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NASA Tests Hardware, Software On Armadillo Rocket
porcinist writes "On June 23 NASA successfully tested hardware and software on an Armadillo Rocket. With the end of NASA's Constellation program in sight, NASA is starting to focus on new, innovative exploration programs like Project-M. This project is meant to land a robotic humanoid on the moon in a thousand days. To meet this goal NASA teamed with Armadillo Aerospace and Draper Labs (the lab responsible for creating the original Apollo Guidance Computer) to integrate and flight test a real-time navigation system in only seven weeks. This might be the fastest thing NASA has done in 30 years. Maybe NASA is taking Obama's new vision to heart."
Sure, the humanoid form is great - for humans. At our current level of technology it's awkward at best for our robots.
The humanoid form is a solution to a set of problems that our ancestors needed to solve to survive. Our robots don't need to solve the same problems, so it might actually be better (read: less wasteful) to design non-humanoid robots.
That said, I'm all for the fem-bots.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
It's not exactly brain surgery.
It's not exactly solving the poincare conjecture.
As in "what were they smokin'?"