Science Made Cool

Space Prospectors

Crusty old space prospectors mining the asteroid belt for valuable minerals have been a staple of science fiction since the 1930s. In fiction they tended to fit the stereotype of the Klondike Gold Rush veteran: grizzled, fiercely independent, surviving in a patched-up old spaceship while searching for the one big strike that never comes.

Well, the space prospectors are here, and they're considerably more well-groomed. Planetary Resources, Incorporated is hosting a press conference today at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where they're going to announce a new company which aims to begin mining near-Earth asteroids for valuable minerals within a decade. Among the backers are Microsoft tycoon and space tourist Charles Simonyi, X-Prize founder and serial space entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, space tycoon Eric Anderson, Google moguls Eric Schmidt and Larry Page, Titanic director James Cameron, and a number of other tech bigwigs.

These are serious people with serious money and serious expertise. If they think there's at least a sporting chance of making money on this venture, I'm inclined to belive them.

So does this mean the old science fictional stereotype will come true? Crusty old prospectors cruising the asteroids? Yes: but they'll be crusty old robots, not humans. If they do become ornery and independent-minded, things can get very interesting indeed . . .

Tacocopter!

Is America ready for flying robot taco delivery?

To ask the question is to answer it, really. Of course we are!

Sadly, this article about just such a project turns out to be a hoax. Or at least vaporware.

Forget about flying cars. Where's my flying taco robot? I want my flying taco robot now!

The Ghoul Strikes Again

Back in the pioneering days of space exploration, probes launched to Mars had a shockingly high failure rate. It wasn't until the landings of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that humans finally managed an overall 50 percent success rate. 

NASA engineers in the old days used to joke rather grimly about the "Great Galactic Ghoul" lurking in space, ready to gobble up vehicles heading for Mars.

Well, the Ghoul is still on the job. The Russian Phobos-Grunt probe (I didn't name it) suffered an engine failure in orbit. Instead of blasting off for Mars it will probably wind up dropping into an ocean somewhere.

The American Curiosity rover is set to launch in two weeks, and if it gets past the Ghoul it may be the last pesky Earth machine to bother Mars for a long time. The Administration is backing away from plans to send more missions in 2016 and 2018, and any thoughts of a manned voyage seem to be permanently on hold.

The Ghoul is winning.

Google's Robot Army to Invade Moon

I only recently heard about the Google Lunar X-Prize, another attempt to encourage private initiatives in space through prize competitions. In this case it's 20 million dollars to whoever can land a robot on the Moon and move it 500 meters, all the while returning data to Earth. Now 20 million is nothing to sneeze at if you're an individual, but in the world of government space programs -- and even big business -- it's nothing. As a reference point, a 30-second TV ad during the Super Bowl costs about 2.5 million dollars, so the Google prize is equal to the cost of maybe two commercial breaks during the game.

If you browse the pages describing the teams which have formally entered the competition, you'll see there is tremendous variety. Some of the designs are pretty recognizable "space probes" while others look like snakes, or sea urchins, or giant spiders.

So is this the future of space exploration? Groovy garage-band robots noodling around on other worlds? It's an appealing notion -- virtual space tourism for everyone!

But wouldn't it be nice if humans were making some new footprints up there?

ZZZAP!

Next time somebody dusts off the "It's the 21st Century, where's my flying car?" schtick, ask 'em if they think ships blasting robots with lasers is futuristic enough. Because that's what the U.S. Navy tried out in secret tests last May. Here's the UPI story.

The Navy loves the idea of directed-energy weapons, because warships can generate tons of power but have limited space for ammunition. Currently the state of the art in close-in defense systems is the awesome Phalanx gatling gun device, which basically fires a beam of bullets at approaching missiles. It apparently works well in tests, but at 4,500 rounds per minute the gun can only fire for a couple of minutes before it uses up all the ammo. Even the biggest warship can only carry a finite amount of 20mm rounds, but they can keep generating photons forever. Defensive lasers could even engage incoming shells, not just missiles.

Presumably it's only a matter of time before Raytheon gets together with the mad geniuses at DARPA to combine this technology with the cyborg sharks. Laser cyborg sharks are even better than flying cars.

Becoming Robots

More weird, cool, slightly creepy, and ultimately very sad news from Japan. A crew of engineers at Tokyo Agriculture and Technical University have been developing a power-assist suit which can amplify the wearer's strength by as much as 62 percent. Who are they building it for? Crime-fighting heroes? Super-soldiers? Plucky alien-fighting teenagers?

Farmers. Japanese farmers, whose average age is now getting so high most of them are having trouble doing basic farm chores. So instead of the country allowing more immigration, or finding a way to encourage larger families, the farmers can simply wear robot suits.

The "greying" of the country is a problem affecting many sectors of Japanese society, and apparently there's no social problem in the Empire of Japan that can't be cured by throwing robots at it.  

Robot Ships

Now this is just awesome: DARPA is studying the construction of robot mini-frigates to track and follow submarines without any crew on board at all. The logic of it is that a small unmanned "platform" (which means, you know, a boat) can tail subs using noisy, un-stealthy active sonar -- pinging away happily all day long to maintain a fix on the target. This is difficult for present-day ships because of the danger that if a conflict develops, the sub's first target would be its stalker. But who cares if an unmanned ship gets sunk? Nobody has to write a letter of condolence to General Dynamics.

New Frontiers In Robotic Creepiness

At times I think Japan must have some secret Ministry of Stuff That Will Freak Out The Foreign Devils. How else to explain this: A Tokyo department store is now selling robot duplicates of people. That's right, for Christmas you can give that special someone an exact android replica. (Presumably their first U.S. outlet will be in Stepford, Connecticut.)

I don't know about the rest of you, but if my wife told me she was getting a robot duplicate of me made, I'd start brushing up on my robot combat tips at the very least. Or go hole up in a bunker in the mountains with Sarah Connor and the gang.

Probably the creepiest aspect of this incredibly creepy story is that apparently most of the buyers so far have bought robot duplicates of themselves. Either they're the world's worst narcissists, or they're such boring people they figure nobody else will be able to tell the difference anyway.

Fish Bots!

Japan is a country which one could fairly describe as being obsessed with robots, and obsessed with seafood. So perhaps it's only natural that artist and educator Masamichi Hayashi has combined the two great national passions by making robot fish.

He isn't the first to dabble in pisciform cybernetics. Nekton Research has been doing the same for years now, and is now part of the growing iRobot empire. Their fishbots even incorporate the same mechanical methods used by real fish.

There's an obvious end point to this:  an International Battle of the Robot Fish!

Rude Mechanicals

Puck:     My mistress with a monster is in love.
            Near to her close and consecrated bower,
            While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,
            A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
            That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,
            Were met together to rehearse a play
            Intended for great Theseus' nuptial-day.

And now some really mechanical mechanicals are performing A Midsummer Night's Dream at Texas A&M University. Robots are playing some of the parts -- the article doesn't say which roles, but I'm guessing some of the fairies, since it mentions flying 'bots. It's an experiment of sorts, to see how people react to robots in unusual situations. Interestingly, the robots got kind of banged up, because humans tend to think of robots as indestructible metal monsters rather than delicate machinery.