Return to the Moon

No, I mean robots that will do the dishes, the laundry, and clean up a teenager's room. The New Frontier.

 

Some guy actually made a full out sex robot that looks like a woman, even snores at night. I need to find that article and make a thread on it, it deserves it

 

Rosie, from the Jetsons. That should do the trick.

 

even if it's messy some original thought about bots would be very useful to designers . it's really a big question of purpose toward Space . if you think YOU are going to space - and you feel your purpose - then you will assume the robot's function as less than You . this does not help the visionary work of Space robot design . it's the importance of visionary dreamers to advance a foundational philosophy of reason : by such reasoning we know how to proceed from where we are toward what is naturally possible . space-travelling robots are more possible than space-crazy YOU .

i like to play with Artificial Intelligence , and i have a toy that exhibits it well enough to keep my interest . So i day-dream a bit about smart and relational robots . At the root of it , i suppose that a robot brain will be based on random initiative and instructed by environment .

 

We have serious issues here at home: brutal attacks on fish and marine mammals, overpopulation, rich getting richer, war, piracy, AIDS, make your own list. I am not sympathetic to space programs while these other problems are still in our face.
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The man that made that robot deserves a sex robot, and not a wonderful woman to care about him and love him.

 

How is that related? It has already been established that space travel has for many years been a relatively trivial percentage of the US budget.

It's a dead issue under the current administration anyway. Obama has made himself clear.

 

Democrats in 1960: We're going to the moon by the end of the decade, a massive dream of humanity for ages.

Democrats 2008: we're a bunch of pussies afraid of the big bad republicans and you know what we're gonna do! We're building trains, damn right, a high speed line in Florida that almost no one will probably use.

Trains are so god damn inspiring.

And the money spend on that high speed line in Florida that no one will use could've in fact paid for the next 3 out of the 10 years of extra funding needed to go to the moon.

 

There's a billion better things we could put that money into than putting some guy on the moon again, having him say "HAI U GAIUZ" on camera and then come home. If some kind of fantastic benefits don't come from this landing I'll be pissed.

 

We need all the trains we can get before the cost of personal transportation rises too much. How the world does things right now is very inefficient, especially transportation.

 

I just want to stay on the earth.

 

The reality is that no one wants to admit is trains are not practical in America due to the distances involved without massive investment in transportation everywhere. People don't use trains because American cities aren't designed for them, the distances in cities alone are vast and without a supporting bus/light rail system nobody wants to ride any reasonable distance on a train to get there and go "damn, I need a fucking car". Trains are only viable up to a certain distances too before almost no one is going to pick them over a plane trip that cost just barely more and does the distance in 1/8 of the time.

People talk about Europe and high speed trains but the difference is one, and a very large one, America didn't have to rebuild its entire railroad network after WW2, and two goes into the above, the layout of America, distances involved, and general infrastructure of public transport means cars will always rule any moderate distance, and planes the rest.

You missed the part where Obama announced we're not going to the moon and all the things that came from the original Apollo program, including the microchip that helped greatly advanced computer technology we're all using right now.

 

I drive a 21 year old four cylinder compact (Toyota Tercel) which gives quite reasonable mileage, provided I do some simple things like keep the tires inflated and change the oil. In exchange for the 'labour' or work of doing the driving, it gets me where I'm going cheaper than bus or plane. We don't have passenger trains in Alberta. The last train I took (Regina to Banff in 1984) was slower than a bus and cost about the same.
Unlike a bus, plane or train, I can steer my car to my destination, at a time convenient to me.
Planes tend to be more convenient when I'm going 500 miles or more one way, and this might happen once a year.
I doubt my Toyota will ever get me to the moon, but then I don't have any business there. Nor do I have any business or pleasure tearing up the back country with an ATV or four wheel drive truck.

 

This seems a reasonable treatment as far as it goes, but your conclusions do not account for creation. At one time slime molds ruled the pace of transportation. Another thing, practical is what you practice at.

 

So, scrap the moon, apparently we're going to Mars instead?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...space-mission-to-send-astronauts-to-Mars.html

That was a quick turn of events.

 

Goddamn! I thought I was the only one who didn't give a shit!

 

I don't think Obama knows what the fuck he wants to do here. He doesn't seem to know or care much about science or technology.

The Orion orbital ferry module and both of the booster rockets being developed for the lunar program would be ideal for future Mars missions. Our return to the moon was to be a stepping stone to Mars. Obama didn't have time to read that memo, assuming that there is someone on his staff who understands the technological overview.

 

I think this maneuvering is political and has not a lot to do with good purpose.
NASA is a special interest that is not actively supported by a large percentage of the population, the sentiment is most often there are more pressing problems.
If you want to appear to be addressing fiscal priorities, then space program is an easy mark for superfluity. At the same time, we do not want to appear in retrospect, to be short sighted. It is a search for political will and advantage.

 

I just heard Obama speak at Kennedy Space Center and I feel much better about the whole plan for NASA's future. I wish we had known more of these details earlier. Perhaps then Neil Armstrong wouldn't have felt the need to write the open letter sent two days ago.

First, the new Obama plan keeps the Orion space capsule alive, for use with the International Space Station in the near future and for later use carrying astronauts into orbit to board the vehicle that will take them to Mars or an asteroid. Of all the hardware that NASA has recently invested time and money into, Orion is the one gold nugget.

Second, Obama's plan increases funding for serious science-based research on the International Space Station, hopefully giving us more useful results to justify the huge amount of money that we have already spent on the ISS.

Third, his plan includes a replacement for the seriously flawed Hubble Space Telescope, one of the best ideas ever devised for learning about the universe from a distance. Hubble has the huge advantage of not having to look at everything through the distortion of our atmosphere, but its mirror was not ground properly, and is permanently and irreparably out of focus.

Fourth, it adds an asteroid mission to the Mars program. Asteroids often get overlooked in popular science because they are not visually impressive, but studying them has great scientific value. Going there is a smart move.

Obama is de-emphasizing the moon as a destination because we have already been there, and NASA has not given us a list of benefits from a return to the moon that justifies the cost of doing so.

The other big change is that private contractors will soon launch manned missions, instead of just building the hardware under contract and delivering it to NASA. If NASA is given sufficient oversight and quality control authority, this may not be as big of a change as I once thought. If existing launch facilities in Florida are used (not clarified in the speech), the program may look quite similar to what we are used to seeing, from a public perspective.

As much as I dislike the idea of relying on Russia during the upcoming transition period, I think it better than extending the life of the Space Shuttle program, which was a flawed concept from day one. The sooner we retire that fleet, the better. I just hope nobody else gets hurt before that program ends.

 

My astronomy text tells me that "... most asteroids orbit the Sun at distances between 2 and 3.5 AU. This region of our solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is called the asteroid belt." Mars's mean distance from the Sun is 1.52 AU.
(Kaufmann, William, Universe, 3rd edition, W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, pages 326-327)

 

You're right. Brain fart.

I suppose the asteroid mission would be easier due to its near-total lack of gravity.