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.
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: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.
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.
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.
Re:Yeah right? (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 kept going for years. Grit will be a major problem.
The lighter gravity means that the robots can have a lighter construction, but it also means that any berm will need to be higher. And the lack of water means that one can't use concrete.
I think this project may be just on the far side of currently possible. Which means that be the time it gets implemented it's likely to be bleeding edge.
Re:I for one, *sigh*...too easy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah right? (Score:3, Interesting)