Robotic Inchworm Drill for Mars, Europa

Erik Baard writes " The NY Times (reg. blah) is currently an article on robotic inchworm drills. NASA is funding Honeybee Robotics' R&D to create an inchworming "underground rover" based in part on a steam pipe welding machine the company built for Con Ed (called the WISER). The autonomous robot (scroll here to the Inchworm Deep Drilling System -- http://www.honeybeerobotics.com/sample.htm) would reach *kilometers* into Mars or Jupiter's moon, Europa, where scientists expect to find liquid water, and just possibly, life. Other drill designs could go perhaps a meter down. The inchworm could either gnaw its way back to the surface, or lay a series of radio relay stations ("bread crumbs") to pass the data signal to an amplifier on the surface to communicate with Earth. Yeah, I'm a regular /.er. And yeah, the NYT online spelled my name wrong."

Hmm...

[rovingeyes]

would reach *kilometers* into Mars or Jupiter's moon

At least this time I hope the people will make sure that they agree on one system. We don't want another screw up becoz someone didn't know they were dealing in *miles*, ooops...../P

honeybeer obotics?

[Zayin]

http://www.honeybeerobotics.com/sample.htm

That domain name sure is easy to misinterpret... What's honeybeer anyway? (And yes, there are other ways to read it. :-)

Copy and Pase Gone Bad?

[vreeker]

Main Street, Got Milk?, Calif.

Got an interest in changing your town's name? The California Milk Processor Board, which is behind the "Got Milk?" advertising campaign, wants to rename a small town in California.

Last month, it wrote to the mayors of 20 of them, asking them to consider a change -- to Got Milk?, Calif. It offered to build a Got Milk? museum and to make a contribution to local schools. Only one town -- Biggs, population 1,793 -- expressed any interest. But last week, a town meeting voted it down.

I dunno about you - but that doesn't sound like inchworm robot drills... Did I miss something in the article? I think someone mucked up copying and pasting or NYT's backend hiccuped.

New "Worm" Mining Rockets

[outofpaper]

New "Worm" Mining Rockets: Gerentied to be able to extract all usable minrals from 3000 cubic meters of average density rock. Using advanced tecnology based on Earth's own inch worms the rockets war head will, on impact, imediatly start burowng into the surface of the planet or planetiod of your choice.

Chack out our other fine Space Crafts based on Earth wild life: "Eagle Scout" Surveillance Drone, and "Sparky the Retrever" unmand retreval ship.

This is a critical piece of technology!

[tolleyl]

There was another article on slashdot that discussed the upcoming reversal of earth's magnetic field (coincidently released shortly before a movie about the reversal of earth's magnetic field). If this inchworm research progresses well then when the reversal happens we'll be ready for it and won't have to have a last minute attempt to drill to the core with unproven technology and a crew consisting of a tormented captain, a comedic sidekick, several people who end up dying and a surprizingly attractive foreign 'scientist' who ends up hooking up with the captain before he tragically dies. This way we can have an overpriced government funded inchworm that will save the day with a boring military crew with plenty of time to spare. Let's prepare for the future!

you forgot one . . .

[misterhaan]

1) Does it attempt to backup and go around? 2) Drop into the cavern 3) ... survive the drop? 4) Get back to the surface?

5) Profit?

Robotic Itch Worms from Mars !?

[brejc8]

Life is much more exciting with dyslexia.

sniff

[bjtuna]

Erik Baard writes " The NY Times (reg. blah) is currently an article on robotic inchworm drills.

Welcome to Slashdot. Verbs are optional.

The MONOLITH!

[Cheesemaker]

Didn't the monolith tell us to stay away from Europa?

Re:Earth applications

[malakai]

Yeah, because drilling tunnels randomly between two points is childs play. I mean, what could go wrong? Not like anything else is buried underground....

And who cares if the 10$-15k rental equipment gets stuck under some highway. You can always shut down traffic, bring in the back hoe, break open the pavement, cart of 1/2 ton of concrete and asphalt, and retrieve the device...

The search and retrieve operation would only cost 300k or so.

Man, what world do you people live in? Have you ever tried to get trench permits from a city? And you think arbitrary tunnels will be looked more favorable on?

The EM spectrum is natures peace offering to us to stop fucking drilling holes in her. Lets get some FCC reform, turn the entire spectrum into a shared spectrum with frequency hoping recievers and auto-relays/routers in each consumer device, and use the nearly inifinte amount of bandwidth that electricity and magnetism provide us.

-malakai

Re:Great Idea for Mars, but maybe not Europa

[cDarwin]

As a home experiment, try piercing an ice cube with a soldering iron. Takes longer than you thought, doesn't it?

Gawd! That took forever! Oh, wait. Was I supposed to plug it in first?