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!"

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US cooperation??

[lecithin]

"Tachikawa's plan follows a January 2004 decision by U.S. President George W. Bush that the U.S., with the assistance of partners including Japan, should build a lunar base by about 2020 and use it as a staging point for the human exploration of Mars."

Does this mean that the US and Japan will be working together on this?

This quote actually fits!!!

"All your base are belong to U.S.!"

"Tachikawa was voted one of the 25 most influential global leaders by Time..."

So was Oprah. (same year) For some reason this does not give me the warm fuzzies. Did Tachikawa have a talk show or something?

Re:Theories (asinine)

[mfh]

"Japanese robots on the moon, is this the beginnings of post-colonial cyborg imperialism?"

When NASA was founded in 1958, Japan was really still recovering from Nagasaki and Hirshima, 13 years earlier. It wasn't until August 1967 when the reinforcement construction was completed on A-bomb Dome in Hiroshima.

Keiji Tachikawa's last name is the same as Tachikawa, a town outside of Tokyo, founded on December 1, 1940. Coincidence?

Japan and the US are now poised to build a very important part of human history together. It's quite moving, IMHO.

I guess it just shows you that no matter what happens, no matter what the evil stuff is, there always really is hope... unless the lunar space robots are really a ploy to get back at us? Fear the space robots!

Buy Sony!

[Dancin_Santa]

Of course Japanese robots will be working on the Moon. The Japanese are the only ones working on humanoid robots that have made significant process in all aspects of design. So you'll have your Honda Asimo to bring you materials, the Toyota Q'rio to put them together, and Gundam to ward off the Russians.

If countries were as serious about robotics as the Japanese are, the whole idea of a Moon dominated by Japanese robots would just be a dream. But Tachikawa is just stating the obvious. The sadly, Japanese are the only ones qualified to provide useful robots.

Re:Buy Sony!

[bornyesterday]

Humanoid robots would probably be the most inefficient form of robots to send to the moon to build things. You would want a series of specially designed robots that are programmed for individual tasks: i.e. locating and mining ores from the moon, refining them into usable metals, shaping the metal into usable pieces, and assembling pre-designed structures. Not a single one of those would look at all humaniform, much more likely to resemble car-manufacturing robots.

Hell, even easier would be to send pre-fab structures that robots could assemble and robots designed to gather lunar soil and process it to collect oxygen/breathable air to fill those structures.

Bad idea...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I can just see giant problems here. First you position all your supplies to build a moon base, and then you unleash semi-autonomous robots to build it. What happens next is nothing less than the total destruction of human life on Earth, after the robots build their moon base, slowly becoming self aware, and then deciding that all our bases are belonging to them. This is a BAD idea.

Long way to go

[dannyitc]

I don't think getting to the moon will be as trivial for Japan as many here think. This is a country who's space division is operating at a tenth of NASA's budget and has had trouble just putting satellites in orbit as recently as 2003. Japanese space technology has a long way to go before they go ahead with all this robot moon base business.

Wow...

[ch0p]

These robots better have some clever way of getting rid of the magnetically charged, extreamly abrasive lunar dust. I had to design a lunar robot for a NASA contest, and that was the biggest obsticle. We just came up with some miracle "demagnatizing spray" that would blow off the dust. I'd like to see how they pull this off without made up technologies.

Re:Wow...

[Rei]

Not *nearly* so easy. Please read about every step (in detail) from raw silica to polycrystalline silicon here on Earth. Down here, first silica is mined and finely ground. It is then reacted with pure carbon under high heat (i.e., external power) in an electric arc furnace to produce silicon metal. Carbon is a trace element on the moon, by the way, so clearly this won't work there unless you keep a closed carbon cycle, which isn't easy at all.

Silicon metal isn't good enough, though. You take the hot metal from the furnace and react it with HCl (both trace elements on the moon) near a copper-containing catalyst to produce SiHCl3 (plus a number of other byproducts, which need to be separated out and either become waste or reused, which would involve another series of steps for each product). The SiHCl3 must be exceedingly pure, and reacted with exceedingly pure hydrogen gas at very high temperatures in clean-room conditions, before being allowed to cool and crystalize (electronics-grade silicon has less than 1 ppb impurities).

Of course, producing electronics grade polycrystalline silicon is itself not enough. You need n and p doped silicon produced and layered to create a boundary layer n-p junction. You then need microscopic contacts laid out on the surface at the micron-scale (i.e., it's almost like building a CPU plant on the moon) to carry off the charge to whatever is to consume it.

This in itself isn't enough, however. The delicate wafers need to be carefully layered onto a rigid surface (which you need to produce) and protected on the other side with a transparent material (the protective material needs to be produced). The whole assembly needs to be mounted at an optimal angle (preferably to a heliostat); whatever it is mounted to needs ot be produced. The entire arrangement needs to be wired (the wires need to be produced), and power brought to huge batteries (which need to be produced) to keep power through the two-week lunar night, after being run through transformers (which need to be produced).

Notice all of the "to be produced" items? Each "to be produced" has its own production chain which is not trivial.

Re:Theories (asinine)

[Dancin_Santa]

explain why Japan still kills hundreds of whales every year.

They are delicious.

Re:Theories (asinine)

[JanneM]

Who needs people when robots can do the work?

Well, who _does_ need people when robots can do the work?

If it happens, we've been there before. About two centuries ago, the vast majority of, well, everyone was gainfully employed in agriculture. Today, in many parts, it's only part of the population - and in wealthy countries it is a small fraction. Yet agricultural output is larger than ever before, and the changing societies managed to absorb that huge pool of available work it got as a result.

I'm looking forward to the day when most menial, dangerous and physically wearing work can be automated.

Re:Theories (asinine)

[bornyesterday]

I'm looking forward to the day when most menial, dangerous and physically wearing work can be automated. Why's that? You trying to put a very large portion of humanity out of work? Without those jobs available for people to make a living, what are they going to do to support themselves and their families? You have to remember that science fiction is exactly that: fiction. Reality is not the idyllic place that it's made out to be in many stories. And it's not the dystopia that it's made out to be in many others. It's somewhere in between. So not only will robots not take over all the high-danger/low-skill jobs because of economic constraints, they won't revolt and try to kill us all. Though if you kick that damn robot dog one too many times it will start spraying oil on your shoes and bed.

Transcript from the NASA Archives

[williamhooligan]

NASA PR EXECUTIVE: We've just had word that some foreign guy Time voted 13th Most Influential Global Leader back in 2001 wants a major role in the development of the space station.

NASA PROJECT MANAGER: Oh, for the love of God... where do you find these people? Alright, give him a desk next to Dave Chapelle and that politician guy who reckons he invented the internet. Tell him not to touch anything. And tell Lucas over on Token Consultant Desk #371 that he can stick his turbolaser suggestion up his ass.

Manifest Destiny

[ramblin billy]

Much as Russia has always longed for a warm water port, Japan has always needed a reliable source of raw materials. Their invasions of China and Russia, and their involvement in WWII, were all based on the limited resources of their homeland. The partnership with the U.S. has provided both a market and a supply of materials for the remarkable post WWII growth of Japanese industry. Space is the perfect answer to a continuing joint effort. I own a Honda and am convinced it is a superior product in every way. I see no reason to believe their robots will be any different. The Japanese are sometimes accused of being better copiers than inovators, at least when it comes to technology. That may be true, but we should also consider that many American companies have copied Japanese management techniques with great success. Traditionally the Japanese people have excelled at successful integration of large populations in small areas with limited resources. Their society incorporates complex and specific codes for individual behavior. In an artificial environment, such as a lunar settlement, the ability to get along in crowded conditions and the socialization of necessary protocols for environmental adaptation are powerful tools for success. The typical Japanese's willingness to give loyalty to the greater good makes them ideal partners in enduring the hardships of space exploration. Note that the articles refer to the Japanese contribution to a lunar colony centering on building and mining robots. Of course the technicians to maintain and control those robots will be a part of that contribution. It may be that in the long run, the lessons learned from the Japanese culture will outweigh the benefits of their technology. Personally I like the idea of a U.S. partnership with a society that is absolutely against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It will make it that much easier for US to do the right thing.

billy - we have no space-based weapons...no really...we promise...really...

Re:Theories (asinine)

[toad3k]

Scenario one. A guy with a hammer. He hammers nails all day, takes his paycheck and goes home.

Scenario two. A guy overseeing 20 robots with 20 hammers. He directs all day, takes a same sized paycheck goes home to his new home which was built at a 10th the price of the first guy's house because it was built by robots.

This is progress. This is no different than the fact that people aren't sitting out in cotton fields picking at cotton seeds all day anymore thanks to the cotton gin. There will always be some other work available.

Re:Theories (asinine)

[packeteer]

The war time government of Japan was not any better than Nazi Germany if you where Chinese or Korean.

Becuase you all know how well The USA treated its own citizens of Japenses decent during the war. And fire bombing/nuclear bombing of Japan and carpet bombing of germany is ok. Yah i gotta say i feel guilty for some of the things my country (USA) did during that war, I think there aren't many countires involved that can think they upheld all of their values by the end of the war. This is not a reason to dislike one country but is a reason to dislike war.

Re:Theories (asinine)

[LWATCDR]

"Because you all know how well The USA treated its own citizens of Japanese decent during the war."
Yes what the US did was wrong. The Equal of what the government of Japan did?
NO FRIGGING WAY.
How many beheading of Japanese Americans did the Government of the US do? How many where forced to become "comfort women" for the US Army?
Want to compare how Japan treated none combatants that they interned? Probably not.

The US did not attack Japan first. The US was trying to use trying use trade sanctions and political pressure to get Japan to stop it's aggression.
As far as the carpet bombings and the Atomic Bombs. The number of Chinese and Korean deaths out numbers those by far.
"This is not a reason to dislike one country but is a reason to dislike war."

You see this is another BLIND KNEE JERK REACTION!
In my post did I ever say Japan? Did I ever say the people of Japan? Nope I said the Government of Japan. Specifically the war time government of Japan.
The war time government of Japan is to blame for the carpet bombings and the atomic bombings. Even after the first Atomic attack they where trying to negotiate for no occupation and they would disarm there own military.
The myth that is about preserving their Emperor is just that a myth.
I do not agree that one should not hate a government that carries out genocidal wars like the Japanese and German government did during WWII. I also disagree that by 1941 their was a peaceable way to stop them.
Had the victors of WWI had set up a "Just Peace" like the US wanted then maybe Hitler would have never come to power. The problem is it was not tried until after the WWII.
The thing we all have to remember is that the Japan and Germany of today are not the Japan and Germany of WWII. The other important thing to remember is even during WWII most of the people in Japan and German just wanted to raise there kids and live their lives.

Re:Theories (asinine)

[Rei]

Feel proud man!

How can you ask a person to feel pride at firebombing Dresden and Tokyo (killing 100-200k people each), and nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki (killing about 250k total), when in each case the war was essentially over? Asking a person to view it as necessary is one thing (which I would strongly disagree, but that's not the point I'm making), but asking a person to be *proud* of the painful (and sometimes prolongued) slaughter of up to half a million people, most of whom were civilians, is appalling.

the EU would have been the CU

You haven't looked at Europe's politics lately, have you? :) (j/k)

I agree, by the way, that the concept of MAD has been good for the world. That doesn't mean that we should be proud of using it, and using firebombings, to brutally slaughter huge numbers of civilians - even if one views it as necessary. It is cruel and unamerican. I think Truman himself said it best in his diary:

"This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.

He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance."

(note that Truman, given his speeches in addition to his diary, seemed unaware that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities. No such warning, as Truman requested, was ever given, even after the bombing of Hiroshima before the followup on Nagasaki. We had two bombs, and wanted to try them both out on populated areas, even ruling out areas of vital military importance because there wouldn't be enough people there. Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph Bard took the same position as Truman did in his diary, in weighing in (repeatedly) on the usage of the bomb (even moreso, he was completely convinced by US intelligence that Japan was preparing to surrender even without the bomb, and a demonstration would have been plenty); he was ignored by Groves).

Re:Theories (asinine)

[ThosLives]

Your scenario 2 is a little flawed. It might turn out that way, but it's not guaranteed. This is even assuming that the purchase price of a house is only based on labor [robots] and materials instead of goofy market speculation and politics.

Here's a situation: person A can build 1 house in 1 year, so he will charge the person to whom he sells the house 1 year's worth of "stuff" he needs and wants: payment for his house, food, savings, entertainment, some free time, etc. Now let's say person A builds a machine (using some of the 'free time' and 'etc.' included in the price he was charing) that allows him to make 1 house in half a year. If person A decides to still only build one house per year and take half a year off, he would probably still charge the original price to pay for his house, food, etc. Person A would probably tell you his quality of life has improved greatly, even though he doesn't have more money. Person A may decide to build 2 houses instead, in which case the price of each house needs to sum to what the person wants, but they don't necessarily have to go to half the original. Even if the person does take "full price" for each house, conceivably the person might not work for as many years and retire early (since he could have saved quite a lot) and the net production of houses he produced might be no greater than before - so there might not be more houses with the machine than without.

I hope this example shows that it is not clear at all how technology really affects the economy - it really depends on the individuals in that economy.