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Well, we have plenty of technologies for dealing with highly abrasive materials and operating in highly abrasive environments.

Take for instance the concrete pump, it's a device that moves a slurry of fine(and many times not so fine) particles at high rates of speed with a decent MTBF.

We have cars, trucks, and mining equipment that can operate with a decent MTBF in abrasive and sandy environments

We have helicopters that have to deal with operation in sand environments, where blades and other fast moving components essentially get sand blasted!

And there has been some recent work on lunar regolith tolerant connectors.

Now the bigger issue that we have isn't that the dust is abrasive, but that we can't model how the dust behaves! Granular materials like lunar regolith do not have scaling laws. Thus, we can't make small scale 'wind tunnel tests' on systems that handle granular materials, the only way to test is at full scale.

So when someone wants to build a new type of concrete plant, they test it out at near full scale and tweak it until it works, because we have no good way to computationally model it before hand. And even then, most concrete plants and other systems that handle granular materials do not work very well. They tend to experience jams and other problems which must be fixed with regular maintenance.

And we don't know why they jam or even in some cases why they work in the first place!

Thus we'd have trouble building a 'concrete plant' on the Moon without impractically large expenses, because we don't understand dust.

it'll eventually lose its effective geometry, and its surface coating should wear out.

The bits basically self-sharpen as they wear (abrasive in matrix as opposed to a surface coating), but the abrasive pad wears away eventually. The bit is pictured on the lower left here. The little pads on the ends of the bit arms are the abrasive. Eventually, those little pads will be all used up.

Opportunity's rock abrasion tool - which was built by Honeybee Robotics Spacecraft Mechanisms -- was used to grind away some of the rock's surface and expose the interior. This was the 38th rock Opportunity has ground into, and one of the hardest, NASA stated.

Don't most/all abrasive tools wear out? Here's its description (linked from the TFA). It doesn't matter how "gently" it operates, it'll eventually lose its effective geometry, and its surface coating should wear out.

i'm really surprised we haven't seen advertisements on TV for the companies and subcontractors that helped make all the components. talk about some serious bragging rights!

Actually, most of the robotics comes from New York's own Honeybee Robotics. You can still see their logo on the side of the RAT in some shots.

Speaking of Honeybees... Check out Honeybee Robotics.

What makes a better story? The NASA Mars Rovers being controlled from downtown New York, or that the company controlling them built them with debris from the World Trade Center without telling NASA?

So then why did the New York Times publish the first story on the front page, weekend edition, and bury the 2nd story on a seperate page?

The New York Times is reporting that Honeybee Robotics, manufacturer of the drill on the NASA Mars Rovers, built parts of the drill out of World Trade Center debris. The article claims NASA was not told about this design decision, but there are rumors that NASA found out and explicitely forbid it and Honeybee used the material anyway.

If you find that interesting it's worth reading about a robot called WISOR that was built by a company called Honeybee Robotics. WISOR is uses for inspection and repair of high temperature and pressure steam pipes under the city of New York. It moves through the pipes like a very large inch worm.

There's even a movie (a really odd movie in fact) about it.

John.

These robots reminded me of W.I.S.O.R., a robot built by Honeybee Robotics to repair the ancient steam pipes under New York's streets.

Very interesting to anyone reading this would be a docudrama about the creation of W.I.S.O.R. This is a cross between Pi, 2001, and Junkyard Wars.

Of peripheral, yet substantial interest is Honeybee's RoboTender, a robotic bartender.

These robots reminded me of W.I.S.O.R., a robot built by Honeybee Robotics to repair the ancient steam pipes under New York's streets.

Very interesting to anyone reading this would be a docudrama about the creation of W.I.S.O.R. This is a cross between Pi, 2001, and Junkyard Wars.

Of peripheral, yet substantial interest is Honeybee's RoboTender, a robotic bartender.