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."

Comments

The speed of light is a bit of a problem

[Bruce Perens]

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.

Re:The speed of light is a bit of a problem

[colonelquesadilla]

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.

We train for that in grad school.

Obvious Hoax

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:Obvious Hoax

[QuantumG]

If you're a subscriber to Slashdot you see stories like this hit the front page a half hour or so before they go live. There's a link that says "Any serious problems with this story? Drop our on duty editor a line." and there's an email link with prefilled subjected line etc. I sent basically what I wrote here as an email nearly an hour ago.. they chose to ignore me. I've done this before and they've pulled stories.. so it seems some editors are interested in stopping nonsense and some are not. So yes, I do blame Slashdot for being part of the echo chamber. There's no reason to post shit that is obviously fake.

Re:Obvious Hoax

[derGoldstein]

I tend to hold Slashdot to a higher standard too, which is why I'm here rather than Digg/Reddit (where anything that draws clicks is welcome, and any discussion is, well, you know...). However, occasionally Slashdot will post bait stories (not necessarily "flaimbait", just "plain bait"), especially when it comes to anything regarding MS/Apple/YRO where the main purpose is to let people vent. In such cases, I don't really see it as a mistake, or "wrong", partly because anyone with high karma doesn't see ads, so at most it's "pandering", rather than something used to boost page views. In the case of this particular story, I imagine that the editor thought it would make a good discussion piece in its field, and the source (and even validity) was irrelevant because just the theory/concept will produce an interesting discussion (as users discuss the viability of such an undertaking).

I'd blame Gizmodo, if I visited the site directly, but I don't -- I let other filters point me there if they think there's anything interested posted. As for Slashdot, probably less so in this particular case. If they ignored the comment that you sent, then it changes the "judgment" somewhat, but it may still be arguable that the story was posted just for general interest, and the source/validity wasn't a factor. As you said, it's also (or primarily) up to individual editors, though I'd hope that they at least talk to one another and try to get minimal feedback prior to posting (I've no idea what their actual process is, of course).

Wikipedia + google calculator

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wikipedia + google calculator

[QuantumG]

Most of the delay on the Deep Space Network is a result of the 30 year old hardware that processes and transmit the signals.. the speed of light defines a minimum that is never practically met. Emory Stagmer talks about it in his interview on Spacevidcast.

Re:Wikipedia + google calculator

[Bruce Perens]

Add a varying amount between 0 and 1/2 the circumference of the earth, with the 1/2 being best-case. I don't know what the velocity factor of optical fiber is. Yes, there's also a signal-processing delay, but let's not assume we're using 30-year-old equipment so it should not add very much.

Thanks Bruce

[symbolset]

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.

Re:Thanks Bruce

[grumbel]

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.

If we can't get our act together and manage to survive on earth, our chances to survive anywhere else are pretty much zero.

Let's do something even more useful

[urusan]

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.

Re:Let's do something even more useful

[Animats]

In addition to sending human-controlled robots to the moon, lets send along refineries and factories to produce solar panels.

Yeah, right. Back around 1985, I went to a conference where some AI professors were mouthing off about putting self-replicating factories on the Moon within 20 years. I asked "How soon can you do it in Arizona?" They didn't like that.

Science?

[piemcfly]

Science?! Screw science! You mean sports!

Become Lunar Boxing Heavy Weight Champion by punching an opponent into orbit!

Epic!

Re:Why something so complex?

[TapeCutter]

"Plus, the moon is slightly less likely to have the dust devils that have been graciously dusting off the panels."

It's also less likely to have dust suspended in a vacum above the ground, just design the moon rover so it doesn't kick sand in it's own face. Maybe something high tech like mud gaurds over the wheels