Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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!