Robonaut To Escort On Space Shuttle Mission 74
An anonymous reader writes "The STS-133 crew will deliver robot Robonaut 2 (R2) to the International Space Station. Cocooned inside an aluminum frame and foam blocks cut out to its shape, R2 is heading to the station inside the Permanent Multipurpose Module in space shuttle Discovery's payload bay. R2, with its humanlike hands and arms and stereo vision, is expected to perform some of the repetitive or more mundane functions inside the orbiting laboratory to free astronauts for more complicated tasks and experiments."
the best thing about this new crewmate... (Score:3, Insightful)
... he doesn't fart.
Re:about fucking time (Score:5, Insightful)
Because robotic teleoperation, while handy, is far from perfect?
Re:about fucking time (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF are you talking about? Have you ever looked at the vast number of unmanned spacecraft doing work for us right now? Ever noticed how many were launched & operational even before Vostok 1?
It is really hilarious - those claiming we don't need "inspiring" manned programmes...completelly taken by them themselves, apparently, to the point of not noticing how humans are not, and never were "our primary means of getting work done in space"
Re:about fucking time (Score:4, Insightful)
Because people want to be there.
besides there are a LOT of other things my taxes go to that I really don't want to pay for. Sending people into space is just a good idea. as it improves our knowledge on how to do so. So if were survive long enough and need to escape earth we can and possible settle someone else.
If we don't wast time and money on humans in space the knowledge will go away. Just think if we were to go to the moon again we need to rethink everything again because we havn't been there in 40 years. And we have forgotten how to.
Re:R2-D2 (Score:1, Insightful)
If you added a 'D2' onto the name, you'd have R2-D2. There, I said it. Now nobody else can make lame puns.
Nope, that would be R2+D2, what you meant is subtract it, sheesh, news for nerds.
AC was proven wrong yet again!
Re:about fucking time (Score:2, Insightful)
"I now define 'moral behavior' as 'behavior that tends toward survival.' I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word 'moral' to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define "behavior that tends toward extinction" as being 'moral' without stretching the word 'moral' all out of shape.
... and it is still moral behavior even when it fails.
Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.
The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so fierce that she'll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a moonlighting job to keep his kids in college -- and the level at which a mother or father dives into a flood to save a drowning child
br> Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.
The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called 'patriotism.' Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind.
Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: 'One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.'"
Re:R2D2? (Score:3, Insightful)
R2
Here I am, brain the size of a planet