"Matt Wiser" wrote:


"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" wrote:

When those eyes can pick up a rock, break it open with an appropriate
tool, run requisite tests on it, run over the next hill to check
something at a speed somewhat faster than a drugged snail, notice
something about the rock based on its heft or other details not easily
gotten over a remote, time-lagged link, and the billion other things
that a human being can do without even pausing to wonder how they did
it, yes, you might have a point.

ISTR, about a year into their mission(s), Steven Squires (head honcho
of the rover program) being quoted as saying that a human geologist
could do what either rover had done in a year - in thirty days.


That's indeed correct, Derek. Steve has made that comment on more than one
occasion. What took Spirit and Opportunity years to do could be done by
Humans in weeks. And will be done. In time. where robots go, people
inevitably follow-Ranger, Surveyor, Lunar Orbiter, then Apollo. It'll happen
with Mars. After lunar return, which a successor administration (hopefully
in 2013) will put back on NASA's official agenda.

The problem to date hasn't been various administrations putting or not
putting Bold Goals onto NASA's official agenda - it's been the utter
lack of any actual follow up (funding, political support) to said Bold
Goals.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL