Not content with the sheer badassery of sending a humanoid robot to the moon in 2015, Japan has just unveiled a mission for 2020 that will involve setting up a whole robotic moon base. It will be unmanned in the flesh-and-blood sense, but will be populated with a 660 pound rolling bot. The station will be self-powered, and will let its citizen roam over 60+ miles of terrain, gathering scientific samples that can be sent back to earth. While rocks are great, we’re even more excited about the HDTV the station will be beaming back as well. The whole project will run somewhere in the ballpark of $2.2, and will be developed simultaneously with Japan’s manned moon program. We’re going to get working on our “I’m 660 pound a scientific exploration robot” costume right away.
Japan building a robot moon base in 2020, and you’re not invited originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 May 2010 21:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Space tourism is something we here at Engadget have always been pretty fond of in theory — it is the final frontier, after all — but the prohibitive (exorbitant, extravagant, ridiculous) $200,000 price tag on a
Virgin Galactic flight pretty much ended any small hopes we ever harbored of getting on one. So, would a reduction of about 50 percent be enough to get us to sign up? That’s the question that Virginia-based Space Adventures is asking. The company’s just announced it’s going to offer flights into suborbital space through an exclusive agreement with
Armadillo Aerospace, which is currently developing the rockets for the journeys. A trip with Space Adventures is set to cost just $102,000. We still can’t afford it, but we’re certainly glad to see the prices fall from insane to outrageous. So, what about you? Are you in?
Space Adventures undercuts Virgin Galactic — announces $100,000 space tourism flight originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 May 2010 11:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Categories: Science, Space Tags: armadillo aerospace, ArmadilloAerospace, space adventures, space tourism, SpaceAdventures, SpaceTourism, suborbital, suborbital space flight, SuborbitalSpaceFlight, tourism, virgin galactic, VirginGalactic
As the US prepares to send NASA’s humanoid Robonaut2 up to the International Space Station in September, Japan’s private SOHLA (Space Oriented Higashiosaka Leading Association) is gearing up to send its own two-legged robot to the moon by 2015. The $10.5 million robot named “Maido-kun” is being developed in coordination with the Space Exploration Agency of Japan (JAXA), an organization that has been trying to send robots to the moon since at least 2006. Oh sure, there’s little reason to send a wobbling two-legged robotic rover to the crater-pocked face of the moon when four-on-the-floor would be much more practical — other than it’s awesome.
Japan sending humanoid robot to the moon by 2015 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Apr 2010 05:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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