spherical granules mars
Is anybody else feeling a disoriented disconnect to this whole Mars thing? Half the time I feel like we've (and by we I guess I mean you, ie: USA) already colonized the planet, a quarter of the time I'm horrified at this contemporary imperialist-in-space adventure, and the other quarter I'm feeling childishly dumbstruck and wowed by the fact that there's a remote control robot on Mars.
so thats a 3/4 negative and 1/4 positive response ? i guess im 3/4 pos 1/4 neg. bush is pressing for a future with man driven missions but conventional scientific wisdom points towards robotics. Im fully blown away by these color images beamed back here from mars.
I'm not sure if I'm positive or negative...more puzzled. I have ambivalence about 'big science' projects. I'm easily wowed and enthralled. Then I get scared. Then I feel ignorant. Then I go read stuff. Then I get wowed and enthralled again. etc. Just read a great article (hardcopy) on nanotechnology from Technoetic Arts - man-made microbes changing our whole basis for perception and physicality from the bottom up ---a polar opposite to clunky mechanical robots in space. The dichotomy is pretty fascinating.
acknowledged.
But what do the robots think about all this stuff? "Umm, where's the ahh, ya know, launch vehicle? For the return trip?"
If we're going to spend vast sums of money on science, I much rather have it go to NASA than to DARPA or DoD procurement. Bush's man-on-Mars program undermines that by turning NASA into a front organization for DoD's space superiority ambitions.
speaking of Darpa, they've taken over the battle bots thing from Comedy Centrail
Scientific America paired these two robot stories as well. The battlebots-race-across-the-desert story is all about a dedicated team working on a sort of SUV with radar and how they give each other pep talks and stay up all night. I didn't notice anything about building prototypes for better tanks to handle desert conditions.
Robotics is finding more and more use on the battlefield, so it's logical for DARPA to push the state of the art of one particular aspect of the technology. I'm sure there are other programs to deal with the munitions aspects.
Back in the early eighties I worked at major defense contractor. This was during WWIII, aka the cold war. One of the projects (that I did not work on) was an autonomous anti-tank weapon. The fear was that the Ruskies would roll across western Europe led by vast columns of tanks. The US wanted a non-nuclear response so as to avoid the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
The idea was to fly over likely routes for the tank columns, and drop automated weapons in vast quantities using parachutes. Upon landing, the weapons would deploy an array of microphones and a ground-coupled accelerometer. A microprocessor on board examined the inputs to detect vehicles, determine their type, estimate and project their path, determine the optimal intercept point for a heat seeking munition, and launch that munition.
Another SW routine detected the footfalls of an approching person, and would self-destruct -- taking out that person. It all seemed very abstract to me until I heard about that particular feature. Taking out the diesel engines of tanks and trucks seemed somewhat benign (if one blindly ignores the possibility of incinerating a tank crew), but writing software to purposely shred some poor Russian farm kid seems rather cold.
Having a measures-countermeasures mindset, I thought the Russians should build little robots that would fling themselves on top of the automated anti tank weapons. (The Iranians chose the low-tech approach of using swarms of human minefield sweepers during the Iran Iraq war.)
The idea of battle bots fighting battle bots has a certain appeal -- bloodless conflict. But this is an illusion, since battle bots are ultimately used as a better way to kill.
That's an interesting, chilling tale Mark. Makes me think of two things: one fiction, the other art. The fiction is Stanislaw Lem's Peace on Earth in which the moon is inhabited by robots sent there years previous to fight earth wars without killing any humans. But its been a long time, with the moon off limits, and nobody knows how the tech has evolved. Astronaut Ijon Tichy was sent to take a look but in the process the right and half lobes of his brain were severed and only one half can remeber what happens. The tale is told from the point of view of the half that's in the dark. The art is Bombs Which Take Pictures by Harun Farocki. He seems to think that the power structures of technology (such as surveillance and imaging unwitting subjects) might eventually replace genocide. I disagree, but it's interesting to contemplate.
The defense contractor that I worked for did not make the actual munitions portion of any weapons systems, and some folks seemed to take comfort in that. But we all know, munitions don't kill people, software engineers kill people.
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spherical granules mars
- bill 2-20-2004 3:57 am
Is anybody else feeling a disoriented disconnect to this whole Mars thing? Half the time I feel like we've (and by we I guess I mean you, ie: USA) already colonized the planet, a quarter of the time I'm horrified at this contemporary imperialist-in-space adventure, and the other quarter I'm feeling childishly dumbstruck and wowed by the fact that there's a remote control robot on Mars.
- sally mckay 2-20-2004 7:15 am [add a comment]
so thats a 3/4 negative and 1/4 positive response ? i guess im 3/4 pos 1/4 neg. bush is pressing for a future with man driven missions but conventional scientific wisdom points towards robotics. Im fully blown away by these color images beamed back here from mars.
- bill 2-20-2004 9:57 pm [add a comment]
I'm not sure if I'm positive or negative...more puzzled. I have ambivalence about 'big science' projects. I'm easily wowed and enthralled. Then I get scared. Then I feel ignorant. Then I go read stuff. Then I get wowed and enthralled again. etc. Just read a great article (hardcopy) on nanotechnology from Technoetic Arts - man-made microbes changing our whole basis for perception and physicality from the bottom up ---a polar opposite to clunky mechanical robots in space. The dichotomy is pretty fascinating.
- sally mckay 2-21-2004 6:51 pm [add a comment]
acknowledged.
- bill 2-21-2004 7:31 pm [add a comment]
But what do the robots think about all this stuff? "Umm, where's the ahh, ya know, launch vehicle? For the return trip?"
If we're going to spend vast sums of money on science, I much rather have it go to NASA than to DARPA or DoD procurement. Bush's man-on-Mars program undermines that by turning NASA into a front organization for DoD's space superiority ambitions.
- mark 2-24-2004 8:11 am [add a comment]
speaking of Darpa, they've taken over the battle bots thing from Comedy Centrail
- mark 2-24-2004 8:27 am [add a comment]
Scientific America paired these two robot stories as well. The battlebots-race-across-the-desert story is all about a dedicated team working on a sort of SUV with radar and how they give each other pep talks and stay up all night. I didn't notice anything about building prototypes for better tanks to handle desert conditions.
- sally mckay 2-24-2004 5:07 pm [add a comment]
Robotics is finding more and more use on the battlefield, so it's logical for DARPA to push the state of the art of one particular aspect of the technology. I'm sure there are other programs to deal with the munitions aspects.
Back in the early eighties I worked at major defense contractor. This was during WWIII, aka the cold war. One of the projects (that I did not work on) was an autonomous anti-tank weapon. The fear was that the Ruskies would roll across western Europe led by vast columns of tanks. The US wanted a non-nuclear response so as to avoid the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
The idea was to fly over likely routes for the tank columns, and drop automated weapons in vast quantities using parachutes. Upon landing, the weapons would deploy an array of microphones and a ground-coupled accelerometer. A microprocessor on board examined the inputs to detect vehicles, determine their type, estimate and project their path, determine the optimal intercept point for a heat seeking munition, and launch that munition.
Another SW routine detected the footfalls of an approching person, and would self-destruct -- taking out that person. It all seemed very abstract to me until I heard about that particular feature. Taking out the diesel engines of tanks and trucks seemed somewhat benign (if one blindly ignores the possibility of incinerating a tank crew), but writing software to purposely shred some poor Russian farm kid seems rather cold.
Having a measures-countermeasures mindset, I thought the Russians should build little robots that would fling themselves on top of the automated anti tank weapons. (The Iranians chose the low-tech approach of using swarms of human minefield sweepers during the Iran Iraq war.)
The idea of battle bots fighting battle bots has a certain appeal -- bloodless conflict. But this is an illusion, since battle bots are ultimately used as a better way to kill.
- mark 2-27-2004 2:08 am [add a comment]
That's an interesting, chilling tale Mark. Makes me think of two things: one fiction, the other art. The fiction is Stanislaw Lem's Peace on Earth in which the moon is inhabited by robots sent there years previous to fight earth wars without killing any humans. But its been a long time, with the moon off limits, and nobody knows how the tech has evolved. Astronaut Ijon Tichy was sent to take a look but in the process the right and half lobes of his brain were severed and only one half can remeber what happens. The tale is told from the point of view of the half that's in the dark. The art is Bombs Which Take Pictures by Harun Farocki. He seems to think that the power structures of technology (such as surveillance and imaging unwitting subjects) might eventually replace genocide. I disagree, but it's interesting to contemplate.
- sally mckay 2-27-2004 3:14 am [add a comment]
The defense contractor that I worked for did not make the actual munitions portion of any weapons systems, and some folks seemed to take comfort in that. But we all know, munitions don't kill people, software engineers kill people.
- mark 2-27-2004 9:41 am [add a comment]