Moon, the direct threat of physical injury comes from high-speed micrometeorites raining from the sky above, as well as the lunar dust created by these steady collisions with the lunar surface. The impact speed of micrometeorites is typically several tens of kilometers per second, carrying up to a thousand times more kinetic energy per unit mass compared to bullets fired by a rifle. The latest detailed study of the statistics of lunar micrometeoroids (reported here) implies that the surface area of a human body would experience a single impact per year by a micrometeoroid which is a tenth of a millimeter in diameter, roughly the thickness of a human hair. Serving as a construction worker on a lunar surface for decades is akin to playing Russian roulette.
The conditions on Mars are even more extreme because of its larger distance from the Sun. When Elon Musk said: “I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact,” he should have acknowledged that there are more nuanced ways to die on Earth. Ignoring the human health hazards on the Moon or Mars is madness. Sending AI astronauts instead to these hostile environments would be a mark of genius.
What is the fine line separating madness from genius? Aristotle noted, “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness”. Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky confessed: “Undoubtedly, I should have gone mad but not for music.” Creative thinking is facilitated by a brain that exhibits less restraint than average. Friedrich Nietzsche argued that what society calls “madness” is often a visionary mind refusing to conform to “venerated custom”.
Nevertheless, we should make wise decisions on whether to send humans to the Moon based on hard facts and not wishful thinking. If the health risks are too high, we should instead use robots with artificial intelligence. The impact of cosmic-rays or micrometeorites on a robot body can be fixed by replacing hardware parts in a lunar machine shop, also operated by robots.
Our primary responsibility is to preserve the health of humans who create a better future for all of us here on Earth. This should not preclude us from taking risks in space with the help of our technological avatars.
In this essay, I featured four amazing watercolors from a series created by the celebrated artist, Greg Wyatt. These watercolors incorporate inspiring statements by Nicolaus Copernicus, Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Walt Whitman. This is the 13th in a sequence of essays, where Greg and I collaborate on the interface between art and science. The first essay in this series, titled “Music of the Cosmic Spheres,” appeared here; the second essay, titled: “Cosmic Waterfalls in Spacetime Cliffs,” appeared here; the third titled “Missing Elements in the Cosmic Jigsaw Puzzle,” appeared here; the fourth essay, titled: “Why Do We Exist?”, appeared here, and the fifth titled “Inspiration from the Stars”, appeared here, the sixth titled: “We Might Understand How the Cosmos Works Before We Understand How Life Works”, appeared here, the seventh titled: “Will the Human Survive for Billions of Years”, appeared here, the eighth titled: “The Butterfly Effect of Intelligence in the Cosmos”, appeared here, the ninth titled: “Benefits of Extraterrestrial Intelligence over AI”, appeared here, the tenth titled: “Übermenschen on Exoplanets” appeared here, the 11th titled: “If You Had an Infinite Research Budget, How Would You Allocate It?” appeared here, and the 12th titled: “Are Human-Made Objects Orbiting Earth?” appeared here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
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