[elihu]

Message delay makes this not feasible from Earth, but it may be a pretty good solution for people living on Mars who need to do some outdoor work (construction, mining, etc..) but don't want to deal with space suits and radiation. Sending a robot in their place sounds pretty good.

On the other hand, if AI technology is good enough, you might not need the human operator except for certain complex tasks. Most of the time you might be able to get away with high-level tasks like "dig a hole here" or "load this equipment onto this rover".

[erik_seaberg]

If the tasks look like “we’d like someone to eventually dig out a 3x3 room for an iron smelter across from the mechanic’s workshop,” that’s just Dwarf Fortress minus the booze.