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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.
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?
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?
Possibly just rednendency. The Mars rovers have shown us that a little design redundency and simple, good engineering can go a really, really long way. It sounds like this moon rover is hoping to follow in their metaphorical footsteps. This seems an excellent approach (one that we should take more often) and I wish it the best of luck!
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
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
But thats the thing, we need to see if they were non-rusting or not. Sure, we can know that they aren't rusted but 40 years of moonquakes, micro-meteoroids and just general disuse is going to make it a valuable insight into a future plan of colonizing the moon.
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Buzz Aldrin, you f-ing ROCK!!!
Life is not for the lazy.
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!
One of the things that I think was near criminal about the post Apollo period was that the ALSEPs were turned off, including the seismometers, to satisfy Senator Proxmire. So many billions of dollars to put them on the Moon, but $ 250,000 / year to keep collecting data was just too much.
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?