Ocean Robots Upgraded After Logging 300,000 Miles

kkleiner writes "Liquid Robotics first generation of wave gliders have successfully navigated from the U.S. to Australia, surviving numerous hurricanes. Now, the next generation of autonomous robots have been outfitted with thrusters that supplement the wave-energy harvesting technology that they use to move. They also are equipped with a weather station and sensors to collect even more data on the ocean. Currently, over 100 missions are in operation around the world."

A lesson for space robotics

[khallow]

A private company receives [crunchbase.com] somewhere less than $90 million in funding (half which was received last month) and manages to create a new type of cheap sea-based platform and currently has over a hundred of them active.

In contrast, the typical space probe is a hideously expensive, one-off design made by people who have no interest in reducing the cost of the platform. In the past, I've advocated developing space probes in batches or iterative generations instead. This is an example of why.

There are some obvious differences. Space is much more expensive to access at $5-10k per kg just to reach low Earth orbit. While these guys can just drive up to a beach. Space also is a harsher environment. It doesn't have full time exposure to sea water, but it does have hard radiation, temperature extremes, and heat dissipation issues.

Even so, this is how you do things economically. Making multiple copies of a probe design means that you spread out R&D costs over more probes - R&D is a large cost currently of space probes. You also get "learning curve" effects where the marginal cost of manufacturing, operation, and management of probes goes down as you make and deploy more of them. You "learn" (or rather exploit various economies of scale for these processes) how to do this better.

End result is more probes and more work done for the same amount of money spent.

Re: A lesson for space robotics

[mi]

Well, the difference is that such sea transports are meant to be practically usable fairly soon, whereas the space exploration is not expected to pay for itself in a foreseeable future -- it exists only, because enough taxpayers view space-travel as interesting.

This leads me, a Libertarian, to think, NASA (except for its military parts) ought to be financed not by taxes (which are collected at gunpoint), but by donations. This will make it responsible not to Congressmen seeking to "fund jobs" in their districts, but to donors genuinely interested in space-explorations.

It would not only be fair (some taxpayers may prefer spending on protein research, or, indeed, sea-travel over spaceships), but also more efficient.