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.
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 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.
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:Yeah right? (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Sweet! At that gravity... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Avoid the target area!! (Score:1, Insightful)
Did it all go wrong, or just the thing(s) that could go wrong?
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 have to build 160 feet of dirt-pile. They don't even have to compact it. And they can take six months to do the job. And, again, they don't have to worry about wind and rain and green things with teeth and Mrs Cake.
Re:Fire the robots (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll go. Tomorrow. Somebody get me a shovel and a suit.
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.
Re:I for one, *sigh*...too easy... (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:radiation protection, prooly more important (Score:4, Insightful)
Blind to the Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Re:Don't lift the mass from earth... (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 would be a huge investment that would almost certainly not pay off on the scale we could contemplate in the immediate future, because we don't have enough investment in the other things we'd need to exploit that. Debris berm building robots sounds about right.
An interesting thought occurs though. One solution to the mass problem is simply patience. Since the Von Neumann approach is based on exploiting exponential growth, but growth doesn't have to be fast at the outset. Suppose you put ten robots on the moon that could scavenge enough material to make one robot in ten years. After the first ten years, you'd have 11 robots. After a hundred years, you'd have about 25 robots. After a 1000 years, you'd have almost 14,000 robots. After 2000 years, you'd have 190 million robots.