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

Innovative idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This will likely be the First base design for soldiers Posted on the moon.

Does anyone else think NASA reads too much SCI-FI

[Claire-plus-plus]

Land trains without tracks, sounds like the trains in the Amtrak wars books by Patrick Tilley. As you may or may not know those books featured a mobile base/habitat on wheels that was set up like a trackless train.

Inherent problem

[carambola5]

By making the base mobile, it would obviously need to be above ground (er, regolith, I suppose). One of the major problems with this is shielding from cosmic radiation. By placing a base a few meters under the lunar regolith, expensive (either due to manufacturability or weight) shielding need not be used... the regolith is good enough. However, with a mobile lunar base, that expensive shielding must be employed and transported along with the mobile base.

I'm sorry, but this is just one of the many reasons why a mobile lunar base is infeasible (as of now). The sheer coolness of it is astronomical (haha, get it?), but the costs are simply too high.

Re:Inherent problem

[Dark Nexus]

Considering the low gravity, transporting that shielding along with the base wouldn't be that difficult.

You're probably right about the cost though, and weight would certainly come into play with actually GETTING the sheilding there.

Re:Inherent problem

[RollingThunder]

Remember that low gravity doesn't change the mass, just the weight. You still need to put in a lot of energy to start the mass moving, it's just easier to build the structure to hold it and lift it up.

Re:Inherent problem

[carambola5]

Plus, the moon rock between you and space would provide some sort of insulation and therefore warmth as opposed to being simply "out in the open", wouldn't it?

Actually, regolith is such a good insulator, the base would have to vent off heat.

And how hard could moon-mining be anyway?

Not terribly hard. Remember, everything weighs ~6x less on the moon. Picking stuff up and putting it down elsewhere is much easier. But also, regolith is mostly of a very fine composition. Something similar to the sand you find in hourglass timers. Not to mention no water to allow it to clump. I would imagine such a small angle of repose would lead to a more inefficient dig than generally expected.

Re:Inherent problem

[stevelinton]

There is a problem with temperatures, but it doesn't work quite the same way on the Moon as you seem to think. There is (basically) no atmosphere, so there is no "current air temperature" as there is on Earth. The rock surface varies from very hot after being in sunlight for a while to very cold after being in shadow for a while, but the rock is a very poor conductor, and it is not hard to insulate the base from the rock it's standing on (or rolling over) or simply to heat or cool the small amount of immediately adjacent rock and use the rock itself as insulator.

The main issue is radiation. If you are in sunlight, you get intense radiant heat from the sun, which, depending on what colour you are, you may or may not absorb. If you're not, and can see open space, then you radiate heat to it, again depending on what colour you are. Finally, you have to get rid of the heat generated by your people and machinery, which can be a problem, especially if you are underground.

These are all issues that need attention, but it should not actually be too hard to keep all, or most of the materials that make up the base at more or less whatever temperature you want. To a large extent this can be done with surface coating -- shiny at optical wavelengths to reflect sunlight, darker at IR wavelengths to radiate internal heat, etc. Some active heat pumping might also be needed.

NASA Ames...

[IanDanforth]

I went to check out their Mars flyby simulation the other day. They had SGI towers powering a multi-projector system. I was all excited, as were the kids around me, until the showtime came and went with no show. A few minutes later an engineer came by and taped up a hand written sign saying there would be no shows today, the system was broken, and they didn't know when it would be back up.

Needless to say my confidence in the place dropped a few points. But maybe they could get a walking moon-base up and running. :) -Ian

Re:Thought

[Esion Modnar]

send a mars type rover first and put it near one of the previous landing sites

I've always wondered if there is a plan for preserving the original landing sites: landers, footprints, everything.

The sites have huge potential for tourism in the future (think next couple hundred years), and tracking them up with all our new footprints just won't do.

I suppose a crane could be brought in to drop a big protective dome over the whole area, put in observation catwalks, and such like. Turn the place over to the Parks Service.

Re:To the Moon, Alice

[ChowyChow]

What will likely happen, within the next twenty years is the advent of commercialized space travel.

I'm guessing those who are motivated with money and exploration will be the same ones motivated to reach the moon 'first.'

Department of Redundancy Department

[Tokerat]

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?

That's fine and all, but what happens when only one base is traveling to a remote place? A second base might travel with the first...but what if the second base runs into a problem, too? Well, that means a third base...

Re:Department of Redundancy Department

[Tokerat]

That's fine and all, but what happens when only one rescue crew is traveling to a remote place? A second rescue crew might travel with the first...but what if the second rescue crew runs into a problem, too? Well, that means a third rescue crew...

God, I'm such an asshat ;-D

Re:To the Moon, Alice

[Rei]

Scaled Composites, whose craft isn't even designed to make it into orbit, let alone to the moon?

Keep dreaming...

Re:Mobile base breaking down?

[nick0909]

Not sure why you got a redundant on this, but they say it will bring along all the redundancy of multiple rovers with one base. I fail to see how one base is as redundant as multple rovers. If your one base dies its dead. If you build a static base and let rovers out and they crash who cares, your base and people are okay and you can still send out more rovers.

An endless string of "what ifs."

[techno-vampire]

No matter how you try to arrange things to be perfectly safe, there's going to be risk, and the explorers will be the type of people willing to take them. NASA has long viewed its mission to be "the exploration of space with zero risk." Everything they design is over-engeneered to make it as close to 100% safe as possible, with the result that everything takes longer to build, is exorbitantly expensive and far more massive than it needs to be. I'm beginning to believe that NASA is more interested in keeping its workforce busy and getting bigger budgets with which to do less. Maybe we need to tell them that enough is enough already, and that they need to get off the stick and get us back to the Moon.

Re:An endless string of "what ifs."

[techno-vampire]

NASA is a bureaucracy. As such, the main interest of many of its members is keeping their jobs and funding. Actually doing something comes second, at best. They stick to the shuttle because it keeps 25,000 people on their payroll, and they get the same budget if it flys twenty times a year or zero. Doing everything in the most elephantine way is much less work for the same money, so that's what they do. Maybe if they were paid on a flight-by-flight basis would encourage them to fly more often. I doubt we'll ever have routine space-flight (Like we were promised the shuttle would give us.) until it becomes a commercial venture. At that point, no flights means no income and no jobs, so the ships will fly.

Re:To the Moon, Alice

[matlhDam]

Yes, because it took more than 20 years to go from the first sub-orbital flight to the moon the first time around.

Wait...

Re:Mobile base breaking down?

[Somegeek]

If lunar explorers are out in a rover, and say the axle breaks, if it takes them longer to walk back than their air supply of their suit lasts, they die. So you send a backup rover. it gets an electrial problem that fries it electronics. they die if there is not a third rescue mobile. Big negative for your exploration crews to die.

Now if you are moving your whole base around, if an axle breaks, you are now stuck in that spot until/if repairs are made, but you still have your food, water and air generating/recycling equipment with you. everyone lives. Big plus.

Re:To the Moon, Alice

[Xilman]

Less absolute amount of sunlight on Mars but more evenly spread around.

A lot of plants can't hack 2-week long nights, whereas the nights on Mars are only slightly longer than they are here.

Paul

Nonsense

[Fortress]

This is the height of foolishness. For the mass of the drive system for the entire base, you could fly ten rovers to the moon. This would give much better redundancy than a single base-like vehicle. About the only advantage I see is using the same base to explore physically disparate locations.

Is it just me?

[Shoten]

Is it just me, or does this guy seem a little low on the common-sense scale? I mean, his logic is this:

1. Unpressurized rovers can't go too far because the astronauts will be limited by the air supply in their suits, so pressurized rovers that can go further are better.

Okay, good so far. On to the next part of the idea.

2. If something goes wrong with the rover, the guys inside are screwed. Being stranded on the moon with no AAA roadside assistance really sucks, so there should be two rovers.

Hm. Maybe, but you've just doubled the resources needed to go look into something. If this logic had been followed before, we'd never have made it to the moon in the first place. At some point you need to just accept that setting up a base of operations on the moon HAS to involve risk. Why not have redundant systems on the rover instead of two rovers? But it really goes off the tracks here...

3. But what if something happens to both rovers? You really need three!

Wait, now...someone didn't pay attention in statistics class. If there's a 1% chance of the first rover failing, then the chance of two rovers failing isn't .5%; it's .01%. And as I said above, at some point you just need to accept that being an explorer on this level is dangerous stuff, and shit will happen. Also, any event big enough to nail both rovers at the same time (meteor strike, or solar radiation enough to overwhelm any protection the rovers have?) would nail three as well, so that kind fo risk isn't limited by this approach at all.

4. So just get rid of the rovers, and stick with one big mobile moonbase!

Okay, so now what you've done is gotten rid of the rovers, only to make the whole base just one big rover itself, or a whole group of interdependent rovers? And this is more reliable HOW? It seems to me that it takes the challenge of a moonbase and adds complexity to it. Not only do the pieces have to fit together to form a secure and reliable habitat, now they have to withstand coupling and uncoupling, as well as the challenge of mating when the respective pieces might not be exactly aligned due to terrain. So I'm thinking this guy is a little more into astrophysics and a little less into simple common-sense engineering than he should be. Thoughts, anyone?

Re:Is NASA lost?

[Overzeetop]

No, it's not about technical limits, it's about financial limits. NASA does a lot of continuous research, both alone and with other agencies, such as NOAA. It's all stuff we take for granted now, kind of like sending the shuttle up three or four times a year. It's not sexy anymore just to get to orbit.

The problem is that the "next big thing" costs a lot of money. Think in terms of $1E12 to $3E12. Thats where preliminary Mars Mission estimates hit. Bush announced his plans for the Mars mission, then offered to give them an extra $1E7 to $1E8 over the next ten years to pull it off. I see no less than 3 orders of magnitude shortfall.

Think that number is out of line? Wiki mentions $1E10 as the 1994 cost of Apollo. Though not listed at Wiki, I would expect the Shuttle program cost somewhere in the $1E11 range. Given inflation of both costs and expectations, $1E12 is a good target for the next likely Big Thing.

With the retaliatory action in Afghanistan and the personal vendetta persued in Iraq, along with a not-red-hot-bubble-driven-economy tax base, we're back in the red by $5E11 a year, and still owe $7E12.

NASA doesnt seem to have vision because there's really no money to do a marquis program properly. They're trying to start a high profile program, funded by scraping the sides of the financial pudding bowl. It just isn't going to work. Gee Whiz is expensive - it always has been. Now that we pay for overhead and profit of corporations in addition to the research and development, its even more expensive than it used to be.

NASA hasn't lost it focus, it's been beaten out of them. How much would you expect to spend for the next Hollywood super-blockbuster? I'll give you a budget of $750,000. And I want three films. And amazing special effects - stuff never done before. Throw in a couple of name actors, too - that'll help the marketing. You'd start putting together Blair Witch Project ideas, too, faced with that kind of scenerio.

Re:Space RV's

[mwood]

Hmmm, let me get this straight: instead of the risk of losing one rover and having to double up, plus the much smaller risk of losing both rovers and having four people *perhaps* unable to hike back to base, we'd prefer to lose the *entire base with all its resources* and leave our guys with nothing but the consumables in their suits (presuming they got out safely).

Hmmm.

Mobile? Huh?

[PrvtBurrito]

Is it just me or is NASA barking up the wrong tree on this one? I would think that the challenge of a Moon Base would be building a sustainable (human) operating environment on the moon. This base would allow humans to exist/live on the moon allowing for human exploration of the solar system and potential commercialization of the resources present outside of our planet. These are significant challenges. Lets focus on these instead of focusing on exploration of the Moon. Is there anything a huge mobile laboratory could tell us that a small inexpensive rover could not?