Re: LA-4541-MS

Have you ever built anything? Have you ever built anything that is
comparable in operation to what you describe? Iwould wager a large
amount the answer to both of these are no.

Go out and build a simulation of what you're talking about - not in a
computer. In the real world. See how hard it is, then come back and
tell me its easy.

I can go out and build a model rocket. I can take an empty two liter
bottle, a cork, some tubing and a bicycle pump, and fire it into the
air. I can use equations of motion to predict its flight. While not
as sophisticated and accurate or as powerful as larger rockets - it
proves the principles involved and from that I can be re-assured that
using the same equations and principals, I can build a rocket that
will take me across the solar system.

Now, I cannot go out and build a model robot that can do anything like
any of the things you are talking about. I cannot predict such a
model robots behavior. Its not for lack of trying. Over the past
half century at least, researchers from MIT, UCLA, Carnegie Mellon,
Renslear Polytechnic, and those are just the few centers i know about
- thousands more - have tried to

a) evolve some sort of theory of robotic behavior
b) build model systems that can reliably be counted on to do stuff

and guess what?

THEY HAVEN'T SUCCEEDED!

Why?

Because robotics has yet to have its Newton,(equations of motion) ,
its Leibnitz (Calculus), its Einstein (Relativity) - its Caley
(Aviation) its Goddard (Rocketry)

The industrial revolution happened within a century of Newton and
Leibnitz. The Wrights a half century after Caley. Hiroshima,
30years after Einstein. Sputnik, 25 years after Goddard.

None of the achievements happened before the genius. We haven't a
clue yet. You are in a worse situation - you don't even have a clue
you NEED a clue. That's because you do not recognize what every
expert roboticist recognizes - human behavior EMBODIES knowledge it
does not KNOW.

We need to know a thing in order to write a program to do a thing. We
do things for reasons we do not know. We do not even know that we do
many of them. This makes it devilishly difficult to think clearly
about our own behavior. In fact its far worse than I've just
described. We THINK we know what we're doing when we do it. But,
what we think is a representation of what we actually do, and we are
blind to what we actually do.

For example, when I say stand up and walk over there and sit down.
You do so. As you do so, I gently nudge you on the shoulder, and give
you a gentle push. You continue walking and sit down.

Then I ask you how many steps did you take? You don't know. I ask
you which foot did you lead with? You don't know. I tell you it was
17 steps. I ask did you know how many steps you would take BEFORE you
got up? No.

I tell you you started with your right foot and ask you WHY you led
with that foot? You don't know.

I tell you I pushed you. Yes you remember that. How much force did I
push you with. Not much. I'm looking for a number. How many
newtons? You don't know. Alright, I tell you I pushed you with 15
Newtons of force for 1/20th second. 1.2 meters above the floor.
Alright.

What did you do specifically, what pressures did you apply to the
floor and how did you apply them do counter that force? You don't
know.

Are you getting the picture?

You don't know a damn thing about what you did. YET YOU DID IT
ANYWAY!

You say a lot about what robots will do - but since you never have
built a robot - you don't understand how limited your knowledge is -
and you don't understand that what you describe is the sheerest
fantasy of what can be done. In fact, your description of robot bears
as much resemblance to a real robot (if any are ever made) as a
chariton drawn by geese resemble a moon rocket. Francis Godwin's
story Man in the Moone written in 1638 a time BEFORE Newton's ideas
were widely spread, wrote a story of a man going to the moon in a
carriage drawn by a flock of geese!! People had no idea,they just
knew you had to get into the sky somehow - and Geese seemed perfectly
okay - since they hadn't a clue about the forces and principles
involved. Of course AFTER Newton, you had people like Jules Verne and
his massive shell projected from a massive cannon. This was almost a
blueprint for a modern space capsule - why? Because he appreciated
some of the principles involved thanks to Newton.

We're still primitives when it comes to robotics. Once we do
understand the principles involved - if that day ever arrives - we
won't need to go into space to get materials. We'll make everything
we need here - using self-replicating solar powered machine systems.
If we want to do anything on the moon, in that day, when we truly
understand, we won't build big ass rockets to launch humaniform robots
into space. We'll have the machines design themselves to be most
efficient and then build up the infrastructure themselves from a few
'seed' robots.

Even though we don't know how to program them - and may never know -
we can say from principles laid down by geniuses like von Neuman, that
a small population of microscale MEMs based solar powered self
replicating robots will build up a small infrastructure from local
resources capable of building ANYTHING.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbotics

Gerald Bull showed that you could build cannons that shoot things off
Earth very efficiently. He even designed shells and sabots that shot
rockets and electronics from cannons.and survive 5,000 gees.

So,assuming you have solved the robotics problem (which you haven't)
the easiest thing to build is a small hypervelocity cannon and a shell
filled with a population of solar powered self replicating MEMs based
robots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_gas_gun

So, this is something you could build and launch in your back yard.

But you don't shoot the moon.

You shoot Pallas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Pallas

and when the shell approaches Pallas, it fires a rocket to slow down
and the payload crashes into the surface of the asteroid - easily
surviving the 'crash' - designed to withstand 5,000 gees!!

The microrobot population along with the as yet unobtained software
set about to remaking Pallas into whatever their programming
dictates. We want a tether on the moon? No problem. They set about
building the tether and shipping it piecemeil back to L1 - along with
the counterweight and everything else - no problem.

All you gotta do now, after you build your small light gas gun and
your small population of 'seed' microrobots - is to keep in contact
with them using your small radio telescope. or if your prefer -
modulated laser beam attached to a small optical telescope.

They'll even build to spec a nuclear powered spaceship and bring it
back to your back yard launch site for you. So, you could go tooling
around the solar system in style.

How long would all this take?

Well Eric Drexler in his book NANOTECHNOLOGY - estimates that a
silicon based system, solar powered could double its mass every few
hours. At the distance of Pallas from the sun, you'd double in mass
every few days.

What does that mean?

Well say 5 grams of microrobots survived the fall - with their as yet
unobtained software intact. In the dim sunlight of Pallas, they
double every 50 hours. So, in 50 hours you have 10 grams of
microrobots. in 100 - you have 20 grams and so on. How many doubling
periods does it take for the micro-robots to turn the ENTIRE MASS -.
2.2e+20 kg - into micro-robots? Why 77.54 - so if each doubling
period is 48 hours - it will only take 3722 hours to convert the
entire dwarf planet into machinery! That's about 5 months. It will
take a few years for the shell to get there - and a few years for
stuff to make it back. So, the build up time is nil compared to the
transport times.

Once you've got the entire dwarf planet converted to machinery, all
you gotta do is tell the machinery to organize to make whatever it is
you want and it gets done pronto..

How much is 2.2e+20 kg - well, there are 6.6e+9 people, so you're
talking about 33.3 MILLION TONS of stuff for every man woman and child
on Earth!!! The average density of shipping containers is 0.65 ton
per cubic meter. So, if you had stuff built and brought back in
shipping containers each person could have a cube of shipping
containers that would measure 371 meters - over 1,000 feet on a side!

That's a lot of stuff to build in 5 months!!!

So, you see what the humans have to do;

(1) develop software that gives robots all the knowledge we embody
with our behavior.

(2) build a small number of microrobots that use this behavior to
achieve useful tasks

(3) build a light gas gun, and a sabot launched rocket and fire it at
Pallas.

(4) land a small population (5 grams) of microrobots onto Pallas

(5) they reproduce until they have a sizeable capability.

(6) the robots build a telescope and a laser communicator.

(7) you build a similar laser communicator

(8) you order up stuff like you would from a Sears catalog.

(9) you sell the stuff or use it as you will to enhance your power
prestige and authority over all living things.

Of course you haven't achieved step 1 - so, all the other steps are
moot.

Now, the question you have to ask yourself. Are you going to sit on
your hands and wait for step 1? Or are you going to take a more
reasonable course of action - like getting along wiht people and
working together with them to do things they can really do right here
right now to advance the human condition?

..

..

.

Relevant Pages

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