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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."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOo6aHSY8hU
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!
"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.
If only Armstrong made a giant leap instead of a small step then the first footprint might have survived.
Why is it necessary that we go back and explore what was accomplished in the past?
Because the relics of the past visits will give us valuable insight into long-term exposure of our machinery in the environment of the Moon - something that is surely relevant to future efforts of colonization. All the things we left behind have been sitting (hopefully?) untouched for 40 years getting bombarded with micrometeoroids, experiencing huge temperature swings and moonquakes, and generally experiencing the reality of existing there.
I find it fascinating and am excited to see pictures of how the sites have weathered.
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!