Center Director Avatar Droid Attends Reception

Nice Toy. Now get to work on the Shuttle's replacement!!!!!!!No wonder so much money is wasted on stuff at NASA, it's beginning to become clear that it is just an engineer's playground.

Pretty cool! Can other people disable your avatar if they don't like what you are saying?

"Old school" proponents of conventional human space exploration should take note of this. Whether they like it or not, the first non-Apollo step in human missions beyond earth orbit will rely on telerobots for surface exploration and operations outside the main spacecraft. The revolution began with scientific and commercial operations in the oceans and continues with UAVs for military applications. Rather than insisting on humans immediately in-situ for the Moon, Mars and other destinations, the human spaceflight enthusiasts should be embracing the middle-road of telerobotics. When you look at the costs, risks and everything else, the argument for autonomous robotic exploration can eclipse that for any human presence beyond earth orbit. It's time to get with the program and reshape the vision around the new reality.

Actually, developing robots like this one is a good idea for exploring the Moon & other celestial bodies from here.

to sc220: word.

Furthermore, we should be excited at the opportunities offered by telerobotic technologies.

According to Anybot's website, their avatar concept is offered for $15k. This is a very small drop in the bucket for the potential significance of the PR opportunities to NASA, who should be among the most significant customers for such products. Remember that the robot is ON LOAN, perhaps even at zero-direct-cost, for the mutual benefits of the publicity.

I just wonder how someone feels when they are spied upon by a floating camera and a disembodied voice. Sheesh.

I think I must have forgotten that sending robots is safe....I guess Columbus should have stayed home...

telerobotics are not new...surveyor, viking, luna...all were used to sniff out the basics so it is a bit more safe for the humans, who must expplore...

Ahh yes, I know that story. He turned down Da Vinci's intercontinental predator drone in favor of going himself. Every historian knows that! Its a perfect analogy and not at all the ravings of a madman.

I was referring to the risks that a lot of "Send in the drones!" seem to use in their argument against HSF. Everoyne knew that the earth was flat back then, till Chris (and the Queen)took a risky boat ride...I suppose we could have sent a message in a bottle...

@ Astropat:

That was then, this is now. You explore with the technology you have on hand. As some people have noted, having a person in the loop isn't the same as having a person on board. If people need to be sent along, then we should send them, but it shouldn't be the only option-look at how well the Mars rovers have done over the years.

Isabella wasn't taking a leap in the dark. On the one hand, most scholars of the time knew that the Earth was round, & that Asia wasn't as big as Columbus said it was. On the other hand, the Spanish & Portuguese had discovered islands that were profitable (for instance, Madeira & the Canary Islands were major sugar growers), so funding a nobody from Genoa who might discover a new set of islands was a reasonable idea.

That's actually not the correct story about the flat Earth... But whatever, I see your point.

Still, the option does exist now and we shouldn't hesitate to milk it for all its worth.

Furthermore, we actually do have a more relevant historical case.

Back in the 20th century the spanish queen La Cennedia OK'ed an expedition, called Los Apollos, that actually did involve sending robots first, and radar pings before that ("message in a bottle"?) and unmanned test flights of the manned spaceflight hardware.

You mention the Mars rovers, I believe one is stuck. I'll bet an astronaut could fix it and send it on its way! I'm not saying we don't need robotic explorers, I'm just saying we need to quit playing with them and get to work on the high visability missions, so that we can get a bit more funding to put into more R&D but we are dependent on the Russians because there isn't enough support and therefore no funding for all the things we want and need to do! Our society has the attention span of Dori from finding Nemo...we need some big flashy things like the missions to the moon , asteroids and eventually Mars to get the funding for every thing else.

Be serious. He could fix one, for roughly two hundred times the cost of just sending another rover.

Also: you're recommending spending ginormous amounts of money on something because its flashy to get attention?

That's basically a tacit admission that you can't think of anything actually useful for valuable to do in space.

Do you think the FAA gets a budget because what they do is flashy and cool?

Howabout the coast guard? INS? NOAA?

Also also: You really think nobody follows the Mars rovers?

You seem to have a really low opinion of space exploration coupled with a low value on other people's tax money.

Human spaceflight is generally way more expensive than sending robotic probes. This item's a drop in the bucket compared to the gushers spent on the Ares rockets & the Orion. Robots can go where we can't, & if one breaks down, we don't have a group of mourners & irate Congressmen at the doorstep.

The reason I am making bold statements is that, it's very frustrating watching program after program spend a gazillion dollars. Then they don't even get out of the planning stages. Maybe some testing was done, but then (for the past 20 years)each program has been canceled. I think that reinventing the wheel is not necessary, we need to make a basic solid lightweight spam in a can kind of capsule (Just like the Russians have done for the last 40+ years!!!). I know it's expensive but so are the $50,000,000 per astronaut rides on the Soyuz, not to mention all the traveling and housing for training in Russia!!! I think that robotic probes are a very important part of exploration, however, there is nothing like the human experience. The problem with NASA as it is currently is that it cannot see the Forrest because of all the trees. From the outside it looks like a kid with A.D.D. I also see the big robot vs.HSF war that has been going on for 50+ years. It needs to stop! Get on with something-ANYTHING that gets our people into space safely and efficiently. Now before you respond, sit for a few minutes and consider why this mess that NASA finds itself in is happening...An engineer (Griffin) tried to make his vision of a vision succeed,even though it was shown to be almost impossible to make it work. I guess it looked good on paper though.

You're right, it does look that way like its all just a mess.

I don't see why people should even be arguing about many of these things.

I feel a bit touchy about the robotics only people - like you, I guess - because some imply that all we need to do is robots and scoff at ideas like mining the Moon, colonizing Mars, etc.

But if we don't intend to do anything in space, than this is all little more than expensive trivia. We'd best cut everything except asteroid hunting and SETI - that is, keeping an eye out for danger from above. So I'm not one of the robots-only crowd.

But we also have to be clear and rational about what we're doing, why we're doing it and how.

I think we can all agree that society pays for a plethora of boring programs if they believe they're useful, so I don't think being a flashy, expensive attention getter is necessarily important. In these hard times, if it isn't perceived as actually useful, it's a huge blaring red target.

People don't see NASA as serious, important business. As long as they're doing something, we'll get those technology spinoffs and pretty pictures. So few get upset if it's treated as a political football. There's no pressure to clean house or make sure it works. Conversely, there's plenty of pressure for it to redirect lots and lots of cash to certain districts. Forever. No other pressure is put on NASA, except people within who want to do various cool things. The result? Exactly what we wish for.

Two administrations in a row here tried to propose NASA changes, but when congress turns it into the usual pork barrel scheme, they retreat. They retreat because they're choosing their battles; NASA isn't important.

There are a variety of things we could be doing in space from colonizing Mars to exploring the cosmos.

I say we pick something that looks relevant and important.

Space-based power is an excellent choice, everyone knows we have a fuel crisis and whatnot. Is it economical? Who cares? We probably could've built our way out of any energy crisis for the cost of the Iraq oil war. It's also a good choice for us due to the high number of launches; a serious space based power program could create a strong business case for a new RLV. It would solve the "chicken & egg problem" of cheap space access by simple brute force.

Moon mining, my favorite, is less excellent, but the same theme.

Neither involve much humans in space. Maybe none at all. But they're immediately useful and could mean a competitive market doing 200 RLV flights a year. What would that do to the cost and capability of a Mars mission? What sort of beast could we build with that infrastructure?

Meanwhile the manned program could be kept on life support with - like you suggest - a simple capsule to access our space station and do that research. Tourist, foreign paid astronaut researchers, whatever. Its just to keep busy until colonizing Mars looks like a better idea, so we don't forget how to fly in space.

The next thing we do isn't our magnum opus. And with any luck, it wasn't Apollo. Let's just pick something that's immediately useful. Anything that you can show to a random passerby, and explain why its important in 10 words or less, so they'll say "OK that sounds like it's worth public money".

These things aren't exciting, but that's a bigger problem for us space geeks than it is for anyone else.