[ExI] Meat v. Machine

[spike]

... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty
...

>...With semi-intelligent (or at least not-too-dumb) of a robot a fairly
long latency could be tolerable.  I'm pretty sure a Roomba vacuum has enough
smarts to not fall down stairs or kill the housepets - and for a few dollars
more we could probably make a dumptruck version to move ready-to-haul
regolith around the moon...


The problems of dealing with 2.6 second feedback is small compared to the
problems presented with trying to keep apes alive and satisfied on the moon
I would think.  There is *plenty* we could build under those circumstances.
After looking at all the alternatives, I have concluded that most of our big
space stuff in the future will need to be built on the moon out of moon
stuff and hurled out of that relatively shallow gravity well.  We aren't
that close to having machines that can build elaborate stuff however.

Speaking of moon, how many caught that new crescent this evening.  For US
west coasters there is still time to see it.  The conditions this evening
were perfect: crystal clear and not a breath of wind.  Since there was an
eclipse yesterday, I knew exactly where to look for it.  For something
really cool, check this, the moon and the space station eclipsing the sun at
the same time:

http://www.astrophoto.fr/

spike