Bases on Mars? What's the holdup?

But that's not possible to do.

 

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There is no reason why a robot could not wear a space suit a removable insolation suits with heaters on the inside combinend with a some sort of radiation reflecting helmet and disposable gloves would do wonders on it's life expenctensy.

Note on the AI intiligent that I would not compare it with any living lifeform, and the level of sentients I see is more of reckognising it's enviroment. To have a 3 dimensional image on how the area has to look like overlapsed by what's really there passed through some filters to get rid of the wind and such so that all objects who stand out can be sepperatly recognised and recognised by either their dimensions or more simply bar a barcode on them, that it can perform a simple action on it's own like screwing a series of bolds while critically observe it's own action and act on them if things go wrong according to a check list of most probable errors recognising a bend bold recognising a broken screwdrever etc. thereby trying to bypass the problem while sending visual photo's back to earth so they could recognise the problem and explain it.

 

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I don't think you understand the nature of radiation hardening.

object recognition is just one component, We may want it to do complex thought and planning.

 

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Time delay from earth is only 20 minutes complete autonomy is desired but not necceserily and it reduces the scifi factor. Honnenstly how complex would it taskes needed to be...
solar baking of bricks, and checking if they are allright
seting up a very light tent with reflecting mirrors to use the greenhouse effect to condense water.
Dig a hole a couple of meters deep with shovels some sort of truck and perhaps dyanimte.
Some masonry of a cellar type building against radiation so all that has to be placed in are air locks electronics and the lickes (the loss of atmosphere and water vapor through the wamms would be verry small considering you coould produce it on site)
place a prefabed dome and bury it halfwise with dirt and perhaps make the connection with the base.

The machines would work slow but the tasks are so repetitive that that they would probably be better at it then astronauts in bulky suits.

Much of these things could not be reached with current robots but they are not that far off aftherall I bet if you could give assimo limitless time and power and something from clugging his joints he could probably use equipment to bake bricks and dig a hole with certain dimensions using a shovel, he couldn't do all these tasks at ones and there would have to be a lot of programming but he probably could produce resanebly quality and in all you would be amased how much work you can do if you can work non stop never needing to sleep

 

orcot...these so called "simple" tasks you describe are in actuality very complex. And the main idea orcot is to have humans live elsewhere Earth, and that is why we need humans to adapt to their new home.

 

The point here is to use robots to understand the environment of Mars and than have Earth colonists settle the area, it takes gigantic number of people to control Spirit vehicle operations remotely, something happens to it all the time, its wheel gets jammed, its panels dont gather much sunlight, one of its drills isnt working properly, there is a shortage in a circuit causing programming mulfunction. I would say that sending robots before humans is a logical thing to do, but after a while humans must step in. My first idea was to send a robot to Mars to extract fuel or solid magnesium from rocks for combustion with carbon dioxide...but even such small procedure will require much expertise with so many possibilities that a program just would not be able to handle without supervision. Autonomy is possible, but not to the extent that we need it to work currently.

 

We are not talking currently, we are talking 2030 or later. Lets say we send robots that are as smart as a person, if not smarter, why should we send humans then? Lets say transhumanism sets in and people have the ability to upload them selves into bodies that don't need food, water or air, why should we waste the energy sending obsolete body and mind types into space?

 

simple, because this so called "transhumanism" will not happen for at least another 1000 years for sure, meanwhile we got a planet in havoc and a need to find ourselves a place to exist.

 

Transhumanism :bugeye: sounds pretty scifi but personally seems biology orientated I believe life is worth dying for but even so I can't see it happen altough I'm pretty sure that afther I loose my body I will be in a state no longer recruiring food water or air. This comming from someone who believes that by 2030 if there aren't any neanderthals walking the earth it's because of political reasons and not technical reasons

I agree not very mars settlement orientated

 

draqon,

Try 100 years, at are present rate of technological exponential growth and barring a collapse of civilization. Unless we develop warp drives we can't move millions and billions off this planet, it would be a titanic effort just to setup a colony in the low hundreds, so no matter what for the next 100 years or so we are stuck having to try to fix our problems here on earth.

orcot,

Alot of things were scifi, space travel was scifi, manned flight was scifi, cell phones were scifi, etc, people saw these things coming, in some cases hundreds of years ahead of their time. Transhumanism is a cultural movement

 

Yes I agree they are inmensly complex however it's now 2008 and the first mannend mission to mars will happen no sooner then 2030 (it has been delayed multiple times and 2040 is not impossible). That leaves us 22 years minimum.

Now if you track that back it really is comparing vista with MS-DOS 3.2 (okay XP was better but I really can see computers getting worse).
Keep this in mind please, the advances of electronics are overwhelming at this point the military are developing (better) unmannend planes while the japanese make fun household robots that can assist the elderly (something that might even proof crucial for the near future).

Also note that afther scientist have some experience in automatision for vehicles on mars both soyouner and the rovers are pretty manual but especially those rovers are seting up the science for nasa's next science laboratory. So NASA will have some experience with delayed remote controled semi independable machines on Mars

I'm not saying that we will get AI anytime soon but these as of yet "impossible" tasks are a going to become a reality pretty soon.

And as for the reason why?
As for now scientists speak abouth mars missions some astronauts get up go to mars look around for a couple of months at best and return to earth the payload penalty is to massive for colonisation. Machines require no return ticket and the extra weight can be used to deliver tons of extra hardware to the surface that could be used to build a base for permanent settlement.

Ask yourself is colonisation possible by sending thin cans for x year in a row. How much can you put on the surface and leave behind for the next lander to use.

It would be nise when the first settlers arrive mars already has a domed in area of multiple km with if not selfsustaining enviroment, a enviroment that can recup it's losses from the martian surface and most importantly where they can stay until they die. Face it without such structures there never will be a colonisation

 

it would be nice of course to have robots prepare the area for astronauts, but again...the task is overly complex. In addition to the geohistorical need to preserve Mars for closer study by humans...we dont want to destroy whatever may be on Mars if there is life.

 

If their is life on mars it's a survivor. Besides sending people with terrian germs could damage or completely overrun Martian microbes.