Ever since man was no more than a glob of snot floating in a primordial ocean of ooze, he has pondered the nature of reality. Perhaps this inquiry came later in his evolutionary journey. He may have even been a glob of snot with legs by the time he began questioning the universe around him, but snot he was and snot he would remain for billions of years.

One clarification to avoid labels of sexism; the current English male pronoun is used to describe our primordial progenitor for the simple sake of convenience. In fact our gelatinous little ancestor had no gender. Like many fans of science fiction he would have no sex at all for much of his existence.

So there floated our wee ancestral phlegm pondering existence. He wondered if there might be a world above the water. He wondered what IS real? Is this watery world in which I find myself floating real and if so, am I keeping it real? But more than anything else, he pondered what a little protoplasmic ball of goo has to do to evolve into a species with gender and therefore sexual reproduction.

Eventually groups of snot-wads clumped together and formed The Protoplasmic Ponderers. Initially intended to be a philosophical society, they soon devolved into a primitive Doo-Wop band. This delayed further advancements in philosophy for 3 billion years, but resulted in a lucrative recording deal. The Ponderers considered that fair. Philosophically speaking, that is.

Eventually man moved out of what scientists refer to as the “Mucoceous Period” or colloquially amongst themselves after a few rounds of beer as “The Age Of Snot”. It is generally accepted as fact among scientists who do not smell of sulfur and methane that dinosaurs did not ponder the question of what is real until they saw a giant ball of fire in the sky, at which point they universally asked, “Is that thing for real?” In fact that sight sparked an evolutionary leap in thinking that would have flowered into the greatest civilization ever known on planet earth had it not been followed 12 seconds later by an earth-shattering impact that may or may not have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, but sure as hell put a stop to all that high-toned thinking they had just started.

Next we leap forward to the age of Homo Erectus. We shall move on lest we consider too deeply what he was thinking.

Now we enter the Stone Age. Suddenly man found leisure-time in which to think thanks to his many inventions. Inventions such as the “Giant Pelican-Like-Bird-Thing Washing Machine”, the “Pig-Beast Garbage Disposal” and of course, “Mastadon Plumbing”. That and the stone spear. That was quite popular as well.

Another leap in thought occurred during this period, when Auaagghuurraagh The Mighty Hunter was struck dead by lightning in the very instant before he would have achieved the greatest kill of his life by plunging his stone spear into the raging beast known to the tribe’s elders as “Pooky”.

Two great discoveries came from this chance happening:

1. The tribe decided that the universe doesn’t like over-achievers and
2. BBQ.

In fact Auaagghuurraagh was blasted inside Pooky (along with a small pigeon) and the world’s first “Turducken” was created.

The story of Auaagghuurraagh was handed down over many generations through the iron, tin, aluminum, pyrite and eventually the bronze age when the Greeks explored the concept of hubris through the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Perhaps Socrates said it best when he questioned, “That wasn’t really hemlock was it?” Through his death Socrates proved that as the universe selects against over-achievers, so do our fellow humans. Especially if we annoy them with questions.

And now in our mighty space-age, we who have hurled our spears to the very edge of our solar system and stamped our heavy boots right in the eye of the once feared Moon goddess, find ourselves asking: “What is real?” and “Are we keeping it real?”

That title doesn’t make sense. Keurig is a coffee maker and a modem… isn’t.

If titles could be as long as blog posts I would have said, The Sound A Keurig Coffee Maker Makes When Brewing The Liquid Fuel That Is My Addiction Is The New Replacement For The Sound Of A Modem Connecting.

Say what?

You young’uns won’t remember the special thrill of hearing a modem singing it’s love song to various BBSes and eventually the internet (my bad, teh internetz). That sing-song chirp-fest meant you were about to tap into a rich vein of… well mostly chat, email and “door games”. Ha! Door games are now an obscure reference. It’s what we did before Flash and FaceBook. Door games were simple games that a BBS could drop you into after you connected. Legend Of The Red Dragon! Yeah!

Interestingly enough many of the FaceBook games are just spam-tastic versions of old door games. You take a certain number of turns each day and other players do the same. The big difference now is that the apps SPAM the LIVING Be-Jebus out of all your friends who don’t know how to ignore them.

My children have grown up with the internet having always been an always on, always connected resource.

That means the sound of a modem connecting would be… annoying at best.

However, our new Keurig coffee maker with its wheezing, gasping, spitting sounds of forced coffee production is a different matter. In the few days since Christmas I have already begun to experience a Pavlovian reaction to that sound. Originally it sounded like the poor machine was in some form of respiratory or intestinal distress. Now it sounds like tasty rocket fuel is about to hit my bloodstream. Mmmm.

So that, my friends, is the long, round-about explanation of how the bear lost his tail, er, the Keurig Is The New Modem.

Hey! Buy one here and experience the love for yourself!

When I was a kid, I loved a comic book called Magnus The Robot Fighter. Magnus was a robot fighting machine human, who stood up to the robotic overlords who for some reason I can’t remember were both bossy and mean.

Despite the futuristic setting complete with flying cars (which I seem to remember you lay on your stomach to fly) and of course robots everywhere, apparently the best weapons for fighting said robots were your bare hands. Well, not YOUR bare hands, pretty much only the hands of Magnus The Robot Fighter.

I’m guessing their little robotic faces were made from thin aluminum based on the damage Magnus’ fist inflicted. I am curious what metal was used in the construction of their spindly little necks because Magnus could karate chop their heads right off. Those robots needed to learn the meaning of the word “recall”.

The best part was how cute they thought Magnus was as he was killing them because they often said, “SQUEEE!!!” as he mangled and beheaded them.

Jump forwards about 30 years and a question that looms over the future of space exploration is what mix of human vs. robotic missions make sense.

As a species we’ve taken our first tentative steps away from our crib and into the cosmos (with its BILLIONS and BILLIONS of stars) with both manned and robotic missions.

On the manned side we’ve been to low earth orbit, then to the moon, then to low earth orbit, and well, more low earth orbit. Kind of the space-faring equivalent of going to the grocery store for milk. Then going to Tahiti. Then going to the grocery store for bread. Then going to the store for eggs. And so on.

On the robotic side we’ve been to Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn with dedicated missions plus fly-bys of the other planets (and planetary bodies formerly known as planets). Our Voyager probes are even leaving our solar system.

Holy crap! The robots are clearly winning the space race!

Curse these oxygen sucking, radiation succumbing meat-based bodies!

Turns out our bodies are perfectly adapted to life on earth and nowhere else we have found. For us to go anywhere else, we have to schlep along a good sized chunk of earth with us (relative to our body size).

We need air, water, food, protection from radiation, just the right air pressure, and even entertainment! Services the earth provides, and we take for granted.

Hands down it is far easier and less expensive to send robots into space. You know what they don’t have? Families to mourn them if they die.

On the other hand they are not able to adapt to changes in plan. Apollo 13 proved that people can adapt to changes in plan with a flexibility machines can’t even dream of. That is if machines could dream. By the way, the answer is “NO” androids do not dream of anything much less sheep (electric or otherwise). They may, however, count sheep for all I know. Robo-shepherds at least.

Humans have had one advantage for a very long time and that is adaptability. Whereas most animals have to adapt biologically over many generations to a new environment, we humans can adapt our culture and tool-kit immediately. Just got colder? Guess what? Stick + sharpened stone = fur coat. Sharpened stick + water = fish sticks. Well, something like that.

Let’s look at two of the most famous robotic explorers of all time: Spirit and Opportunity.

Artist‘s conception of Spirit or Opportunity on Mars. Image Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Now let me say that I have trouble imagining any circumstances that would result in me being that angry with those two adorable little robots. SQUEE!!!

Artist‘s conception of me whooping the living Hell out of Spirit while Opportunity looks on in horror, while secretly feeling thankful that I will only live long enough to kill its beloved sibling.

First off, the initial cost of the two rovers, plus all costs associated with getting them to Mars (plus tax, tag and title of course) was around $820 million. The cost to get me to Mars? BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars. Score one for the robots.

The rovers were expected to survive on Mars for 90 days. As of this writing in mid-2010 they are still alive after more than half a decade. Were I to find myself on Mars I would really, really hope it would be for no more than a year and then feature a nifty return trip. If it were to be a one-way trip, then if all went extremely well I might survive as much as 20 more years. My odds of surviving on earth for more than about 30 years are fairly slim, so I think it is probably overly generous to think I could make 20 years on Mars, what with the radiation, the sandstorms and the love-starved Martian princesses. I’m fairly certain that my mission wouldn’t be extended. The rovers’ mission has been extended 5 times. That’s the equivalent of me being there for more than 100 years (the exact equivalency is left as an exercise for the student). Score one for the robots.

Time for ole Jeff to score one, so here we go. Back in 2006 one of Spirit’s wheels stopped working. Let’s say I sprained my ankle. Or even broke it. Given the right circumstances my ankle would heal. It might never work at 100% efficiency, but it would heal. Spririt can’t heal. Wow, that sounds metaphysical. Score one for Jeff!

Every rotation of a wheel on those robots is calculated, re-calculated, debated, decided and transmitted to them with about a 15 minute delay for the commands to travel at the speed of frickin’ light from earth to the rovers on Mars. That means no free-wheelin’ around the dunes throwing up rooster tails of sand and potentially finding something in a place we didn’t think would be worth visiting. The rovers haven’t really travelled very far and only to places we were confident would have something worth seeing. Humans could make decisions on the fly (most of us don’t have 15 minute delays built into our thought processes — at least not after we’ve had some coffee) and visit places that might unexpectedly yield interesting results. We can also decide to throw something under a microscope or spectrometer without advanced planning (other than to bring those items along to our Mars base). W00t! Score another one for humans!

So I’ll stop there with Man and Machine tied at 2 each. I’ll make some trite comments about how both are great and have their place. Ho-hum.

Here’s the reality: we were able to launch robots to Mars in 1975 and here in the futuristic year 2010 we are more than a decade away from even hoping to send people.

Although I want to see people visit other planets as much as anyone else, I think we get far more “bang for the buck” with robots. For now. The day will come when we can more cheaply and reliably send people, and then the equation will tilt. Our ability to improvise will mean that we can learn about Mars far more rapidly with people than robots. Once we can keep them from dying, that is.

If we look beyond Mars to the outer planets (or inner ones for that matter), it will be a very long time before we can keep our meaty little selves alive for a visit. Meanwhile I’ll keep looking with wonder at the results of metallic pioneers like Galileo and Cassini.