> I just hate how you succumb to easy thinking, an appeal to tradition No. I appeal to PHYSICS. This isn't an emotional argument. Or one out of "tradition".

> I just hate how you succumb to easy thinking, an appeal to tradition No. I appeal to PHYSICS. This isn't an emotional argument. Or one out of "tradition". The reusable rocket was a question of implementation, not physics. The math actually supported the idea of being able to do that. It wasn't some magical juju bean Musk pulled out of his behind. They did the math. The math proved you could do it. They built it. It took a lot of trial and error and, yes, failure, but they KNEW the math supported the concept. This inflatable muscle thing (air or fluid) isn't supported by the PHYSICS. What do I know anyhow? I've only been in robotics since the early 80's. I have literally seen <insert fantastical claim> in robotics and artificial intelligence since that time. And here we are, we still don't have a robot of any kind that is as capable as a house fly, even with a supercomputer running it remotely. And that, BTW, is the test for fantastical actuators. The technology has to support an amazing range in terms of scale. At one extreme you have something like an ant and, opposite that, an elephant. Even within a human being the range of size and strength in muscles is likely 1000 to 1 (haven't done the math). > Boston Dynamics would have never created Atlas or Spot I don't think you have a good sense of what these machines are and are not. Hint: They are not what you think they are.