Small Robots Could Build Landing Site For Moon Base 199
A new NASA-sponsored study suggests that small lawnmower-sized robots could be used to build a landing site for a moon outpost. In order to be efficient a landing pad would have to be close to any structures created, but without an atmosphere to slow down the lunar sand it would sandblast the outpost, creating the need for some sort of protection. By using small robots to either build protective berms or collect rocks to "pave" a landing pad, NASA hopes to provide protection against the sand-blasting effects of a landing on the moon.
Robots building sand structures (Score:3, Funny)
Now I know how I'm gonna win that sand castle contest this year...
Yeah right? (Score:2, Insightful)
If robots could be used in construction this complex, they already would. Right up here in Minnesota, there is a huge need for road repair and construction. If there was any way to automate the process more than it already is, it would be done by now. Any robot that could withstand the punishment of construction work would need to be very heavy, and also have a lot of redundancy built into it. It's one thing to make a little mini-rover with a camera and some sampling equipment. It's quite another to put a C
No hitchikers (Score:5, Insightful)
No weather on the moon. No thieves. No vandals. No vegetation. No mud. 1/6th gee. No wind to blow piles of dirt away. It's a simpler environment to work in.
Forget the construction work, could you build a rover that would last 90 days in Minnesota. just driving around photographing things?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:No hitchikers (Score:5, Interesting)
I somehow doubt this is going to be much of an issue. Chances are much higher for something like damage from thermal expansion/contraction from driving in and out of shadows to do in a rover, or getting that nasty abrasive moon dust into the moving parts.
Re:No hitchikers (Score:4, Interesting)
It's possible some spacecraft have been hit by meteorites large enough to damage them, but space is pretty damned empty... even in crowded neighborhoods like LEO and the vicinity of Jupiter and Saturn (including Saturn's ring system) the biggest impacts are from dust-sized chunks. When probes fail they look for defects in design or operation before even considering impacts.
Re: (Score:2)
no drivers to get pissed off if you have to close the area down for a year for instruction instead of 2 months.
(i.e. The timetables on the moon don't need to be nearly as short as on earth, allowing for potentially slower problem solving).
You don't have the fiscal cost of the land on the moon, and if the system is automated (or mostly automated), the workforce time will will be less costly as well.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think you realize how drastically you are oversimplifying. The conditions are different, but not particularly easier. But competition from humans is nil, because humans need to carry life support. The equivalent for robots is much simpler. (Non-volatile greases, UV protection [i.e., no external plastic parts], etc.)
Repair is probably going to be a problem. I expect that at least initially any non-functioning robot is going to need to be scrapped. But with care it's probable that many can be ke
radiation protection, prooly more important (Score:2)
Future settlements will still need radiation protection, which will still be the major environmental concern for future lunar inhabitants (Lunites?)
Anyone remember how deep the soil base would need to be? Obviously without any atmosphere and magnetic shield cosmic rays and other high powered radiation will still penetrate the soil shield.
Re:radiation protection, prooly more important (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
No the moon really is a bad place to build stuff. Yes there are no storms or wind. But moon dust, unlike dust on Earth or even mars looks and cats like ground glass. The stuff gets into everything and is very abrasive. Anything that moves will not last long unless you figure a way to keep the dust away.
Here on Earth crushed rock (sand) becomes rounded quickly. But not on the moon.
Re: (Score:2)
It depends... (Score:3, Insightful)
On just what the lunar soil is really like. We know a few bits from the various moon missions but its not like anyone tries to dig anything around up there. If the lunar soil was just a big pile of dust, then a robot pushing it around is rather doable. But if it had all sorts surprises in it, rocks, differences in composition that changes the way one digs, well then, the robots will run into problems.
Re:Yeah right? (Score:5, Insightful)
...If there was any way to automate the process more than it already is, it would be done by now.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Sound familiar?
I for one, *sigh*...too easy... (Score:5, Funny)
Do you have any concept of which you are speaking? Why on earth (lol) would you want to further automate road construction in Minnesota? Human labor on this planet is pretty cheap, even if it is unionized. When you have fly that labor to off word, hiring someone to scrub the great wall of china with a toothbrush is cheap in comparison.
Robots don't need air, food, or water. They can work for long periods of time in utterly hostile environments with little to no supervision. They don't get sick or bored. They can be mass produced. When you are done with them, they don't want to go home. And, they have yet to rise up and try to enslave humanity, which is more than we can say for humanity.
Re: (Score:2)
Robots also don't experience fear, doubt, or vanity. Plus they need no fuel, no maintenance, and are impervious to physical damage.
Re:I for one, *sigh*...too easy... (Score:5, Funny)
Robots also don't experience fear,
Of course not
doubt,
Never!
or vanity.
It's not vanity; we are perfect.
Signed,
Your Hidden Robotic Overlords
p.s.: get back to work, fleshy servitor, or we'll reassign you to pave our Lunar Base landing pads!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
p.s.: get back to work, fleshy servitor, or we'll reassign you to pave our Lunar Base landing pads!
Geeze. So on the plus side, robots don't experience fear, doubt, or vanity. On the minus side, they are kinda dicks.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Plus they need no fuel, no maintenance, and are impervious to physical damage.
Excuse me?
Fuel
They don't put solar panels or RTGs on these things for the fun of it.
Maintenance
Spirit and Opportunity are doing well, but both have had various mechanical failures that are impedances.
Impervious to physical damage
No, just less fragile than humans in space.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I for one, *sigh*...too easy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any concept of which you are speaking?
Minneapolis/St.Paul metropolitan area is rapidly becoming snarled in traffic jams. We've recently deployed a light-rail transit system, serving approximately a dozen stops. It was wildly successful and there are plans to expand it, with the next leg going over the recently rebuilt 35E bridge that (as you might recall) fell into the river a year ago. Our public transit system though, bluntly stated, has the suck. Really, unless your destination is downtown, or your transportation is within minneapolis/st.paul proper, you'll be spending hours riding and waiting. Which means that in Minnesota, as soon as you can afford it -- you buy a car. Insurance, by the way, is mandatory. We have a relatively high cost of living index as well. Not only that, but our traffic system is already being pushed beyond capacity. Experiments in "high occupancy vehicle lanes" to secure federal tax dollars have frustrated commuters because it's being used largely as a toll system for the upper-class to bypass traffic snarls, especially along 394 and the 35E (burnsville)->94(minneapolis) corridor.
Why on earth (lol) would you want to further automate road construction in Minnesota? Human labor on this planet is pretty cheap, even if it is unionized.
Presently, the Minnesota Department of Transportation has a budget of approximately 2.2 billion dollars per year. We just biffed a few hundred million on reconstructing a bridge that fell into the river (oops), so we're kinda tight on funding right now. There are redesigns planned for most major freeway/freeway interchanges inside the 694/494 beltway, and we are already at capacity -- with average commute times of over 45 minutes. The budget has grown annually perhaps 5-9%, while the usage patterns indicate at least 15-23% (depending on who you ask) rises over the same period. In short, we're not keeping up. Adding insult to injury -- unlike California where temperatures are relatively constant and weather-related road repairs are at a minimum, leading to highway lifespans of 50 years or more... Up here in Minnesota, we need to resurface the roads perhaps every 5-7 years, and rebuild them entirely every 20 years or so due to high temperature variations and constant humidity and weathering. Concrete roads, common throughout most of the country, are not used here except for overpasses and select areas because they fall apart too quickly under weather conditions -- necessitating the use of less-robust black-top. So our per-mile maintenance costs are higher. As well, unlike in other parts of the world, we have at least a third of the year in which we can't build roads -- because the ground is frozen!
In short, labor is more expensive up here, the build times are shorter, the demand is rising faster than supply, and alternatives simply don't exist. Why robots? Because they can work at -40 temperatures, doing 16 hour shifts. Because human labor is damned expensive up here, and because automation means we can do more work for our dollars spent. That is, if such technology existed. But it doesn't. Every mile of road we build takes a team of twenty people working at least a couple days. And it's crap work that nobody wants to do, and only a small subset of the population is physically capable OF doing -- which is why, regardless of how well it pays, there's going to remain a shortage.
EARTH is the hostile environment... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why robots? Because they can work at -40 temperatures, doing 16 hour shifts.
Except they can't, because apart from the fact that you're lucky to get 8 hours of sunshine in MN when it's -40 out, things like rain and snow and vandals and wind and mud and thieves that make your average human grumble in the pub after work bollix up robots completely.
Every mile of road we build takes a team of twenty people working at least a couple days.
You're building roads damn fast in MN.
The robots we're talking about only ha
Re: (Score:2)
Minnesota cheese road mining robots. (Score:2)
I think you are missing the point. I really don't care what you advocate as a solution for road construction in Minnesota.
The article is about robots building things on the moon. Your initial post suggested that hum
Re: (Score:2)
Your initial post suggested that humans would be a better choice, and you attempted to back your thesis with examples from Minnesota,
Thesis is a big word for such a small idea, which is this: Humans can do it now. Robots cannot. It's unlikely given economic pressures already in place that robots will be created anytime soon to do this affordably. Therefore, humans are the best option because they can do it. Robots are a nice theoretical fluffy bunny.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Very good point: the difference between a teleoperated robot and a piece of construction equipment is whether you need to include a heated cab or a bunch of cameras.
Re: (Score:2)
In Minnesota robots are a bad choice. If you choose to go with non-human laborers (back-hoe, anyone) then non-automated equipment is currently much cheaper. Even if you go fully mechanized, telefactor operated + minimal local robotic control would be much cheaper. There's no problem with light-speed delaying reaction times when you are so local.
N.B.: AFTER the robots have proven themselves on the moon, altered versions will start appearing on Earth. But paying for the development for use on Earth is si
Re: (Score:2)
Wow... China when it was building the great wall must have confused people with robots. Thats probably why so many people died while they were building
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Robots don't need air, food, or water. They can work for long periods of time in utterly hostile environments with little to no supervision. They don't get sick or bored. They can be mass produced. When you are done with them, they don't want to go home
It's a machine, Schroeder. It doesn't get pissed off, it doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, it doesn't laugh at your jokes... ...IT JUST RUNS PROGRAMS!
Re:I for one, *sigh*...too easy... (Score:4, Insightful)
All of those arguments work just as well in Minnesota as they do on Luna.
MN is a much more hostile environment for robots than the moon is.
All that scary green and blue stuff! (Score:2)
Yeh, the moon doesn't have all that water that has to be kept out of robot innards, it doesn't have those clouds hiding the sun from the solar collectors, it doesn't have those trees turning the nice smooth regolith into a fractal maze. Any sane robot would pick the moon over MN...
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, most sane humans would pick the moon over MN...
[ducks and hides from all those MN'ers]
Re: (Score:2)
So how much shielding is needed to protect humans from solar radiation on the surface of the moon? It might be easier to get the first few humans on the moon with prefab structures that simply set down, and allow humans to work beneath it. Look at the Bigelow space module. Something like that, with additional protection, could make for a fast settlement where humans can work with robots/tools to do the real heavy lifting (besides, things are a little less heavy on the moon).
I think conventional construction
Re: (Score:2)
They've had rovers on Mars for several years now... a 3 hour tour turned long term expedition. All they need to do is the same thing.... with a shovel.
The moon is closer, and gets the same sunlight as Earth versus less than half on Mars. Other than dealing with several weeks of dark when the moon faces earth there's not much difference as Mars has to shut down for "winter" when sunlight drops below enough to recharge the batteries.
Re: (Score:2)
They've had rovers on Mars for several years now... a 3 hour tour turned long term expedition. All they need to do is the same thing.... with a shovel.
The moon is closer, and gets the same sunlight as Earth versus less than half on Mars. Other than dealing with several weeks of dark when the moon faces earth there's not much difference as Mars has to shut down for "winter" when sunlight drops below enough to recharge the batteries.
Added advange on Luna: no weather to blow moondust and coat solar cells in dust. They'll stay mostly clean pretty much forever.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If robots could be used in construction this complex, they already would. Right up here in Minnesota, there is a huge need for road repair and construction. If there was any way to automate the process more than it already is, it would be done by now. Any robot that could withstand the punishment of construction work would need to be very heavy, and also have a lot of redundancy built into it. It's one thing to make a little mini-rover with a camera and some sampling equipment. It's quite another to put a Caterpillar, cement truck, and support equipment up there, and expect it not to break. Sorry, but human beings need to be there... There are some things robots just can't do -- like repair themselves automatically. And I mean that in practical real-world terms, not in the laboratory.
Build it on Earth first and make it work, then we'll talk about the moon.
Think of this as a way to redistribute the wealth involved in those porkulus packages. After all, it's about creating jobs.
Now, these things reside in their respective spheres. Developing robots to pave Earthbound roads is way more expensive than hiring some semi-skilled out-of-work guys to stand around while the two-lane highway is reduced to one-way traffic.
However, developing something like this for the moon, where not much changes in the course of a day, makes sense.
It also employs downsized engineers a
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure they *will* build it on Earth and make it work before they try it on Luna. But I have my doubts that they'll try it in Minnesota. That's not a very similar environment. White Sands, maybe.
Also, note that construction on the moon can afford to pay much more per robot because the cost of humans is so extraordinarily high.
Hmmmm (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If there was any way to automate the process more than it already is, it would be done by now.
Mmm... i get where you're coming from, but you assume rational forces making decisions based on logic. Instead, you have entrenched forces making decisions based on self-preservation, or greed, or plain buttheadedness.
Consider the existing systems in place that benefit from road repair and construction; or, at least, have prioritized other expenditures - such as themselves - over same. Then too, who will research and develop these systems to a usable level? If a market is viewed as difficult to reach for
NIMBY (Score:2)
They say "Oh, we just need to do this on another planet and everything will be okay." Nevermind that the "this" is something we aren't even remotely approaching be able to accomplish right here in our own backyard.
Well, you know, when you're talking about slamming cruise-liner chunks of ice into a planet, I'll be the first to say "Not In My Back Yard".
Why not use a crater wall? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not use a crater wall? Put the landing strip on the outside, the base on the inside, and cut a tunnel? (And build a ramp over/around for the big stuff.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's no moon... it's target practice (Score:3, Funny)
Just don't let the Chinese know where your moon base is going to be, they'll crash into it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7917957.stm [bbc.co.uk]
MOON-E (Score:3, Funny)
Seems like a good idea to me (Score:2)
Lawnmower size? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Lawnmower size? (Score:4, Informative)
1 Lawnmower = 0.1 Volkswagen Beetles = 20 telephone directories.
Found via Google.
Avoid the target area!! (Score:2)
I would not want the landing pad right next to the outpost unless you have achieved the impossible with 100% error/malfunction free operation of the lander vehicle hardware and software, eliminate human error, and have assassinated Murphy.
Re:Avoid the target area!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Just remember Silverman's Paradox: "If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will".
Crater (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Crater - moderated insightful??? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree. Quick n dirty, the bots can build a road into the crater and the pad itself at the bottom, using materials on hand.
Sweet! At that gravity... (Score:3, Insightful)
Graviton flux (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh man, you are in DEEP trouble with the Federation boys...
Surely you jest (Score:2)
Sandblast First (Score:3, Interesting)
Many small vs. one large makes good sense in case of failure(s). Either way, why not blast the dust away as the preparation stage? A squadron of small crawlers with a high gas expansion motor (for simplicity, monopropellant such as UDMH, as in Shuttle steering thrusters or H2O2 as in Armadillo's landers) pointed ahead and slightly down. They'd line up side by side, crawl away from the base site, blasting the dust away in front of them like a line of snow blowers.
Yes, this design might require more mass to be sent to the moon initially due to the mass of reaction gas. However it leaves a bunch of functional crawlers for other tasks plus a bunch of functional motors that can be used to construct suborbital lifters.
If there's water ice, they could be constructed to harvest it, use the solar UV to convert it to H2O2, and be self-refilling. This would be slower because where there's ice there's less sunlight. Armadillo's designs would be very likely to be adaptable because they've built not only H2O2 lifter motors, but also H2O2 production facilities. A digger/UV/vacuum design is very different from their fuel production design (quite likely far more reliable), but they have some experience with the subject, and already have award money for designing landers.
So the robots build it...but (Score:2)
Who says they'll let us land there?!1! After all that work our base are belong to them.
Berms or pavement (Score:2)
This, being the first ever attempt at building such a facility, might be the time to try both approaches simultaneously?
mass driver (Score:2)
Go further (Score:2)
Instead of just have robots construct the station, have them man it also. The savings from not having life support and safety systems would be tremendous. It would greatly reduce the cost of manned missions to almost that of unmanned missions!!! . . . . . oh, wait
Red Mars (Score:2)
...Just finishing reading "Red Mars" and they talk about automated or programmable construction robots.
However I did notice that the author glossed over many of the problems associated with this, which the moonbots (if I may) would also encounter.
#1) Weight. Escaping earths gravity well is hard.
#2) HOT!/COLD! It is either really freakin' hot or really freakin' cold depending on where the Sun happens to be.
#3) Oxygen. None. Cannot combust stuff.
#4) Erosion. None. While having an atmosphere is a pain in the a
Blind to the Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Allow me to quote Robert Browning (Score:2)
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"
And also George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Everest: "Because it is there."
In other words, we want to go there because we're human. It doesn't NEED a technical or scientific justification.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, robots! (Score:2)
Yes, let's use robots to prepare the moon base site. And then we can use robots to build the habitats. And then we can use robots to collect the field samples -- after all, that's just more digging. And then we can use the robots we already use to analyze the samples. And then use more robots to manufacture and operate a moon mining operation... ... wait, why were we sending people again?
(I mean that as a serious question. Why bother with humans?)
Re: (Score:2)
Landing Site (Score:2)
with blackjack... and hookers....
Pixar has the solution (Score:2)
"Could" (Score:2)
Heard this in the 1980s. (Score:3, Informative)
Some of the Stanford AI crowd in the 1980s were talking up a proposal for a long-term project to build robots capable of building a moon base by the year 2000. I commented at the time "How soon can you do it in Arizona?" This yielded some embarrassment.
NASA robotics efforts have had an overall negative effect on robotics as a field. They take forever, they produce one-off devices, and they suck smart people out of useful areas. JPL's rovers are really rather simple-minded devices, and are mostly teleoperated. They're just well engineered. Robotics efforts out of the NASA "centers" have generally been embarrassing. [astronautix.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Creating robots is a bad idea! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Terminator, The Matrix, Battlestar Galactica are a few stories out there.
You should probably destroy your computer, just to be safe.
Re: (Score:2)
First post, from a small robot, on the moon!
That small anonymous robot should be FIRED
from a CANNON
into the SUN!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I know the interaction with the Earth makes setting up a lunar-synchronous orbit very difficult and pretty much precludes any sort of ring system...but just imagine how pretty it'd be!
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, most of the material you're removing will end up in orbit...giving our moon a stunning ring system...Who wouldn't want to go there then? Yeah I know the interaction with the Earth makes setting up a lunar-synchronous orbit very difficult and pretty much precludes any sort of ring system...but just imagine how pretty it'd be!
Actually, it sounds exceptionally dangerous to incoming spacecraft...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
yeah - then the nanobots go all wrong and reduce the moon to a lifeless planet of grey rock and dust. what will you do then?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I prefer to think of her as a harsh mistress. What you should think about is that when Adam Selene is in charge the pedants will be the first up against the wall.
Re: (Score:2)
...yet
Re:Fire the robots (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll go. Tomorrow. Somebody get me a shovel and a suit.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems likely to me that you'd need to move a lot of mass to bootstrap a Von Neumann style self-replicating system. Assuming you have a "large enough parabolic mirror" is a bit like the proverbial assumption you have a can opener.
This is especially true because we don't know if there are richly concentrated deposits of all materials that are useful in building robots on the Moon, although we have reason to doubt it. Most of the interesting things we think we might get from the moon involve processing h
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Come now. Nobody seriously things we should send bricks to the moon. Initially we'll send any structures we need, but any reasonable moon industrialization or colonization will require using local materials. But the first step in using local materials on a large scale will certainly involve moving a great deal of mass, probably far more mass than we'd need to significantly increase our initial capacity there.
That's the point: you need to spend mass to save mass. Sending giant solar furnaces to the Moon