Bill Stone, the maverick cave explorer who invented robots and dive equipment that have allowed him to plumb Earth's deepest abysses, explains his efforts to build a robot to explore Jupiter's moon Europa. The plan is to send the machine to bore through miles of ice and swim through a liquid underworld that may harbor alien life. And if that's not enough, he's also planning to mine lunar ice by 2015.
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There's been a lot of news about robots lately, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to synthesize what's going on in this field and offer a bit of speculation about where robotics is headed.
Kids love robots. I have a three-year-old friend who can identify the 1950s cult icon Robbie the Robot at 20 paces. My own son Jim could do an impressive multi-voiced impression of R2D2 by age five.
Jeebus. Didn't he read "2010"?
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/Summon Bevets.
Wow, I've been farked. Is that good?
Hope you have alot of bandwidth.
Where do I sign up!!
Hope the robot doesn't kill the little buggers if it finds any.
man, i wouldn't want to be deep in a cave with him. he seems about two steps short of snapping, lot of barely-contained rage in him, yow.
Aren't Europa's oceans mostly sulfuric acid? If he is actually preparing to send a probe, it better be pretty tough.
I don't see rage. I see compassion and life! There are those who do it. And those who read about it. Those who read about it do so from the comfort of a warm room with the T.V. on. Those that do it.... face each day with a fire that is hard to contain. For that....we all reep the rewards.
As an engineering I think it is absolutely a doing goal with a realistic time line. I would absolutely sign up to be on the mining expedition to the moon. For that matter the cave thing looked pretty cool, too.