[extropy-chat] Re: Are dwarfs better for long durationspaceflight?

[kevinfreels.com]

>
> We earth creatures are 2 to 15 minutes away down here, so the
> robots need a great deal of autonomy, which limits their ability
> to build things.  But with someone right there making decisions,
> controlling machines on the surface, much more can be accomplished.
>
Exactly. And that is just the time needed to execute a command after a
decision has been made. That doesn;t address the fact that it often takes
Earth bound controllers to gather enough information to make a decision and
then have the robot actually do something.

I remember when we first sent Spirit down to Mars. It took something like 3
hours to drill a small hole in a rock. EVery bit f data has to be taken in
and analyzed, then cast before a committee to decide where to dig the three
hour hole. A human would glance around and start busting open rocks or
drilling with a Craftsman cordless drill. By the time NASA could even make a
decision on Earth, our little Mars Midget could have drilled into and
analyzed several rocks and already determined that they were in a bad spot
and needed to move somewhere else.