WHEN IT COMES TO GOING TO MARS AND BEYOND, MACHINES CAN DO THE WORK

Do you love the next planet out from the sun as much as I do? No? Does this image make you feel anything or are you suffering from Space Mumps?

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems & a cute little roving buggy

The heart-breaking ‘get our human asses to Mars’ news is that realistically it’s still at least 20 years away. If the experts are saying that something is 20 years away, they may as well be saying, “we don’t know!” There are perhaps a million innovations and incremental improvements required to actually get people safely to Mars and be able to return. So what should we do?

Can you hear Holst’s masterpiece in your head? If not, play the music and let’s visualise together an army of robots waging exploration war on the fine red regolith, then chilling out in their downtime playing the Martian-robo-mod of the Plants vs Zombies video game.

While I’d like more money to be spent on exploration rather than weapons of Terran mass murder, I agree with the current plan that machines can do the work. Let’s keep following the red brick road that space scientists and engineers and their support teams have been given the curious opportunity to robo-slave away on. With each new mission we find out more and more and with slow incremental improvements, we should one day be able to make a fully operational kill-bot who’ll be able to hermaphroditically reproduce with their double-barrelled inseminators.

Have I just jumped the Martian Sharknado in claiming that we’ll ever be able to advance from cute little remote-controlled buggies to remote-controlled synthetic humans with terminating abilities far beyond the T-1000? Perhaps, but the RC synths will be far more resistant to the deadly conditions on Mars than squishy humans and not go space-crazy on the 6 month voyage.

The biggest current obstacle that I see for a real breakthrough to get the wider population as excited as me is brain/machine interfacing: the ability for telepresence; which is remotely controlling robots using only our minds and getting the inputs piped into our brains from the robots’ sensors. If you’ve had the misfortune to see Smurfs in Space (the movie Avatar), you get the idea.

It’s all extremely cool technology to get anything to Mars, but we are in an early stage right now. Many of us don’t feel like we’ve actually gone there like we went to The Moon. Well, the current robotic technology is not as Fancy as Iggy Azalea yet, but at least the Mars bots won’t struggle with the lyrics to their own songs and cancel their concert tours and advertise underwear instead. Anyone looking forward to her troubled second album?

Am I the only one that can see her robot flanges?

Maybe Iggy is actually secretly a robot remotely controlled by Nicki Minaj. The technology hasn’t been perfected yet and Iggy is currently being repaired and upgraded, but Nikki managed to get some extra cash, no. 1 hits and awards by creating and controlling a white and non-threatening rapper and even inventing the feud between them so no one except me would be able to join the conspir-ass-y dots. Come on Nicki! Let's use some of your booty robot technology to help out the Mars robot nerds.

If I could get Nicki’s technology, I would build and control a billion Bill Cosbys to swarm over Mars and there wouldn’t be a single woman to violate on the entire planet. In a Universe without karma, this would be poetic justice for me. Think the ‘Being John Malkovich’ movie poster but with Bill Cosbys. If this thought experiment horrifies you, then how about substituting with a more friendly celebrity like Rolf Harris or Jarred ‘not from Subway anymore’ Fogle or Mel Gibson or any of these stellar individuals?

TRIGGER WARNING ON VIDEO FOR ANY HUMAN THAT ISN'T MELVIN GIBSONS

The snail pace speed of light time delay thing would be annoying for sure; like your clunky old computer that takes half an hour to download a single high-res risqué image of Tanning Chodeum in the movie Magic Mike XXL. It takes between 3 and 22 minutes to send a signal to the Martian robots, so we would need to give them just enough artificial intelligence to survive while they wait for further instructions. They could even be programmed with Cosby’s best routines and depositions to keep us all ‘entertained’.

Have I managed to make a cogent point between dumb jokes trying to somehow come to terms with the evils of human nature? Stay on target Gold Five! We are already doing what it will take to one day at least feel like we’re on Mars with the aid of technology. If you think this is far-fetched, just consider how much technology is in your smart phone. You’ve got the whole world in your hands and one day you’ll have other worlds too!

References:

Blog article about a planned human mission to Mars possible/probable scam

Pinterest board for any space exploration articles that get my space antennas buzzing

SPACE WHY? (IN YOUR BEST SHATNER)

How old were you when you decided what you thought about exploring beyond the confines of Earth? I think we can divide ourselves into three bases: Moon Unit Alpha, Moon Unit Zappa and Dweezil Zappa

1. Alpha: “Stay at home! It’s obscene and a complete waste of money when we still have so many worldly problems.”

2. Zappa: “Leave Earth! It’s absolutely necessary for the future survival of humanity.”

3. Dweezil: “I don’t really care either way, as long as they don’t spend too much and share their discoveries and space art.”

Let’s be realistic. No matter what I write, chances are that you and I won’t be changing our positions. I was pretty much locked into position 2 somewhere around the age of 10 when I decided that space was cool. I had a ‘big astronomy for kids’ type picture book that convinced me well before I had the ability to defend my position. As I got older, I remember one disagreement where someone took position 1 pretty much just to be Mary Mary Quiet Contrary; they scored a strike by knocking down my passion pins at Barney’s Bowlarama.

Schlock jocks get paid to be contrarians; even the conservative ones. I haven’t heard the ‘paid to rant’ folk talk about space travel for ages; probably because as a global society, we pretty much landed on position 3 ‘Dweezil’ after the Americans beat the Russians to Bing Gordon’s moon. This somewhat satisfies all humans and when politics is all about trying to maximise votes, it makes sense to me that this happened. So that pretty much explains why space exploration is just trickling away slowly and painfully like your Uncle with the prostate problem. 

The end, right? “Why write more?” asks the bright space-shipwright preparing for her first flight fight rite of passage through the Wilbur Wright tight asteroid field bathed in white light.

Well, I’d like to be able to convince the Team Alphas to maybe reconsider their positions to at least a ‘Dweezil’ position, then we can start talking about Mars Attacks rusty iron tacks: spending. I am aware that attempting to persuade you in my own voice is as futile as resistance from the Borg, so how about if I crudely channel Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story movies? This is what he might say about space exploration:

“Buzz Lightyear to Star Command. I have an AWOL Space Ranger who doesn’t want to play with me anymore. I will attempt to communicate.”

“I'm Buzz Lightyear, Universe Protection Unit. My ship has crash-landed here by mistake. No matter what your thoughts are of the protective powers of your planet; one big rock smash is all it will take to wipe you Earth persons out. All of your Cowboys and Slinky Dog toys would be gone with no backup. This is unlikely in Andy’s lifetime; but a near certainty in the future. Remember that almost all of the species of Earth were extinct long before Mr & Mrs Potato Head were grown. It is certain that if you stay sitting around a campfire with Andy making delicious hot Schmoes, the future of your entire species is in jeopardy. That is your mission, space cadets! First, are you still using fossil fuels, or have you discovered crystallic fusion?”

Where does this leave us? After writing this article I love space and the Toy Stories even more; which is no surprise. I’m also rather pleased with myself that I didn’t put a single reference in this article to Star Wars or Star Trek; at least not in the final edit…

How about you, young Padawan? Do you accept that there are benefits to perhaps spending a little more to going to “Infinity and beyond,” then perhaps one day, even further than that and breaking the fourth wall of our Universe? If Rick Moranis can do it, then surely so can we!

References:
Blog article about a planned human mission to Mars possible/probable scam
Pinterest board for any space exploration articles that get my space antennas buzzing

PAREIDOLIA FUN TIMES

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/02/09/the-hubble-spotted-this-smiley-face-in-space/

All Hail Galacto!

This is not a stellar smiley emoticon. Curse my human brain for seeing a face and ascribing to it a personality and an origin story and magical powers and a character arc.

Paradolia: easily my favourite cognitive distortion

It is, of course, an exquisite example of gravitational lensing. The phenomenon behaves like a natural telescope where instead of a glass lens bending light and magnifying an image, light is bent and magnified by the gravity from galaxy clusters and dark matter.

Source: http://www.lsst.org/News/enews/lensing-201107.html

This effect is a consequence of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity and was predicted in around 1937. It wasn't, however, confirmed by observation until 1979, long after Einstein's death.

All that science-babble aside, darn it looks like a smiley face! I've called him Galacto. He is a happy-go-lucky giant space being who...

Google image search 'pareidolia' for lots more fun