Small Robots Could Build Landing Site For Moon Base

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.

Comments

Robots building sand structures

[MrEricSir]

Now I know how I'm gonna win that sand castle contest this year...

Why not use a crater wall?

[DavidTC]

Why not use a crater wall? Put the landing strip on the outside, the base on the inside, and cut a tunnel? (And build a ramp over/around for the big stuff.)

No hitchikers

[argent]

No weather on the moon. No thieves. No vandals. No vegetation. No mud. 1/6th gee. No wind to blow piles of dirt away. It's a simpler environment to work in.

Forget the construction work, could you build a rover that would last 90 days in Minnesota. just driving around photographing things?

Re:No hitchikers

[Walkingshark]

I somehow doubt this is going to be much of an issue. Chances are much higher for something like damage from thermal expansion/contraction from driving in and out of shadows to do in a rover, or getting that nasty abrasive moon dust into the moving parts.

Re:No hitchikers

[argent]

It's possible some spacecraft have been hit by meteorites large enough to damage them, but space is pretty damned empty... even in crowded neighborhoods like LEO and the vicinity of Jupiter and Saturn (including Saturn's ring system) the biggest impacts are from dust-sized chunks. When probes fail they look for defects in design or operation before even considering impacts.

Lawnmower size?

[oodaloop]

Sheesh. How about a standard unit of measurement here, like Volkswagen Beetles or African male elephants or telephone directories? Tell me they at least expressed their hard drive size in multiples of Libraries of Congress.

Re:Lawnmower size?

[morgan_greywolf]

1 Lawnmower = 0.1 Volkswagen Beetles = 20 telephone directories.

Found via Google.

Re:Yeah right?

[xonar]

...If there was any way to automate the process more than it already is, it would be done by now.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Sound familiar?

I for one, *sigh*...too easy...

[TiggertheMad]

If there was any way to automate the process more than it already is, it would be done by now.

Do you have any concept of which you are speaking? Why on earth (lol) would you want to further automate road construction in Minnesota? Human labor on this planet is pretty cheap, even if it is unionized. When you have fly that labor to off word, hiring someone to scrub the great wall of china with a toothbrush is cheap in comparison.

Robots don't need air, food, or water. They can work for long periods of time in utterly hostile environments with little to no supervision. They don't get sick or bored. They can be mass produced. When you are done with them, they don't want to go home. And, they have yet to rise up and try to enslave humanity, which is more than we can say for humanity.

Re:I for one, *sigh*...too easy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots also don't experience fear,

Of course not

doubt,

Never!

or vanity.

It's not vanity; we are perfect.

Signed,
Your Hidden Robotic Overlords

p.s.: get back to work, fleshy servitor, or we'll reassign you to pave our Lunar Base landing pads!

Re:I for one, *sigh*...too easy...

[girlintraining]

Do you have any concept of which you are speaking?

Minneapolis/St.Paul metropolitan area is rapidly becoming snarled in traffic jams. We've recently deployed a light-rail transit system, serving approximately a dozen stops. It was wildly successful and there are plans to expand it, with the next leg going over the recently rebuilt 35E bridge that (as you might recall) fell into the river a year ago. Our public transit system though, bluntly stated, has the suck. Really, unless your destination is downtown, or your transportation is within minneapolis/st.paul proper, you'll be spending hours riding and waiting. Which means that in Minnesota, as soon as you can afford it -- you buy a car. Insurance, by the way, is mandatory. We have a relatively high cost of living index as well. Not only that, but our traffic system is already being pushed beyond capacity. Experiments in "high occupancy vehicle lanes" to secure federal tax dollars have frustrated commuters because it's being used largely as a toll system for the upper-class to bypass traffic snarls, especially along 394 and the 35E (burnsville)->94(minneapolis) corridor.

Why on earth (lol) would you want to further automate road construction in Minnesota? Human labor on this planet is pretty cheap, even if it is unionized.

Presently, the Minnesota Department of Transportation has a budget of approximately 2.2 billion dollars per year. We just biffed a few hundred million on reconstructing a bridge that fell into the river (oops), so we're kinda tight on funding right now. There are redesigns planned for most major freeway/freeway interchanges inside the 694/494 beltway, and we are already at capacity -- with average commute times of over 45 minutes. The budget has grown annually perhaps 5-9%, while the usage patterns indicate at least 15-23% (depending on who you ask) rises over the same period. In short, we're not keeping up. Adding insult to injury -- unlike California where temperatures are relatively constant and weather-related road repairs are at a minimum, leading to highway lifespans of 50 years or more... Up here in Minnesota, we need to resurface the roads perhaps every 5-7 years, and rebuild them entirely every 20 years or so due to high temperature variations and constant humidity and weathering. Concrete roads, common throughout most of the country, are not used here except for overpasses and select areas because they fall apart too quickly under weather conditions -- necessitating the use of less-robust black-top. So our per-mile maintenance costs are higher. As well, unlike in other parts of the world, we have at least a third of the year in which we can't build roads -- because the ground is frozen!

In short, labor is more expensive up here, the build times are shorter, the demand is rising faster than supply, and alternatives simply don't exist. Why robots? Because they can work at -40 temperatures, doing 16 hour shifts. Because human labor is damned expensive up here, and because automation means we can do more work for our dollars spent. That is, if such technology existed. But it doesn't. Every mile of road we build takes a team of twenty people working at least a couple days. And it's crap work that nobody wants to do, and only a small subset of the population is physically capable OF doing -- which is why, regardless of how well it pays, there's going to remain a shortage.

Re:I for one, *sigh*...too easy...

[argent]

All of those arguments work just as well in Minnesota as they do on Luna.

MN is a much more hostile environment for robots than the moon is.

Crater

[flyingfsck]

I think constructing berms and such is redundant. After a few typical NASA landing attempts, there should be a nice crater at the landing site with berms to protect the base.

Re:Creating robots is a bad idea!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I, for one, live in terror at the idea that machines built for shoving sand around in 1/6th gravity might someday rise up to destroy me. When the last of the brain-apes is buried knee deep in a sad little grit pile, truly they shall rue the day they created the earthmover robot.

Graviton flux

[this great guy]

Why doesn't NASA simply use a reverse graviton flux to land the spacecraft without any rocket blowing towards the lunar sand ? Oh wait... you guys haven't discovered yet how to create gravitons right ? Shit. I hope I haven't modified this timeline too much by revealing things you aren't supposed to know. Shitshitshit.

Re:Avoid the target area!!

[RabidMoose]

We attempted to assasinate Murphy, but it all went horribly wrong.

Re:Fire the robots

[stoolpigeon]

I'll go. Tomorrow. Somebody get me a shovel and a suit.

Re:radiation protection, prooly more important

[MaxwellEdison]

The soil shield would be for protection from micrometeorites and also keep the area inside in constant shade, reducing thermal effects that may be caused while transitioning from sun to shade. a properly shielded and pressurized habitat could then be constructed within. The habitat could use a magnetic field generator in combination with other shielding materials to protect the "Lunarians".