NASA's Robonaut Gets Its Legs; Could a Moonwalk Be In Its Future?

MarkWhittington writes "Project M was a proposal at NASA's Johnson Spaceflight Center that would have put together a mission to deliver a bipedal robot to the lunar surface within a thousand days. The idea never got out of the conception stage, but two major components, a new type of lunar lander, now called Morpheus, and a robonaut continued on as separate projects. Morpheus is getting ready to conduct a second attempt at free flight tests at the Kennedy Space Center. The first attempt resulted in the destruction of the prototype vehicle. If the second round of tests is successful, NASA will have a spacecraft that could deliver 1,100 pounds of payload to the lunar surface. While a copy of Robonaut 2 is still undergoing tests on board the International Space Station, ABC News reports that a cousin of the mechanical person has been built with legs. It stands eight feet tall and weighs 500 pounds. With two major components of Project M nearing completion, could a robonaut become the next moon walker?"

Re:Obligatory Poverty Comment....

[Mitchell314]

Yes. The tech and space race during the cold war drove huge demand for technical and specialized labor, as well as immense demand for the resources and know-how to educate such a workforce (an increasingly educated workforce generally means a more productive one). Even if there isn't an immediate product being produced, you're still drawing more people into higher paying jobs, and giving them experience that will benefit them for their careers well after a given project is done. The economical benefits of even pie-in-the-sky research are positive and long lasting.

And before somebody says anything, no this is not a broken window fallacy. A BWF would be to say the money put into building the rockets is value added. This is a different argument.