I was going to make the same complaint about the dynamic typing bit they were criticizing. I personally loved that feature on ICQ and would like to know when the hell every other chat client is going to wise up and reinstate it.
Not really, unless it has independently tracking antenna dishes for every drone/probe/rover/what have you. The more antennae you put on a satellite, the more independent control motors you have to use to operate them. This impacts the controllability of the satellite attitude in a very adverse manner. Every time you want to repoint a dish to track whatever it's particular target is, this induces a moment on the spacecraft. This moment has to be damped by the reaction wheels or CMG's on board and, all of this requires more power to power the satellite itself. The further you complicate the orbiter, the sooner you will reach a point of diminishing returns in your design where you will need so much power to power the orbiter that it will have little power to beam to its target. Add on top of that the fact that continuous drive motors are very expensive (and sometimes hard to find depending on the amount of torque you need them to drive) and you start having a very pricey, very large, very complicated spacecraft. That's not necessarily easy to put into orbit around another planet. The Global Surveyor and Recon Orbiter discussed above have the advantage that their instruments do not, necessarily, need to gimbal on their own to track targets. In fact, I think most of their instruments are fixed on the spacecraft bus. I think the spacecraft itself is pointed in order to target for those particular spacecraft. This is much simpler than a spacecraft that has multiple antennae each tracking a different target. You also have to consider overlapping fields of view of the antennae, controlling the thermal input and output of each antennae so you don't melt the TWTA's inside, and you are going to have a very tough time designing this spacecraft. That's not to say it is impossible, but I really think that trying to develop such a mission, at this time, would would be far riskier than the potential payoff...
That seems like a very complicated and risky solution to a simpler problem. We have yet to proof of concept solar collectors and microwave energy transfer from orbit combination technologies here on Earth. Trying to do that for a semi-autonomous, moving rover on a distant planet would be....um...tricky and risky. If they don't like solar panels (which, admittedly, do have their limitations) I would think their first alternative power source of consideration would be an RTG. That would give them a nice long lived, steady, consistent power supply without all the tracking, communications, extra satellite hardware that an on orbit solution would provide. However, as long as you are inside the asteroid belt, the kJ/m^2 of sunlight is decent enough that solar panels make sense from a cost and simplicity point of view. Anyways, the first rule of spacecraft engineering is to keep things as simple as possible. If you start trying exotic methods of doing something just because they seem cool, it tends to complicate your entire design uncontrollably. It's better to do a full advantage/disadvantage trade study of various options and see which one, objectively, meets mission requirements the best. I would be highly suspect if an on-orbit solar collection system turned out to be that answer....
Yeah, I suppose so. I was kinda thinking along the lines of T-mobile marketing phones that compete openly with Google phones. But since they don't develop those phones themselves, that's really just the effects of late afternoon - coffee hitting my brain. Ah well...
It only flatlined because nobody tried to write speech recognition software in perl*.
*Disclaimer: Poster is not responsible for attempts resulting in unintended AI development and/or end of the world scenarios brought on by such an irresponsible endeavor.
I am not familiar with OHA at all, but doesn't it seem like someone who once worked as the CEO of two of Google's competitors might just be biased a little bit? I guess what I am asking is why should I take Grandy to be anything other than an astroturfing shill?
Huh, it's kind of odd that she attributes government inefficiency to the public being concerned about privacy. Correct me if I am wrong, but they way I figure it, government inefficiency tends to stem from excessive bloat. When federal executive agencies are employing hundreds of people to push paper, because they have not updated their computing methods yet, and they have not updated their computing methods yet, because half of their employees don't want familiar systems to change, then that is not an issue with privacy, that's an issue with stupid, spineless management. For instance, I can look at DMV in California and still feel my blood pressure rising at the thought of doing business with them. Here they are, an agency that primarily deals with signing forms and filling out said forms, and yet when you enter the building, the first thing you are supposed to do is stand in a long line and wait for one or two people to hand you the forms you need to fill out by hand. Why doesn't an agency like DMV institute some dumb terminals that allow people to sit down, fill out, and print their filled forms for signing? This would expedite the process rather quickly and might even ease up the crowded state of most DMV offices. Yet, simple measures like this give way to having 20 or so employees on hand, all telling each and every customer precisely what information has to go on what line. It's terribly aggravating. I would wager that there are other government agencies that are similarly outdated and convoluted.
I guess what I am really getting at is that government inefficiency is not, in my opinion, due to privacy concerns. It seems more likely that government inefficiency stems from over complicating many simple things. Also, if I recall correctly, the founding fathers designed inefficiency into the government for a reason. They wanted to make it hard for any particular branch or agency to get anything done quickly and instantly to prevent abuses of power and folks taking poor causes too far. Hell, if you want efficiency in government, then you design a monarch system, not a democratic republic. So, frankly, I am not so sure that having an inefficient government is a terribly bad thing. It seems like one of our protections against a government expediting unpopular policy (like, say, ACTA). I get the feeling that having to wait a bit longer for your preferred policy of choice to be implemented is a decent price to pay to ensure that the next piece of policy, implemented by the guy you don't agree with, doesn't steamroll its way over your rights as a citizen...
California's AGs, both Democrat and Republican, have been doing it for as long as I can remember and I've heard of numerous other states' AGs that have done similar things.
As a Californian, let me just warn you that using any part of our political practices as a model for your state is a very efficient way to commit financial and common sense suicide.
it still has a long way to go before I will swap one in to replace a 7-button mouse + keyboard with a half dozen macroes.
Meh, I used to think like you. Then I swapped my 7-button mouse and keyboard macros for an Xbox 360 and a girlfriend. I consider my decision an upgrade.;)
If you don't know what Ctrl-Alt-F1 and Ctrl-Alt-Backspace are for, GTFO.
If you think a pretty web browser is more important than a properly secured one, GTFO.
If you don't know how to listen to music with any player other than iTunes, GTFO.
If you think the App store counts as a software repository, GTFO.
If you think you know how your computer actually works, GTFO.
If text that is not encompassed by a pretty bubble widget scares you, GTFO.
Most importantly:
If you think personal computers are no longer necessary, interesting, or are part of a dying industry, turn in your geek card at the door as you GTFO.
Unfortunately tongue-in-cheek methods of giving people shit tend to lose their context when put in raw text form on the internet. In general, far too many things get taken too seriously. I'm not worried about it.
Do you remember how, when you were young and in grammar school, and didn't have a lot of responsibility, every student seemed to be able to cope with school and even enjoyed it? Do you remember how, as you got older, and your peers got older, more responsibility was expected of you? Do you remember how, as this responsibility was expected, there were some kids in the class that couldn't handle it very well? Do you remember how some of those kids, even though they generally got good grades and got along with teacher at a younger age, started doing poorly in school as it got harder? Do you remember how there was always one or two of those kids that, instead of bucking up and working harder, threw temper tantrums every time something didn't go their way? Remember how, at first, that was intimidating to all of the other kids on the playground that were smaller than the underachievers, but, as time went on, the rest of the kids stopped taking the immature kids seriously? Remember how, if the immature kids became too much of a burden and bully, the other kids would sometimes gang up on the bully and put him in his place through the sheer force of numbers?
Do any of you remember any of that? I do. I remember feeling embarrassed for the immature, incompetent kids as they fussed and screamed and acted out because things weren't going the way they wanted, even though everyone else was moving along just fine. Most of those kids, that I knew, are now alcoholics or dead because they couldn't cope with a dynamic reality.
Do you think there is a lesson to be learned from those days back in school?
Sincerely,
A Terribly Embarrassed United States Citizen.
I once read somewhere that a person has to hear something repeated six times and it will stick. I wonder pundits like O'Reilly and Cooper and such have picked up on this trick. If you ever watch their shows, they often repeat themselves exactly (sometimes three or four times within a couple minutes). That said, it would be interesting to determine if these particular soundbites are often repeated, near verbatim, by each pundits followers when they, 'discuss,' politics. I don't mean to dabble in tinfoil hattery here, but it would certainly be something interesting to investigate....
Thank you for this. Every time I click on an Inhabitat article I facepalm myself because there is next to no interesting information anywhere in the entire damned, 'article.' I really wish that people would submit articles with some actual technical information rather than a few sentences on some blog claiming how cool something is. It's getting frustrating.
Interesting, I'm young and make quite a bit of money actually. I am employed with a steady, salaried job. I am not a student. However, if I make the decision to not spend my money on sleeping in a hotel every night that I go on a vacation, then I can save that money and invest it in something that, to me, has more value, like, say, one of my close friends education, or a college fund for my nieces.
I realize having a bigger paycheck makes it easier to spend money. That doesn't mean you have to spend more money when you start getting a bigger paycheck though. Self-imposed moderation can open a lot of opportunities in life, in my experience.
Then again, I don't have particularly high standards for a sleeping space because I travel light, spend my vacations exploring, and keep things simple.
(And just for the record, in response to some other comments, I know couchsurfing isn't for everyone [most notably folks with families], but if you want to have an adventure and can make it work, I would still suggest it highly)
I suppose that makes sense if they can actually convince a commercial investor to seed them money for the 2 legged design. I know when I did a design presentation on a small satellite orbital telescope project I worked on in college, the industry board that was supposed to be funding the project ripped my design due to the use of a single, deployable hinge for my solar panel because that one hinge added far too much complexity (according to them) in the control systems architecture. Thus, it was more likely to fail and they didn't want to invest in the project.
Of course, if you are getting your funding from ventures that know nothing about spacecraft design, they wouldn't be capable of making such criticisms so you could probably sucker them into it. But then, if your design fails because you created a very complex system to do a very simple task, and your investors money gets sunk into the surface of a planet, at best you will have a harder time generating investment revenue for your next project, and at worst your ass will get sued.;)
Well I don't know about any taxes in particular, but I do know that private space industry development will help move along COTS component R&D which will certainly benefit NASA, NOAA, and most civilian customers in terms of technology developments and in-house R&D money saved. I can't pretend to have the economic expertise to even start figuring whether this will lead to the subsidies paying for themselves or not, but it is certainly a start.
Hotels, in general, are for suckers in my opinion. If you're planning a trip, go to www.couchsurfing.org, make yourself a profile, meet some cool people while you travel, stay in the area for relatively cheap and/or free, and chances are, your host will be able to provide internet that you don't have to pay for. Of course, for business trips and the like, that kind of thing may not work out. However, I've often found that corporate overlords dictate hotel choices when flying for business anyways so its not like you get to make the choice based on internet or any other thing that you value.
Also, hostels are awesome. We should open some more of those in the States.
Meh, I realize that is what Japan intends to do with this mission, but when million dollar projects are involved (or, at best, hundreds of thousands of dollar projects) I think publicity should come as a secondary benefit to doing something productive. Hell, even the initial Apollo missions, while they involved all sorts of fun publicity, returned various samples, tested new technologies, and found out if, indeed, the moon was made of cheese as we suspected. That's not to say that missions that bring about publicity and inspiration don't have their place. It just seems to me that they should at least attempt to return something else as well, even if that something else isn't particularly spectacular. As the OP said, having the robot pick up a rock and drop it into the return module would be a pretty trivial, but valuable, task to partake in while on this mission.
You must spend your time observing different quads and hummers than I do. I grew up in the country where four-wheeling and quading were one of very few past times. I have seen hummers and jeeps alike scramble, literally, over boulder ridden inclines. I have watched quads with paddle tires tear through deep sand efficiently. In that same sand, I have watched bipedal humans get off their broken down quads and expend a ridiculous amount of energy having to practically swim their way out of sand that they sink knee deep into. I have seen basic 4 x 4 trucks drive up loose dirt inclines that I, myself, slide down on my ass trying to get up.
I am not saying that either hummers or quads are the end all, be all of wheeled all terrain vehicles. I am just saying they demonstrate that wheels can be effective on some forms of rough terrain. Similarly, legs can be effective on some forms of rough terrain. Your Pinzgauer can be effective on many forms of rough terrain and so on. The original point that I was making was that for any space design mission (moon invasions included) you need to design your system to work particularly well in whatever environment it will be operating in. This requires various trade offs and design analysis. If your design process can show, definitively, that four, six, or eight legs will be the best, cheapest, most successful design, then you should use that. If your analysis shows that two legs would be best, use that. If your design shows that having a massive suspension and monster tires on it is the best design (like a hummer), use that. The point is not whether a hummer or quad can drive where you hike, the point is that your vehicle should use whatever locomotive system best suits it. You may be able to hike up the side of the Grand Canyon whereas a quad cannot. However, I guarantee you that I can ride my quad faster across large distances in deep, loose sand thank you can hike. So it isn't a matter of whether or not those two vehicles, or any vehicle, can do everything. In a given space exploration mission, the necessity to maneuver every possible terrain configuration is very likely unnecessary. However, if your mission calls for maneuvering through terrain that is better explored via wheels, then you should use wheels. If it calls for legs, use legs. If it calls for treads, use treads.
Mind you, I don't intend to disagree with you or pick a fight or anything. I am just explaining that legs require very complex designs with multiple points of failure (both in control software and hardware). If you can navigate the same terrain with some big tires and a heavy suspension, and you don't particularly care about climbing up narrow trails on the Grand Canyon on the moon, then maybe you should look at that design option as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I was going to make the same complaint about the dynamic typing bit they were criticizing. I personally loved that feature on ICQ and would like to know when the hell every other chat client is going to wise up and reinstate it.
Not really, unless it has independently tracking antenna dishes for every drone/probe/rover/what have you. The more antennae you put on a satellite, the more independent control motors you have to use to operate them. This impacts the controllability of the satellite attitude in a very adverse manner. Every time you want to repoint a dish to track whatever it's particular target is, this induces a moment on the spacecraft. This moment has to be damped by the reaction wheels or CMG's on board and, all of this requires more power to power the satellite itself. The further you complicate the orbiter, the sooner you will reach a point of diminishing returns in your design where you will need so much power to power the orbiter that it will have little power to beam to its target. Add on top of that the fact that continuous drive motors are very expensive (and sometimes hard to find depending on the amount of torque you need them to drive) and you start having a very pricey, very large, very complicated spacecraft. That's not necessarily easy to put into orbit around another planet. The Global Surveyor and Recon Orbiter discussed above have the advantage that their instruments do not, necessarily, need to gimbal on their own to track targets. In fact, I think most of their instruments are fixed on the spacecraft bus. I think the spacecraft itself is pointed in order to target for those particular spacecraft. This is much simpler than a spacecraft that has multiple antennae each tracking a different target. You also have to consider overlapping fields of view of the antennae, controlling the thermal input and output of each antennae so you don't melt the TWTA's inside, and you are going to have a very tough time designing this spacecraft. That's not to say it is impossible, but I really think that trying to develop such a mission, at this time, would would be far riskier than the potential payoff...
That seems like a very complicated and risky solution to a simpler problem. We have yet to proof of concept solar collectors and microwave energy transfer from orbit combination technologies here on Earth. Trying to do that for a semi-autonomous, moving rover on a distant planet would be....um...tricky and risky. If they don't like solar panels (which, admittedly, do have their limitations) I would think their first alternative power source of consideration would be an RTG. That would give them a nice long lived, steady, consistent power supply without all the tracking, communications, extra satellite hardware that an on orbit solution would provide. However, as long as you are inside the asteroid belt, the kJ/m^2 of sunlight is decent enough that solar panels make sense from a cost and simplicity point of view. Anyways, the first rule of spacecraft engineering is to keep things as simple as possible. If you start trying exotic methods of doing something just because they seem cool, it tends to complicate your entire design uncontrollably. It's better to do a full advantage/disadvantage trade study of various options and see which one, objectively, meets mission requirements the best. I would be highly suspect if an on-orbit solar collection system turned out to be that answer....
Can't help you there chap. As I said, I am not terribly familiar with the smartphone world at all...
Yeah, I suppose so. I was kinda thinking along the lines of T-mobile marketing phones that compete openly with Google phones. But since they don't develop those phones themselves, that's really just the effects of late afternoon - coffee hitting my brain. Ah well...
Still, the history at Apple rankles my nose.
It only flatlined because nobody tried to write speech recognition software in perl*.
*Disclaimer: Poster is not responsible for attempts resulting in unintended AI development and/or end of the world scenarios brought on by such an irresponsible endeavor.
I am not familiar with OHA at all, but doesn't it seem like someone who once worked as the CEO of two of Google's competitors might just be biased a little bit? I guess what I am asking is why should I take Grandy to be anything other than an astroturfing shill?
Huh, it's kind of odd that she attributes government inefficiency to the public being concerned about privacy. Correct me if I am wrong, but they way I figure it, government inefficiency tends to stem from excessive bloat. When federal executive agencies are employing hundreds of people to push paper, because they have not updated their computing methods yet, and they have not updated their computing methods yet, because half of their employees don't want familiar systems to change, then that is not an issue with privacy, that's an issue with stupid, spineless management. For instance, I can look at DMV in California and still feel my blood pressure rising at the thought of doing business with them. Here they are, an agency that primarily deals with signing forms and filling out said forms, and yet when you enter the building, the first thing you are supposed to do is stand in a long line and wait for one or two people to hand you the forms you need to fill out by hand. Why doesn't an agency like DMV institute some dumb terminals that allow people to sit down, fill out, and print their filled forms for signing? This would expedite the process rather quickly and might even ease up the crowded state of most DMV offices. Yet, simple measures like this give way to having 20 or so employees on hand, all telling each and every customer precisely what information has to go on what line. It's terribly aggravating. I would wager that there are other government agencies that are similarly outdated and convoluted.
I guess what I am really getting at is that government inefficiency is not, in my opinion, due to privacy concerns. It seems more likely that government inefficiency stems from over complicating many simple things. Also, if I recall correctly, the founding fathers designed inefficiency into the government for a reason. They wanted to make it hard for any particular branch or agency to get anything done quickly and instantly to prevent abuses of power and folks taking poor causes too far. Hell, if you want efficiency in government, then you design a monarch system, not a democratic republic. So, frankly, I am not so sure that having an inefficient government is a terribly bad thing. It seems like one of our protections against a government expediting unpopular policy (like, say, ACTA). I get the feeling that having to wait a bit longer for your preferred policy of choice to be implemented is a decent price to pay to ensure that the next piece of policy, implemented by the guy you don't agree with, doesn't steamroll its way over your rights as a citizen...
Anyways, those are just my thoughts.
California's AGs, both Democrat and Republican, have been doing it for as long as I can remember and I've heard of numerous other states' AGs that have done similar things.
As a Californian, let me just warn you that using any part of our political practices as a model for your state is a very efficient way to commit financial and common sense suicide.
I think if the Slashdot crowd really wanted technical examples, they'd ask questions instead of making statements. ;)
Ha! That's a good one. What are you going to ask of us next? That we actually RTFA? *snicker* ... You're a clever one....
Does it smell like panic? Your smell sensors might get confused...
it still has a long way to go before I will swap one in to replace a 7-button mouse + keyboard with a half dozen macroes.
Meh, I used to think like you. Then I swapped my 7-button mouse and keyboard macros for an Xbox 360 and a girlfriend. I consider my decision an upgrade. ;)
If you don't know what Ctrl-Alt-F1 and Ctrl-Alt-Backspace are for, GTFO.
;)
If you think a pretty web browser is more important than a properly secured one, GTFO.
If you don't know how to listen to music with any player other than iTunes, GTFO.
If you think the App store counts as a software repository, GTFO.
If you think you know how your computer actually works, GTFO.
If text that is not encompassed by a pretty bubble widget scares you, GTFO.
Most importantly:
If you think personal computers are no longer necessary, interesting, or are part of a dying industry, turn in your geek card at the door as you GTFO.
Unfortunately tongue-in-cheek methods of giving people shit tend to lose their context when put in raw text form on the internet. In general, far too many things get taken too seriously. I'm not worried about it.
Dear Leaders of My Country,
Do you remember how, when you were young and in grammar school, and didn't have a lot of responsibility, every student seemed to be able to cope with school and even enjoyed it? Do you remember how, as you got older, and your peers got older, more responsibility was expected of you? Do you remember how, as this responsibility was expected, there were some kids in the class that couldn't handle it very well? Do you remember how some of those kids, even though they generally got good grades and got along with teacher at a younger age, started doing poorly in school as it got harder? Do you remember how there was always one or two of those kids that, instead of bucking up and working harder, threw temper tantrums every time something didn't go their way? Remember how, at first, that was intimidating to all of the other kids on the playground that were smaller than the underachievers, but, as time went on, the rest of the kids stopped taking the immature kids seriously? Remember how, if the immature kids became too much of a burden and bully, the other kids would sometimes gang up on the bully and put him in his place through the sheer force of numbers?
Do any of you remember any of that? I do. I remember feeling embarrassed for the immature, incompetent kids as they fussed and screamed and acted out because things weren't going the way they wanted, even though everyone else was moving along just fine. Most of those kids, that I knew, are now alcoholics or dead because they couldn't cope with a dynamic reality.
Do you think there is a lesson to be learned from those days back in school?
Sincerely,
A Terribly Embarrassed United States Citizen.
I once read somewhere that a person has to hear something repeated six times and it will stick. I wonder pundits like O'Reilly and Cooper and such have picked up on this trick. If you ever watch their shows, they often repeat themselves exactly (sometimes three or four times within a couple minutes). That said, it would be interesting to determine if these particular soundbites are often repeated, near verbatim, by each pundits followers when they, 'discuss,' politics. I don't mean to dabble in tinfoil hattery here, but it would certainly be something interesting to investigate....
Thank you for this. Every time I click on an Inhabitat article I facepalm myself because there is next to no interesting information anywhere in the entire damned, 'article.' I really wish that people would submit articles with some actual technical information rather than a few sentences on some blog claiming how cool something is. It's getting frustrating.
Interesting, I'm young and make quite a bit of money actually. I am employed with a steady, salaried job. I am not a student. However, if I make the decision to not spend my money on sleeping in a hotel every night that I go on a vacation, then I can save that money and invest it in something that, to me, has more value, like, say, one of my close friends education, or a college fund for my nieces.
I realize having a bigger paycheck makes it easier to spend money. That doesn't mean you have to spend more money when you start getting a bigger paycheck though. Self-imposed moderation can open a lot of opportunities in life, in my experience.
Then again, I don't have particularly high standards for a sleeping space because I travel light, spend my vacations exploring, and keep things simple.
(And just for the record, in response to some other comments, I know couchsurfing isn't for everyone [most notably folks with families], but if you want to have an adventure and can make it work, I would still suggest it highly)
I suppose that makes sense if they can actually convince a commercial investor to seed them money for the 2 legged design. I know when I did a design presentation on a small satellite orbital telescope project I worked on in college, the industry board that was supposed to be funding the project ripped my design due to the use of a single, deployable hinge for my solar panel because that one hinge added far too much complexity (according to them) in the control systems architecture. Thus, it was more likely to fail and they didn't want to invest in the project.
;)
Of course, if you are getting your funding from ventures that know nothing about spacecraft design, they wouldn't be capable of making such criticisms so you could probably sucker them into it. But then, if your design fails because you created a very complex system to do a very simple task, and your investors money gets sunk into the surface of a planet, at best you will have a harder time generating investment revenue for your next project, and at worst your ass will get sued.
Oh yeah, cite a comedy show dedicated to hyperbolic absurdity to generate controversy and humor to make a point. Well done sir. Well done......
Translation: After Halo Reach, Halo won't be worth touching with a ten foot pole...
Well I don't know about any taxes in particular, but I do know that private space industry development will help move along COTS component R&D which will certainly benefit NASA, NOAA, and most civilian customers in terms of technology developments and in-house R&D money saved. I can't pretend to have the economic expertise to even start figuring whether this will lead to the subsidies paying for themselves or not, but it is certainly a start.
Hotels, in general, are for suckers in my opinion. If you're planning a trip, go to www.couchsurfing.org, make yourself a profile, meet some cool people while you travel, stay in the area for relatively cheap and/or free, and chances are, your host will be able to provide internet that you don't have to pay for. Of course, for business trips and the like, that kind of thing may not work out. However, I've often found that corporate overlords dictate hotel choices when flying for business anyways so its not like you get to make the choice based on internet or any other thing that you value.
Also, hostels are awesome. We should open some more of those in the States.
Meh, I realize that is what Japan intends to do with this mission, but when million dollar projects are involved (or, at best, hundreds of thousands of dollar projects) I think publicity should come as a secondary benefit to doing something productive. Hell, even the initial Apollo missions, while they involved all sorts of fun publicity, returned various samples, tested new technologies, and found out if, indeed, the moon was made of cheese as we suspected. That's not to say that missions that bring about publicity and inspiration don't have their place. It just seems to me that they should at least attempt to return something else as well, even if that something else isn't particularly spectacular. As the OP said, having the robot pick up a rock and drop it into the return module would be a pretty trivial, but valuable, task to partake in while on this mission.
You must spend your time observing different quads and hummers than I do. I grew up in the country where four-wheeling and quading were one of very few past times. I have seen hummers and jeeps alike scramble, literally, over boulder ridden inclines. I have watched quads with paddle tires tear through deep sand efficiently. In that same sand, I have watched bipedal humans get off their broken down quads and expend a ridiculous amount of energy having to practically swim their way out of sand that they sink knee deep into. I have seen basic 4 x 4 trucks drive up loose dirt inclines that I, myself, slide down on my ass trying to get up.
I am not saying that either hummers or quads are the end all, be all of wheeled all terrain vehicles. I am just saying they demonstrate that wheels can be effective on some forms of rough terrain. Similarly, legs can be effective on some forms of rough terrain. Your Pinzgauer can be effective on many forms of rough terrain and so on. The original point that I was making was that for any space design mission (moon invasions included) you need to design your system to work particularly well in whatever environment it will be operating in. This requires various trade offs and design analysis. If your design process can show, definitively, that four, six, or eight legs will be the best, cheapest, most successful design, then you should use that. If your analysis shows that two legs would be best, use that. If your design shows that having a massive suspension and monster tires on it is the best design (like a hummer), use that. The point is not whether a hummer or quad can drive where you hike, the point is that your vehicle should use whatever locomotive system best suits it. You may be able to hike up the side of the Grand Canyon whereas a quad cannot. However, I guarantee you that I can ride my quad faster across large distances in deep, loose sand thank you can hike. So it isn't a matter of whether or not those two vehicles, or any vehicle, can do everything. In a given space exploration mission, the necessity to maneuver every possible terrain configuration is very likely unnecessary. However, if your mission calls for maneuvering through terrain that is better explored via wheels, then you should use wheels. If it calls for legs, use legs. If it calls for treads, use treads.
Mind you, I don't intend to disagree with you or pick a fight or anything. I am just explaining that legs require very complex designs with multiple points of failure (both in control software and hardware). If you can navigate the same terrain with some big tires and a heavy suspension, and you don't particularly care about climbing up narrow trails on the Grand Canyon on the moon, then maybe you should look at that design option as well.