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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Scuttle the Shuttle?(Boskone Panalist, etc.)
Message-ID: <6515@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Mar-86 17:10:53 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.6515
Posted: Fri Mar 14 17:10:53 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Mar-86 17:10:53 EST
References: <8603111311.AA07802@s1-b.arpa>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 41

> But teleoperated devices have been used in the lab for 40 years, in
> nuclear physics.  

And very crude and primitive they are, too.  Nothing that would be at
all useful in space, for the most part.  Why do you think the Surveyors
and the Vikings carried only the simplest remote-controlled scoops?

> Using them in the lab in non-life threatening
> situations would not make sense.

Bova was exaggerating a bit, but only a bit.  There are many jobs on
Earth where teleoperators would be the preferred technology if they
were capable and reliable.  As for non-life-threatening situations,
the life expectancy of chemists is noticeably shorter than that of other
laboratory-based professionals.  Not a lot, but some.  Is this a
life-threatening situation?  If not, why not?

(I still remember our instructor in third-year organic showing us how
to clean spectrophotometer cells.  Using benzene.  >>>GAK<<<  If I'd
known then what I know now, I'd have walked out of that lab and dropped
the course at once.)

> ...People are cheap on the ground...

Have you tried pricing them in a university environment lately?  For
positions requiring serious skill, not just warm bodies?

> ...People in space are expensive...

Have you priced space-mission teleoperator development projects lately?
They aren't cheap either.

> You can't expect the economics to be identical.

No, but I can expect to draw some limited conclusions from the observation
that teleoperators see very little use on Earth, and most of the ones that
do see use are for situations where human presence is not just expensive
and dangerous but utterly impossible.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry