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<TITLE>February 15: Talk by space historian Roger Launius on Robots and Humans in Spaceflight</TITLE>
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<P ALIGN=CENTER><B><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Seminar on Space Policy and Society</FONT></SPAN></B><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B><I><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Robots and Humans in Spaceflight: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel</FONT></I></B><I></I></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Roger D. Launius, Ph.D.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Division of Space History</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">National Air and Space Museum</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Smithsonian Institution</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Friday, February 15</FONT></B></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">2:00-3:00 pm</FONT></B></SPAN></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Room E51-095</FONT></B></SPAN></P>
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<P><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Abstract:</FONT></B> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">This presentation is based on a forthcoming book that explores the history and possible futures for human/robotic spaceflight. While writing Imagining Space: Achievements, Possibilities, Predictions, 1950-2050 (Chronicle Books, 2001), my co-author and I realized that the one area where all spaceflight visionaries failed to make meaningful predictions was in the rapidly advancing capabilities of robotics and electronics. For example, when Arthur C. Clarke envisioned geosynchronous telecommunications satellites in 1945 he believed that they would require humans working onboard to change the vacuum tubes. In such a situation, it is easy to conceive of the motivation that led people like Clarke and Wernher von Braun to imagine the necessity to station large human crews in space. Some of the most forward-thinking spaceflight advocates, in this instance, utterly failed to anticipate the electronics/digital revolution then just beginning. Humans, spaceflight visionaries always argued, were a critical element in the exploration of the Solar System and ultimately beyond. Human destiny required our movement beyond this planet, ultimately to the colonization of the galaxy as a means of assuring the survival of the species. With the rapid advance of electronics in the 1960s, however, some began to question the role of humans in space exploration. It is much less expensive and risky to send robot explorers than to go ourselves. This debate reached saliency early on and became an important part of the space policy debate by the latter twentieth century.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">This presentation offers a history and analysis of how we came to the point that we have in human spaceflight, as well as a discussion of the relative merits of human versus robotic space exploration. In essence, I shall suggest that the old paradigm for human exploration—ultimately becoming an interstellar species—is outmoded and ready for replacement. I will specifically look to the future of humans and robots in space and suggest that the possibility exists that perhaps a post-human cyborg species may realize a dramatic future in an extraterrestrial environment.</FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P><SPAN LANG="en-us"><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Biography:</FONT></B> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Roger D. Launius is senior curator in the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. He has written or edited more than twenty books on aerospace history, including</FONT><I> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel</FONT></I> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008);</FONT><I> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Societal Impact of Spaceflight</FONT></I><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman"> (NASA SP-2007-4801, 2007);</FONT><I> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership</FONT></I> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">(University of Illinois Press, 1997); and</FONT><I> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">NASA: A History of the U.S. Civil Space Program</FONT></I> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">(Krieger Publishing Co., 1994, rev. ed. 2001). He served as a consultant to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003 and presented the prestigious Harmon Memorial Lecture on the history of national security space policy at the United States Air Force Academy in 2006. He is frequently consulted by the electronic and print media for his views on space issues, and has been a guest commentator on National Public Radio and all the major television network news programs. </FONT></SPAN></P>
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