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NASA Moon Space Science

NASA Gears Up for the Regolith Rumble 69

Posted by Zonk from the in-this-corner-weighing-in-at-0.34-pounds dept.
eldavojohn writes "NASA is holding another scientific challenge to see which autonomous robot can move the most regolith in 30 minutes. The finer details: 'To win the cash prizes for NASA's Regolith Challenge, teams must demonstrate fully autonomous robots capable of collecting at least 330 pounds (150 kilograms) of mock Moon dirt within 30 minutes. Whichever robot moves the most regolith over the benchmark limit, while still meeting contest specifications, wins, NASA said. But in order to compete, lunar regolith excavators must weigh less than 88 pounds (40 kilograms) and run on less than 30 kilowatts of power, according to contest rules.'"
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NASA Gears Up for the Regolith Rumble More

NASA Gears Up for the Regolith Rumble

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  • and moves a ton of dirt? Can I enter my dog? It's pretty damn autonomous.

    • Can I enter my dog?
      Give her a biscuit and tickle her a bit. You never know, your luck might be in...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      and moves a ton of dirt? Can I enter my dog? It's pretty damn autonomous.

      Ok, great! Now repeat the same, but your dog's on Mars and should receive commands from Earth :)
  • May the best rock lobster win.

  • Winner? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It seems that, while building your robot to carry alot of dirt seems the most obvious way to move the dirt, my bet is that the winner ends up trading off some of its capacity for speed. My guess is, considering the amount of effort people put into thesee things, everyone will be doing extensive tests to see, energy lost for each journey compared to enery lost by carrying alot at the same time, then of course by carrying half the weight you need to be 4x as fast, becuase of the fact you have to make the jou
    • Carry the dirt? Why carry it? Just fling it. Or is that not allowed by the official rules (which seem to have gone AWOL)?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by SEWilco ( 27983 )
        Snowblower.
      • Because the word "lunar" in the "lunar regolith" implies that its on the moon - you know, 1/3 gravity. I would expect it would only fling dirt into space. My guess is that they want to do something with this dirt, like pile it up - hence they would want to keep it on the ground.
        • You expect wrong. Lunar escape velocity is 2.4 km/s. It's not possible to accelerate very much mass to that velocity with 15 kWh of energy. Flinging the regolith with consistent velocity will result in a nice pile of it accumulating somewhere. Just point the machine in the right direction.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by johnw ( 3725 )

      then of course by carrying half the weight you need to be 4x as fast, becuase of the fact you have to make the journey there and back to collect dirt to move it.
      Huh?! If you're carrying half the weight then you need to do twice as many trips. (You need to do a round trip for each load regardless of size.) If you carry half as much you only need to be 2x as fast to move a given amount in a given time.
      • Could use the robot to extend a conveyor belt, to avoid idling the pipeline. Depends on the distance I guess.

    • Go slow and multiply (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nietsch ( 112711 )
      remember they only have 30 watts to spend, so anything that involves a lot of accerlerating and braking is out of the question. Solution: use a conveyor belt (at least one of the entrants will). Just take tiny bites and transport it slowly to the dumpsite, but use a lot of buckets in the chain, so that the total transported load is high enough. 150 Kilo in 30 minutes means 5 kilo per minute => 10 loads of 500 gram per minute.
      In fact, on another scale this is what is being done in stripmines, so you can c
  • My robot was designed to round up 130+ slaves to work in the sugar mines of our newly welcomed overlords. I dont think it works too well with regolith.
  • 330 pounds (weight) is much different than 150 kilograms (mass). There is no purely numeric conversion factor between the two, as anyone with even the slightest knowledge of physics knows. The imperial unit of mass is the slug, and is approximately 14.59 kilograms.

    30 kilowatts is one heck of a LOT of power to be used by something that is only supposed to mass 40 kilograms. I was unable to find the official rules, because the link on the NASA site was broken, but the challenge page [california...hority.org] gives the power limit

    • Re:Well, which is it? lb of kg? W or kW? (Score:4, Informative)

      by halftrack ( 454203 ) <{jonkje} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday May 12, 2007 @05:48AM (#19094505) Homepage
      Wikipedia seems to disagree with you. See: article about the Pound [wikipedia.org] and Avoirdupois article [wikipedia.org]. It seems to have been defined as weight initially but 1 pound is now defined as exactly 453.59237 grams ... which is mass. So TFA is infact correct stating that 330 punds = 150 kg (with an error less than 0.3%).

      • weight != mass (Score:2, Informative)

        by tolomea ( 1026104 )
        weight is the combination of mass and local gravity. an earth such distinctions don't much as local gravity is pretty much the same everywhere, but local gravity on the moon is very very different. however for the purpose of the contest it's probably safe to assume they meant weighs 150kg on earth

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by johnw ( 3725 )

          for the purpose of the contest it's probably safe to assume they meant weighs 150kg on earth
          No - they meant what they said. The kg is a unit of mass and the mass is the same wherever it is.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Kagura ( 843695 )
            Obviously a counter-balancing scale will work on the moon, but how about an electronic scale?
      • No, it's the force exerted by 453.59237 grams on the surface of the earth. After all, PSI is a pressure unit.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by camperdave ( 969942 )
          The pound was redefined in 1959, when your entire measurement system was converted to metric bases. PSI should now read PFSI (pound force per square inch).
    • My brain is made heavy by the mass of your post.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      the 330 lbs to 150 kg gives you your answer. The contest, as we're all no doubt surprised to learn, is being held on the surface of the Earth. Is there a -1 pedantic moderation option?
      • Since it's a contest to design something intended to operate on the lunar surface, I don't think it's at all obvious how to interpret 330 lbs.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by The_mad_linguist ( 1019680 )
      Well, 30 watts *is* less than 30 kilowatts. The TFS is (technically) correct.
      • Well, 30 watts *is* less than 30 kilowatts. The TFS is (technically) correct.

        Technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.

  • Some info missing - how far must rock be moved? (Score:3, Informative)

    by glawrie ( 663927 ) * on Saturday May 12, 2007 @05:23AM (#19094441) Homepage
    Does anyone have a link to the terms of the competition. The posting and the article it came from both omit to say how far the rock has to be moved. I'd have thought that would have a big impact on the total energy requirement. I would also hope that the spec would have a total energy consumption target (in KWh) - rewarding the more energy efficient robots.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by SirBruce ( 679714 )
      Click on registration [california...hority.org] and you will find several links, including one to the rule book [california...hority.org] which contains the information you seek. Specifically, there's a "sandbox" 4m x 4m x 0.5m of regolith, which the robot most sit on top of place into the "collector" area which is adjacent to the sandbox. How far you have to go depends upon how much regolith your robot can "reach" and collect in the time allotted; at most you might have to travel 5m to get to the regolith you need. It's really not so much distance moved

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ohmypolarbear ( 774072 )

      I would also hope that the spec would have a total energy consumption target (in KWh)
      Giving just a wattage would make sense if they want to make sure that the robot doesn't use energy faster than it can be provided by, for example, a solar array of a certain size.

      • The power is supplied by an external connector. From the rules:

        The Power Source will supply 6 Amperes of current at 5 Volts to the excavation hardware during the 30 minute excavation attempt. A measurement device will be used to detect a draw of more than the allotted 30W of power from the Power Source. The power use will be recorded through the entire competition attempt, allowing the judges to detect an average power use of greater than 30W.
        • Which this "external connector" would likely be connected to a solar plant. You can only launch such a big solar panel on one rocket, and even if they intend on having a large scale farm of solar panels, they would likely only launch a small plant at first, which is the most these 'bots can count on until further notice...

          My reasoning for this lowest common denominator of power source is that Congress hates NASA enough as is. They don't have the patience to wait for NASA to get a large scale power plant
  • How about a mole in a spacesuit? :)

    But seriously, it seems odd that would would want a digging robot. Wouldn't one of those ditch-digger devices suffice? They are more like drills.
  • the moon landings. They can't even build their own robot. NASA, what a hoax!!
  • I'm not sure where the scientific part is.
  • Those things (trenchers) are fairly lightweight in the consumer version... have to be able to be pushed by lowest common denominator of people... move a lot of dirt quickly and could easily be adapted to a mulching lawnmower type design where the dirt is shoveled into an enclosed container rather than simply spewed out the sides.

    IMHO we already have equipment designs that meet this spec, minus the autonomous part. Add in an expert system and an ECU and you're done (yeah I know that's the hard part). What I'
  • A small unit that places directional charges to explosively blast out portions of regolith and then gather the resulting dust/rock might be the way to go. maybe put in place a shield of some sort to further contain/direct the displacement?

    would certainly cut down on the power requirements and weight of the unit itself and explosives are not very heavy but contain enormous power output.
  • 30 kilowatts? u crazy??? learn to read, man, it's 30 watts... an 88 pound, 30 kilowatt digging machine is simply outrageous! what, is it nuclear powered?? does it fly? LOL 30 watts, not 30 KiloWatts

  • The poster is wrong! 30 Watts is the limit.

    When I first read 30 kilowatts I said "300+ pounds with 3000 watts??? no problem!! You'd be talking 4000 horsepower. Your only real limitation on how much you could move would be the 40 kilogram limit.

    But of course 30 Watts is much different. With a car battery based system with 13.8 volt you'd be limited to just a little over 2Amps. DC motors for the FIRST robotics competition draw far, far more than this. (300 - 500 watts peak power.)
  • Being an orbiting planet, the regolith is never stationary, however I'll just use some TNT...
  • I for one, welcome our new regolith scraping excavator overlords!
  • With 30 kilo Watts power I can move 150kg of moon rock in like 30 seconds, never mind 30 minutes. I suspect it should be 30 W not kW.
  • Create a simple cart, use the rest of the mass for a load of C4, and I'll bet you could move a lot of material very quickly.
  • While I'm not a physicist, astro-physicist, astronomer, or have any real knowledge in the field (hey, if I'm wrong, at least I admit and accept it) - I remember reading somewhere that for low level radiation, things like certain types of clay can stop such low level radiation. Am I the only one thinking NASA wants to use the lunar dirt for at least partial shielding of a base?

    Also, a base being slightly set below ground level, and even better covered by dirt, would decrease the tempurature (IIRC, this is

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