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Project M Could Send Every Scientist To the Moon, By Proxy
An anonymous reader writes with this interesting bit of speculation: "NASA can put humanoids on the Moon in just 1000 days. They would be controlled by scientists on Earth using motion capture suits, giving them the feeling of being on the lunar surface. If they can achieve this for real, the results for science research of our satellite could be amazing."
You can't get instant feedback from the moon. There's a slight delay. So, it doesn't really feel like you are holding something in your hands unless you're standing still. It mostly feels like you're drunk when you operate a waldo with a delay. People are going to have to get trained to deal with that.
Bruce Perens.
What's the fun in that?
QamuIs Heg qaq law' lorvIs yInqaq puS
Wow.. the Internet really is an echo chamber isn't it?
This nonsense video has been floating around for months now. There's no confirmation from NASA.. no-one even knows who made it.
If you RTFA you'll see the last paragraph reads:
Whoever did this at NASA should put together an actual budget as soon as possible. And while you are at it, make it possible for regular people to use one, maybe at the Johnson Space Center or some selected museums through the world. That will definitely inspire people.
Send an email to Jesus Diaz, the author of this post, at jesus@gizmodo.com.
Hey Jesus Diaz, were you sick the day of journalism school when they taught chasing up sources? Maybe if you called JSC and heard the exasperated public relations officer explain, again, that no there is no Project M but thanks for your call, you could save yourself some embarrassment.
How we know is more important than what we know.
363104km = moon's orbital perigee.
405696km = moon's apogee.
2*363104 km/c = 2.42236914 seconds of round-trip signal delay.
2*405696 km/c = 2.70651238 s
So maybe we don't need round-trip time, but just one-way streaming time. Divide by two.
Call me when they are 3m tall, blue, w/tail.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Rovers have already been effective on Mars. Use them on the moon first.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
I probably would have gone with "You can't take and hold ground with bots - to stake a claim requires Men on the ground." But that works.
The bot thing is a distraction. If we don't get our genome off this mudball we're as doomed as the dinosaurs. Sooner or later some unpleasantness will occur.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
In addition to sending human-controlled robots to the moon, lets send along refineries and factories to produce solar panels. Then we can build thousands of square kilometers of the stuff on the moon from local materials at a very low cost and beam the energy back to Earth. Covering roughly 1% of the moon's surface area with present-day solar tech would yield on the order of 20TW, worth tens of trillions at today's energy rates and capable of meeting the world's energy needs.
I'm not sure how good this paper is, but it has some more details on the basic idea: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i28_kumar.html Certainly a more detailed study would be needed before really doing this to ensure there weren't any show-stopping problems (such as the one DOE/NASA undertook on the solar satellite idea, where they concluded it was not economically worthwhile with the lifting costs http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/doe.htm).
This path would be even better for science too, as it would create a permanent human presence on the moon instead of probably being a one-off mission. There would also be interest in creating a self-sufficient lunar economy so that Earth wouldn't have to keep supplying it. A robotic lunar colony capable of launching solar satellites and other craft would be of great value to both science and the economy.
We can do this with today's technology, as it's essentially a different approach to the old solar satellite idea.
Science?! Screw science! You mean sports!
Become Lunar Boxing Heavy Weight Champion by punching an opponent into orbit!
Epic!
If "being" on the moon means controlling a humanoid avatar by motion-capture suit, and assuming 2 such avatars. Each scientist in the US (around 1.25 million) could get 25 minutes of "moon time" over a period of 30 years.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
That said, there's no mature technology for doing this kind of processing of regolith and, even when there is, it's unlikely to be something that could be tended by robots or weigh so little that it can be sent up on an existing booster.
Indeed, this is the main technical challenge for such a project. Is it possible with present-day technology at a reasonable weight or not?
The robot part can definitely be handled because it doesn't require AI, as they can be remotely controlled by human operators and any AI will merely simplify the process.
The weight issue seems more promising than the solar satellite idea, which requires millions of tons of material lifted into orbit to cover our energy needs. While there is still no guarantee that we can develop refineries and factories that can meet the needs of such a project at a reasonable overall cost and weight, it should be noted that the project does not need to be lifted in large indivisible pieces. Unlike manned space flight which needs a heavy lifter booster to carry all the essential equipment up in one go, the factories can be lifted in many small pieces in many smaller flights and assembled on-site by the human-controlled robots. The biggest single piece may be an assembler robot.
Additionally, the returns on the investment could be staggering. Let's say for the sake of discussion that the US carried out the program at a cost of $1 trillion USD (NASA's 2010 budget for 53 years or 7 International Space Stations) and it delivered 5TW of power (covering roughly 0.25%-0.5% of the moon's surface area). At current electricity rates it would generate something like $400 billion USD a month, which would mean it would pay for itself in roughly three months. After three years of operation it would have generated enough revenue to pay off the US public debt (what other trillion dollar program can even consider doing this?). Afterwards there would be a trillion dollar surplus even with taxes reduced to 0%.
Of course realistically it would cause energy prices to plummet, but the overall benefits would be on the same order of magnitude. The above is merely meant to illustrate the enormity of impact a success would have.
Also, the above scenario is probably quite pessimistic, as $1 trillion is pretty insane for a space program (would a moon factory really cost seven times as much as the ISS to develop, build, and launch?) and after the concept was proven it would keep expanding beyond its initial capacity as long as it was economical to do so. Getting an accurate figure will require more in-depth research.
If such extreme returns are reasonably possible, then shouldn't we at least consider the idea very seriously? It's not like we need to start with the part where we lift the equipment to the moon: an in-depth study would iron out the details and if it still looks promising then an Earth-based demonstration of the technology would remove all doubt before we start pouring billions into launches.