From: utzoo!decvax!cca!REM@MIT-MC@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.space
Title: Lunar Telepresence
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3182
Posted: Wed Sep  8 22:42:04 1982
Received: Fri Sep 10 05:12:09 1982

From: Robert Elton Maas 
Note that I was not proposing the use of 3-sec-delay remote-control
for fabricating aluminum girders, merely for stuffing ore into a
hopper for tossing out to space (with or without preliminary
processing on the moon before the toss). Thus the problem of fragile
materials and "dropping things" won't exist. Once ore gets off the moon
it's trivial to move it to LEO where there are plenty of voluteers to
handle it locally. The reason for suggesting telepresence on the moon
is it's a real pain to maintain human crews there, whereas LEO and
even lunar orbit are easy by comparison. The reason for suggesting
telepresence between Earth and Moon instead of between lunar-orbit and
Moon or LEO and Moon, is that telepresence may be very clumbsy, taking
lots of time even to do loading of ore, so using an astronaut's time
would be cost-ineffective, whereas using the time of an Earther would
be reasonable, even with the 3-sec problem. A lot of out-of-work
Earthers could be employed as remote manipulator miners. (Hey Reagan,
did you hear that? A solution to unemployment!)