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Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on March 9, 2012 at 7:29am

What this is is an extension of capabilities which have been a part of commercial flight for a while, from the first autopilot to ALS, the Automatic Landing System.  Computers and pseudo-intelligent processing make more advanced tasks such as in-space refueling possible, though I suspect that, like UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), there is still a human being somewhere in that loop.

A good thing, too.  Anyone here remember the movie Westworld - where nothing can possibly go worng!

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Permalink Reply by Richard ∑wald on March 10, 2012 at 12:08am

"What this is is an extension of capabilities which have been a part of commercial flight for a while, from the first autopilot to ALS, the Automatic Landing System.  Computers and pseudo-intelligent processing make more advanced tasks such as in-space refueling possible, though I suspect that, like UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), there is still a human being somewhere in that loop."

For now, …but it's getting to be something that could probably be done from a terminal in someone's bedroom. 

What would be cool is if they'd look into scooping the atmosphere for hydrogen/oxygen using gravity and processing it zero G. Lowers the payload you have to get up considerably as well as making low earth orbit maintenance/higher orbits and transits out of the gravity well vastly cheaper

"Anyone here remember the movie Westworld - where nothing can possibly go wrong!"

Loren! Stop scarin' the post-boomers with Yul Brenner!

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