Questions about "The High Frontier"

John Schilling wrote in
:

[snip]

Right; just look at all the mines being operated by robots right now.

Or, wait - the mining industry seems to have decided that all the
manifold advantages of mining robots are outweighed by the one
critical disadvantage that they don't work unless there's a human
standing right next to them to make sure they don't botch the job and
fix them when they break.

Hang on - People need only look at the machines in mines (eg, stuff made
by Joy Mining[1]) to see that massive mechanisation has happened in many
mines, and that machines have replaced many people in mines.

The fact that mining machinery doesn't look humanoid says litle about the
benefits or otherwise of mining robots; it just means that humans aren't
a great design for mines. Humans are either too big, and don't fit
neatly into narrow seams. Or they're too small and can't efficiently cut
a face. Or they don't work well under water. etc etc.

Humans are fragile, they need to be fed and watered and rested, they need
accommodation, they don't produce much. People reject[2] your product if
you use the wrong type of human or treat them poorly (sometimes.) Humans
(on Earth) are, however, plentiful and have a low capital cost.

Mining morality is complex; people want the wages, society wants the
cheapest products, but no-one wants dead miners (or crippled child
miners) or environmental destruction (open cast mines, co2). Mines could
be fitted out with big machines, but would they still be competitive with
shoddily run Russian / Chinese / etc mines?

[1] I used to work for an electronic sub-contract company that made
equipment for, amoung others, Joy Mining.
[2]Look at the UN stuff about Tanzanite mines.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

The habitat itself might blink...you've just added another person to its
ecosystem, and that means more food an oxygen are needed for a new member
of the society that isn't going to contribute much in regards to its
upkeep for several years.

Eh, I see you got to "Logan's Run" before I did. I'd ask why children
didn't bankrupt the early American colonies, but you'd only say those
colonies could get oxygen from the surrounding air. I really don't know how
to make any headway in this debate, because you've decided that if a place
can't be colonized by naked people armed with sticks, it can't be colonized.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

On a planetary surface you could expand the colony outwards to meet the
demands of increased population, although each new colonist is going to
mean a lot of added cubic feet for food production.
On something like a L colony this gets a lot more difficult because you
have to keep the spin in balance as you increase the internal area, or
build a whole new habitat and attach it to the existing one.

Although some designs to this end have been proposed, I don't see any reason
why we would have to enlarge the internal area of the already-existing
habitat. Nor do I see a reason why the new habitat would have to be
attached to the existing one (other than perhaps by some maglev system).
I've never seen a problem with one habitat building another, and those
another. I reject the idea that we'll build on planets because you can
expand incrementally, because I don't see impediments to incremental
expansion in space. Although you haven't yet done this, I consider it
madness to throw up the incremental expansion argument, and then in the next
breath propose terraforming.

By the time all this is ready to go, you will have spent a huge amount of
money and consumed many years of time, with no power generation to show
for it.

Much the same could be said for fusion research.

The parts will be built on Earth's surface and then launched somehow into
GEO where the will be assembled by some sort of largely automated or
telepresence system, like a giant version of a Lego block construction.

The first few demonstrator models might well come together as you propose.
But the space resources studies came to the conclusion that for any SPS
program where more than 30 SPS were planned, the space resources option
saves money.


--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:18:55 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

Matthias Warkus wrote:

Apparently you never read Adam Smith.

Adam Smith lived with his mother, and thought that free trade and wages
must never be restrained by any sort of government interference.

And thus the political "science" major confirms Matthias' hypothesis.

Matthias Warkus wrote:

Apparently you never read Adam Smith.

Adam Smith lived with his mother, and thought that free trade and wages
must never be restrained by any sort of government interference. In one
respect he's very similar to Karl Marx; he'll be quite happy to explain
how economics work and what is good for labor, having never done any
physical labor himself. He basically spent his life from age fifteen
onwards living in one university or other, neatly detached from the real
world and its concerns.
If he'd spent more time with a shovel in his hand than a pen, his
outlook on labor might have been a tad different; say a two year long
break from writing and speaking spent in a Scottish coal mine, rather
than showing the young Duke of Buccleuch around France.
Well, at least he probably didn't want to get raped, which is more than
one can say for Rand's Dominique Francon.
The Adam Smith Institute sent out this cheery little Christmas card in
2000 - http://weizsaecker.bawue.spd.de/down...0Smith%20e.jpg
Novel from two different points of view; first, scary things generally
come out of a jack-in-the-box...and indeed old Adam does have a
predatory look in his eyes as he peers at the children. Second we here
have Christ's birthday celebrated by someone who doesn't believe in the
concept of 'sin'...and knows full well which his choice is going to be
when it comes down to deciding whether he's going to serve God or wealth.
I assume he's still trying to squeeze himself through the eye of a
needle somewhere out there. ;-)

Pat

Mike Combs wrote:
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

'God hath delivered him into my hands.'


Oh, please, this dinky little debate isn't that big a deal.


I think it's quite important, if the reason for sending people into
space is to have them do mining, and the mining can be done at lower
cost roboticly, then you've just lost a major rationalization for
sending people into space.
In 'The High Frontier' the people mine the Moon to build the L
Colonies, which in turn process the materials mined from the Moon to
build the SPS constellation in GEO.
If you can mine the Moon roboticly, you lose the need for the L
colonies...they can simply be unmanned factories without the need for
gravity, a ecosystem, or atmosphere; or you can ship the materials
straight down to the SPS assembly point and process them there, which
would be better in respect to making quick replacement parts for things
that fail on the SPS' themselves. In that case the L Colonies become
unnecessary, and you save a fortune in construction costs for the SPS.
That's one of the few things that could drop the cost of lunar mining of
the materials to the point where it might be cost competitive versus
surface launch of pre-fab components.

Pat

Mike Combs wrote:
Your point is perfectly valid. But it does nothing to establish that any
time in the next quarter century we'll be able to run a mine on the moon or
on an asteroid with no human workers on-site.



I've got news for you; there's just about a zero chance that any lunar
mining, manned or unmanned, is going to occur in the next 25 years.
I still like how everyone is saying robots aren't advancing because they
can barely walk.
Again this is falling back to a 1950's science-fiction concept of robots
as something like Asimov wrote about them - metal people walking around
and running machines.
C3P0s rather than R2D2s.
Note that Robby isn't walking around on Mars at the moment, but a pair
of robots have been exploring things up there for 45 months now, and
about the time the first rock got its surface abbraded by the rock
scrapper, something like the first step of mining had occured.
Figure out how much food and water a pair of astronauts would have
consummed in that amount of time.
According to NASA, a astronaut needs a total of 67.32 pounds of food
water and air per day to be kept healthy -
http://education.jsc.nasa.gov/explorers/p9.html
So lets do some math here and replace one of the rovers with a human
astronaut for 45 months.
We'll be conservative, and make it 65 pounds of supplies for a 29 day
month.
....so 1,185 days x 65 pounds = oh my...122,525 pounds...over 60 tons of
supplies.
A Shuttle can carry a max of 53,700 pounds of payload to LEO, so you
need over two Shuttle's worth of supplies for just one person.
We'll let recycling be used for the water, and derive oxygen from the
CO2 of the Martian atmosphere, but they'll still need food in some
form, so let's cut things down to say 1/3 of the gross total, or about
20 tons...and that doesn't include some sort of living quarters for the
astronaut, heating for life support, and the water recycling and oxygen
extracting gear, as well as radiation protection, particularly during
solar storms.
Even if the living area were very small and the astronaut could drag it
along with him as he explores the surface, you are still talking around
something of around another ton of mass. You could bury the living
quarters to serve as insulation and radiation protection, but in that
case the astronaut is limited by how far he can walk from it, or he's
going to need a vehicle to drive around, with the added weight of that
to take into account.
So anyway, you are talking around 21 tons minimum per astronaut for a
expedition as long as the Mars rovers have done.
.....and the rovers weigh 408 pounds each, so you could send 42,000
pounds/408 pounds = 102 of them exploring for the same amount of landed
mass that one human astronaut needs.
And unlike the rovers, the human astronaut is going to be expecting to
come home at the end of the mission with all that entails.
Also not included in this analysis is the amount of consumables used on
the trip to and from Mars, or the fact that the astronaut probably
wouldn't be arriving in a giant soccer ball. :-)

Pat

Mike Combs wrote:
Nor "The Case for Mars", as I fail to see how THF could be included on such
a list, and TCfM left off. At least O'Neill attempted to propose a
plausible export to balance trade and assure ROI.


Because THF is the one that gets the ball rolling in this direction, and
probably leads to TCFM.
Ideas for putting human cities on Mars go way back to the early 1900's.
I do find the battle between the build space habitats/terraform Mars
advocates fascinating, and
Notice I didn't include the works of Lenin or Mao in that list either,
as without Marx their books probably never get written.
I maybe should have included 'Mein Kampf', but its impact only lasted
around two decades.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:



Mike Combs wrote:

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message

'God hath delivered him into my hands.'

Oh, please, this dinky little debate isn't that big a deal.

I think it's quite important

Ah, so yours is a divine mission. Yes, indeed, brothers and sisters,
God's wrath has smote that minion of Satan Mike Combs. He is cringing in
abject defeat whilst thou dost inflict your righteous vengence:
irrefutable evidence coal mines don't need people.

And this proof comes in the form of an .... an article about a possible
machine, maybe.

What an anticlimax.

There are all kinds of machines at mines. Humans operate them and humans
maintain them. Even if your machine were to make it off Power Point
viewgraphs, that does absolutely nothing to demonstrate humans are obsolete.

Sorry, God didn't deliver for you. And like the Y2K apocalypse folks,
you won't have the grace to be embarrassed.

Hop

Bryan Derksen wrote:

Hop David wrote:

The human hand is an amazing tool. At first M.C. Escher thought his
hands wouldn't be able to meet the demands of his circle limit prints.
But then he discovered with eyesight enhanced by magnifying lens, his
hands were capable of extremely sure, minute movements. Besides doing
fine minute work hands can also help swing a sledge hammer. Closing my
eyes, I move my hands about and can still tell what position they're in.
They send back other information like pressure against the skin,
temperature, texture, etc.


Again, the comparison isn't quite fair. This isn't a contest between a
robot hand and a human hand, it's a contest between a robot hand and a
human hand _in a spacesuit glove_. Current spacesuit gloves are
extremely cumbersome. You can posit enhanced spacesuit design, of
course, but if you do that then you have to also allow for enhanced
robotic hand design at the same time.

Teleoperated robots that can do better than pressurized gloves are
desirable and plausible. As I've said several times in this thread I
expect teleoperated robots to be an enabling technology.

However there are two good reasons to keep humans at the worksite. Time
lag is one. Maintenance is the other. Human mechanics in a pressurized
onsite bay would be far more effective in maintaining robots.


A lot of work is being done in
that field anyway, for a myriad of other reasons.

And again, a robot hand may be inferior to a human hand in terms of
dexterity, but in terms of cost it's a lot cheaper. That's my main point
here. The tool arm on a MER is vastly inferior to a human arm in terms
of physical capabilities, but the cost of putting a couple of human arms
on Mars to do geological work is many orders of magnitude greater.

And if a MER breaks down, do you think other MERs could repair it? Time
lagged teleoperated robots with no onsite humans may suffice for
discovery missions. But the demands of industrial and mining robots
would be greater. It would be desirable to have humans at the worksite.



Besides hands, the semi circular canals give information it'd be hard
for a teleoperated robot to relay. I can move my head side to side and
the world doesn't move from side to side - but television cameras
mounted on a teleoperated robot likely won't have some of the image
processing abilities of the visual cortex.


On the other hand, the television cameras mounted on a teleoperated
robot can be made _better_ than human vision in a lot of ways. You can
mount them anywhere, give them extreme zoom functions, etc.

And onsite mechanics would also be able to enhance their vision with
machines. I'm not arguing for a human workforce with no robots or
machines. I believe an effective mining and manufacturing complex will
have both.


And it's much cheaper than human eyes.


The sense of smell is very
useful (the sense of smell could be used by a mechanic working in a
pressurized workshop in space). There are many aspects of actual
physical presence that would be hard to replicate with telepresence.


I find it hard to believe that the sense of smell would be so useful in
space construction that it'd justify the cost of putting humans up
there.

I included smell in a list of things that are hard to replicate with
telepresence. Did you think I was saying the sense of smell alone
justifies the cost?

What _Earthside_ manufacturing processes depend on the sense of
smell so heavily?

Smell can be a useful tool to mechanics and chemists.
For example here is a page on using smell to diagnose automobile problems:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/how_...e/2423551.html


Can you give any specific examples that might be
applicable to space-based manufacturing?

Any mining operation will need chemists and, as I've said, chemists
often find the sense of smell useful.

Mechanics dealing with machine systems composed of several different
substances may also be able to use smell is diagnosing problems.


Many tasks are difficult with actual physical presence. Doing the tasks
even with extremely good waldos would be harder. Waldos with a 2 second
light delay would be even more difficult.

I expect teleoperated robots to be very useful in space. But they won't
be a human substitute in all situations for a long time to come.


It's possible to come up with situations where humans are still needed
in space, sure. But I remain unconvinced that one of those situations
will be a large-scale lunar mining and manufacturing operation.

A repetitive manufacturing process, once it's set up, could be done well
with robots. But even in this case, robots will still need human
maintenance.

As for mining, it seems to me people vastly underestimate the difficulty
of mining. Although machines are needed, onsite humans are indispensable
now and I believe they will be for some time to come.

Hop

Hop David wrote:

Ah, so yours is a divine mission. Yes, indeed, brothers and sisters,
God's wrath has smote that minion of Satan Mike Combs. He is cringing
in abject defeat whilst thou dost inflict your righteous vengence:
irrefutable evidence coal mines don't need people.

I think that would be anti-divine; although it may be apocryphal, that
was supposed to be Thomas Huxley's response to the staunch critic of
evolution and supporter of creationism Bishop Samuel 'Soapy Sam'
Wilberforce's arguments against Darwin's theory of evolution at their
1860 Oxford debate. Huxley took Wilberforce's arguments and turned them
right around to use them as arguments for evolution instead.
When I did a Google search for 'robotic coal mining', and the link I
posted promptly came up, the quotation immediately jumped to mind.

And this proof comes in the form of an .... an article about a
possible machine, maybe.
Hmmm... let's see what 'robots in coal mining' brings up...oh, looky
here -
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...C0A9669582 60
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Au...al_ Mine.html
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-onlin...88JO15G0.shtml
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=12637032
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0522081404.htm


What an anticlimax.

Started way back in 1990.


There are all kinds of machines at mines. Humans operate them and
humans maintain them. Even if your machine were to make it off Power
Point viewgraphs, that does absolutely nothing to demonstrate humans
are obsolete.

Sorry, God didn't deliver for you. And like the Y2K apocalypse folks,
you won't have the grace to be embarrassed.

I have a alternative halfway point where we can meet...we build the
colonies, and fill them with...androids.
Androids made by The Tyrell Corporation that are forbidden to ever come
to Earth.
The Japanese are already working on androids -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez8wz...elated&search=
She may look polite there, but watch it - she'll snap your spine in a
second if you get fresh.
You don't want to tangle with these either -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQf0Q0JEdtE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9FOOs-8syU
These SOBs never heard of The Three Laws, and would be liable to machine
gun children as save them from onrushing cars. :-D

Pat