Send Your Avatar to the Moon with NASA's Project M

Coolio - I'll be watching this one closely.

Even as we read this, there are probably countless young hackers who have already begun furiously cobbling together Wii remotes, Legos, bits of old camcorders and the neighbor's screen door into something that could get the job done in 100 days.

So we're going to Moon vicariously, eh? So what are we going to do there as humanoid avatars that a more capable non-humanoid non-avatar couldn't do better, faster and cheaper?

Every time I read something like this I cannot dispel the image of NASA as an old man in a rocking chair, on an old-timey porch, reminiscing about his Glory Days when, as a youth, he flew to the Moon and back. Now? Now he's trying recapture that moment in time when he actually had a Real, Honest-to-God Mission: to get to the Moon before the Soviets did. In other words, it was a Public Relations job all the way.

Then, like now - like the ISS, which continues to siphon much-needed funds from other, far more worthy and truly-scientific missions - Manned Space Flight a la NASA is all about Public Relations.

These programs are not and never have been about Science.

Attila

"Houston, we've got a problem. I've fallen and I can't get up."