Another important benefit of our moon’s closeness is the short ping. We still don’t have an AGI we can send to industrialize other planets, but I do think we are at point where we can do remote controlled industry where humans don’t have to be at the site but still need to monitor and manage everything. Even if it’s not commercialized yet, the technological frontier is already there—think Boston Dynamics showcase robots with humans telling them what to do doing the work of human workers in a mostly automated modern factory.
If we do this on the moon, communication round trip is just a few seconds (between 2.4 and 2.7, but maybe we’ll need to route it via some satellites so let’s round it up to 3 seconds). Not instant feedback, but good enough to be effective. Mars, on the other hand, has a ping of between 6 and 44 minutes—which is much harder to work with.
Imagine a robot doing something wrong in a martian factory. The control center on Earth will see it after 3 minutes at best—and by that time the robot proceeded with its wrong actions, doing 3 minutes worth of damage. The humans send the command to stop—which arrives after 3 more minutes of damage. On the moon, on the other hand, that’s only 3 seconds of damage (not counting the humans’ reaction time) which is much better.
Another important benefit of our moon’s closeness is the short ping. We still don’t have an AGI we can send to industrialize other planets, but I do think we are at point where we can do remote controlled industry where humans don’t have to be at the site but still need to monitor and manage everything. Even if it’s not commercialized yet, the technological frontier is already there—think Boston Dynamics showcase robots with humans telling them what to do doing the work of human workers in a mostly automated modern factory.
If we do this on the moon, communication round trip is just a few seconds (between 2.4 and 2.7, but maybe we’ll need to route it via some satellites so let’s round it up to 3 seconds). Not instant feedback, but good enough to be effective. Mars, on the other hand, has a ping of between 6 and 44 minutes—which is much harder to work with.
Imagine a robot doing something wrong in a martian factory. The control center on Earth will see it after 3 minutes at best—and by that time the robot proceeded with its wrong actions, doing 3 minutes worth of damage. The humans send the command to stop—which arrives after 3 more minutes of damage. On the moon, on the other hand, that’s only 3 seconds of damage (not counting the humans’ reaction time) which is much better.