Robots already do more than humans in a lot of production now. Humans are still used because they are so cheap, but humans are not cheap in space. To house and feed humans off world is hideously expensive. Teleoperation is used to do the most delicate brain surgery and the heaviest tunnel boring and mining operation here on earth. Right now our service people are flying UAV's remotely from DC around the world.

How many farming robots are now used? The tractors are guided by lasers and gps to do the plowing, planting ,and harvesting. Could a crane operator doing skyscraper construction really need to be in the cockpit of the crane or could you just simulate the cockpit ala UAV's and have him anywhere? I think you know the answer and and I think you understand having that crane operator remain on earth rather than going through all the cost and expense to transport SAFELY and have him survive off planet would be WAY cheaper.

What I don't get is what possbile activity couldn't be teleoperated (or fully automated)? Robots can do more delicate work than humans and do heavier work than humans and work 24 hours a day. The cost for humans to do anything in space has remained at incredible levels (or increased) while the costs for fully or teleoperated robots and vehicles has plummeted and will continue to plummet. The capabilities of robots and ROV's continue to increase. Many human activies are currently not automated, but if the cost per hour were $10,000 name something that wouldn't be automated.

Ironically part of the plans to support humans off world will be teleoperated medical robots--which would not be needed if humans weren't there! Instead if we could just go directly to teleoperated construction robots we would save both time and money.

Remember you don't have to bring the robots back. This is important enough to repeat. REMEMBER YOU DON"T HAVE TO BRING THE ROBOTS BACK. You can just keep launching them building up a bigger and bigger infrastructure of all types of specialized robots and ROV's. The unmanned rovers on Mars have lasted 5 years! Can you imagine if we really started to get serious about using this technology to explore the moon what could be done?! This also undermines the argument that humans are going to save this huge amount of money by being on site and making some sort of wonderful snap decisions. 1) Astronauts rarely if ever make snap decisions--most decisions are made on earth after consultation with experts, 2) you eliminate all the snap decisions about their own survival because there is no need, and 3) what exactly will humans provide that could not be done by a plethora of robot options. As soon as you figure out any capability that is missing from the robot tool kit, it can be added to the next generation robot on earth or a new specialized robot can be developed to provide it and a relatively cheap (unmanned launch) can be sent to the moon.

1) Survey the moon at all spectrum levels from moon orbit while building up communication bandwidth so that heavily virtualized remote operation on the moon can be done effectively.

2)Drop the specialized reconnaisance rovers on the moon that will last for years and can answer critical questions for resource acquisition that can't be answered from orbital reconnaisance.

3) Develop plans based on resource reconnaisance and experiments on earth on utilization of moon materials in situ

4) Figure out something to really do on the moon--whether it is large observatories, or asteroid protection program, or building a large permament settlement that will be manned or visited by tourists or scientists. Whatever this is, it needs to be justified on a cost return basis at some level compared to other potential human endeavors both on and off earth.

Obviously 4 is affected by what is found out in steps 1-3 and some of the activies in 1-3 is affected by what could be potentially desired in step 4. But the whole process is accelerated the less we directly involve the transportation of humans off world in the early stages.

Currently it is obvious that ROV reconnaisance of Mars is the only way to go because we can't even compute the cost or have the capabilites to do it directly with humans. Just because we can figure out a cost that could be paid to have direct human involvement in these early stages of moon exploration does not justify spending 10 or 100's times as much as doing it in teleoperated mode.