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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."
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!
Armstrong's first boot prints must surely have been destroyed when the ascent module fired its main engine. However, there are probably other footprints further from the LM site that should be preserved.
Armstrong's first boot prints were most likely destroyed the minute Buzz Aldrin hopped off the ladder after him. It's the last bootprints that would have been obliterated by the ascent module.
Well, not all of them, and the truth is we don't actually know what the landing sight looks like with very close resolution. Didn't you see the photo of the footpath? Some of the footprints from Apollo 11 remain, certainly. Such details of the LEM pad site are a matter of speculation.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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 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.
What? There's no prize money until you land on the Moon. From the prize website: "The first team to land on the Moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million."
I heard Red Whittaker, the team leader, speak last summer; he said he does expect to make money off the project. Not from the prize, as the costs are several times the prize money, but from all the money that can be generated from the publicity of the landing. He wouldn't be doing the project if it was going to lose money; he's not in it for the science or the benefit to humanity. So yes, it is in large part a PR thing. But they definitely plan to launch; they've bought a launch rocket from NASA for several million dollars. Personally, I'm all for it; I think the lander is unlikely to mess up the Apollo site more than the launch rockers of the return stage already have, and it's perhaps the only site that will generate a bunch of public interest. As someone who wasn't alive during Apollo, I'm excited to see the video.
...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.
Actually, the first bootprints might have survived due to the LEM base acting as an umbrella. Sure, the flag may have been knocked over (Aldrin saw it fall), but the lack of atmosphere means there would be no swirling of the dust.
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.