Why the hell isn't that fully autonomous? I mean, robot doesn't get any response from home for some time, switch transponder, do a hard reset, whatever. Why would they have to instruct it to do something the robot should be able to figure out by itself?

My favourite what?

I haven't found yellow belts yet.

Antarctica is boring and very restricted to military/scientific missions. A commercial/civil mission to Mars would attract a lot of interest by the media and help improve the technology and get the experience needed to settle somewhere else. Of course, we wouldn't be moving many people there, just enough to start a human colony.

That's true. As a long time Linux user I've given up on trying to convince other to switch. Now I prefer them to switch to standards, so I can use my Linux, they can use their Windows and we can communicate without .DOC, .XLS and other "standards" getting in the middle. Standards are the future.