NASA Considers Mobile Lunar Base

colonist writes "During the Apollo missions, astronauts explored on foot or in rovers. The next astronauts on the moon may move the entire base instead. Marc Cohen, from NASA's Ames Research Center, proposes a lunar base on wheels or legs, such as the habot (robotic habitat) or the mobitat (mobile habitat). Cohen considers mobile bases superior to rovers: 'To avoid life-threatening or other compromising situations that might occur with only one rover traveling to a remote place, a second rover might travel with the first. But what if the second rover runs into a problem, too - the same or a different problem? Well, that means a third rover. So, why not make the entire base mobile, so that all the resources, reliability and redundancy of the lunar mission move with the excursion crew?' Of course, mobile bases are nothing new. Terran buildings have been lifting off for years."

Comments

Re:Inherent problem

[Slashamatic]

Forget cosmic, the main issue for the lunar camperwould be solar, i.e., during flares. This is already a major issue for mission planners and the ISS has a single protected area where astronauts can hide in when NASA sounds the alarm.

Of coure it would be possible to do something similar for NASA's lunar-camper. It would just add to the weight. A static underground shelter as you suggest would be much better.

In Soviet Russia, they did this in 1970

[Animats]

The USSR landed several rovers on the moon. Big rovers. The first, Lunokhod 1 worked for eleven months, exploring far more territory than the short-duration American manned missions. This vehicle was the size of an SUV, so it is clearly the first "mobile lunar base".

References for Mobile Lunar Base Papers

[colonist]

I found these references at AeroSpace Architecture Publications:

Cohen, Marc M. (2003 September). Mobile Lunar and Planetary Base Architectures (AIAA 2003-6280). AIAA Space 2003 Conference & Exposition, Long Beach, California, USA, 23-25 September 2003. Reston, Virginia, USA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Link to on-line order forms

Cohen, Marc M. (2004 February). "Mobile Lunar Base Concepts." In M. S. El-Genk (Ed.), Space Technology and Applications International Forum - STAIF 2004: Conference on Thermophysics in Microgravity; Conference on Commercial/Civil Next Generation Space Transportation; 21st Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion; Conference on Human Space Exploration; 2nd Symposium on Space Colonization; 1st Symposium on New Frontiers and Future Concepts (p. 845-853). Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, 8-11 February 2004. College Park, Maryland, USA: American Institute of Physics. Link to on-line order forms

Pictures

[Somegeek]

Here are some links to NASA's concepts of what the mobile bases might look like:

MOBITAT

HABOT

Re:Does anyone else think NASA reads too much SCI-

[FleaPlus]

I would certainly tend to hope that people at NASA read large amounts of sci-fi. Many of the most useful concepts in spaceflight have come from science fiction, e.g. geosynchronous satellites.

In this particular case though, I'm not so sure. It just seems that you would take too much of a hit on cost and reliability to make up for any possible benefits. For one, a mobile base can't be built into the regolith for insulation, a feature one hopes a lunar base would have.

Re:Mars for me.

[techno-vampire]

A moonbase has a number of advantages. It's a good idea to learn how to build and maintain a base, because it's close enough to the Earth for us to send needed supplies or repair material. It might even be a better place to start a Mars expidition from, because we can get a little extra velocity from the moon's orbital velocity.

Obligatory pictures

[FleaPlus]

I haven't seen them linked to yet, so here's some info pages with pics of this:

"Habot" mobile lunary base
Mobitat (mobile lander?)

Does anybody know if scientists in Antartica use mobile habitats? If they do, then this would seem much more plausible.

Re:To the Moon, Alice

[Rei]

I used to be a major "moon-as-stopping-point" proponent myself. However, there are some serious advantages to a base on Mars in comparison.

* Higher gravity means less need for strength training to stop bone loss and other problems
* Partial natural radiation shielding
* Ample known water supplies (moon ice is currently only speculative, despite plenty of lunar-orbit studying)
* Cheap to get bulk raw materials to anywhere we care about. Even cheaper to get raw materials to Earth than it is from the moon, due to the orbital energy of the moon that needs to be overcome.
* Ample sunlight for farming; artificial light for farming is a pretty doomed concept, when you do the energy calculations.
* Partial-pressure domes
* Far more mineral rich in every respect except for Helium-3, which is currently pretty worthless.
* A perfect stopping point for a triangle trade with the incredibly mineral rich asteroid belt (Mars raw materials and people can get to the asteroid belt with very little energy; asteroid belt materials get sent to Earth; Earth sends small, high tech components that Mars can't build to Mars).
* Major terraforming prospects; estimated workforce needed to terraform Mars to 1atm=10,000 people; procodes enough pressure and CO2 for plants, which over about 100 years can produce enough O2 for humans to breathe.

Of course, the big downside: It's far. Still, I think the pros really outweigh the cons. A Moon base would be like an antarctic research station. A Mars base would be like a colony. Stopping at the moon just seems like a waste of time - it'll take so much in terms of resources to keep it going that it will severely sap from the Mars effort. Just think of food and nuclear fuel shipping costs alone... Mars will take more resources initially, but at least it becomes somewhat sustainable over time since large-scale partially-pressured agriculture is feasable, and there's enough good raw minerals in easily processable forms...

Re:^H^H^H^H^HWrong!

[Rei]

You forgot to add "Supreme Court".

Re:To the Moon, Alice

[JazzXP]

Yes, but a moon base is much closer, even just for "practice" for a mars base. It's still a hell of a lot cheaper to send stuff to the moon than Mars.

Re:Inherent problem

[Somegeek]

You're also forgetting about the cold. I think that the lunar night is like -180 c or something. I think that would be a huge challenge for our material sciences to deal with. That is one of the challenges of a lunar base, if they can't put it in a spot with constant sunlight (they think they have found a couple) then the base has to deal with 2 weeks of 100c in the sunlight, followed by 2 weeks of darkness in the impossible cold. Also one of the reasons to go to Mars first. The environment is much more habitable and forgiving. Well, some anyway.

Re:Thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to disappoint you, but there won't be any footprints left.

Contrary to the popular myth, the recycling of the regolith due to thermal expansion and contraction will wipe out details like footprints after a few decades.
RJG

Re:Inherent problem

[hughk]

A decent bit of metal and possibly polyethylene will help to handle radiation, at least to the level of the ISS. The 'shelter' in the ISS is in the hab module and also has things like water tanks as well around it.

The closest analogue to this would be the ISS, but as far as I know, it flies beneath the Van Allen belts. Outside the belt then the risk from charged particles increases a lot.

Re:To the Moon, Alice

[starcraftsicko]

You were good until this:

* Major terraforming prospects; estimated workforce needed to terraform Mars to 1atm=10,000 people; procodes enough pressure and CO2 for plants, which over about 100 years can produce enough O2 for humans to breathe

The much lower gravity on mars combined with the lack of useful magnetic field will make it virtually impossible to hold a surface pressure anywhere near 1 atm. The best you can reasonably hope for is a 1/2 atm surface pressure (in the deep valleys mind you) and a high fraction of oxygen to yeild a breathable atmosphere.

Keep in mind also that the atmosphere of mars is really all of the radiation shielding there is. With no magnetic field to speak of, the martian atmosphere is exposed to solar wind and all of the other hard radiation that the sun throws at it. That's one of the reasons they have such a hard time keeping probes and robotic explorers "alive" on the partian surface.

Re:To the Moon, Alice

[CrimsonAvenger]

On Mars, however, you have ample hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, iron, and aluminum already known (plus a whole lot of other stuff). So, perhaps if you shipped in nuclear fuel or huge amounts of solar arrays, you might be able to produce aluminum products and oxygen on the moon... but I can't see how you'd economically produce fuel there. On the other hand, it is quite feasable, and actually rather simple, to do so on Mars.

You liquify O2. That accounts for ~5/6 of the fuel mass required for an H2/O2 rocket. You lift the H2 from Earth. For the first trip. Later on, might make sense to import it from Mars. Since the fuel (and oxidizer, yes I know the difference - and I know when it stops making a difference) is most of the mass of the spacecraft. Reducing the amount of that "most of the mass" that has to be lifted from Earth to the spacecraft is a significant thing.

Admittedly, in the long run, you'll be using nuclear rockets, and have no real use for lunar oxygen. Even then, it is possible that it is worthwhile. Consider, a 60t (dry) spacecraft, nuclear propelled, would require ~50t of H2 reaction mass. The same 60t spacecraft, using conventional rockets, would require ~135t of H2/O2. But only 22.5t of that 135t is H2. As opposed to ALL of the 50t. You'd have to have a nuke rocket with an Isp of 1600+ to match the cost-effectiveness of the H2/O2 burner, if only the H2 had to come up from the ground.

Alternatively, it is possible to design a rocket to burn a slurry of Al dust and O2. Both of which are available on the moon. Performance of an Al/O2 rocket is crap, but crap that doesn't have to be lifted from Earth at all. Might be worth using, in some cases.

Please note that I'm not arguing that we shouldn't go to Mars. Or even that Luna is more important than Mars. Luna will never be more than a convenient waystation between Earth and other places. But without that waystation, getting to other places will be painful....