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Small Robots Could Build Landing Site For Moon Base

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the get-serious-about-moving-off-planet dept.

A new NASA-sponsored study suggests that small lawnmower-sized robots could be used to build a landing site for a moon outpost. In order to be efficient a landing pad would have to be close to any structures created, but without an atmosphere to slow down the lunar sand it would sandblast the outpost, creating the need for some sort of protection. By using small robots to either build protective berms or collect rocks to "pave" a landing pad, NASA hopes to provide protection against the sand-blasting effects of a landing on the moon.

4 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Lawnmower size? by Lord+Pillage · · Score: 2, Informative

    They need the rover to be able to push aside the equivalent of 1.8 Olympic Swimming Pools of sand. It also needs to be able to traverse the grand canyon 3 times.

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  2. Re:Lawnmower size? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Informative

    1 Lawnmower = 0.1 Volkswagen Beetles = 20 telephone directories.

    Found via Google.

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  3. Re:Allow me to quote Robert Browning by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 2, Informative
    You are clearly a late-comer. Your argument is not merely rubbish, it is a straw man made of rubbish. I favor space exploration at least as much as anyone on this forum. The point you are missing is that a human being does not need to be physically present to explore space. In fact, the presence of humans impedes exploration by burning up the lion's share of resources in maintaining livable conditions. Look at the history of space exploration, from the points of view of both scientific achievement and exploratory coverage. The vast bulk was done with unmanned equipment.

    Why do you provide those quotes to refute my post? In what way am I in opposition to them? They were written long before there were robots. Your tone is starry-eyed, shallow-thinking, and reliant purely on emotional impulse, precisely the sorts of traits that explorers tend not to possess.

    Unlike you, apparently, I actually want space exploration to occur, not just talk about it or daydream about my favorite sci-fi stories and cartoons.

  4. Heard this in the 1980s. by Animats · · Score: 2, Informative

    Some of the Stanford AI crowd in the 1980s were talking up a proposal for a long-term project to build robots capable of building a moon base by the year 2000. I commented at the time "How soon can you do it in Arizona?" This yielded some embarrassment.

    NASA robotics efforts have had an overall negative effect on robotics as a field. They take forever, they produce one-off devices, and they suck smart people out of useful areas. JPL's rovers are really rather simple-minded devices, and are mostly teleoperated. They're just well engineered. Robotics efforts out of the NASA "centers" have generally been embarrassing.