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NASA's New Lunar Rover in Action
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist has video of Nasa's new Chariot lunar rover in action on simulated moon surface in Houston. As the associated story explains, the two-ton "truck" has a top speed of 20km/hour and is currently fitted with a plough, with additional back hoe and drill attachments to come. Sure it's not glamorous — more of a lunar tractor — but sure looks handy for establishing that permanent moon base NASA wants."
I wonder if this is the same simulated surface where the original landings were filmed.
Also all the other things a "truck" in Houston should have.
*Gun Rack
*Redneck Bumper stickers
*Shiney nude girl mudflaps
*A Wooden Back bumper (Usually 4x8)
*Empty Bud cans on the floor
*A Nascar Sticker on the Back window. #3 or #8) or both !
*Marlboro boxes everywhere.
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
No, they've spent the last 35 years just doing enough to justify their budget each year and making grandiose promises to keep people interested. They know damn well they're not going to the moon or Mars. It's all just PR and budget hearings for them now.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
and is currently fitted with a plough...
Vital for those sudden lunar snow storms.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Maybe this has been discussed before on another thread, but how the heck do you protect your buildings that are completely exposed to the elements of space? Without an atmosphere to burn up or dismantle most of what comes at it, is there really a plausible way to shield your structures from essentially anything at any speed? Hopefully some of the space guys can shed some light on this for me.
They got ho's on the moon? Sign me up!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Why do we not try and 'pave' parts of the moon we want to land on? Ok, granted it'd probably be pretty difficult (rocket science and all that...) to land in the exact same 30m x 30m grid every time, but the point remains. If we have so many concerns about moon dust and what damage it can cause, why don't we solidify a large section of the top layer?
I refuse to believe I'm the first person to suggest this, but I have yet to see it mentioned anywhere else.
My suggestion, since that's what your thinking at this point, is some type of ceramic.
Your comment was obviously tongue-in-cheek, but there are reasons for a plow. First is for infrastructure: it's useful to push off all of the fluffy regolith (moon dirt) to get to the compacted stuff when you want to drive moon buggies and such things.
:)
More interesting (for me, at least) is for excavation. The plow is used to strip the top layer of loose regolith so that a mining attachment can dig up the compacted stuff. There is evidence of water ice near the poles as well as He-3, so an effective cutterhead and muck retriever could collect resource-laden material. I just so happen to be lead mechanical engineer on such a Chariot-attachable mining module.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
I think it really needs a roll-bar or cage to protect the lunar worker. Our terrestrial intuitions about what looks stable may not be accurate for the mooon.
Well DUH!
We could have been doing THAT for the past 30 years or so using tele-operated robots. By now we'd have a substantial robotic base, likely mining lunar water to make rocket fuel and lunar soil to make fuel tanks. But all that would've done is cut the cost of space missions about in half, while greatly advancing the state of robotics.
Who'd want any of that?!
If anyone is interested, here's some pics my coworkers and I took. Plus a few more pages of crud.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
That's no moon!
From TFA:
Independent steering on each of its six pairs of wheels... give the vehicle the ability to raise or lower each individual wheel to keep its chassis level on uneven ground.
I've remotely driven that *exact* sort of vehicle! Well, in simulation, at least. I just can't believe it took from 1982 to now to go from simulator to prototype.
And they still didn't get the forward and vertical blasters! Hokey plows and an ancient drill bit are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
They'd be able to succeed if there weren't luddites like you cutting their budget.
They were nuclear powered to survive the 14-day night, drove tens of kilometers. At that time computers werent too powerful, so these were intereactively controlled (2 sec delay) with live telemetry.