Hi again...
As I write this I'm watching the post-landing NASA press conference live on
NASA TV (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html). One of the NASA
people was talking about what a difficult navigation problem they'd
successfully overcome. His analogy was, "It was like golfing from a tee in
Boston, Mass, aiming at a cup in Australia and hitting a hole-in-one."
Everybody applauded (and so they should have). But, then, the next guy to
speak interjected, "Yeah. And the cup was moving!" They had only a 20
meter "window" of landing space to make their desired landing spot (after a
600+ million kilometer trip from earth). It looks, by the initial data,
that they nailed it.
This program begin in 1998. Ten years! Imagine how the technology they
were working with changed (improved) in those ten years. The success of the
Phoenix Lander now brings NASA's Mars mission success rate up to 50%.
They are very different problems, of course, but one is prompted on the
heals of a great intellectual success like this to renew one's belief that
humanity will, one day, build the AGI we can only dream about and (most of
the time battling great frustration) work toward today.
Cheers,
Brad
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agi
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