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Space Technology

Space Spiders to Assemble Satellites in Orbit 155

Posted by samzenpus from the ziggy-stardust dept.
Grubby Games writes "New Scientist reports that a JAXA mission to determine whether spider-like robots could construct complex structures in space is set to launch in January 2006. The spider bots could build large structures by crawling over a 'web' released from a larger spacecraft. The engineers behind the project hope the robots will eventually be used to construct colossal solar panels for satellites that will transmit solar energy back to Earth."
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Space Spiders to Assemble Satellites in Orbit More

Space Spiders to Assemble Satellites in Orbit

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  • Obviously (Score:3, Funny)

    by kadathseeker ( 937789 ) on Thursday December 15, 2005 @12:31AM (#14261835) Homepage
    I for one welcome our new robotic spider overlords. Really, that is cool.

  • AJAX in Space! (Score:3, Funny)

    by snevig ( 555801 ) on Thursday December 15, 2005 @12:34AM (#14261852)
    oh wait...
  • Such spider robots could one day be used to fit pieces of a large solar array or reflector on top of the netting. in R&D, when they say "one day..." it's either a bone for the funding agency or the media, or some interesting application on paper that has a slim chance of making it to production. I just thought it was more concrete based on the title of the story. Oh well...no asimov stories about crazy robots in space yet.
    • Naw, its for real. I've seen this episode.

      Eventually the spiders turn into humanoid form, and one wants to all get it on with Carter, which is totally messed up... and then Jack totally blows them up.

      Ok, I watch too much TV.

      • Re:nice idea but... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by drwho ( 4190 )
        Nah, it's alright, because they communicate using WiFi, and we can jam that no problem. That's what the big thing on Takara is -- a giant wifi amplifier - basically a really large microwave oven. SO no worry about the spiders replicators getting outta control. And we have the ass-guard to back us up.

        I actually don't watch it on tv. I use bittorent to download the episodes. Is this any better?

      • Re:nice idea but... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        There is nothing messed up about wanting to get it on with Carter. even if you are a weird ol' humanoid replicator type thing...

  • Its too bad its solar, not nuclear... (Score:5, Funny)

    by aapold ( 753705 ) * on Thursday December 15, 2005 @12:35AM (#14261862) Homepage Journal
    They tell us that nuclear stuff in space would be dangerous. Irresponsible.

    But if these spider robots were nuclear powered, they'd have greater power.

    And with greater power comes greater responsibility.

  • So where were the spiders while the fly tried to break our balls?

  • Nice move. (Score:1, Funny)

    by icepick72 ( 834363 )
    JAXA and a web ... way to confuse a techie!

    • Re:Nice move. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Vladan ( 829136 )
      "spider-like robots could construct complex structures"

      "the spider bots could build large structures by crawling over a web"

      Sounds like Google should do it.
  • OMG! The Replicators are here.

    You bastards, you have no idea what you are letting loose on the world. :-\

    They'd make an artifical Sam Carter, and have her all for themselves. :-(

  • Hmm (Score:1, Funny)

    by nexcomlink ( 930801 )
    So let me guess we are going to have a 50ft thick cable floating from earth where these solar panels are located in space, god might trip over it emagine the consequences for that.
    • He might wreck all the stars and the moon. Then he'd have to send little Prince Jesus to Earth to roll up replacements.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)

      by FireFury03 ( 653718 )
      So let me guess we are going to have a 50ft thick cable floating from earth where these solar panels are located in space

      No - the solar array sits in geosync orbit and transmits the collected energy back to a rectenna array on Earth as microwaves using a phased array. This is a pretty safe idea - you transmit a pilot microwave signal from Earth up to the satellite and the phased array on the satellite then uses the wave fronts of that pilot signal to synchronise the wavefronts transmitted by the phased arr
    • The idea of God tripping makes me think of the duck-billed platypus...
  • For many things, space construction is a much more logical option. Things don't have to be built to withstand the strain of being sent up from the ground on a rocket... I would definitely say that space construction is the way to go...
    • Things don't have to be built to withstand the strain of being sent up from the ground on a rocket...
      I'd say that structures supposed to house humans in space should probably be built to be able to withstand excess strain anyway.

  • This is just one of many... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chris Bradshaw ( 933608 ) on Thursday December 15, 2005 @12:42AM (#14261898)
    I'm suprised how little publicity JAXA gets (with the exception of Hayabusa). There are some very interesting, projects currently in progress. It's worth checking out...

    http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/index.shtml [isas.jaxa.jp]

    • I hope this project is as successful as JAXA's previous projects [snigger].
    • There are interesting projects, yes. But JAXA shows a shocking lack of willingness to share. Case in point: Hayabusa has some excellent shots of the asteroid. So where's the high definition map available for public download? Where's the raw image site (à la JPL's Cassinni [nasa.gov]) where the public can download the latest processed and unprocessed images? You want publicity, then put your product out there. Show landscapes (real and virtual), named features, etc. In short, make the work as exciting to th
  • Anyone played Sim City 2000 lately?
  • The screws for the assembly is sorted on-the-spot by a nearby located well-trained team of insects.
  • Seems more like a novelty than a viable solution.
    • I agree. There would still have to be rocket launches to deliver parts, and Spiders would break down from time to time.

    • Re:Novelty (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I dunno. People say that mining and manufacturing certain things in space are where the money is at. I have this idea that money is smart...maybe intelligent risk is what is smart. I doubt anybody would want to live in a place like space for a long time. So I think building robots, or concepts of robots right now, to do major work in space is where things are going. I think NASA said what it was about when they decided to send robots where humans couldn't really afford to go and got sizable scientific
  • With an area measured in sq. kilometers, and having to face the Sun (along the gravitational vector for any object being drawn by the Sun's gravity), I wonder if being struck by a "cosmic object" might be a serious concern for these solar panels they want to build.
    • It'll get hit constantly... mostly be the junk we've put in orbit. So they'll have to repair little holes. But solar panels work just fine with little holes punched through them.

      Things don't tend to fall straight into the sun either -- they travel in orbits. Extremely elliptical orbits might see a fairly large cross section of this thing, but to anything on a more or less circular orbit it's going to be very, very thin.

      • The problem I foresee is how you keep this thing from acting like a huge solar sail ...

        So you've got to get it dynamically stable - spinning, etc., so that it has some rigidity to it.

        And you need thrusters, and reaction mass, etc. Then you have to beef up the components to account for the thrusters, tanks, etc., which means even bigger thrusters, more reaction mas, etc. Has anyone bothered to do the calculations to see if there's any point where this thing is even buildable in theory? Or is this one of

        • The problem I foresee is how you keep this thing from acting like a huge solar sail ...

          I really don't see the problem with coming up with a way to build giant solar sails.

          Besides, my understanding of how solar sails work relies on reflecting light, a solar panel that absorbs light shouldn't have that problem/feature. I could be wrong on this though, and I'll happily defer to someone who really knows what they're talking about.

          • First, there's no 100% efficient absorber. No solar panel is going to behave like a perfect black body.

            Second, it irrelevant. The solar panel isn't converting mechanical energy (the motion of the photon) into electricity. Its converting the photon into electricity. The mechanical energy doesn't just "disappear". Since it has nowhere else to go, its absorbed by the structure. Hence, even a perfect absorber will be affected.

        • Re:Armageddon... for solar panels (Score:5, Informative)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Thursday December 15, 2005 @01:43AM (#14262191)
          I don't know if anyone's done the calculations. Better fix that!

          Photon pressure force:

          F = PA/c

          At 1 AU from the sun, P=1400 watts/m^2. For a 1km^2 collector we have A = 1*(1000*1000) = 1 million m^2.

          So F = (1400)*1x10^6/3.00x10^8
          F = 4.7N

          4.7N is almost enough to hold half a kilogram up on the surface of Earth. Divert a bit of the power to some ion thrusters, and you should be fine. You might have to shuttle up some reaction mass every few years, but that mass would be REALLY insignificant compared to the mass of the array itself.

          The mass of the array is irrelevant for countering the solar sail effect. You're not trying to accelerate it, you're trying to STOP it from accelerating, so you just have to counter the force being applied to it, which is the same regardless of the mass of the array.

          Rigidity shouldn't be a problem -- any sort of solid structure shouldn't have a problem withstanding tiny forces like that.

          • The problem is its NOT a solid structure. And there's no diff between trying to accelerate something, and trying to stop it from being accelerated. Also, if its in orbit around the earth (a reasonable requirement, unless your receivers are going to form a ring around the worlds' surface) the force isn't constant - on one side, its accelerating, on the other side, decellerating.

            Any structure sufficiently rigid may be too heavy to build. Make it dynamically rigid (by spinning it up), doesn't solve the prob

            • Okay, first, if you want the thing to not be accelerated, you have to balance the force that's trying to accelerate it. That is, Fs = Fr (force from the sun equals force from my rocket). So you have to apply 4.6N per square kilometre. There's no mass in that equation. Where mass comes in is if you want to get a certain acceleration, say 5 m/s/s. In that case, you'd have to apply a force equal to mass times the desired acceleration. In that case, yes, more mass does make things more difficult.

              So long a
              • It might be geosynchronous, but that just means a 24-hour orbital period. On one side, it is being accelerated in relaton to the earth (not the sun), on the other, decellerated. This would tend to make the orbit an ellipse, not geosynchronous.

                Better to just build a skyhook and exploit the differential electrical potential along its length. And, unlike a real skyhook, there's no need for it to go all the way to the ground, or even into the upper atmosphere, so that solves a lot of the materials problems as

                • The only undesireable force on the solar collector is the pressure put on it by the sun, right? So if you cancel out that force you have a regular satellite sitting in a high orbit -- no atmospheric drag -- and it'll stay there for a VERY long time with no course corrections. So the only force you have to worry about is the one that the sun is applying, which is always directly away from the sun. Since you're being careful to keep your solar collector always pointed towards the sun, that force is always
        • Far from being an expert in orbital dynamics, I suspect that solar radiation would accelerate this structure while it's on one half of its orbit, and slow it down it when it's on the other half. Shouldn't the forces compensate? Or maybe it would result in an orbit more and more elliptical, until it intersecates Earth's athmosphere?
  • This seems like an interesting concept, but a 10 minute sub-orbital experiment is certainly a "first step" at best. Some details on how the robots actually attach themselves to the "web" and move around, and how they would actually perform some useful work would have been interesting.

  • Suborbital research and private spaceflight (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Thursday December 15, 2005 @12:50AM (#14261949) Journal
    From the article: The satellite will be deployed from a rocket on a sub-orbital trajectory. This means scientists will have only 10 minutes of microgravity in which to perform their tests before the craft starts its descent back to Earth and eventually burns up in the atmosphere.

    I find it interesting that this research is being done with a suborbital launcher. People often dismiss ventures like SpaceShipOne and Virgin Galactic because they aren't orbital, but perhaps the cost efficiencies of private ventures could help suborbital space research?

    Does anyone have an idea of how much suborbital launches currently cost, and how this compares to Virgin Galactic's prices? Of course, one would likely need to add some sort of satellite deployment mechanism...
  • Now here's a technology we should all be able to get behind. By building in orbit, we can make spacecraft much larger and more sophisticated, from probes and satellites to huge passenger liners (if we have anywhere to go). We can make all sorts of things better and cheaper--optical lenses, crystals, precious gems, you name it. But it's not the incentives or the ability that will keep this from happening.

    No, it's the problem of who owns space. Who collects taxes for orbital manufacturing? Who pays fo

    • Who pays? Well, thus far it has been mostly US taxpayers I guess. And to an extent, the other governments of the world that actually have space programs.

      Who WILL pay in the future? Likely the rich benefactors behind private groups going to space...who will then be contracted by the US govt, and then the taxpayers are once again footing the bill. Only this time with some markup from the contracted private company.

      I think it's great that we do stuff in space, explore our little corner of the galaxy some m
    • Now here's a technology we should all be able to get behind. By traveling across the ocean we can reach new lands with tremendous opportunities. We can build exploratory ships, buoys, maybe even huge passenger liners. We can fish the legendary Grand Banks... where the fish jump right onto the deck by themselves! But it's not the incentives or the ability that will keep this from happening.

      No, it's the problem of who owns the ocean. Who collects taxes on off shore fisheries? Who pays for the ships to g

    • Re:it's about damn time...but still too soon (Score:5, Insightful)

      by R3d M3rcury ( 871886 ) on Thursday December 15, 2005 @04:16AM (#14262608) Journal
      Ridiculous.

      "No, it's the problem of who owns space."

      I'm pretty sure this has been decided already. No one owns space. People can own things within space, but you can't say "This orbit is mine. Go find another one." However, to use the Antarctica analogy, people can own things within the space. There are various research stations owned by governments on Antarctica. They don't own the land, but they do own the station.

      "Who collects taxes for orbital manufacturing?"

      I am not an accountant, but I'm not sure that there are taxes on manufacturing. I think you can make whatever you want tax-free. However, when you try to sell it, you have pay sales and/or import taxes and such to the area in which you sell it. So, no, I don't have to pay any taxes on crystals I build in orbit anymore than I would have to pay taxes on go-carts I build on the ground.

      Also, I think there are official rules which talk about how high a country's airspace goes. Thus, a satellite flying over some country does not enter it's airspace. So, no, just because my orbital factory goes over your country does not mean you get to collect taxes.

      There are only taxes when I go to sell the thing. And those would be collected based upon where I try to sell it. Just like they are now.

      Now, obviously, if I'm an American and I build something in orbit, would the US Government charge me an import tax? I don't know. But the worst-case scenario would be that I would pay taxes just like if I was an American company and I had my computers built in Taiwan and shipped here to be sold. Does Apple pay taxes on iBooks built overseas and shipped to the US? Any accountants out there?

      "Who pays for the infrastructure to shuttle things back and forth from orbit?"

      Anybody who wants to, I suppose. Would a government do it? Perhaps, if the people feel this is worthwhile (or, for the cynics, if enough companies want to do this to pay off the government). Otherwise, it would be up to private industry.

      Use the crystal example. I want to make crystals in orbit. I suppose I will need a factory. I will need some way to get the raw materials up there. I will need some way to get the crystals down here. I might be able to build an automated rocket or some sort of ground controlled system to do this. I may try to get a government to subsidize this because I'm doing really cool R&D. Or I may be able to do it cheap enough that I don't need a government subsidy. Since it costs a lot of money to lift something up there, I might try to build a combination raw materials deliverer and crystal pick-upper. I'd probably need to sit down and figure out how many crystals I need to make for this to be worthwhile--obviously, spending $50,000 to go up and pick up one crystal isn't worthwhile, but picking up 50,000 crystals would be. Of course, how much raw material can I haul up and how many crystals do I get out of the raw material, etc., etc. would come into play, too. I'm sure some computer program could figure out how often to go into orbit to make it cost-effective.

      "The ambitious and egalitarian notions that space is for all of mankind is exactly right; [...] Entering space was supposed to promote the idea that we're all on the same little rock together and that we have to face the much bigger galaxy on a united front, as citizens of the same planet. But it just hasn't happened. Despite the benefits, I don't think we're ready for the consequences yet."

      Hey, I like Star Trek as much as the next guy. But it's a TV show. It's not real.

      Again, I don't see what the issue is. Are you saying that if I built an orbital crystal factory, I should be concerned about someone shooting it down? About me starting a war on the ground over it?

      Heck, the US and the former Soviet Union spent years building satellites to spy on sensitive military installations. Yet nobody shot a spy satellite down. And no wars were started over spy satellites going over other people's countries.

      Or is this just FUD? "Ooh! Don't do that! Something bad might happen! I don't know what, but it might. Better stay up here in the trees where it's safe..."
      • "I'm pretty sure this has been decided already. No one owns space. People can own things within space, but you can't say "This orbit is mine. Go find another one." However, to use the Antarctica analogy, people can own things within the space. There are various research stations owned by governments on Antarctica. They don't own the land, but they do own the station."

        That's just the thing, though. How long do you think it would stay that way? There are only so many geosynchronous orbital points, and th
      • "No one owns space. People can own things within space, but you can't say "This orbit is mine. Go find another one." "

        Not true, I'm afraid. The ITU assigns orbits to commsats in Geo orbits. These rights can be traded, etc. So, in effect, certain particularly valuable orbits are already owned.
      • "However, to use the Antarctica analogy, people can own things within the space. There are various research stations owned by governments on Antarctica. They don't own the land, but they do own the station."

        As far as they're concerned, they do own the land. It's just that the United States doesn't recognize any claims. This doesn't prevent countries like Argentina and Norway from making expansive claims [fotw.net] to the continent.
      • However, to use the Antarctica analogy, people can own things within the space. There are various research stations owned by governments on Antarctica. They don't own the land, but they do own the station.

        Actually, there are number of countries that aren't treaty signatories and who claim regions of antarctica as their own territories. These are the pie shaped regions visible on this map [world-maps.co.uk].

      • Better stay up here in the trees where it's safe

        But you've got to admit that flinging poo at each other is still quite amusing.
  • It is scaring me that press releases from NASA sounds just about like press releases from IBM. AJAX or JAXA? XML, eXtensible Markup Language, or LMX, Lunar Mission '10? I'm confused and minding it less and less.
    • [flamebait]

      Its also scaring me that people can confuse NASA and JAXA. They only have a difference of what... 1000km? (rough estimate). Oh, don't forget thousands of years of cultural differences and customs, and what have you.

      Seriosuly, of course you are getting confused between Computer stuff and Space technology if you can't even tell the difference between the US of A and Japan.

      *sigh*

      [/flamebait]
  • Thanks again, Japan, for making things horrendously more complicated than they need to be. Spiders??? So many moving parts...
  • This is just another excuse to post an article with the letters A-J-A-X in it!! I call conspiracy. hehe
  • Aiming 1 Billion watt microwave beams at Earth isn't a very good idea.

    Spiders yes. Blofeld no.

  • I for one... (Score:3, Funny)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Thursday December 15, 2005 @01:44AM (#14262196) Homepage
    welcome our new "I For One..." overlords, who will no doubt reveal themselves in this thread many times over.

  • Furoshiki Satellite (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Research on Large Membrane Furoshiki Satellite [nasda.go.jp]

    FYI:
    Furoshiki [wikipedia.org] is traditional wrapping-cloth in Japan.
    Often, old women use Furoshiki as a substitute of bag.
    For example, when carrying a watermelon, Furoshiki is used as follows.
    Suika-zustumi [nifty.com]
  • Much like they have lead the way in innovative implementations of technology, I'm curious to see what they do with space. Their research into robotics (probably partially inspired by mecha fanboys) could probably contribute a lot to space exploration.
    • I agree. With all the sarcasm about Hayabusa probe failures, it has been underreported how innovative the mission is in the field of autonomous navigation. Both NASA and ESA are doing a lot of research in the same field, as it's what is badly needed in order to make robotic exploration more and more effective, especially when your probe is 2 UA away and the Sun gets in the way of control signals. But the Japanese can build on decades of AI research that most of us laughed at one time or another. What is an
  • I think that this could be interesting. I wish there were more details in the article. Photovoltaics in space have promise, if they can be done cheaply. Someone here asked if they'd act like sails -- well I think that they might, a little, but perhaps they could be put into orbit in such a way that they could tack around the planet, so as not to be pushed too far into space. This would require some reaction mass, true, but perhaps when they orbit around to the night side of earth their orbit could be ellipt

  • Cool! (Score:2, Funny)

    by commodoresloat ( 172735 )
    Giant intelligent spider robots in space!!

    What could possibly go wrong?

  • Danger... danger... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Danger Will Robinson!
  • ...spider robots build solar panels on you!

  • hmmm deus? (Score:2, Funny)

    by sam_paris ( 919837 )
    Spider bots??

    Anyone else thinking deus ex?... *sigh* God I loved that game..
  • Who else read these books by Kim Stanley Robinson?
  • Fred Saberhagen [berserker.com] has an uneasy feeling [wikipedia.org] about this.

    Seriously(?), is this one step closer to the 'smart pebbles' of 'star wars'? - Reagan's not Lucas's. Not passing any ideological judgement on the incoming tide of technology (like it or not, here it comes ...), but automated space replication would sure heat up the coming military space race in a higher ground sort of way.

  • will they obey robots.txt ? (Score:4, Funny)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Thursday December 15, 2005 @06:02AM (#14262904) Journal
    Who knew that Asimovs laws would end up being 'INDEX, NOFOLLOW'.

    tsk.

    Oooooooooh I get it now...
  • Did anyone else just think "holy FUCK we're screwed!"
  • Ziggy [wikipedia.org] played [seeklyrics.com] guitar! [amazon.com]
  • Though "selling real estate on the sun" is not truly what I describe, it still applies that if large solar catchers are deployed, then a shadow will be created. If that shadow is cast upon the surface of the earth, then a given region will be denied the usual-strength shower of photons (and other solar radiation). If the "recovered" (to borrow a term from the oil industry) light is redirected from a path NOT leading to the earth's surface (a bank shot of concentrated light energy), then there will still b
    • The shadow would be insignificant. As a shuttle's satellite upon the earth is. Because of lights characteristics light will easily fill teh space in between for such a small item. It will bend and reflect inside the atmosphere. As well, the movement of an object like this would very quickly go across the planet leaving shadows (if they are there) for very small amounts of time. Similiar to more mundane things, like, i dont know...clouds. Additionally, the shadow will only fall on teh surface of theearth whe
  • Clearly, these 'rocket scientists' never saw the Lost in Space movie. On the upside, it'll give us a reason to shoot Joey into space.
  • Science fiction author Bruce Sterling [wikipedia.org] wrote about a similar system in his 1982, Hugo-nominated short story Spider Rose.

    In that story eight pods eight radial cables rotated around the center of the web to maintain tension. Incoming packages would be caught in the centre of the web, wand the spinning pod would be drawn intowards the center to absorb the kinetic energy as the web bowed out.

    Any work that needed to be done on the web was done by numerous spider-bots.

  • Dr Wierd: Release the phone spiders!!!
  • spiders to build satellites that will transmit solar energy back to Earth. The satellites could reflect and concentrate the Sun's rays.

        Well sure, why don't we just hand them their revenge on a silver platter. This is exactly what they've been dreaming of ever since children first brought magnifying glasses into their backyards.

  • Superbot (Score:2)

    by Anm ( 18575 )
    For a second there, I thought the article summary was refering to one of the projects here at USC, the Superbot [isi.edu], part of our Polymorphic robotics Laboratory. Superbot is really about chains of tiny robots that can connect together to adapt to the particular task at hand. I know know low-G environments is one of our targets (NASA funded) and we have 2D air hockey table prototypes, and even toyed with underwater robots. But the videos show we have a long ways to go.

    Anm

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