To hell with using your robotic avatar to touch the ancient dust of a stillborn world before staring up at the ethereal beauty of the Earth hanging in the sky like some fragile gem suspended in the mind of God, I want two of these things so a friend and I can start punching the daylights out of each other.
The Mark 2 should have lasers and shoulder-mounted missile launchers, of course.
Looks to me like NASA wants to capitalize on Hollywood hype to keep themselves in a budget for the next little while.
ReplyDeleteIs it reasonable to believe that development of a robot, a delivery system, and an uplink/downlink system would be cheaper than building spacesuits and a returnable craft?
If the prints are still around I believe they did develop both of those things over 40 years ago.
I would have thought this more believable had they made an animation of the Honda ASIMO riding on one of those Mars skateboards.
I understand the sense in sending robotic investigators to further reaches of the solar system because of the time and distance involved. Particularly as long as our primary launch and travel systems rely on light-it-and-run technology rather than resuming research and development on the shelved NERVA system President Kennedy supported nearly 5 decades ago.
Oh, and why does it have to "see" through that gold layered visor? It isn't like there's got to be air in that helmet. If we're going to send walking Handycams to the moon, the least we could expect should be nice clear images.
and of course, everyone knows the real attraction of exploring the moon via remote is that exciting 20 second delay between you and your avatar...
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