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| Dynamic image by Rover 1A Hopping ( no photoshop !) JAXA |
This weekends big news has to be the landing of Japans hopping modules on Ryugu, an asteroid some 158 million miles from Earth.
That's worthy of a momentary pause for reflection.
At 7 inches wide and 2.8 inches tall, the little ' hopper' modules really will be like specks of dust on the asteroid surface...but these electronic specks will gather a wealth of information on what appears to be a rocky remnant from when our solar system was formed
Using the weak gravity of the asteroid, the robots will be able to change position by hopping - although it appears that the surface is far more rugged than first thought - so fingers crossed for safety - the previous Hayabusa mission accidentally deployed the first MINERVA module into the depths of space, missing its target.
In a previous blog-post , I mentioned the relatively new field of autonomous weapons ( i.e. robots)*. Far from being the stuff of sci-fi, the European Parliament has just passed legislation outlawing such things.
A previous UN resolution was halted, with some saying that ' The benefits of autonomous weapons should be explored...'
Call me old fashioned but I can't see any benefits to being killed by an army of robots.
The only benefits to autonomous weapons that I can think of, are instances where they can be used to create controlled explosions to clear areas of rockfall, etc, during natural disasters
Rumours abound that Jeff Bezos is embarking on a new space venture, possibly in the field of commercial satellite launches - I wonder if it's anything to do with ...
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| Artist rendition of ' Marsbase Alpha' with BFR |
Whether Messrs Musk and Bezos are at loggerheads in their plans for cosmic exploration is immaterial - it's all good, if it advances the cause - to which end, the announcement of the first passenger for the SpaceX orbit around the moon is good news; Yusaku Maezawa intends to take a group of creatives from different fields, with a view to creating multimedia art of the journey - which strikes me as very positive, and philanthropic of Mr Maezawa .
After such a life-affirming thing, I almost feel guilty for saying that the downside of this is that the rocket has not yet been built for the journey...still, 2023 is enough time to take the BFR from a CGI render, to moon-orbiting reality !
* I included drones initially, but they are not really autonomous, being remotely controlled ...unless they were remotely controlled by robots, which is just too scary...
