Slashdot Mirror
Robots Will Pave the Way To Mars
szotz (2505808) writes "There's a lot of skepticism swirling around NASA's plan to send humans to Mars in the 2030's, not to mention all those private missions. If we want to have sustainable (read: not bank-breaking) space exploration, the argument goes, there's no way we can do it the way we've been going to the moon and low-Earth orbit. We have to find a way to exploit space resources and cut down on the amount of stuff we need to launch from Earth. That's not a new idea. But this article in IEEE Spectrum suggests research on resource extraction and fabrication in low and zero gravity might actually be making progress...and that we could take these technologies quite far if we get our act together."
Isnt it pretty obvious to send an automated system to prepare a safe habitat anyway?
Oh, come now, surely the fact that ordering replacement laborers would take (given historical mission data, as a rough guide) at least 100 days, quite possibly two or three times that, and cost tens of millions of dollars a head (very optimistic figure) doesn't change the viability of using humans to do dangerous construction and heavy industrial jobs, does it?
I don't think I would enjoy the drive.
To the stars through asteroids... we need to bring them close enough from here to move manufacturing to the space. It will take quite a bit of investment, but once we get there we can go to mars and the rest of the solar system way far cheaper, and probably will bring more than enough benefits down here, both for the developed technologies to make it viable, and the things and materials that could be manufactured/acquired that way. It is just an investment, just the kind of things that make the banks live.
Of course, bringing asteroids large enough (i.e. of the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs) to be profitable close enough to earth could trouble a lot of people.
Personally I welcome all our robot overlords who buggered off to mars. Oh wait.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
We made it for months on submarines, underwater, day and night...months at a time. We made our own air and water from the ocean. So yes, find the resources along the way and Mars is not far at all. Robots? They will help, they are not the sole answer.
We've to build robots (space dock, new type of engine, new rad hardening, etc) first - these myths have long been debunked by Robert Zubrin. It's the never-ending process of getting ready that the space industry earns the Benjamins from, not the flight itself.
From the article:
Thatâ(TM)s the scenario laid out some 35 years ago by a team of academics and NASA engineers meeting at the University of Santa Clara, in California.
There were still AI people talking this up when I was at Stanford CS in the 1980s. They wanted to have self-replicating robots on the Moon or Mars by 2000. I asked "how soon could you have it working in Arizona?" Some people didn't like that.
It's embarrassing how bad robot manipulation is in unstructured situations. DARPA is trying to fix that by throwing money at the DARPA Humanoid Challenge. But so far, the machines in that are mostly teleoperated. (Ignore the edited videos for popular consumption; look at the split-screen videos that show three views of the machine and one of the operators, who often are using game controllers.)
I'd like to see a robotic system able to do simple parts changes on a car - air filter, fuel filter, spark plugs, etc., removing and replacing any covers and cables needed to do the job.
Research on those things never has been the problem. The problem is that it's going to be extraordinarily expensive to get and maintain all that resource extraction and exploitation infrastructure on stream. The only way to "save" money is to a) treat the costs as sunk costs and thus not apply them to missions flown, or b)... there really isn't a "b". (Unless you fly a sufficiently large number of missions frequently enough that said costs become a minor component of the overhead - which really isn't "sustainable" because it doesn't create any savings because of the high total costs of all those missions.)
one of the more depressing things is that no one is building a von neumann machine.
We have at least one of these already... the total human industrial complex on earth is of course capable of replicating itself.
The problem is that its dispersed, poorly organized, designed more for production efficiency and capacity then for space/mass efficiency... etc.
If you started out with one large warehouse and started putting at least one of every factory machine in existence... and then started combining them where they do similar things that can be tweaked so one machine does two roles... and then started miniaturizing them so you could squeeze the whole thing down. The point is that you should be able to fit a machine that can replicate itself and all human industry into a launchable package.
Consider that everything we have was made with these soft clumsy hands. Everything we have comes from those hands making tools, which made tools, which made tools, which make everything.
So we need to make something that can do that on mars or the moon or anywhere. Ideally not soft organic hands... those work on earth where our biosphere supports our life... but on other worlds you're going to need robots. And if you're building robots you might as well make the robots more specialized so you can skip a few steps.
We should have already done this... launch a package at the moon and mars... and then just have the robots dig in and start building an industrial infrastructure.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Very few of us can truly laugh at ourselves, even though the one's who can seem to have the very best sense of humor.
And your nigger jokes aren't funny.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The truth is, we have given very little thought to what traits would be selected for in a hostile, alien environment.
We haven't put a lot of thought into it because it doesn't require much. Any corporation's HR department is already well-equipped to draft requirements for that kind of position: 15-20 years of experience building and maintaining extraterrestrial habitats, and able to make solid decisions and perform under intense pressure (or an increasing lack thereof).