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NASA Suggests Nano Robots To Explore Mars
destinyland writes "'We're going to have to do extensive robotic exploration,' says the director of NASA's Ames Research Center, suggesting nanotechnology to build self-replicating robots on Mars. Genetically engineering extraction and construction microbes could 'grow' electrical components, and eventually convert carbon dioxide on Mars into oxygen. 'If we really want to settle Mars, and we don't want to have to carry millions of tons of equipment with us to duplicate the way we live on Earth, these technologies will be key.' This interview with Peter Worden, the director of NASA's Ames Research Center, was just featured in the summer issue of H+ magazine, and he also argues that robots will be necessary to first survey Mars for underground microbes and protect the unique Martian biosphere, since it may contain clues about earth's own first life forms. In fact, given the water and carbon that's been discovered on Mars, the possibility of underground microbes is still considered real, and Worden argues that Mars 'may already be supporting life.'"
The robots are going to colonize Mars and then will take over the Earth! I for welcome our new Martian robotic overlords.
Get the Replicator disruptor and break the bonds that hold them together before they take over the plant!
It has taken a while, but finally NASA is taking my plans to use an army of nanobots to build pyramids on Mars seriously.
Replicators in Stargate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Stargate)
... but most of the heavy lifting is going to come from genetically engineered microbes.
I've been following with interest the bacteria that was recently revived from the ice core samples. The assumption (logical or not) is that if they can survive that extreme situation they may be adapted to this sort of extreme condition.
With GE we can introduce traits, perhaps not as specific as we'd like, but still to tailor the needs. Bacteria that can break down iron oxide into Fe or other easily smeltable materials- that could extract gold (there has been some postulation that 'tracer' gold is nothing more than bacterial waste). We already have some plants that can selectively uptake metals and sequester them in the cellulose - but then breeding those with any other traits destroyed the character set that was capable of doing so.
I should also state I'm a fan of Mars from KSR- and if we start introducing extremophile bacterial colonies we may never find out if life evolved on that planet. I for one am waiting for that little tidbit and the Vatican's response (I expect it to be something along the lines of "Not intelligent thus God discarded the world as unsuitable", but I digress).
I say go for it... but I'd really really really want to know that the lab doing the work was fully set up to prevent accidental releases. While an extremophile may not like the conditions outside as too energetic... I'd hate to find out they're quickly adaptable - with those cell walls specifically thickened and hardened to handle UV (another assumption on my part) as well as low pressure they might just turn out to be a bitch to kill. Then again, keeping them in conflict with the UV sterilizer lights might just be the way to grow them hardier :)
He basically said: "In order to colonize Mars, we will need to use Technology that doesn't exist yet but I bet that it'll probably be kind of like this."
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but I'm not sure how this is newsworthy, since it's completely idle speculation.
I, for one, welcome our new nano robots overlords!
Can we even build "Self-replicating nano robots" on EARTH?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
... I should also state I'm a fan of Mars from KSR-
Ah, that's your problem-- his main interest is in politics, and he's, at best, superficial about the science. (Great climbing scenes, though!).
There's some good SF that gets the science right about Mars, but KSR isn't it.
Seriously, has no one at NASA watched stargate? I can tell you how this ends.
1. NASA creates self replicating nanobot to perform a useful function
2. life form develops beyond their wildest dreams.
3. replicators begin attacking humans.
4. replicators begin to LOOK like humans.
5. O'neal sticks his face in some mind alterning THING that implants all the knowledge of the ancients.
6. O'neal makes BFG 3000 that can blast them, but it's not enough.
7. Daniel and Carter link all the stargates, creating one big distributed network (internet?)
8. Ba'al, big evil Goa'uld, knows the secret code to set off super-weapon in the temple where the Jaffa live...
9. 'super radiation' kills travels through all the portals across the universe, killing off the replicators.
So, someone go ahead and tell NASA to cut it out.
Can't they see this ended badly?
Somehow this lead to a new storyline with the stupid Oreye, Ori, whatever they are.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Maybe I've watched too much science fiction, but building self-replicating robots never seems to turn out quite the way you'd want. A few examples: the NS5 robots from I, Robot, the Decepticons - although those weren't man-made, and the Cylons. Is this something we want to recreate? Because humanity only survived the Cylon invasion thanks to the Galactica, so maybe NASA should think about building a few Battlestars before they go messing around with things they don't fully understand. Hey, maybe that's what the NSA is planning to work on in Utah?
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
I"m in favour of GM crops, mainly because I feel that is simply an acceleration of selective breeding, but engineering a process into an organism that does not normally do this worries me. (I realise that this too can be seen as accelerated selective breeding, but this is thousands of generations as opposed to a few hundred max.)
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
Typing and multiple personality disorder don't mix!
Self replicating nano-technology is far in the future, it is good NASA looks into it, but there is only one good thing I would take out of his proposal and apply it immediately : robots sent to Mars need to be autonomous. 20-40 minutes of lag is not a good way to drive a rover. Have a dozen of cheap rovers, give them a daily (or even hourly) schedule of things to do, and, for god's sake, let them do their things autonomously ! DARPA's Grand Challenge has proven since 2005 (or was it 2004 ?) that autonomous vehicules in a desert can ride up to 40 mph without problems. At this speed, it takes less than 200 days to go from equator to poles.
And it would be nice to also have robots (or simply landers) dig a good depth of martian ground to see wether it is possible to have good water ice, whether it is electrolysable and/or drinkable, suitable for culture, etc...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
One of the real problems with sending a colony of air breathers to Mars is that the atmosphere there is thin. The atmosphere is thin because the planetary magnetosphere is not a strong enough protective shield to protect it from being eroded by solar wind. We underestimate the benefits to us here on Earth with regard to our own planetary magnetic field.
Ironically, it may take only a minor improvement in the strength of the Martian magnetosphere to provide sufficient protection to allow us to harvest atmospheric gasses from interplanetary space and effectively terraform the planet.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Are they TRYING to imitate a well-known anime from the late 90s? Let's just build the giant mechas, the interplanetary spaceship, and find us a deadpan genius pre-teen for tech support while we're at it.
Wait, why don't they do that HERE? Why can't we benefit from this technology on Earth first? It would be a new industrial/tecnological revolution. Mars can come later.
Ignoring the robots-turning-evil angle on this, let's consider a more likely scenario. Probably any self replicating nano-things would be bacteria, or possibly very small machines that act like bacteria. I see two very likely scenarios that don't require any sort of thought, agency, or evil on their part:
1) Being designed to convert CO2 to O2, some of these things get carried back to earth (inside of human lungs, perhaps) and radically alter earth's atmosphere, or
2) They mutate and start metabolizing other things, like rocks or people.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Here come those replicators we heard about on SG1 or in that movie Screamers.....I thought we would have a little more time to set up before the onslaught started...!
How about we try it out here first? We have plenty of extra CO2 floating around that won't be missed, and I don't think anyone on Mars would complain if we do ours first.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
I remember watching Tomorrow's World a decade or more ago and they were talking of terraforming Mars... I've been waiting since! Scientists are coming up with different ideas of terraforming and a lot are on the basis of what technology will be available in the future... it seems the future is possibly even further away that Duke Nukem Forever!
in that, you look at your average list of requirements that nanotech is supposed to fulfill, and pretty much some microbe or insect already does most of that
i think to satisfy the requirements here, you start with a preexisting microbe to do all the terraforming requirements. and if its something bizarre like surveillance you want, you work that into an insect somehow. now if you are thinking using insects for surveillance on mars is insane, i'm saying i agree with you. only that genetically engineering a preexisting insect to do that is LESS insane than satisfying the requirements here with something you are building out of nanotech from scratch... that can replicate, use energy sources, and transmit the info to a transponder for beaming back to earth? tall order, no?
plenty of insects subsist off of fungi and lichen, something that could be genetically engineered to grow on mars. andyou don't have your temperature concerns, insects for example are the kings of Antarctica:
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50C0B020090113
and as for beaming info back to earth, you don't have to wire that ability into every insect. take a cue from foraging social insects like bees, wasps, or ants: each colony contains some sort of transponder that monitors the social cues the insects naturally communicate to each other in the hive about what is out there in the environment around them. the abilities of borrowing beetles prove you can do lots of below the surface exploration by swapping in those genetic components, etc.
i'm not saying any of this is easy, but what i am saying is that the far reaches of what we can do with genetic engineering are much closer to our abilities than the far reaches of what we can do with nanotech
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
another round of "Total Recall" jokes... get 'em while they're hot.
Now to be renamed Gray Planet.
Why not just find some Earth, photosynthesizing microbe that has had the benefit of a half billion years of evolution, and plant it on Mars? Something that's used to the dry, cold, nutrient poor, sometimes dim, terrain of the arctic or antarctic. There has to be something.
nano size, because Mars Rovers moved too fast.
Next notice will go about Texas Association of School Administrators. I bet my pattern recognition software.
Handful of insects
thrown to the Martian red sky
mosquitos
wasps
bees
flies
all fall and promptly die
without atmosphere
noone can fly
experiment failed
but tax dollars flow my way...
Why go through the billions (trillions) of dollars needed to terraform another planet when said planet does not have the mass or the magnetic field that's needed to keep a habital atmosphere for any significant time. If we boosted O2 to bare levels and other gasses where people could work without suits, the loss due to solar wind and just plain lack of gravity will mean the atmosphere reverts back to "normal" withing about three decades.
It just isn't worth terraforming mars unless we can increase its mass substantially (eg: crash a bunch of iron-rich asteroids and water-rich comets into it...then wait a couple of hundred years for the melted mess to calm down)
Mike Boyle, JPL
~Sticky
/Step 2: Reprogram nano-bots to consume Earth...
The Pathfinder was the size of toy car.
Spirit and Opportunity the size of golf cart.
Curosity (Mars Science Lab) is the size of an SUV. This last one is is over two years late, a billion over budget, and tempting Congress to cut NASA's budget drastically.
Design them with only the storage capacity for caching a subset of the replication/operation program, and just continually broadcast the whole thing. Allows for quick bugfixes while you're at it. Now, good luck figuring out the receiver...
How about we try it out here first? We have plenty of extra CO2 floating around that won't be missed, and I don't think anyone on Mars would complain if we do ours first.
I'd prefer to try it on mars first. Last thing we need is it getting out of control here, converting all of the CO2, ending plant life on earth (with us quickly following).
It's called Dissociative identity disorder.
Free Martian Whores!
I, for one, welcome our self-replicating nanotechnological robotic Martian overlords!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
and protect the unique Martian biosphere,
So this guy has already discovered life on Mars, huh? After all, you don't get a BIOsphere without BIOS - life.
Another idiot talking out of his ass.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's unclear whether self-replicating "nanobots" are even possible to engineer, let alone possible to engineer in the next 50 years. We barely have MEMS, let alone NEMS, and as far as I know, virtually all of those MEMS systems are fabricated top-down (using focused ion beam milling and other such high-energy laboratory devices) not bottom-up. Self-replication is another thing entirely.
I understand that NASA is founded on "long-view" principles, but seriously, sometimes we need to understand the current status of the research and weed out what is reasonable and what is (unfortunately) still science fiction.
Has nobody read "The Intrepid" by Stanislaw Lem? Seriously? Nanorobots?
First I read a Slashdot story about flesh eating robots and then one about some NASA guy who wants to make SELF-REPLICATING robots?? Hello?? Self-replicating flesh eating robots?? I mean! These things will live by The Three Laws: Kill em, Chop em up, Eat em!! I mean! Dood!! I know we have a population problem and all but! Dood!!!
How long before we get nano probes to explore Uranus? Really, REALLY sorry. Just had to ask.
Extracting oxygen's all well and good, but even if we do that, would there be enough atmosphere on Mars to make it livable?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't see the need for all of the complications. Going through all of that is completely pointless. Send me to Mars. I'll make robots for NASA if they send me a little food and water every once in a while. Hell, if anyone has ever met some of my ex-girlfriends they would know I'm completely immune to cold.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Safer to do it far away from us.
I for one welcome our new Martian nanobot overloards. All hail Emperor *zip* *click * *zoot*
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
If we get to the technology level we can build self-replicating nano machines that can survive and function outside very specific laboratory conditions / external energy input. The world would have already been long radically transformed by nanotechnology. Thus it makes the grey goo scenario unlikely (since we'd have the technology level to defend against this problem) and importantly, it means we would have long had the technology ability to go to mars more traditional ways easily and get a colony started.
So not newsworthy at all, and get off my lawn.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
If they really were self-replicating they might compete with life already there, unless very firmly under human control.
That said it is a nice idea since small payload = small investment, but we will probably need some civilian teams compete in an X-prize for progressively more powerful airborne / hunting bots on our own planet. I don't think I would like what they come up with to become common Earth-side. They sound very annoying and dangerous.