Japanese Agency Plan for Robot Lunar Base

Dilaudid writes "According to these articles Keiji Tachikawa, head of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency sees a major role in the lunar base planned by NASA in 2020. 'As part of the plan Japan would use advanced robotic technologies to help build the moon base ... Japan's lunar robots would do work such as building telescopes and prospecting and mining for minerals, Tachikawa said.' Tachikawa was voted one of the 25 most influential global leaders by Time... I wish him luck!"

Re:Theories (asinine)

[mfh]

"Japanese robots on the moon, is this the beginnings of post-colonial cyborg imperialism?"

When NASA was founded in 1958, Japan was really still recovering from Nagasaki and Hirshima [gensuikin.org], 13 years earlier. It wasn't until August 1967 when the reinforcement construction was completed on A-bomb Dome in Hiroshima.

Keiji Tachikawa's last name is the same as Tachikawa [wikipedia.org], a town outside of Tokyo, founded on December 1, 1940. Coincidence?

Japan and the US are now poised to build a very important part of human history together. It's quite moving, IMHO.

I guess it just shows you that no matter what happens, no matter what the evil stuff is, there always really is hope... unless the lunar space robots are really a ploy to get back at us? Fear the space robots!

Long way to go

[dannyitc]

I don't think getting to the moon will be as trivial for Japan as many here think. This is a country who's space division is operating at a tenth of NASA's budget and has had trouble just putting satellites in orbit as recently as 2003 [rednova.com]. Japanese space technology has a long way to go before they go ahead with all this robot moon base business.

Wow...

[ch0p]

These robots better have some clever way of getting rid of the magnetically charged, extreamly abrasive lunar dust. I had to design a lunar robot for a NASA contest, and that was the biggest obsticle. We just came up with some miracle "demagnatizing spray" that would blow off the dust. I'd like to see how they pull this off without made up technologies.

Re:Theories (asinine)

[JanneM]

Who needs people when robots can do the work?

Well, who _does_ need people when robots can do the work?

If it happens, we've been there before. About two centuries ago, the vast majority of, well, everyone was gainfully employed in agriculture. Today, in many parts, it's only part of the population - and in wealthy countries it is a small fraction. Yet agricultural output is larger than ever before, and the changing societies managed to absorb that huge pool of available work it got as a result.

I'm looking forward to the day when most menial, dangerous and physically wearing work can be automated.

Re:Long way to go

[antifoidulus]

Also keep in mind there is not much room for growth in terms of government funding in Japan. Japan's debt problem is just about as bad as the US's, the big difference is that the majority of Japanese debt is held privately but the US debt is held abroad. In terms of GDP, Japan is even worse off. The size of their debt is roughly 130% of their GDP, the US's debt is about 65% of the debt. The Japanese government is also caters to special interests as much as the government of the US, and their favorite bed partner is the construction industry. You wouldn't think that Japan, a very small country with an even smaller amount of usuable land(most of the country is very mountainous) with a population that is barely growing would need a large construction industry, and yet it exists, building giant roads to nowhere.
I think that Japan's potential is high, but they are going to have a hard time trying to raise the funds necessary to turn that potential into useful space products. They really need to cut off the construction funds first, but that would cause a temporary spike in unemployment, the one thing the Japanese people cannot stand it seems.....

Re:Theories (asinine)

[bornyesterday]

I'm looking forward to the day when most menial, dangerous and physically wearing work can be automated. Why's that? You trying to put a very large portion of humanity out of work? Without those jobs available for people to make a living, what are they going to do to support themselves and their families? You have to remember that science fiction is exactly that: fiction. Reality is not the idyllic place that it's made out to be in many stories. And it's not the dystopia that it's made out to be in many others. It's somewhere in between. So not only will robots not take over all the high-danger/low-skill jobs because of economic constraints, they won't revolt and try to kill us all. Though if you kick that damn robot dog one too many times it will start spraying oil on your shoes and bed.

What else?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what else should they have a boner for? Mindless celebrities? Reality television? At least they have a boner for something useful, unlike this stupid shithole (USA) where people live and breathe the daily idiocies of the famous and fuckheaded.

Manifest Destiny

[ramblin billy]

Much as Russia has always longed for a warm water port, Japan has always needed a reliable source of raw materials. Their invasions of China and Russia, and their involvement in WWII, were all based on the limited resources of their homeland. The partnership with the U.S. has provided both a market and a supply of materials for the remarkable post WWII growth of Japanese industry. Space is the perfect answer to a continuing joint effort. I own a Honda and am convinced it is a superior product in every way. I see no reason to believe their robots [planetanalog.com] will be any different. The Japanese are sometimes accused of being better copiers than inovators, at least when it comes to technology. That may be true, but we should also consider that many American companies have copied Japanese management techniques with great success. Traditionally the Japanese people have excelled at successful integration of large populations in small areas with limited resources. Their society incorporates complex and specific codes for individual behavior. In an artificial environment, such as a lunar settlement, the ability to get along in crowded conditions and the socialization of necessary protocols for environmental adaptation are powerful tools for success. The typical Japanese's willingness to give loyalty to the greater good makes them ideal partners in enduring the hardships of space exploration. Note that the articles refer to the Japanese contribution to a lunar colony centering on building and mining robots. Of course the technicians to maintain and control those robots will be a part of that contribution. It may be that in the long run, the lessons learned from the Japanese culture will outweigh the benefits of their technology. Personally I like the idea of a U.S. partnership with a society that is absolutely against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It will make it that much easier for US to do the right thing.

billy - we have no space-based weapons...no really...we promise...really...

Mineral extraction and Moon's mass?

[indriyas]

It may be a silly question but... Could a full scale exploitation of the Moon's minerals alter the satellite's mass and change its trajectory around the earth? Could that be plausible? We never altered our Earth's mass as almost nothing quit the planet. Cheers, Eric

Re:Theories (asinine)

[ZosX]

Becuase you all know how well The USA treated its own citizens of Japenses decent during the war. And fire bombing/nuclear bombing of Japan and carpet bombing of germany is ok. Yah i gotta say i feel guilty for some of the things my country (USA) did during that war, I think there aren't many countires involved that can think they upheld all of their values by the end of the war. This is not a reason to dislike one country but is a reason to dislike war.

Why feel guilty? Feel proud man! War is brutal and demoralizing. World War II was no doubt one of the worst (WWI actually takes that honor IMHO), and every country that participated did terrible things to their enemies. The gloves were off, it was us or them. If it wasn't for the United States, we would all be speaking german right now, or worse perhaps, maybe Russian. We needed the nuclear bomb then probably more than we need it now. Without anyone to counter Russia it would have sliced Europe into pieces and the EU would have been the CU, that is, Communist Union. By launching a second (though debatably unnecessary) bomb, we were showing the USSR that we had the means to potentially take out a few of their cities as well in one fell swoop. Do you honestly think that the occupation of east germany would have stopped just there without our atomic weapons of mass destruction? The USSR was poised to keep on fighting and I honestly don't know if we would have had the resources and manpower to take on the red army at the end of WWII. Technologically we could have had an upper hand, but WWII was still fought more or less man to man and we were greatly outnumbered.

In any case, WWII was brutal, dehumanizing, and an awful display of what happens when humans become disposable for a potentially greater good. I can only hope (and I'm not optimistic given the current climate) that it will be the last great war. The last world war, but unfortunately, history tends to repeat itself.

Those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat the mistakes that those have made in the past.

Re:Theories (asinine)

[LWATCDR]

"Because you all know how well The USA treated its own citizens of Japanese decent during the war."
Yes what the US did was wrong. The Equal of what the government of Japan did?
NO FRIGGING WAY.
How many beheading of Japanese Americans did the Government of the US do? How many where forced to become "comfort women" for the US Army?
Want to compare how Japan treated none combatants that they interned? Probably not.

The US did not attack Japan first. The US was trying to use trying use trade sanctions and political pressure to get Japan to stop it's aggression.
As far as the carpet bombings and the Atomic Bombs. The number of Chinese and Korean deaths out numbers those by far.
"This is not a reason to dislike one country but is a reason to dislike war."

You see this is another BLIND KNEE JERK REACTION!
In my post did I ever say Japan? Did I ever say the people of Japan? Nope I said the Government of Japan. Specifically the war time government of Japan.
The war time government of Japan is to blame for the carpet bombings and the atomic bombings. Even after the first Atomic attack they where trying to negotiate for no occupation and they would disarm there own military.
The myth that is about preserving their Emperor is just that a myth.
I do not agree that one should not hate a government that carries out genocidal wars like the Japanese and German government did during WWII. I also disagree that by 1941 their was a peaceable way to stop them.
Had the victors of WWI had set up a "Just Peace" like the US wanted then maybe Hitler would have never come to power. The problem is it was not tried until after the WWII.
The thing we all have to remember is that the Japan and Germany of today are not the Japan and Germany of WWII. The other important thing to remember is even during WWII most of the people in Japan and German just wanted to raise there kids and live their lives.

Re:Theories (asinine)

[ThosLives]

Your scenario 2 is a little flawed. It might turn out that way, but it's not guaranteed. This is even assuming that the purchase price of a house is only based on labor [robots] and materials instead of goofy market speculation and politics.

Here's a situation: person A can build 1 house in 1 year, so he will charge the person to whom he sells the house 1 year's worth of "stuff" he needs and wants: payment for his house, food, savings, entertainment, some free time, etc. Now let's say person A builds a machine (using some of the 'free time' and 'etc.' included in the price he was charing) that allows him to make 1 house in half a year. If person A decides to still only build one house per year and take half a year off, he would probably still charge the original price to pay for his house, food, etc. Person A would probably tell you his quality of life has improved greatly, even though he doesn't have more money. Person A may decide to build 2 houses instead, in which case the price of each house needs to sum to what the person wants, but they don't necessarily have to go to half the original. Even if the person does take "full price" for each house, conceivably the person might not work for as many years and retire early (since he could have saved quite a lot) and the net production of houses he produced might be no greater than before - so there might not be more houses with the machine than without.

I hope this example shows that it is not clear at all how technology really affects the economy - it really depends on the individuals in that economy.