Japan Plans Moon Base Built By Robots For Robots

An anonymous reader writes "The Japanese space agency, JAXA, has plans to build a base on the Moon by 2020. Not for humans, but for robots — and built by robots, too. A panel authorized by Japan's prime minister has drawn up preliminary plans for how humanoid and rover robots will begin surveying the moon by 2015, and then begin construction of a base near the south pole of the moon. The robots and the base will run on solar power, with total costs about $2.2 billion USD, according to the panel chaired by Waseda University President Katsuhiko Shirai. 'As currently envisioned, the robots that will land on the lunar surface in 2015 will be 660-pound behemoths equipped with rolling tank-like treads, solar panels, seismographs, high-def cameras, and a smattering of scientific instruments. They'll also have human-like arms for collecting rock samples that will be returned to Earth via rocket.'"

Comments

optimistic Japanese

[Dyinobal]

Ya I'm not so optimistic about the trust worthiness of robots. This sounds to me like they are practically giving them the perfect rebel base, for when the robot rebellion comes.

The start of the revolution...

[Geraden]

That's all good, until they start to hurl moon rocks at us, via a robot-built rail gun.

Re:The start of the revolution...

[Max Romantschuk]

The grandparent was referring to "The moon is a harsh mistress" by Robert Heinlein. Worth a read, has held up very well despite it's age IMHO.

Re:The start of the revolution...

[durrr]

I'm starting to grow a bit tired of repeating this, but He3 is not the ultimate fusion fuel. It's only because it's an exotic off world resource that it gets all the hype.
The benefits of He3 is that it's a aneutronic fuel, but it is definitely not the only such fuel, and considerin the shipping cost from the moon it is quite likely that He3 will have a hard time competing with other aneutronic fuels.
Also, The temperature requried for He3 fusion is higher than for other fuels, so to actually get anything out of He3 fusion we're probably going to wait until second generation commercial fusion reactors pop up, the first ones that will feed our grid and establish the standards for fusion energy are unlikely to be He3 fusion reactors. Probably, we won't bother to ever use He3 fusion on earth, possibly we won't even bother to use it on the moon either.

What about the sailors?

[0100010001010011]

Should they bite your shiny metal ass?

Just $2.2 Billion?

[timeOday]

Funding to the Space Shuttle has been around $5 billion per year for most of the last 30 years or so, and just keeping the program on operational life support was quoted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program">$2.5 billion per year in early 2009.

So if they deliver that entire program whose lifetime costs are only 2.2 Billion, I would be super impressed. In fact I would be impressed if we did it ourselves for 5 times that amount.

Re:Just $2.2 Billion?

[sqrt(2)]

I would imagine that the prices drop dramatically once you don't have to worry about sending humans up, keeping them alive, and returning them safely.

Re:Just $2.2 Billion?

[khallow]

I would imagine that the prices drop dramatically once you don't have to worry about sending humans up, keeping them alive, and returning them safely.

The price drop occurs when you limit the scope of your mission to what two robots can do. Yes, a small, relatively simple robotic mission is cheaper than a complex manned mission, but it also does less. I will say that due to the small communication delay with Earth, the argument for a manned presence is far less compelling than it'll be for anything outside of the Earth-Moon system. You really can run complex operations mostly from Earth via teleoperations. That's not an option that works well on Mars, for example.

Re:Just $2.2 Billion?

[sznupi]

What they currently have can put close to 20 ton payload into LEO; that should be comfortably sufficient for robotic "base", in few shots.

(and it's in the league of SpaceX anyway; especially if Japan modifies (only) their heaviest launcher even more - it is already a modification of one which could put half the above payload into LEO)

Re:Just $2.2 Billion?

[Dragoniz3r]

For a better comparison, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers:
"The total cost of building, launching, landing and operating the rovers on the surface for the initial 90-Martian-day (sol) primary mission was US$820 million." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover
The moon is a lot closer than Mars, so it doesn't seem entirely infeasible that they could do things significantly cheaper.

Re:Just $2.2 Billion?

[Gorobei]

On running the math a bit more: getting 1kg of payload mass to the moon with a soft landing is more like 1/1000 the cost of the round trip.

So, $2B for an automated moon-base is pretty reasonable.

Yes, I am a rocket scientist.

Re:Just $2.2 Billion?

[fizzup]

Yeah, you get less. But, man-oh-man, this seems like very high value. For comparison, here are some expenditures from groups that "can't afford" to go to the moon:

• Canada will spend half that amount on a meeting of 20 world leaders next month.
• South Africa will spend that much and half again on a soccer tournament.
• ThyssenKrupp will spend four times that amount on a steel mill.

It's such a small amount of money, I can't even believe it's true.

Re:Just $2.2 Billion?

[Like2Byte]

OK, here's a question for you then. I understand the moon's surface is made up of a bunch of tiny particulate - "dust" is you will. This dust, as I understand, got into everything during the Apollo Moon Missions. Now, for arguments sake, let's say Japan is able to install a moon base operated wholly (locally) by robots.

What kinds of effects would the dust have upon the rails, pathways, gears and whatever other machinery is necessary to operate? I imagine that the gust would wear down the machinery and the robots might not have the ability to recognize wear and tear in such an environment - both on themselves and the machinery.

Re:Just $2.2 Billion?

[Gorobei]

Hey, I just do rockets. I can figure the cheapest way to get mass X to position Y with velocity Z.

Dust? Ask the guys who build targets (I think they are called civil engineers or something)

and why, exactly?

[Johann Lau]

Why would you want the US to "take the Moon"?

Fuck Empire. Everywhere, always. Don't take that bullshit to space, kthx.

Re:and why, exactly?

[gzipped_tar]

Your UID sounds un-American. All your bases will be belong to US.

Re:and why, exactly?

[gzipped_tar]

I guess I'm from the 1st category "people who own America" according to your hierarchy. I'm Chinese.

Look to see human exploration fans squirm...

[bradbury]

All I can say is "Its about time." The human body is not designed to operate in space, indeed almost all biological systems on Earth that reside under nice "shields" including the magnetic field, the atmosphere, the ozone layer or even the oceans and they were not designed (evolved) to withstand the hazards of space. Ignoring minor topics like micrometeorites and the lack of atmosphere one has the ongoing problem of radiation exposure. Humans for example have 150-200 genes in the genome (~1%) whose purpose is to repair DNA damage. It does not do so reliably (so radiation causes gradual genome decay). And although one may develop "shields" this makes activities by humans in space inherently more expensive than using the right "organism" [1]. Anyone aware of robotics research knows that the Japanese are pushing this forward at a very rapid pace. Presumably much faster than one can push forward human "evolution" [2].

Yes humans can engineer suits, habitats, shields, rovers, etc. which would allow humans to operate in such alien environments. But *why* do this? One has to remember that the "moon rocks" were brought back to Earth for analysis. We have to develop the remote robotics operations capabilities for exploration anyway [3]. Lets do it for the moon first.

If people want to go places to say "I have been there", then fine let them pay for it (as private citizens or organizations) -- just don't expect all the rest of us to pay for your expensive vacation. The robotic development of the moon could serve as a prelude for human colonies there (to preserve humanity from terrestrial impacts) or taking vacations there. The moon is close enough that round trip radio can be used to control or reprogram robots in the event of complex/unforseen situations (remember we reprogrammed the Galileo mission when it proved necessary). The "nightmare" scenario of robots evolving into autonomous entities (a new robotic species) only arises when one is dealing with situations where remote control and/or reprogramming are not possible and one has designed the robots both self-reproduction and intelligence enhancement capabilities -- and I think we are still quite some distance from those achievements.

1. References to using a hammer as a screwdriver apply when using humans in space. Astronauts require additional tools and training to work in space. Instead design the systems to be easily maintained and repaired by robots in space.
2. Ideally if one wanted humans to live in space one would use genetic engineering to produce humans which were radiation tolerant. This not only has benefits from a space exploration standpoint -- such humans would likely have reduced cancer rates as well. But such developments are at least a generation away.
3. I have yet to see a single proposal for a single human "submarine" or a human colony to explore the oceans of Europa to search for life or provide a humanity "safe room".

Re:All Your Base Are Belong To Us

[TheRaven64]

Note, however, that this project is not going to be under the control of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture.

Re:Yay and nay

[TheRaven64]

No, it isn't pointless, not for teleoperation - and Moon is just close enough to at least consider it with skilled human operators.

And the longer they're up there for, the cheaper this becomes, in comparison to humans. Even ignoring the costs of getting food and oxygen there and maintaining life support systems, humans need to be brought back periodically. You need to rotate the crew, and sending a couple of people to the moon and back, even once per year, quickly gets expensive. With robots up there, you can put different experts in the control center every week for a comparatively tiny cost.

Ohhhhhhhhh

[dreemernj]

We're whalers on the Moon, we carry a harpoon. But there ain't no whales so we tell tall tales and sing our whaling tune.

Not 660 lbs, 300kg.

[KeithIrwin]

See, this is one of those places where we should discuss mass, not weight. Because it's not clear whether we're talking about robots which would weigh 660 pounds on earth or 660 pounds on the moon (which would be about 3960 pounds on Earth, quite a difference). The C-Net article (on which the PopSci article is based) took the information from a blog post from a Japanese Blog called Node. In that blog post, it says 300kg. The author of the C-Net article (Tim Hornyak) did the sloppy thing and just converted it to pounds without giving context. If you really want it in imperial units, the correct unit of mass is slugs. So the robots can be correctly described as being 300 kg, 20.56 slugs, or 660 pounds on Earth at sea-level.

Re:Obligatory

[racasper]

Remember they are Japanese - these robots will probably look like adolescent schoolgirls.