Questions about "The High Frontier"

Bryan Derksen wrote:

Hop David wrote:

Bryan Derksen wrote:

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?


Of course not. But they're not intended to, so this is hardly an
indictment of the general concept. The two MERs landed on the opposite
sides of the planet from each other so what would be the point of
designing them to be able to interact with each other in any meaningful way?

If you're putting together a full-scale mining facility, on the other
hand, you're going to have hundreds of robots. A repair bay of some sort
seems like a fairly obvious thing to include, though the details of its
capabilities would depend on complex economics (at some point it may
become cheaper to just throw away badly damaged robots, or parts
thereof, and import fresh replacements).

Ironically, right now a hot topic of research is using robots for
repairing damaged _humans_ in space. Googling "robot surgeon space"
brought up a bunch of recent news stories about this sort of thing.


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.


If the worksite is on the Moon, the round-trip lightspeed delay is 2.5
seconds. Enough to make direct teleoperation a bit clumsy but not really
a major handicap.

Recently I was replacing a screw on my eyeglass hinge. At one point I
dropped the screw. Hearing it hit the floor, I quickly turned my eyes
toward the direction of the sound to see it bounce and roll in a corner.
It was easy to retrieve it.

This would not have been possible had I been using teleoperated hands
with a 2.5 second delay.

Actually being there is a distinct advantage that telepresence,
especially distant telepresence, cannot fully replicate.



For Mars, greater autonomy would obviously be required. But the maximum
round-trip time is 40 minutes, so it's not like the robots would need to
be making complex long-term planning decisions. If something goes
unexpectedly wrong they can reasonably rely on instructions from Earth.


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.


But if you're going to be designing these extraterrestrial mining
machines with these capabilities either way, why _not_ make them
autonomous?

Well, I consider such robust A.I. rather implausible science fiction. I
could read a yarn employing this device with WSOD, but I don't expect it
to come to pass.

The robots will be there either way, IMO it's the humans
that are "extra" and need to be economically justified.


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?


No, but just because it's hard to replicate with telepresence doesn't
mean telepresence won't still be adequate to the particular job at hand.
A teleoperated robot would probably also suck at playing a violin, but
that's not really important for mining operations.

And I would say a mine mechanic needs dexterity on par with a violinist.

Miners need common sense and ingenuity to deal with the many
manifestations of Murphy's law that constantly crop up. I don't see
teleoperated robots or autonomous robots by themselves as being adequate
to be competent miners.



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


Here's a page describing how NASA's working on an artificial nose for
use in detecting chemical leaks on board the ISS because the human nose
isn't good enough:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/06oct_enose.htm

If we really need to detect and analyze vapors, machines are already
quite good at that. They're not yet as versatile as human noses, but who
needs versatility? They're there to do a specific job.

Even given many hours using telesenses, a user won't acquire the ease of
use of our native senses. And, again, an onsite worker would have access
to his native senses as well as machine enhanced senses.




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.


They'll still need maintenance. Whether it's better provided by humans
or by other robots is open to question.

Certainly it's open to question.

And there are also a wide spectrum of possible mining robots. The
chemical plants Zubrin describe for extracting fuel from the Martian
atmosphere might be regarded as a robotic miner in a broad definition of
the term. Or a Kuck mosquito. A simple, robotic miner designed for a
very specific situation may be able to accomplish its mission handily
without humans by its side.

But robots only are insufficient to do the mining and manufacturing
operations proposed in "The High Frontier", in my opinion.

Hop

Pat Flannery wrote:
With that many rovers you could afford to optimize them to do different
things, lose a lot, and still get far more data per pound than two
astronauts are going to give you, pretty much blanketing the whole
surface of the planet in the equatorial regions, while using RTG power
supplies for the parts of the planet outside of the most favorable sun
illumination areas.

RTGs are pretty expensive, when shooting out lots of small, cheap probes
it'd probably be more cost effective to go with solar even in the polar
regions and just accept the more limited operating conditions. Mars
Polar Lander and the recently-launched Phoenix lander both used solar
panels.

And unlike the human, the technology to build rovers will continue to
evolve making them lighter and more capable.

It probably helps that there are also Earthside applications for more
advanced robotics too, allowing spinoffs in both directions.

Again, all I did was go by weight of consumables and things the
astronaut needs to survive on the surface as a rough metric.
The big problem is that a human expedition to Mars gets a great deal of
data from a very small area of the planet.

The swarms of cheap rovers could serve as a means of selecting which
places are interesting enough to one day warrant a human landing. If a
rover were to find a cliff face with exposed fossils, or a foaming
spring of liquid water, or somesuch, subsequent ultra-expensive missions
to that spot would be easier to fund and more likely to be worth the money.

Bryan Derksen wrote:

It probably helps that there are also Earthside applications for more
advanced robotics too, allowing spinoffs in both directions.

It helps *enormously.* All the "we're gonna have clever robots for
space operations" put together can't support a fraction of the
manpower, expertise and budget that goes into terrestrial automation
work every day.

....which is why I keep saying that NASA should stop spreading
themselves thin and concentrate on those things that are needed only
or pre-eminently for space. Robotics would have advanced nicely on
multiple fronts if we'd never launched a rocket, and will continue to
do so if we never launch another. So it makes sense for space
applications to use or lightly adapt whatever the state of the art is
in that domain when they're ready to build.

By the same token, I never saw much sense in supporting fundamental
physics via NIAC. It's not as if there isn't already plenty of
independent motivation for finding a terawatts-in-a-thimble
breakthrough, a way around relativity, etc.

But apparently the empire-building urge to say "yeah, we're working on
that, too"... along with the readiness of all too many in Congress and
all too many space fans to see NASA as an all-purpose "futures"
agency... is too strong to overcome.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

I think it's quite important,

The issues are important, but our debate is not, because major
decision-makers aren't paying any attention to our silly little debate.

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.

Yes, but that second point is a big "if". Those of us who see a role for
humans in space are certain that present robotics is not up to the task, and
are confident that the situation will improve but not entirely reverse in
the next 25 years.

In that case the L Colonies become unnecessary, and you save a fortune in
construction costs for the SPS.

One point: After The High Frontier was published, O'Neill did further
studies involving much smaller "Space Manufacturing Facilities" with workers
quarters which made no attempt to emulate the Earth's surface. Past a
point, O'Neill was happy to concede that SPS from space materials would
precede, not follow, Earthlike habitats from same. But it remained that
once one had in place everything needed to make the former, you pretty much
have everything you need for the latter.

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.

The experts who studied this in depth came to a different conclusion than
you for any SPS program involving 30 or more SPS.

--


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

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

She may look polite there, but watch it - she'll snap your spine in a
second if you get fresh.

As far as I've ever been able to tell, she can't even so much as get up off
that stool.

--


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

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

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.

Only if there's zero chance that we decide to get started. Which
could
easily be. But I hope not.

I still like how everyone is saying robots aren't advancing because they
can barely walk.

No, we understand your point about how robots will not necessarily be
humanoid. What we're saying is based on the fact that you can't find
any
industrial examples where robots are doing everything themselves
without the
assistance of humans on-site.

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,

It could be that running an entire industry is more complicated than
a
limited-scope scientific investigation.


--


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

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

I do find the battle between the build space habitats/terraform Mars
advocates fascinating,

Then you might find a couple of my modest little salvos in this battle of
interest:

The Case for Space
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/case_spc.htm

Somewhere Else Entirely
http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/somewhere_else.htm

--


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

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

And that's what I don't understand... on the one hand you blithely assume
that somehow transportation cost are going going to drop by a order of
magnitude or so, but never explain how that's going to happen

Some experts have started saying it's not the technology, it's the traffic
model. A system launching once a week and then later 2 or 3 times a week
might have only a fraction of the cost/lb of a system with the same tech
launching once a month, or, like the Shuttle, perhaps every other month.

One reason why I favor things like SPS. They may get us to the traffic
model needed to drop the cost/lb to enable everything else people want.

or the technology that's going to be somehow developed that makes that
happen, despite the fact that rocket efficiency has been fairly constant
since the mid 1960's...

It might all well happen within the limits of chemical rockets.

but on the other hand you assume that robotic systems are going to remain
stagnant for decades into the future,

Well, it's just that there's been so many failed promises (yeah, I know,
you'll find those in space as well). I'm sure dramatic advances lie within
our lifetimes, but progress has been slower than anticipated, and some
problems were more difficult than early advocates had supposed. For these
reasons, I don't anticipate robots which won't need the help of people in
any foreseeable future.

At least it's giving me a chance to realize that I was right all along,
and that Robert Zubrin really does sound like Bruce Dern out of "Silent
Running". ;-)

Hmmm... better keep him away from shovels, then.


--


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

Pat Flannery wrote:


3) Mike Combs doesn't advocate human settlement of Mars.


I never said he did

Then why the **** are you explaining to him problems with Mars settlement?


For someone who brought Spanish Carracks into a discussion about space
colonies, that's a fairly odd statement

What I said was relevant in a discussion about exploration and settling
frontiers.

.....wait a second...solar sails,
right?

Yet again you demonstrate poor reading comprehension.

Gio

On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:45:48 GMT, bealoid wrote:

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,

There's a difference between mechanization and robotics. Almost none
of the machinery used in modern mining would qualify as robotic.


and that machines have replaced many people in mines.

Can you point me to a working mine, even one, anywhere, that has no people
in it because they've all been replaced by robots or other machines?

Machines, very few of them robots, have *assisted* many people in mines.
The number of people who make a living working in mines, continues to
increase fairly steadily. The productivity of those mines increases
even faster, on account of those people bring more and better machinery
to help them do their jobs.

And sometimes the circumstances are so favorable to mechanization that
the number of people working the mine actually can be reduced. But that's
the exception, not the rule, and even then it's a matter of the human work
force being reduced, not eliminated. Nor even decimated and I think only
rarely so much as halved.


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.

Nobody here has said anything about *humanoid* robots; that's a strawman
of your own devising. We all understand that extraterrestrial mines are
not going to be operated by humanoid robots wielding pick and shovel. Or,
for that matter, by spacesuited humans wielding pick and shovel. The
actual rock-grabbing and so forth, will be done by various sorts of heavy
machinery.

Operated by human miners, with human mechanics in close attendence. If
you propose anything else, the people laughing loudest will be the actual
professional mining engineers, with the professional robotics researchers
not far behind.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
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