My apologies if I applied a label and put you in that group. I do agree that robots can help create a base before humans arrive, what I do not agree with is that it will automatically be cheaper and more efficient. Only because we have a history of failure rates and know that putting humans into that mix makes it extremely more efficient and reliable overall.

I have been around to many construction sites to know just how often reliable machines break down and how much human tweaking comes into play and by creating every more complex machines does not make them more reliable but actually the opposite, witness the space shuttle.

The only point I am trying to make is that robotics alone is not going to solve all the problems and we will still want and need humans in the mix.

Remote controlled trucks, driverless trains and touch screen computers are the future of mining according to Rio Tinto. The FT’s Neil Hume visits…”

The article shows the unmanned trucks picking up ore in the Australian mine.

Well that’s just pretty silly. Maybe I should also ask him how many $B he spent on those machines? I’m not talking about taking bulldozers and drills out of Canadian mines and sending them to the Moon, any more than I’m talking about sending Canadian miners to the Moon. You know, the terrestrial rovers we use for rescue and recon would never have worked on Mars either, but what we learned from the former helped us create hardware for the latter.

I am familier with Mr. Baiden, they competed in the regolith challenge. They had to revamped four major areas of that robot. Granted this was just the beginning but had that been launched, it would not have been very productive.

The next time you talk with Greg, ask him how many mining systems have been remotely driven off the truck, into the mine and start production without any human intervention and how long did the system operate before a human had to go in and tweak a machine?

Larger science probes are another obvious possibility (or just ones using more delta-v).

“Of course, what you are really asking for, by invoke “Congress” again as a customer, is not a mere plan, but another big whopping government subsidy.”

Nope. Having a plan for expansion is independent of where the money comes from. Personally I don’t see NASA’s budget going up in the future, and it could even decline, so I see what I propose as making sure that it’s limited budget is used as efficiently as possible.

Again, Congress has no clue what they should be funding for HSF beyond the ISS. Those in Congress that aren’t involved with NASA funding think the SLS is needed, but they have no idea why since there is no plan that shows them how it will fit in with future needs. They have to believe Nelson, Shelby and Hutchison that it’s a good use of public funds. We know better, but how do you prove they are wrong when no one can agree on what truly is needed?

You know, what I’m proposing is not new. Industry and government already collaborate on these kind of things, and the decadal surveys that NASA’s Science Mission Directorate relies upon for direction is referenced by both the Administration and Congress for guidance on what to fund next. What I’ve been proposing would do the same for HSF, or at least the transportation part of that. And my fondest hope would be that it’s not just for NASA, but for our ISS partners as well as other countries.

Getting back to the dead-end road, communities do commit significant amounts of money to opening up new tracts of their communities. I’ve seen bridges built to vast open spaces by developers anticipating the next economic boom, and even hillsides graded waiting for customer demand. There are lots more examples too, so this too is normal in business and government.

For space, none of that has to happen since the “roads” cost nothing, but the destinations and transports will cost significant amounts, so providing clarity on where they are and how everyone wants to move between them is very important. Consensus in this case saves money, and that is my #1 goal.

“Why are you so obsessed with useless heavenly pilgrims at the expense of real space industry?”

Go back and read what I wrote, and you will see that I never talked about who the customers were or what the business was that was driving the creation of the transports. Only that industry and government should come to agreement on what the transportation expansion path was.

But since you brought it up, yes, a reusable tug vehicle that could move satellites out of LEO to GEO, or move cargo from LEO to L1, would be one of many possible businesses.

Of course. I was too brief in my explanation. Sending a bulldozer up to LLO is not a trivial task! What I was trying to say was that repairs could be organized from such locations where, say, depots of replaceable parts could be stored and sent to the sites where they were needed, where they would be telerobotically refitted, perhaps in a specially equipped garage. Let’s be careful. This isn’t a situation where lunar handymen with a torch, dikes and duct tape and greasy overalls are going to make everything right. The idea of “repair” is going to mean something quite different than it does here on Earth, or even in ISS.

I’m just repeating what Canadian telerobotic mining industry entrepreneur and engineer Greg Baiden (Penguin Telerobotics) has been saying for a number of years at space resources meetings. You can look up his presentations pretty easily. He says that telerobotic mining in Canada at least is understood to be highly profitable and widespread. He speaks for Canada, and he does consulting (along with other Canadian telerobotic mining outfits) in Australia. I am not a miner, but he’s an expert, and that’s what he says. My understanding, by the way, is that there is rather little telerobotic mining in the U.S. The U.S. is well understood in the mining industry to be behind the curve in that respect.

Vladislaw wrote @ February 29th, 2012 at 10:55 am
“The point I was making is that some people that think you can just drop abunch of automated robot mining bots on the moon and it will be super cheap and repairs will be a thing of the past.”

You weren’t making it very well. No one (not even me) was saying anything about it being super cheap with repairs being a thing of the past. Maybe some others do, but not me. What I was saying was that until it becomes vastly cheaper to land people on the lunar surface, and to arrange for them to survive there for long periods of time (the Constellation project analyzed those costs and established how expensive it was going to be) telerobotic mining from a distance is going to be the way to go. Those telerobots may be controlled from the Earth, but may well be controlled from lunar orbit or a Lagrange point, which are advantageous because of our extensive expertise in in-space operations.

The word “automated”, as I said above for “robots”, is a dangerous one. The implication it conveys is that these robots are smart enough to do it all themselves. That’s false. These are TELErobots, which are extensions of human eyes, hands and limbs. We understand how to make such systems. They are used very widely commercially and, especially for mining. But indeed, this is pretty new technology. In the Apollo era, the idea of telerobotic mining would have been crazy. Repairs? Well, sure, you can make some repairs telerobotically and, as has been pointed out umpteen times, for serious failures, you don’t make them at all.

Human hands and eyes remain enormously valuable, but not necessarily in flesh standing on regolith.

Rational businessfolk read sci-fi, if they do, for entertainment, not for commitments to base their business decisions on.

Of course, what you are really asking for, by invoke “Congress” again as a customer, is not a mere plan, but another big whopping government subsidy. That may be good for a few more lucrative contracts, and that will surely attract some government-contract-minded business, but it will also sidetrack the natural growth of space industry with preposterous distortions, as it has already quite astronomically done.

Anyway, Congress already has a plan under the pretense of long-range prophecy. It’s called SLS. Of course you don’t like _that_ consensus dogma do you? You on the other hand really do know the One True Future?