That means full blown Artificial General Intelligence is needed for actually commanding a military spacecraft if you want to go without crew. Anything creative or anything an algorithm is not explicitly designed for would throw it for a loop.
In particular, how to see through enemy deceptions, laying deceptions, handling unexpected scenarios and failures, and so on are all problems that algorithms would fail badly at. On the other hand, other classes of problems are best solved with intelligence and creativity. AlphaGo is a one-problem AI, but it could be the first step towards a general intelligence. Currently, certain problems of space warfare are best solved with algorithms (see Misconceptions about Space Warfare), such as leading targets hundreds of kilometers away moving at multiple kilometers per second. However, AI is more than a series of algorithms running on a laptop. On top of that, the heat they need to dump out can be a problem if you want to talk Stealth in Space. Crews are expensive to train, take up precious mass and volume, and require power. This means remote control is restricted to drones and missiles, remotely operated and ordered by the nearest capital ship or celestial body.Īrtificial Intelligence (AI) is an interesting solution to the problem of having crews. Additionally, long term journeys have much greater potential for unexpected failure. Beyond high orbit of a moon, for example, the speed of light lag is too great for combat. The main issue with remote control is the speed of light lag.
Remote control can be spoofed or jammed, but there are countermeasures and counter-countermeasure. Though if DARPA’s work is any indicator, humanoid robots may be the ideal maintenance workers rather than minidrones.īrains of the spacecraft can be replaced with remote control, or with an artificial intelligence. The fine grained manipulation could be accomplished by minidrones, automated repair bots and the like, though handling unexpected situations is rather tricky without a human or artificial intelligence. The reason crew compartments don’t receive the same amount of consideration, as say, the engines or the weapons, is that crew compartments have no real surprises about their design, and on larger capital ships, they are rarely a bottleneck in terms of mass, volume, power usage, or heat dissipation.īut before we discuss crews, what about alternatives? Crew provide decision making, the brains of the spacecraft, as well as providing fine grained manipulation of equipment and tools for repairs, maintenance, and so on.
In most cases, this is a crew module, or a remote control module relaying orders from somewhere. A major consideration behind constructing a spacecraft that is often glossed over is the brain of the spacecraft.