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What we're really discussing, robots aside, is multiplication of force through engineering.
Louis has obviously never worked on a farm or ranch, where force multiplication is at a premium. A large John Deere tractor allows a single man to pull and operate a large round baler; then with a bale grapple, more the harvested hay to the haystack and from haystack to feedlot. But then there's a requirement for another piece of farm equipment called a swather-windrower used to cut the hay and arrange it into a nice linear pile called a windrow. On the average ranch, these 3 pieces of equipment will normally cost the rancher around $200,000 if purchased new. But the cost of maintaining these essential tools is also high. Figure an average of $2,000 per year per piece of equipment spread over the lifetime of say 10 years (it's actually longer, since most equipment is used until it becomes a pile of rust.). These are essentially simple pieces of mechanical apparatus, but require an unfathomable amount of TLC to keep them operational.
Fast forward to Mars, a considerably more hostile environment, and take rovers, ditchers, backhoes, and front end loaders. Yeah, they may be robotic, but fixing them requires a skill set that I cannot imagine built into R2-D2! The level of maintenance will be at least an order of magnitude greater than earthbound equipment. Somehow I can't get my head around needing a Ph.D. mechanical engineer who can design the equipment ever getting hands dirty trying (probably unsuccessfully!) at fixing it when broken.
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Louis,
My thought process is that you'd better be careful that you don't end up with so many robots that you need more colonists to maintain all of them. Sophisticated robots are maintenance intensive. Consider how many people are required to keep Curiosity going, even if they're all sitting in an operations room back on Earth. EDL and initial operations were nearly as labor intensive as a Space Shuttle mission. Perhaps not now, but we only arrived at "now" because of the extra hands involved. Even so, it may still be possible to "get the ball rolling" using support personnel back on Earth. That said, even the best AI-enabled military robots are not nearly as autonomous as an adult human. I don't want mission control to figure out that their brand new electrical repair robot cut the wrong wire 30 minutes after it happens. I still understand how it would be highly desirable to free up personnel for more demanding tasks, but development and implementation of robotics should be prioritized and washing dishes is a much lower priority than keeping the lights on.
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How many people can a single big farm in the USA feed? Thousands or more likely tens of thousands of people or maybe even hundreds of thousands of people. There's a single tomato farm in California which I think produces 10% of the world crop.
There aren't going to be hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands of people on Mars for many years. So your scaling is all wrong.
I think it's v. unlikely we'll get beyond a population of 5000 in the first 20 years.
So farming isn't going to vast expanses of fields under huge domes. It's going to be more like a vertical urban farm:
https://medium.com/@mikenasseri/digitiz … f9c5e7e26d
It's much likely to be energy intensive hydroponic/aeroponic agriculture. Moreover, we aren't going to replicate Earth agriculture...For one thing we won't be doing dairy farming or raising domestic animals.
It is much more likely that Mars agriculture will be designed around automated and robotic systems. So you will have flat smooth flooring for ease of robotic operation, with plant trays separated by gangways for access. There will be various types of crop pickers but each robot picker will be able to handle a number of crop types.
But clearly some crops will be more suited to Mars robotic hydroponic agriculture than others, in terms of crop rotation (it makes more sense to have short growing season crops, so you can get more crops per year, because it is building the farm hab space which is the difficulty, not so much the production or importation of nutrients).
Crops like wheat and barley will be less as a proportion of overall food production, compared with on Earth (although quicker growing grains like fonio might be substituted). There will be more of a focus on pulses, salad vegetables, bean sprouts, some rice crops - anything quick growing. With artificial lighting you can of course get maybe six crops where on Earth you might get only one or two. For the same land area, I would say on average you could get x5 the number of crops on Earth and also have three layers of crops with around 80cm spacing, average...so you could get 1500% the amount of food production for the same land area - or even more since you will have no pests, no diseases and perfect growing conditions.
A significant proportion of food will continue to be imported I think. For a colony of 5000 I think you might see about 10% of food consumed every two years (550 tonnes) still being imported - say 6 cargo BFRs. These would be bringing in meat and dairy products, frozen foods, condiments, ready meals and so on, to ensure continued variety in the diet.
As Mars moves more to natural light and soil-based farming (perhaps with the benefit of solar reflectors), farms on Mars may begin to resemble more farms on Earth, but I think they will always be landscaped and designed with robotics in mind.
What we're really discussing, robots aside, is multiplication of force through engineering.
Louis has obviously never worked on a farm or ranch, where force multiplication is at a premium. A large John Deere tractor allows a single man to pull and operate a large round baler; then with a bale grapple, more the harvested hay to the haystack and from haystack to feedlot. But then there's a requirement for another piece of farm equipment called a swather-windrower used to cut the hay and arrange it into a nice linear pile called a windrow. On the average ranch, these 3 pieces of equipment will normally cost the rancher around $200,000 if purchased new. But the cost of maintaining these essential tools is also high. Figure an average of $2,000 per year per piece of equipment spread over the lifetime of say 10 years (it's actually longer, since most equipment is used until it becomes a pile of rust.). These are essentially simple pieces of mechanical apparatus, but require an unfathomable amount of TLC to keep them operational.
Fast forward to Mars, a considerably more hostile environment, and take rovers, ditchers, backhoes, and front end loaders. Yeah, they may be robotic, but fixing them requires a skill set that I cannot imagine built into R2-D2! The level of maintenance will be at least an order of magnitude greater than earthbound equipment. Somehow I can't get my head around needing a Ph.D. mechanical engineer who can design the equipment ever getting hands dirty trying (probably unsuccessfully!) at fixing it when broken.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Even CP3O would have issues even with the fingers it has....I agree with prioritize the gear kbd512, that we need.
Looking at the future needs to drive what we do not take this time on the first, to the second and so on until we have all of what we do need.
Fast forward to Mars, a considerably more hostile environment, and take rovers, ditchers, backhoes, and front end loaders
or bull dozers and grader....
I would also add to that first list of items with blast or smelting furnaces for some soft metals it does not need to be very large plus glass and for a little steel if we need it but also cement / concrete mixer. Now lets think of secondary uses for the same equipment a mixer can be a centrifuge to aid in mineral seperation only needs to spin faster to force lighter material to exit. Furnace could be lowered in temperature and make ceramic material manufacturing possible.
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Well yes, it's certainly a fair point: how much effort are you going to put into maintenance?
Let's assume you can get to a population of 5000... you'd be producing about 2500 tonnes of food per (Earth) year, maybe 500 tonnes of steel, maybe 250 tonnes of plastic...
How many robots do you need? If it we did a pro-rata on industrial robots it wouldn't be two for 5000 people, based on Earth experience. But obviously this is going to to be a robotised community, so multiply that by maybe 20 to give you 40 industrial robots...then a range of 3D printers - perhaps 10...transport? well I'd say you'd need maybe 15 small base rovers for transport...maybe 5 large exploration rovers...mining...could be quite a fleet operating at different sites, including water ice mining - 50 machines perhaps and maybe 30 transporters of various kinds, ferrying materials back to the base Maybe 5 more mobile robots for PV panel cleaning. And another 20 for agricultural management.
So from that list you'd have perhaps 185 robotic machines...That's quite a lot. If they all had an annual service, that would be one annual service every two days or so...if it's a weekly service then that's about 26 services per day. Obviously there will be emergency maintenance as well.
My only real up clolse experience of semi-automated systems is my car - a lot is happening automatically and thankfully I've gone a whole year without any problems!...despite there being thousands of parts that could go wrong critically. We also have the example of rovers on Mars bascially operating for years on end without direct intervention on the planet...I think most of the effort back at mission control is about deciding the route and looking at what is found, plus they probably need to be monitored on a shift system.
I don't see why some basic maintenance of rovers out in the field couldn't be carried out by other robot machines (e.g. dust clearance, replacement of some parts and so on).
Taking it all together, I think a team of 50 engineers and technicians could certainly maintain the various robots. Difficult to tell. There is probably a trade off between maintenance and replacement. It might be easier to just 3D print a component or use a spare part rather than manually take it apart. On Mars, it might make more economic sense in this setting to adopt a "throwaway" approach. Remember, if our robots weighed in at an average 500kgs, that would be less than one BFR cargo load.
If these robots can do the work of 1000 people, it still makes economic sense to be profligate with parts rather than parsimonious.
I neglected to mention domestic robots for cleaning, cooking, washing up, clothes washing and so on. You might want to add on another
100 robots for those and adjust the figures accordingly. Maybe a team of 70 technicians would be closer to the mark then with that additional workload.
Louis,
My thought process is that you'd better be careful that you don't end up with so many robots that you need more colonists to maintain all of them. Sophisticated robots are maintenance intensive. Consider how many people are required to keep Curiosity going, even if they're all sitting in an operations room back on Earth. EDL and initial operations were nearly as labor intensive as a Space Shuttle mission. Perhaps not now, but we only arrived at "now" because of the extra hands involved. Even so, it may still be possible to "get the ball rolling" using support personnel back on Earth. That said, even the best AI-enabled military robots are not nearly as autonomous as an adult human. I don't want mission control to figure out that their brand new electrical repair robot cut the wrong wire 30 minutes after it happens. I still understand how it would be highly desirable to free up personnel for more demanding tasks, but development and implementation of robotics should be prioritized and washing dishes is a much lower priority than keeping the lights on.
Last edited by louis (2018-09-11 18:31:10)
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SpaceNut,
If we take the machinery require to fabricate replacement parts, then far fewer spare parts must be carried and more mission critical consumables can be substituted. We don't know with absolute certainty what will or won't break from extended duration use or accidents, thus the capability to fabricate new parts is also mission critical. The nearest resupply station is tens of millions of miles from home, so you could be waiting an awfully long time for that replacement widget unless Scotty gets his teleporter working.
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We certainly need that capability, but whether it makes resource utilisation sense to use it every time is not clear. You'd need a detailed analysis. Flying in a cargo BFR with 100 tonnes of spare parts on it is relatively simple and uses up virtually no man-hours on Mars, whereas making the spare parts does.
SpaceNut,
If we take the machinery require to fabricate replacement parts, then far fewer spare parts must be carried and more mission critical consumables can be substituted. We don't know with absolute certainty what will or won't break from extended duration use or accidents, thus the capability to fabricate new parts is also mission critical. The nearest resupply station is tens of millions of miles from home, so you could be waiting an awfully long time for that replacement widget unless Scotty gets his teleporter working.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Louis,
Even when you can 3D print or otherwise fabricate new replacement parts, you still have to disassemble and reassemble the machine to replace the busted part. The level of difficulty in doing that varies dramatically by application. A temperature sensor in an engine is simple to replace and is a comparatively simple part, but sometimes you have to disassemble half the engine or even take it out of the car to replace it because ordinarily it doesn't break and the engineers probably didn't give much thought to replacing that particular part. In the Middle East, there were daily maintenance tasks that had to be performed to keep sophisticated military vehicles running. Even if all of the parts previously worked without issue, bad software can (did) still screw things up at the speed of light. The "basic" maintenance on the jets meant the jet was flown for a few hours a day or every other day at most and then every other hour of the day, shifts or men and women disassembled and replaced or repaired numerous and varied components to keep it in the air.
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The idea that vertical farming willl be robotic on mars is not being proven out on earth and then again if we are bringing a farm then we have nothing else...
https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/26/8112 … -grow-food
The side of a structure built natural lighting with multiple floors.
5 Best Farming Quotes From The Martian
Aerospace Engineering Student Turned to Vertical Farming
We also have our own vertical farming topic to which its not robotic other than for water feed control, lighting and if we have them on a rotary tray carousel then that mannual to auto moving....
image search for vertical hydroponic farming on Mars
Now lets not harp on 3D printing capability as there are limits even to this technology...of which we will only be bring just so much of the feed stock for it to work with....
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It depends on the part - I've certainly seen 3D printing of multi-part components. That's what I was thinking of - that's the situation I was thinking of: where it's easy to 3D print that multi-part component, where a part within the component has malfunctioned...so it's easier to take out the whole multi-part component and replace it...I had a very expensive example of that recently. Modern taps (fawcetts) don't allow for disassembly to take out and replace the whole system. You end replacing the whole thing even though it is made up of parts, because it's cheaper than trying to fix the defective part. It's expensive but not as expensive as the labour required to disassemble the component. Either that or I was rooked by the plumber! lol
That said, I don't discount anything you say...I remember in the old days the cars on the side of the road, broken down, would be old jalopies, scarcely roadworthy...nowadays they are often the most expensive up-to-date models with complicated software systems inside.
This is a nice vid on 3D printing combined with robots. This is very much how I see such a facility on Mars.
Louis,
Even when you can 3D print or otherwise fabricate new replacement parts, you still have to disassemble and reassemble the machine to replace the busted part. The level of difficulty in doing that varies dramatically by application. A temperature sensor in an engine is simple to replace and is a comparatively simple part, but sometimes you have to disassemble half the engine or even take it out of the car to replace it because ordinarily it doesn't break and the engineers probably didn't give much thought to replacing that particular part. In the Middle East, there were daily maintenance tasks that had to be performed to keep sophisticated military vehicles running. Even if all of the parts previously worked without issue, bad software can (did) still screw things up at the speed of light. The "basic" maintenance on the jets meant the jet was flown for a few hours a day or every other day at most and then every other hour of the day, shifts or men and women disassembled and replaced or repaired numerous and varied components to keep it in the air.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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We have been through this before 3D printing capability are well known and there are limits even to this technology.
Now back to the topic as a question why would anyone be "Against the Human Exploration of Mars if Everyone can't go." I meantion only the elite was just one reason, others have said only specialists, Astronauts....
I do feel that we need a good mix and they should be schedule to balance the work and labor equally to all that are there.
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It is intimately connected to the subject matter. If you decide on a strategy of using "grunt labour" as it has been termed then you are going to be importing non-elite general labour. I don't think that makes economic sense and may result in weak social cohesion on Mars, with there being a very deep divide between highly educate technical staff and unskilled or low skilled labourers. If you think it doesn't make sense to import low skilled staff, then you need a strategy for how you deal with that - which of course leads to either (a) shared duties among all Mars residents - cleaning and crop picking rotas and all the rest or (b) maximal roboticisation.
I am arguing for a strategy of a selected highly technical and highly educated community with use of robots in all areas including agriculture, domestic services, retail, warehousing, catering, mining and transport. I would also argue for a more throwaway approach to maintenance of robots (and other industrial infrastructure), as it is more effective to replace with spare parts than have humans engage in lengthy maintenance procedures, although of course there will be regular servicing and so on.
We have been through this before 3D printing capability are well known and there are limits even to this technology.
Now back to the topic as a question why would anyone be "Against the Human Exploration of Mars if Everyone can't go." I meantion only the elite was just one reason, others have said only specialists, Astronauts....
I do feel that we need a good mix and they should be schedule to balance the work and labor equally to all that are there.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Being a Grunt does not make you an unskilled low intelligent person and being an elite does not make you above doing the meanial day to day tasks. Remember even the tourist onboard the trips to the ISS did science as well. Everyone needs to do there fair share....robots or no robots...
Champagne in space: Zero-G bottle lets tourists drink bubbly
Yum, Yum...
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Very few people of high cognitive ability do jobs such as cleaning, that's just a fact. If they do it's normally short term - when they are students and need money for instance.
Being a "grunt" doesn't necessarily employ low intelligence but there is a very strong statistical correlation which it's stupid to deny, just as it's stupid to deny most doctors are intelligent (meaning having good working memory, good long term memory, ability to manipulate data and make logical connections between various data items...). Accepting different aptitudes has nothing to do with moral worth of a person.
All people in useful employment are contributing to the upkeep of civilisation whether they are commissioned to write an opera for the Met or cleaning out the toilets in the opera house. Even people not in useful employment are still nearly all fully conscious beings.
Being a Grunt does not make you an unskilled low intelligent person and being an elite does not make you above doing the meanial day to day tasks. Remember even the tourist onboard the trips to the ISS did science as well. Everyone needs to do there fair share....robots or no robots...
Champagne in space: Zero-G bottle lets tourists drink bubbly
Yum, Yum...
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Very few people of high cognitive ability do jobs such as cleaning, that's just a fact.
They do if they can't afford a servant. Not as their main job, but it's still nice to have toilets that are clean.
louis, if we have all this automation, why is not already being used in Antarctica so that the researchers can devote more time to science?
Use what is abundant and build to last
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In the first Mars Colony/Research Station, there will by necessity be divisions of labor w/r to what is necessary for survival and accomplishing the tasks for which the mission has been undertaken. Construction workers will do construction, scientists will do science. But EVERYONE will be involved in habitat maintenance and cleanliness, cooking meals, and be responsible for personal cleanliness (this includes washing one's own clothing, etc.). I consider construction to be more "grunt type work," than say--looking through a microscope at samples. There is nothing demeaning about physical work requiring muscle power over brain power, since BOTH are needed for group well being.
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Most people in London in jobs involving high cognitive ability have cleaners to do the dirty work for them. But since we are on toilets...I am sure the Japanese will have the self-clearning toilet all in hand, so to speak.
Very few people of high cognitive ability do jobs such as cleaning, that's just a fact.
They do if they can't afford a servant. Not as their main job, but it's still nice to have toilets that are clean.
louis, if we have all this automation, why is not already being used in Antarctica so that the researchers can devote more time to science?
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Space X are looking to deliver 600 tonnes to the Mars surface on Mission One.
There's nothing demeaning about grunt work but grunt work is where robots currently have the edge. Of course there will be robots working in other areas e.g. medical diagnosis. There will also be a lot of automated geological and biological research going on. I hope you're not suggesting people in EVA suits will be doing the mining or polishing PV panels. What exactly will this grunt work involve? Construction is a possibility but that depends to what extent you want to develop human-dependent construction techniques, or whether you deliberately favour robotisation.
In the first Mars Colony/Research Station, there will by necessity be divisions of labor w/r to what is necessary for survival and accomplishing the tasks for which the mission has been undertaken. Construction workers will do construction, scientists will do science. But EVERYONE will be involved in habitat maintenance and cleanliness, cooking meals, and be responsible for personal cleanliness (this includes washing one's own clothing, etc.). I consider construction to be more "grunt type work," than say--looking through a microscope at samples. There is nothing demeaning about physical work requiring muscle power over brain power, since BOTH are needed for group well being.
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Louis,
All construction work done on Earth involves humans, even when the humans are just standing around feeding materials to the robot. Until we have robots so advanced that they fetch their own building materials and deal with their own maintenance issues (that all-important "heal thyself" feature), that will continue to be the case. I don't think anyone could seriously dispute that a purpose-built machine is less efficient than a human at a particular task, but the human still has to babysit the robot. So yes, there will likely always be some less glamorous grunt work that humans must do. I'm not against using robots for those jobs, but prove that they work here on Earth first.
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I've never suggested 100% robotisation for anything...there's nearly always a monitoring or interactive function for humans. But there are construction techniques that could replace say 90% of human labour time.
A lot of this is down to design. Hospitals are designed for hygiene. You could design Mars habs for ease of robotisation.
Some of the major grunt work is definitely being replaced by robots: warehouse picking is an obvious one, and there are robot deliverers now in operation in some cities taking parcels etc to individual homes. Construction has always been a slightly difficult one owing to the nature of construction sites...but that's because construction sites haven't been designed for robots. Single storey construction will certainly facilitate robotisation.
Louis,
All construction work done on Earth involves humans, even when the humans are just standing around feeding materials to the robot. Until we have robots so advanced that they fetch their own building materials and deal with their own maintenance issues (that all-important "heal thyself" feature), that will continue to be the case. I don't think anyone could seriously dispute that a purpose-built machine is less efficient than a human at a particular task, but the human still has to babysit the robot. So yes, there will likely always be some less glamorous grunt work that humans must do. I'm not against using robots for those jobs, but prove that they work here on Earth first.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Only a handful of people can want to go to Mars and also be considered be sane. It will be about as much fun as being locked in a basement. Once the thrill of being among the first is gone, few people are going to want to go. And even fewer will be competent to go. Most people would spend most of the trip crying in their quarters wondering what they were thinking.
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As far as robots, I think we're reaching the point quickly where robots are going to be 90% of any mission. We will send robots that mine, robots that process, robots that manufacture, robots that print, robots that weld, robots that create other robots, robots that do nothing but grow plants. They will will create massive, sprawling habitats for hundreds of humans that can land all at once. Future space stations will be built by robots that slowly digest asteroids and replace them with giant habitable stations floating around the Sun as waypoints.
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Nonsense. There's no shortage of researchers and scientists prepared to endure the isolation of undertaking projects in Antarctica. Mars will be a lot more interesting than that.
Anyone who visits Mars for a couple of years will have stories that trump anyone else's at the dining table. People will want to go there for the prestige and status that affords them. Also,the money will probably be v. good, just building up in your bank account back on Earth.
Later, Mars will have many facilities that will make it an attractive place to live.
Eventually terraformation will mean that people can walk out in the open on the surface with breathing apparatus.
Finally, with full terrformation Mars will be as fascinating as Earth.
Only a handful of people can want to go to Mars and also be considered be sane. It will be about as much fun as being locked in a basement. Once the thrill of being among the first is gone, few people are going to want to go. And even fewer will be competent to go. Most people would spend most of the trip crying in their quarters wondering what they were thinking.
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Well I think robots will definitely be a key element in Mars colonisation. In terms of human equivalent labour time... you will probably be right in saying 90% if we take account of all the computational time covered by computers (the clue is in the name!).
I am wondering now if the Mars community should commit to abolishing paid manual labour?
It would be the first human society to do that...
As far as robots, I think we're reaching the point quickly where robots are going to be 90% of any mission. We will send robots that mine, robots that process, robots that manufacture, robots that print, robots that weld, robots that create other robots, robots that do nothing but grow plants. They will will create massive, sprawling habitats for hundreds of humans that can land all at once. Future space stations will be built by robots that slowly digest asteroids and replace them with giant habitable stations floating around the Sun as waypoints.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Some of what you are calling robotics are machines some automated and some manual in how they work.
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