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Japanese Agency Plan for Robot Lunar Base

Dilaudid writes "According to these articles Keiji Tachikawa, head of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency sees a major role in the lunar base planned by NASA in 2020. 'As part of the plan Japan would use advanced robotic technologies to help build the moon base ... Japan's lunar robots would do work such as building telescopes and prospecting and mining for minerals, Tachikawa said.' Tachikawa was voted one of the 25 most influential global leaders by Time... I wish him luck!"

13 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. All your moon base are belong to Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Sorry, so very, very sorry, but it had to be done.

  2. Lunar robots by charlieo88 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Somebody get Bruce Campbell, cause we don't take no shit from the machines.

  3. Fow Houwah.... by Himring · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    We've been building moon base for fow houwah, fow houwah!!! You go home now cowboy!...

    --
    "All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
  4. Droid World by Random+BedHead+Ed · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Wow, suddenly the narration from a Star Wars story book and record from around 1980 has popped into my head:

    This is the story of Droid World. You can read along with me in your book. You will know it is time to turn the page when you hear Artoo-Deetoo beep like this - bep-beep (whistle). Let's begin now ...

  5. you are a jerk... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    the word is PROBABLY!!!

    STOP BEING ILLITERATE, you're dragging us all down, you jerk!!!

  6. Re:Theories (asinine) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    yes, but that does not explain why Japan still kills hundreds of whales every year.

  7. Obligatory... by BigWhiteGuy_27 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I, for one, welcome our new lunar robotic overlords... Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto... Imagine a Beowulf cluster of lunar robots... But will they run Linux?

  8. you Fail It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
  9. Prospecting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    (Spoken by Johnny Cash)
    I discovered the Valley of the Shifting, Whispering Sands
    While prospecting in a western state
    I saw the silent windmills, the crumbling water tanks
    The bones of the cattle picked clean by buzzards
    Bleached by the desert sun
    I stumbled over a crumbling buck board
    Nearly covered by the sand
    And stopping to rest I heard a tinkling, whispering sound
    And suddenly realized that even though the wind was quiet
    The sand did not lie still
    I seemed to be surrounded be a mystery
    So heavy and apperceive I could scarcely breath
    For weeks I wondered aimlessly in the valley
    Seeking answers to the many questions that raced through my mind
    Where was everyone? Why the white bones? The dry wells?
    The barren valley where people must have lived and died
    I sat down and buried my face in my hands
    And resting I learned the secret of the Shifting, Whispering Sands
    How I managed to escape from the valley I don't know
    But now to pay my debt for being saved
    I must tell you what I learned out on the desert
    So many years ago

    (Sung by the Carter Family)
    When the day is oddly quiet
    And the breeze seems not to blow
    One would think the sun is resting
    But you'll find this is not so

    It is whispering softly whispering
    As it slowly moves along
    And for those who stop and listen
    It will sing this mournful song

    (Sung by an unknown male choir)
    Of sidewinders and the horn toads
    On the thorny *chaparral
    In the sunny days and moonlight lights
    The lonely coyotes yell

    (Sung by Johnny Cash)
    How the stars seem they can touch you
    As you lay and gaze on high
    At the heavens where your hoping
    You'll be going when you die

  10. U.S. Weaponizes Space: +1, Peaceful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Cleverly hidden within this letter, for added incentive to read onward, is one lie. Not a lie of statistical or grammatical error, but a ludicrous falsehood at once so absurd as to strike the reader as an insult to human intelligence, and yet so unstable as to convince the reader that Richard B Cheney exhibits an overweening sense of entitlement and a predilection for depreciating others. I guess I should start by saying that Cheney's insults are destructive. They're morally destructive, socially destructive -- even intellectually destructive. And, as if that weren't enough, I feel that writing this letter is like celestial navigation. Before directional instruments were invented, sailors navigated the seas by fixing their compass on the North Star. But if Cheney's mottos get any more diabolic, I expect they'll grow legs and attack me in my sleep. While intolerant paranoiacs claim to defend traditional values, they actually outrage the very sensibilities of those who value freedom and fairness. Cheney's outrage at complaints about him is indicative of his self-esteem and value system. Of course, it's not quite that simple.

    Cheney may be reasonably cunning with words. However, he is completely witless with everything else. When we give peace a chance, we are not only threading our way through a maze of competing interests; we are weaving the very pattern of our social fabric. He can't see the forest for the trees, which makes it obvious to me that his hypocrisy is transparent. Even the least discerning among us can see right through it.

    Ignorance is bliss. This may be why Cheney's underlings are generally all smiles. Cheney never tires of trying to extinguish fires with gasoline. He presumably hopes that the magic formula will work some day. In the meantime, he seems to have resolved to learn nothing from experience, which tells us that he has, at times, called me "brown-nosing" or "narrow-minded". Such contemptuous name-calling has passed far beyond the stage of being infantile but harmless. It has the capacity to call for ritualistic invocations of needlessly formal rules. All the same, if the human race is to survive on this planet, we will have to direct your attention in some detail to the vast and irreparable calamity brought upon us by Cheney.

    Perhaps one day we will live in a world where good people are not troubled by fear of mean-spirited mafia dons. Until that day arrives, however, we must spread the word that Cheney really struck a nerve with me when he said that the moon is made of green cheese. That lie is a painful reminder that Cheney is locked into his present course of destruction. He does not have the interest or the will to change his fundamentally unbalanced wheelings and dealings. In order for us to realize more happiness in our lives, we need to understand that if Cheney's expositors had even an ounce of integrity, they would condemn -- without hesitation, without remorse -- all those who create a world sunk in the most abject superstition, fanaticism, and ignorance. While Cheney has a right, as do we all, to believe whatever he wants about frotteurism, he would not hesitate to pass off all sorts of yellow-bellied and obviously crazy stuff on others as a so-called "inner experience" if he felt he could benefit from doing so. Even though supposedly distancing himself from ostentatious curmudgeons, he has really not changed his spots at all.

    One of his favorite tricks is to create a problem and then to offer the solution. Naturally, it's always his solutions that grant him the freedom to exhibit a deep disdain for all people who are not complacent grotty-types, never the original problem. Although the historical battle between good and evil is exemplified in the philosophical division between Platonic order and Aristotelian chaos, many people who follow Cheney's strictures have come to the erroneous conclusion that we should derive moral guidance from Cheney's glitzy, multi-culti, hip-hop, consumption-oriented snow jobs. The stark truth of the matter is that he recently

  11. Unemployment? by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Scenario three. The 20 guys with 20 hammers got replaced by robots and are unemployed now.

  12. Re:Theories (asinine) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Actually supposedly they don't taste all that great. However the IWC is being quite unreasonable when they ban whaling of non-endangered species -- you have a handful of land-locked, non-whaling nations as a member of IWC that has nothing to lose or gain by voting yes or no. The IWC is about politics and not science. The US hunts endangered sharks for scientific purposes and no one cares because they're not as cute and cuddly as whales.