New Mars Forums

Well a lot of people (if not most) think with their wallet and not their conscience.

Thats also that I think, that is that at this moment there is no commercial need for a space, moon and mars bases.

I think its correct about Mars, Asteroids, mining and stuff.

But you need to confince people why they need to invest trillions of dollars for a Mars colony and terraforming without calling them the stupid mass.

Yes eventually the Mars and other space colonies will be self sustaining and perhaps fancy tech may come from it but before that trillions of dollars need to be invested.

Confince people that there is a need here and now for Mars and space colonies. If you can't do that there will be nothing but scienctific missions or other Apollo projects (get there and forget).

Do you think a canidate will say that he likes dictators? That he is for a single party system? That he thinks his views are better?

People can lie and they will.

Also a lot of dictators and serial killers came from normal middle class families.

The best thing is to send a lot of different people. Balkanize Mars and there will not be one strong faction. However don't make them live in there own domes. Mix em up and have a strong communications network (making the world (Mars) smaller) and make people identify with each other.

Basically people on Mars from different backgrounds, different goals, freedom of speech, freedom of culture (balkan).

I was thinking about the solar system.

The four inner planets are made of rock and the others on the outside are gas giants. So the lighter elements are further from the sun. This makes sense due to gravity and all.

But doesn't this mean that Venus may have more heavier and valueable elements then Mars?

Yes I agree a 1970’s era computer can control a lot of the machines and even more machines can get by with just logic that’s made out of transistors and diodes (electronic punch cards).

But I just wanted to point out that its possible. It’s not the technology stopping you but the ideas on how to implement it in space.

Yeah that’s sad, because if you have a plant like this working (even on the moon) you can have 100 space-initiatives every 6 months. But personally I think the first report was more like I imagine it. Scientists IMHO like to dabble of with building extreme stuff if given the chance.

General Dynamics report also somewhere mentions the original report and said it was greeted with great enthusiasm. But died slowly for no real reason.

The knowledge gained from actually building something like this would be already be worth the investment and then the gain from having it spit out anything you feed it would be enormous.

But then they did continue with a Shuttle program for years. I think its hard move NASA in another direction, because of all the politicians wanting their say in what happens. :angry:

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From the General Dynamics report:

I thought: “heh?”, when I  read the first pages. But after reading this point I guess I was thinking correct. What they are saying is that they want nano machines to basically create anything from known blocks. And just keep them running until something useful comes out of it.

I want the self replications were you feed in known and tested designs that can be build with the parts (blocks) that you have or are able to make. And you can change those designs at anytime.

So I say no to Self Assembly but yes to Self Replication Systems (SRS) that follow the “Genotype + Ribotype = Phenotype” paradigm

I’m now at the end of chapter three and I think they are losing it. They started well with modular robots but then started talking about smart matter and programmable matter. Which I think is nice but out of scope. Its like if I would start talking about a mission to Mars and at the second paragraph I start talking about faster then light travel, which is sweet but not needed.

Well chapter 3.10 explains what they are thinking which is good and as I posted. You can’t build nano machines by hand and if you want a lot of nano-machines you will some automated process.

In general the report has a lot of information but they forget to look at what is already happening now. Now if you build a car, most parts (engine, tires, transmission, lights, radio and etc.) will work in any other model or brand. So there already exists a modular parts way of building and it is applied. And you can cut for example the transmission into even smaller parts, which I guess is also already happening. You got the nuts and bolts, wiring, gears and many other parts that make up a transmission that can be build by a third party and be build into many different types of transmissions or other devices. So at macro scale nothing new and already working except for the 100% automated part.

I saw an image of a SRS build using lego blocks. Funny thing I was also thinking of doing that to prove the concept of SRS’s. Build using lego mindstorms a SRS that is able to build it self in parts and also build mobile assembly robots, that then will assemble the parts at a different location.

Well to be honest there is no real reason behind this name. It’s just that I’m bad at making up names and smurf was the first that came to mind.

You mean if NASA would send 50 astronauts and one starts a martian cult to which 25 of the others join. Now they don't want to go back to Earth and don't take orders anymore from Earth.

Well that could be a problem . Houston we have a problem.

Hey didn't the US start this way? Didn't they show the middle finger to the British?

Your making fun of us. Thats ok, but please skim through the reports mentioned and you will see that all your arguments have been thought off.

No one ever said to use BEAM bots but to use the same logic that beam bots use. Thats different.

So you think that there would be a whole plant on the moon with just one machine thats able to do everything?

Why would a machine need to use 100's of different tools? You have specialized machines. One that screws bolts, the other welds and yet another that glues. One robots one task. Like in an assembly line be it human or robot.

You should be reading this http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advan … tents]1980 NASA report and this http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … 053]modern NASA report before you start mocking anyone in this thread.

If you read both and still think its funny then either you are crazy or you have some really good points you neglect to share with us.

They don't have to know anything. They just need to follow steps that the punch cards tell them to.

I'm not thinking of a robot nation you know, they are just automated tools.

The robots don't think about what tools to use they just follow a sequence of steps that is programmed. There might be a bug but the program is updatable.

They select nothing they just do as they are programmed to do.

I don't know of any intelligent machines on Earth that works in manufacturing. And intelligent is perhaps a bad way of describing. They may have a more complex program logic but they are not smarter. As far as I know there is no program at this time that is able to think. It just follows a step of instructions. It’s called IF THEN ELSE loops. The more IF THEN ELSE loops it may look smarter but it isn’t. It works for the Mars rovers to have some AI but they work in unknown territory.

They don’t decide, it’s programmed for them to do so.

Two-way roads. But then what would they do if a robot is stuck on the middle of the road?

That is logic that can be handled by a program routine that follows certain steps on how to avoid obstacles. Or much easier would be to make a two-way road but with on each lane an escape path to avoid stuck trucks. Like you have on highways when you have car troubles. This is logic that you could do on the http://www.apple-history.com/frames/bod … l=aI]first apple computer, which is from 1976. But I think you could do with less.

The Mariner and the Russian Venus explorers did just fine without Pentium chips. And so did a lot of other space explorers (they are robots at the end)

About SMF (space manufacturing facilities) which robots need to be controlled intelligently? As far as I can think of the only ones that need some kind of AI are the ones working outside the factory or all those that are mobile. And only a very, very small number of the robots need to be mobile.

All the static robots (the ones that actually build) will just follow a set of programmed steps (punch card technology), which can be updated/changed by a human from any place.

And even so a lot of the mobile robots can be dumb to. For instance the resource transporters the ones that bring in the resources to the factory. They just need to follow a path that is surrounded by beacons and a route known to be save and cleared / flattened of any unknown objects. Then a crane robot will detect if a resource robot is at its location (using sensors) and will put lunar/Martian soil into the resource/truck robot. Sensors will detect when the resource truck is full. Again this is all using punch card level technology (and sensors are as old as punch card, well even older).

I'm not saying it’s easy but its doable

I don't understand why you need the robots to be able to make intelligent decisions.