Robotic Pair Planned as First Lunar Colonists By Erik Baard Technology Correspondent posted: 07:01 am ET 18 September 2000 ET
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Dust bothers machines on the
moon as much as it does humans in their apartments. But while allergy-provoking mites living in dust bunnies bring misery, mechanical bugs designed to plow lunar powder could bring tidy profits.
Space-event start-up company, Applied Space Resources (ASR), is negotiating with prominent robotics physicist, Mark W. Tilden, at Los Alamos National Laboratory for two autonomous robots to collect moon rocks from the virgin Mare Nectaris for sale on Earth. But the skittering, insect-like machines will likely outlive that primary purpose, and Tilden said his most important demand is that "after that mission is over, the new mission is mine. My robots will perform the first intergalactic equivalent of draining a swamp."
That is, the robots will attempt to clear away ultra-fine dust that could damage expensive equipment that might be stationed there later.
Future robot generations, Tilden already has in mind, could make and deliver electricity, sweetening the deal for prospective lunar tenants.
But does the moon have protected "wetlands?" ASRs Lunar Retriever 1 mission and Tildens follow-up concept are among several commercial ventures planned for Earths lone natural satellite. A host of legal and political issues regarding humanitys common space heritage await such private endeavors at the United Nations and elsewhere before lift-off. Many hard-nosed aerospace industry executives and dreamers alike have grown impatient with what they perceive as unnecessarily slow progress in space exploration and utilization over the past three decades caused by governmental and large corporate domination of the field.
The Lunar Retriever 1 mission logo
Tilden wouldnt comment on what hell be paid for the robots, only saying that "the average cost for such lunarbots in mass numbers would be less than $100 each. A tad cheaper than usual" in an era when even "faster, better, cheaper" spacefaring robots can cost millions. Denise Norris, ASR's chief executive officer, said overall Lunar Retriever 1 mission costs will be under $100 million. Given the projects unusual nature, financing it "isnt your classical Wall Street deal. Part of me says I should hire a Hollywood producer instead of a chief financial officer, as weird as that might sound."
Wall Street agrees. Until ASR and competing novel projects launch, theyll remain literally and figuratively "under the radar screen," said Heidi Wood, aerospace and defense industry analyst with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
Moonwalkers
ASR plans to launch into low Earth orbit and then moonward using former Soviet technologies, perhaps an
adapted SS-18 "Satan" missile slated for destruction as part of the Start-2 treaty, forgoing earlier plans to employ the reusable Roton still in development. In addition to marketing pebbles from the moon, ASR plans to turn a profit by selling space on micro-engraved disks in a lunar time capsule called the Millennial Archive. The biggest cash cow anticipated is live, interactive television and internet programming shot through several cameras. Tilden may even provide a robot for a viewer-controlled "thrill cam," ASR said.
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But long after the thrill is gone, the 11-inch (28-centimeter) long, two-pound (one-kilogram) pebble-picking robotic critters will perform a valuable task in unobserved isolation, Tilden said. Making the moon safe for more advanced
"The reason we can't live easily in space is that there's no nature there to support us, so we have to introduce stable roboecologies to do slowly and autonomously what would be otherwise grossly expensive," Tilden said.
"To this end, I'm in negotiations with Applied Space to introduce some walkers on the moon in 2004. Biomorphic robocolonization is the only way to significantly reduce cost, politics, and risk for the second age of human interplanetary exploration." Robots must create their own Edens on other worlds before they can be good hosts for human settlers, Tilden argues.
Meet the hosts. A sampling of Mark W. Tilden's biomorphic machines. The roboticist says they'll make your descendants feel at home in space.
A biological ecosystem can be seen as a pyramid founded on its simplest members. Tilden's "roboecologies" are no different. The robots he intends to send to the moon first are purely analog -- transistors, but no software or digital components at all. They behave more like simple life forms that twitch, flinch, and move about through stimulation of local ganglions than animals that centralize higher functions in brains. Instead of the "neural nets" of mainstream artificial intelligence theory, Tilden refers to his designs as "nervous nets."
Tilden is known for favoring analog machines over
digital ones because he finds them more reliable in certain specialized applications. But he emphasizes that hes not anti-digital. Tilden integrates both approaches for, among other things, Pentagon projects.
"To say youre going to survive on digital or analog is like saying youre going to survive on food or water," he remarks.
The biomorphic machines fulfill missions as an extension of what they are, not because they aim to serve or operate by rote instruction.
Tilden offers as an example of his work, a
lawnmower robot he built for himself. It aimlessly and perpetually wandered around, powered by the sun. When it found itself in the shade of tall grass, it snipped the growth over its head because it was hungry for sunlight. It didnt trim the lawn because it knew Tilden likes a putting green to step out on; it trimmed the lawn because it needed to eat solar radiation. A window-cleaning spider robot was similarly compulsive. It was attracted to the sun, but didnt understand the concept of transparent materials. The tragic little anti-Golem climbed all over windows with its cleansing, lens brush-feet looking for an opening.
For the Lunar Retriever mission, Tilden designed his robots with four spindly legs that incidentally furrow the dirt as they walk a path, following the sun across the black sky, picking up pebbles. By the time the mini-Sisyphi die four years after landing from prolonged exposure to gamma radiation, theyll have cleared a figure eight-shaped, four million square yard (four square kilometer) area of ultra-fine dust, the roboticist said. That service could be vital to future arrivals because weak electric charges across the lunar landscape are thought by some to suspend that powder three feet (a meter) over ground level, posing a hazard to delicate machines (especially those using ball bearings) like telescopes and wheeled robots.
Moon rollers and solars
Tilden hopes to follow those
colonizers with cheap, wheeled kindred robots that assemble themselves in reconfigurable solar arrays. A final wave of compulsive wirers and cable-layers would then provide the plug for subsequent landers looking to juice up. With an energy infrastructure and groomed plot, "you could put your Starbucks there. There's no rush though, lunar soil turnover is very low. Any landscaping the robots do will last two million years before it erodes."
Indeed, that giant figure-8 may remain a curious memento of 21st century whimsy for eons, cautions geologist
Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The perceived electrostatic lifting of Moon dust is a poorly understood phenomenon, and because powder produced by billions of years of collisions could go meters down into the bedrock, "it seems like it could be a pointless exercise," says Spudis, author of "The Once and Future Moon."
ASRs Norris said her company is so focused on its immediate goals that "anything past the Lunar Retriever 1 mission is science fiction." But Norris adds that she respects Tildens work and is open to the telescopic, tourism, and other commercial opportunities robotic moonscaping might create. Space-based energy systems using solar or
Regardless of the final outcome of the lunabot's moonscaping, their "lives" won't be spent in vain, at least financially. Tilden said his immediate windfall will come from sales on Earth of his robots as toys and adult tools in the wake of the Lunar Retriever 1 hoopla.
"Building robots for space is visible, possible, and necessary, but Earth is where the market is. It's ironic that I have to send my robots to the moon to sell them here, but that's reality," he said. "The moon machines will only emphasize the quality of device we can build now. If it works there, it'll work anywhere sort of thing."
The first to be sold will be the losers of a robot version of the TV game of Survivor to be played in the New Mexico desert in 2003, Tilden said. One hundred robots will be dumped in a desolate area, and the two that survive best go to the moon. The best humans in TV-land can aspire to now is the Mir -- in orbit around Earth.
Tilden said hes also hoping mass marketing will keep the military from getting a lock on his technologies. But he remains committed to populating the moon with more and more robots.
"In my paper Systematic Deployment of Stratified Roboecologies,' I state that the mission is to provide increasingly improved environments for diverse robot species over years of deployment, so I'll be my own best customer," he said. "If others wish to get involved, we can start negotiating after we've proven the resource and secured enough real estate for experimentation. However, I have no plans outside of my own curiosity, and no expectations outside of what I know I can do. I do know this: we've got to start now, and we start by answering the question: If a robot does work on the moon and there's no one around to see, does the Dow Jones make a profit?"
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