NASA Gears Up for the Regolith Rumble

eldavojohn writes "NASA is holding another scientific challenge to see which autonomous robot can move the most regolith in 30 minutes. The finer details: 'To win the cash prizes for NASA's Regolith Challenge, teams must demonstrate fully autonomous robots capable of collecting at least 330 pounds (150 kilograms) of mock Moon dirt within 30 minutes. Whichever robot moves the most regolith over the benchmark limit, while still meeting contest specifications, wins, NASA said. But in order to compete, lunar regolith excavators must weigh less than 88 pounds (40 kilograms) and run on less than 30 kilowatts of power, according to contest rules.'"

Comments

Well, which is it? lb of kg? W or kW?

[Eric Smith]

330 pounds (weight) is much different than 150 kilograms (mass). There is no purely numeric conversion factor between the two, as anyone with even the slightest knowledge of physics knows. The imperial unit of mass is the slug, and is approximately 14.59 kilograms.

30 kilowatts is one heck of a LOT of power to be used by something that is only supposed to mass 40 kilograms. I was unable to find the official rules, because the link on the NASA site was broken, but the challenge page gives the power limit as 30 watts, not 30 kilowatts.

Can we switch to SI now, please, and try to keep the prefixes straight?

Some info missing - how far must rock be moved?

[glawrie]

Does anyone have a link to the terms of the competition. The posting and the article it came from both omit to say how far the rock has to be moved. I'd have thought that would have a big impact on the total energy requirement. I would also hope that the spec would have a total energy consumption target (in KWh) - rewarding the more energy efficient robots.

Re:Some info missing - how far must rock be moved?

[SirBruce]

Click on registration and you will find several links, including one to the rule book which contains the information you seek. Specifically, there's a "sandbox" 4m x 4m x 0.5m of regolith, which the robot most sit on top of place into the "collector" area which is adjacent to the sandbox. How far you have to go depends upon how much regolith your robot can "reach" and collect in the time allotted; at most you might have to travel 5m to get to the regolith you need. It's really not so much distance moved as it is speed of collection and total quantity collected.

Re:Well, which is it? lb of kg? W or kW?

[halftrack]

Wikipedia seems to disagree with you. See: article about the Pound and Avoirdupois article. It seems to have been defined as weight initially but 1 pound is now defined as exactly 453.59237 grams ... which is mass. So TFA is infact correct stating that 330 punds = 150 kg (with an error less than 0.3%).

weight != mass

[tolomea]

weight is the combination of mass and local gravity. an earth such distinctions don't much as local gravity is pretty much the same everywhere, but local gravity on the moon is very very different. however for the purpose of the contest it's probably safe to assume they meant weighs 150kg on earth

Re:Well, which is it? lb of kg? W or kW?

[camperdave]

The pound was redefined in 1959, when your entire measurement system was converted to metric bases. PSI should now read PFSI (pound force per square inch).