C3PO on the Moon?

Sylvia Else wrote:
This looks like Program Funding Via Flash to me. Making your
teleoperated robot anthropomorphic is great for SF, but for actual
exploration it probably makes better sense to optimize form to
something 8 legged that's designed so it can always right itself, with
a couple of the legs having 'tool adapters' to use specially designed
tools housed in the body.

You want public funding to send a spider to the moon?

We could get exopomorphic with it in that case:
http://www.midwinter.com/b5/Pictures...s/shadows2.gif

Pat

No. �I want public funding to send PEOPLE to the Moon...



Yeah and I want a Rolls Royce..... But cant afford it, and besides the
gas mileage is probably horrible

FIRST we need low cost to orbit!!! once private industry finds a way
then everything else will be easier!

NASA went with Ares, knowing it wasnt faster better or cheaper. But
a excellent political payoff to existing contractors..........

this decision has come back to bite the agency, which is good.

they will be more careful in the future

"Jonathan" wrote in message
...

:

Life on Earth seems to think four limbs and two eyes are the best
solution over the widest range of circumstances.

Not really. If you start to look non-vertebrates, you start to see a
much wider range of numbers over a very large range of environments. By
biomass and species count I believe they'd out number the "4 good, 2 good"
concept you're esposouing.


--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

On 7/02/2010 4:08 AM, Jonathan wrote:
"Fred J. wrote in message
...
Sylvia wrote:

:On 6/02/2010 6:44 PM, Pat Flannery wrote:
: NASA's "Project M" tele-operated Moon robot video:
: http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/0...jscs-proj.html
: NASA says this can be done in 1,000 days from the word "go".
: Is there any good reason it needs to be this anthropomorphic?
: I can see the head, torso, and arms...but having it actually walk
around
: on legs rather than using wheels? The legs would have to be automated
: somehow because of the time lag in communicating with it to prevent it
: from falling over.
:
:Legs have certain advantages, but I'd have thought four (or more!) would
:be better.
:

Life on Earth seems to think four limbs and two eyes are the best
solution over the widest range of circumstances. From dinosaurs
to humans, it's a persistant pattern across different species, time
and environments. Life quickly found the optimum and locked
it in, it would appear.

All land vertebrates, and that includes dinosaurs and humans, almost
certainly have the same common ancestor, so the existence of four limbs
in all land vertebrates can be put down to a single evolutionary
sequence. Descendants of the creature that evolved have been pretty much
stuck with the pattern since, because there's no evolutionary step that
would lead towards having more limbs that would itself be beneficial.

Some land veterbrates may be losing their forelimbs. The NZ Kiwi might
well evolve not to have them (its wings) - if it doesn't become extinct
first, which seems entirely likely.


People that sadly think life is only a fluke of chance, more an accident
than anyting else, haven't noticed that randomness or mutations
allow life to fully explore the possibility space, so that selection
can more effectively take place.

Random events, or mutations, are a one of two primary driving forces
for evolution, the other is persistant order, for example four limbs
and two eyes. When the two are in an equilibrium with each other
so that neither dominates the whole, the system spontaneously
starts hill-climbing or evolving towards higher order.

Evolution is a directed path, not a random walk
towards ever higher order.

It's far from directed. Each change is random. If a change is
benefifical, in the sense of increasing reproductive success, it's
retained. If it is detrimental (and most changes are), then it is dropped.

Sylvia.

Fred J. McCall wrote:
:You want public funding to send a spider to the moon?
:

No. I want public funding to send PEOPLE to the Moon...

This may have been a subtle joke on Sylvia's part; the Apollo 9 LM was
named "Spider".

Pat

On 7/02/2010 4:15 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:
Sylvia Else wrote:

Legs have certain advantages, but I'd have thought four (or more!)
would be better.

I'd think you would want it a lot closer to the ground to aid in looking
at rocks. The way they have it designed it has to kneel down to pick up
a rock sample.
And what's with the mouth on the head in a airless vacuum? It certainly
isn't going to be doing much talking up there.

Pat

A multi-legged machine could lower itself, or just the camera, so as to
look at samples. Keeping the bulk of the machine away from the surface
reduces its exposure to dust kicked up by its own activities. True, the
dust follow a parabolic trajectory when it's kicked up, because there's
no atmosphere, but while it's travelling it can impact the machine and
get into places it's not wanted.

Sylvia.

On 7/02/2010 11:12 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:
Fred J. McCall wrote:
:You want public funding to send a spider to the moon?
:

No. I want public funding to send PEOPLE to the Moon...

This may have been a subtle joke on Sylvia's part; the Apollo 9 LM was
named "Spider".

Pat

I can't take credit for that. But I'm sure the publicity guys would have
a heart attack when told they need to drum up public support for a spider.

Sylvia.

Pat Flannery wrote:

We could get exopomorphic with it in that case:
http://www.midwinter.com/b5/Pictures...s/shadows2.gif

That looks like the cerebral blood supply after you take all the other tissue away

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

Not really. If you start to look non-vertebrates, you start to see a
much wider range of numbers over a very large range of environments. By
biomass and species count I believe they'd out number the "4 good, 2 good"
concept you're esposouing.

The difficult one is bipedalism, as it's very unstable...walking is a
series of controlled falls that are arrested halfway through.
Tripedalism is stable, but very difficult to figure out as for how it's
supposed to move.
Over the years I've built a series of models of H.G. Wells' Martian War
Machine: http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/other/flannery1.jpg
....and have had a hard time figuring out how you get something like that
to walk. The only two ways I can think of doing it are to have the whole
leg assembly rotate under the machine, so that one leg anchors it to the
ground while the other two legs are in the air and advancing (I think
this is what Wells' had in mind when they are moving at high speed, as
he describes one as looking like a milking stool that had been spun
across the floor) The other way is to have it work like someone on
crutches, using the two front legs to support it while the rear leg is
swung forward between them, then lifting and advancing the two front
legs again as the rear leg supports the machine and swings back to its
original position. I was keen to see how the Spielberg movie was going
to do it, and they went with the "crutch" method.
BTW, although the Martians themselves in the movie aren't like the ones
in the book, the war machine itself isn't that far off from the book's
description of them, other than replacing the single heat ray with the
two side-mounted weapons, which appear to operate like super
high-powered masers... they turn the water in the people's bodies they
hit into superheated steam, causing the person to explode while leaving
their clothes unburnt.

Pat

Sylvia Else wrote:
All land vertebrates, and that includes dinosaurs and humans, almost
certainly have the same common ancestor, so the existence of four limbs
in all land vertebrates can be put down to a single evolutionary
sequence. Descendants of the creature that evolved have been pretty much
stuck with the pattern since, because there's no evolutionary step that
would lead towards having more limbs that would itself be beneficial.

And they think they may have tracked that ancestor down, types of
proto-salamanders with eight toes on each foot:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s13176.htm

Some land veterbrates may be losing their forelimbs. The NZ Kiwi might
well evolve not to have them (its wings) - if it doesn't become extinct
first, which seems entirely likely.

Or all their limbs, like snakes.
One prehistoric aquatic bird, Hesperornis, became almost completly
wingless: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesperornis

Pat