Slashdot Mirror
Solar-Powered Moon Rover To Explore Apollo Landing
Mike writes "Carnegie Mellon roboticist Dr. William Whittaker has teamed up with Astrobiotic Technology to develop a solar powered moon rover that will explore the Apollo landing site in 2011. The photovoltaic clad robot features two electric motors in the hub of each wheel, and a half cone of solar generators up top that will power the wheels, run computers, and beam stereo HD video back to earth. The project has been entered in the $25 million Google Lunar X Prize competition."
I think the Apollo landing sites need to be preserved for posterity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOo6aHSY8hU
This should work well there. :D
Sending a mouse to disturb the eternal footprints of giants. Sort of a metaphor for the current state of NASA, sadly.
I hope that they put on a really really good telephoto lense. Those original footprints have the chance of lasting for thousands of years if WE DON'T STOMP ALL OVER THEM WITH A FRICKING ROBOT.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Couldn't they just send a rover to like Nevada or something? I read on the internet that's where the moon landings happened, so it must be true.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
I think the Apollo landing sites should be off limits. One mistake and Armstrong's first boot prints could be destroyed. I cannot believe that a group of scientists have the audacity to mess around with the Apollo 11 site.
Why is it necessary that we go back and explore what was accomplished in the past? Call me stupid, but it seems like a rover on the moon could do something more useful than exploring a bunch of dusty boot prints and some used equipment. Anyone care to enlighten me?
While they're at it, it would be awesome to deploy a few more seismometers...
Moonquakes are pretty damn cool from a seismological perspective. Beyond that, some of the ones recorded by Apollo-installed seismometers were >Mw 5. Big enough to be damaging.
The moon isn't tectonically active, of course, but it is seismically active, and the data recorded in the 70's indicates that the moon's lithosphere is a very different beast compared to earth's. At any rate, it would produce some extremely neat data!
Wouldn't the first footprints have been destroyed when the LM took off?
Dr. James Kelloway: You think it's all a couple of looney scientists, it's not! It's bigger. There are people out there, *forces* out there, who have a lot to lose. They're grown ups. It's gotten too big, it's in the hands of grown ups!
Charles Brubaker: [dividing up the first aid kit] John, you take the flint. Peter and I will split up the matches. Anybody want the gun?
Lt. Col Peter Willis: I'd shoot my foot.
Cmdr. John Walker: I'd shoot his foot.
then there is of course, my favorite: so thereâ(TM)s this guy, see, who takes a trip to see the sights, you know, he has a real good time, anyway, he decides to call his brother, see, and, well, he asks his brother, howâ(TM)s everything at home, and his brother says, the cat died, and the guy says, you shouldnâ(TM)t tell me bad news like that, you know, not like that, you should tell me something like, well, something like the cat crawled out on the roof chasing some mice, and we had to call the fire department, and when the firemen went up to get the cat, well, the cat slipped and fell to the ground, see, and we had to take the cat to the vet, and they were going to operate on the cat, you know, but it was too late, they couldnâ(TM)t save the cat, thatâ(TM)s how you should break bad news, like that, see, so the guy says to his brother, howâ(TM)s mom, and the brother says sheâ(TM)s on the roof
what a great movie...
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
Why two motors in each wheel hub?
The only reason I can think of is that 1 small motor @ 100% is more efficient than 1 large motor @ 50%... or is that incorrect?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I agree, messing them up does nobody any good.
Now, if you could dig them up and bring them back, along with some other artifacts, now that would be worth something!
Do regular international salvage laws apply to abandoned moon gear?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
"Bet they can do it on the sound-stage in Nevada" - Idiot who doesn't understand that every other idiot also thought of the same joke at the same time.
"But we didn't go to the moon! I saw it on Fox, so it must be true" - Flaming moron who couldn't find their ass with both hands, a copy of an anatomy textbook and a full length mirror.
"LOL, wut, we didn't go to the moon, you peeps are sheep" - Troll, pretending to be the above idiot, thereby becoming a recursive idiot instead (idiot^2).
"NASA SUCKS!!!" - Multiple varieties of idiot, any one of whom very well might be a community college certified rocket scientist.
"NOES! They'll destroy the historic bootprints!" - Idiot who believes that lack of erosion signals lack of change. The bootprints are likely long gone, due to heating and cooling of the rocks, vibrations from the ground and, at the landing sites proper, the exhaust from the ascent stage of the lander. Nobody but your high school science teacher seriously thinks they'll last a hundred years, or whatever numeric value you were told.
"Git offa my lawn you kids!" - Angry curmudgeon tired of being able to predict slashdot posts in advance, just by seeing the fucking story title.
There, now you don't have to read the thread. You just read every post, condensed into one. You're welcome. Now, go defy expectations and RTFA instead.
First off, it's bullshit. They may develop the thing, but it's not going to fly itself. The Google X-Prize money is for the development, not the flying, and it's not enough to get it there anyway.
They WANT to have it explore the moon (actually they want to be seen wanting to do so, in order to increase their chances of getting the prize money; you think the timing of the announcement was random?). There's nothing here about anyone else wanting them to.
And given their announced target, I think they've just pointed the space demodulator at their foot. Far too many people would be offended.
All in all, this is a PR job. The guy may be capable of developing, but the chances are that having teamed up with this company, their plans are to get the prize money, maybe develop, maybe not, and know for certain ahead of time it'll never leave the ground. They just want the money. The tip off? Such a device could do valuable research, such as roving around the south pole looking for ice. Are they planning any useful or noble venture like that? No. They're planning on some virtual tourism, and true to big ticket money tourist ideals think that they're permitted to walk on anyone's lawn they wish just so they can take their holiday photos.
Fuck 'em. If you think they're hosebags for wanting to trundle all over what may be the most historic of historic sites, complain to the Google Lunar X-Prize people http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/contact-us and tell them not to support this project.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Why bother visiting old relics? Surely there are more interesting landing sites on the dark side, or the poles, of the moon that warrant more exploration than 40-year-old non-rusting relics.
Kriston
I can fully get behind this if: 1) the robot proves all "the moon landing was a hoax" a-holes wrong once and for all, and... 2) we build another robot to finish the ass kicking that Buzz Aldrin started on that fuckwad Bart Sibrel.
The project heads know that Google is only looking to expand their street view to the moon. Don't blame them there is only one dirt trail to visit!
I have been keeping track of this team for at least a year now. It is a local team and a favorite in the Google lunar x prize. But honestly they have had almost no major advances since last summer. Also in the economic downturn they have not found any real sponsors. AND they still do not have any launch provider willing to take their rover. I think they are waiting for a Space X charity launch. It most likely wont happen before the 2014 deadline
-
I'm only saying this because I care. There are many decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
What they should really be doing is finding a competitive team to have Robot Wars with on the Moon.
...of that episode of Futurama where Fry goes to the moon and finds the original moon landing site, which had been lost for centuries. He proceeds to compare his boot to Neil Armstrongs, and marvels at the sight of "that flag from MTV".
Inside the lander theres something that reads "This lader returned to its original site by the historical sticklers society" or something.
I dunno, mod me +1 Rambling.
Oh, for fuck's sake...we go to the trouble to build a super slick rover to explore the surface of another planet, and they want to waste time visiting the .0001% that we already have explored? If there isn't something better to be exploring on the moon, why the hell are we going again?
I knew we were a glorified pack of narcissistic monkeys but this just take it.
"Lets go look and see where we landed LAST time we were here, that seems like a good idea."
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Sir, if you would just look this way for a minute...
**flashythingy**
Now aliens do not exist. We do not, and never have had anti-gravity or free energy tech. Now go sell all your possessions and join a missionary group in inner Papua New Guinea. Have a nice life.
ACK NAK RST
It's Astrobotic.
Not a chance for something solar panel getting enough power over a long period of time on the moon.
The moon dust (regolith) sticks to everything electrostatically and it's so fine that brushing it off is damn near impossible.
Optimistically, they write...
Yeah, that moon air might be a problem... do they know what are they talking about?
A solar panel on a moon rover will get covered with regolith in short order and that's all she wrote...
"Now, the purpose of this year's expedition is to see if we can find any traces of the last one."
What's with the summary's "the" Apollo landing site? Last time I checked, there were 6 landing sites. (Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I think that HD video will help preserve what is there.
no need to contaminate the site to do so.
Maybe they can see if the missing tapes are there. Apparently they've searched all over earth and they're not here. So they must have been left behind....
---
Heck, why not coat the whole lunar landing site with clear epoxy to preserve everything or at least the foot prints.
I agree with the other posters, this should be preserved. Or at least the 1st one.
Anybody else remember "First Footprint City" from the BBC SciFi series Earth Search?
If there is a real compelling scientific justification to see how the materials have survived then designate one of the other landing sites that is deemed less important and send the robot there. After all several Apollo missions went to the moon.
Sending one for Apollo 11 sounds more like a badly thought out publicity exercise then anything else.
They'll drive around with a buggy in a Area 51 hangar for a while for 25mio?
;)
I could do that for 12mio... within a year
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
To those whining about returning to an Apollo site instead of doing some new exploration/science: This isn't a science mission, and the people doing it aren't scientists. The Lunar X Prize isn't trying to promote lunar science. It's about improving space technology. By returning to an Apollo site, the teams can generate lots of public interest that will help them make some money to cover their costs, and break even on the finances. If they went somewhere else these private teams would likely have to absorb millions of dollars in losses. Plus, there's a bonus prize for photographing man-made objects on the moon. Don't you want to see the pictures?
Don't send a robot to the moon to explore sites we've already explored. We did that during the Apollo missions. Apollo 12 landed within walking distance of Surveyor 3. Now, if you really want to do a follow up that would impress me go find the Apollo 10 LEM ascent stage that was released to a heliocentric orbit after the mission. It's orbitting aroudn the sun somewhere, the only presumably intact flown LEM ascent stage. All the others impacted on the moon somewhere.
The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.
What's the point of this? We already know what's there. Why not pay millions of dollars to send it to a part of the moon we haven't explored yet?
/* No Comment */
There is no mention in the article of HOW that rover will get up there in 2011. Does anyone know what it's launch vehicle is planned to be?
"NOES! They'll destroy the historic bootprints!" - Idiot who thinks there was only one Apollo landing, or that the robot will necessarily visit Apollo 11's site.
The robots will likely be sent to the site of Apollo 17. After all, that's the one for which we have the most and the best photographs. Therefore, a second expedition to that site would be the most valuable. You can say, "here's a picture of this rock from 50 years ago, and here's a picture today" and make some kind of sciency discovery that way. Also, that was the only Apollo mission to include an actual scientist, a geologist to be exact, and the use a hammer to break open a few rocks. It might be interesting to go back and have a second look at those rocks.
I can't understand the people in this thread who assume the robot will go to Apollo 11's landing site. That was the shortest mission and it was in one of the most boring (but easiest to land on) areas of the moon.
Red Whittaker founded Astrobotic Technology - I don't know why this "article" is written as if he's joining the company. And the company does have long-term aspirations for the moon and the Google X Prize allows it to offset the cost of development, assuming they win, of course.
Then the article goes on to say that the "only remaining problem" is handling very low temperatures - while I'm sure it's definitely a problem, I highly doubt that that's the only thing left to be solved.
Bottom Line: Ignore TFA, just read the Astrobotic blog entry.
Minor disclaimer: Dr. Whittaker was my master's thesis advisor.
TFA sucks in sooo many ways. Just go directly to the source. It's much more informative.
From the article:
"Thereâ(TM)s just one problem left to figure out: how to protect the rover from minus 240 F lunar nights. The team is experimenting with different ways to package lithium ion batteries to be able to function after two weeks of exposure to air that is nearly as cold as liquid nitrogen."
This changes everything!
Yes there is value to visiting old equipment left behind. Remember Apollo 12 visited one of the Surveyor landing craft to return a sample from it, for long-term exposure analysis. Even checking out the erosion of the footprints by micrometeorites would be kind of interesting.
bit strange way to design things. You'll get relatively low power (because a lot of the cells won't be full-on to the sun), and relatively high weight because half of your cells will be in the shade. I'd have thought that you'd get a better power-weight ratio by pivoting a flat plate of cells. It's not as if the direction of the sun is either unpredictable or difficult to detect. Pivots may be a problem, but there are plenty of rotary joints in the machine already.
[/self Rs TFA] Hmmm, not a lot of information, but the summary doesn't bear too much relation to the pictures. Not worth more attention.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Contemplating your own navel department
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.