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NASA Considers Mobile Lunar Base

Posted by timothy on from the nasa-meets-wally-byam dept.

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."

2 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. To the Moon, Alice by SolidiusRock · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's been something of a dream to see us go back to the Moon. Mostly on the basis that we need to support space exploration and without people getting interested, that won't happen. However, with new and unique ideas in contrast to the moon, much like this one, it may ignite even more people to support space travel. On a different note, it would be interesting to see how a mobile base would work let alone fair in some large disaster. Instead of one or two deaths, we now have ten.

    - P.S.: I know I just contradicted myself in some fashion, but so be it. :-)

  2. Re:Inherent problem by Sampizcat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, why not make it underground, and just tunnel everywhere? We could become the Mole People!

    Seriously though, it would shield from (some? UV?) radiation as well as help against debris striking the base (provided the debris was small and/or the base & tunnels were deep enough underground).

    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? And how hard could moon-mining be anyway? There's no issue of debris, just shoot it out into space, or even at Earth and it will just burn up (assuming the pieces are small enough). Of course, this could be bad as if they don't make it we could end up with a lovely ring of debris around the moon.

    Regardless of what happens, there's some pretty cool stuff waiting in the future. Hope it's in my lifetime.