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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday September 17 2020, @09:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the at-least-the-AI-can't-get-scurvy dept.

High-tech UK-US ship launched on 400th Mayflower anniversary:

With a splash of Plymouth gin, the U.S. ambassador to Britain officially launched a ship named Mayflower on Wednesday, 400 years to the day after a wooden vessel with that name sailed from an English port and changed the history of two continents.

Unlike the merchant ship that carried a group of European Puritan settlers to a new life across the Atlantic Ocean in 1620, the Mayflower christened by U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood Johnson has no crew or passengers. It will cross the sea powered by sun and wind, and steered by artificial intelligence.

Johnson said the high-tech ship, developed jointly by U.K.-based marine research organization ProMare and U.S. tech giant IBM, showed that "the pioneering spirit of the Mayflower really lives on" in the trans-Atlantic partnership.

[...] The Mayflower Autonomous Ship — its creators decided against a snappier name — is intended to be the first in a new generation of crewless high-tech vessels that can explore parts of oceans too difficult or dangerous for people to reach.

[...] The 50-foot (15-meter) trimaran will undertake six months of sea trials and short trips before setting out on its trans-Atlantic trip to measure ocean health: assessing the impact of climate change, measuring micro-plastic pollution and studying populations of whales and dolphins.

Along the way, its AI captain will have to make complex decisions in response to wind, waves, vessels and unknown surprises.

"We're quietly confident we're going to make it," Stanford-Clark said. "Ultimately, the sea will decide."

Related:
Groundbreaking Mayflower Autonomous Ship revealed to the world
Mayflower Autonomous Ship Launches
An unmanned voyage in the wake of the Mayflower


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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 17 2020, @11:48PM (1 child)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday September 17 2020, @11:48PM (#1052481) Journal

    You know, it does make me wonder if we haven't already done the same thing to Mars, though, with our robotic explorers. They say they sterilize the probes before departure to prevent contamination, but life is incredibly tenacious and bound to hitch a ride anyway.

    Will our grandchildren gasp at how reckless we were?

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    Washington DC delenda est.
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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday September 18 2020, @03:25PM

    by Freeman (732) on Friday September 18 2020, @03:25PM (#1052800) Journal

    Highly doubtful. There's likely no form of life on that barren rock, except what we put there. There may be some dead parasite hitching a ride on one of the rovers or at one of the landing sites or the like. Otherwise, we'll be bringing life with us, carving our own space on the planet, and hopefully using locally resourced metal, minerals, etc. to fuel a sustainable presence. In the event that doesn't pan out, we'll leave a few relics and be stuck on a literal paradise of a planet compared to anything in our solar system. We'd just about have to crack this planet in half to get a worse place to live than any other place in our solar system.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"