I'd be very surprised if they're genuinely out of research ideas to test in space. If that is actually true then humanity has a problem.

>research that couldn't be done with automation

I'd think there is room for both. Automation makes sense, but don't think the versatility of meatbags is entirely there yet.

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gus_massa 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> if they're genuinely out of research ideas to test in space

A bigger problem is lack of expertise. Astronauts are not specialist in whatever is the topic of the current experiment. You need probably like 5 years of training (assume the second half of the undergraduate degree, and perhaps the first half of the PhD). So experiments must be fully automated except for a button to turn they on and off.

	▲	maxerickson 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Lots of research has technicians doing the actual experimental tasks, your argument would benefit from even a short list of experiments that have not been done because astronauts couldn't be expected to handle it.
	▲	Gud 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		We don't really need to send "astronauts"(highly trained operatives) to space anymore. SpaceX has made that happen.

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jfengel 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Meatbags are versatile but really, really expensive. They require a really vast support system, and it has to be highly redundant because the cost of a loss is so high.

You can send up a lot of less versatile bots for the price of one meatbag.