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Space Technology

No Winner In NASA's Moon-Dirt Digging Competition 115

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the not-even-close-and-still-no-cigar dept.
Engadget is reporting that NASA's recent moon-dirt digging competition has concluded without a winner being named. "The excavator built by Technology Ranch was able to notch first place by relocating just over 143-pounds in 30 minutes, but fell quite short on picking up any award monies. So for those of you who weren't exactly ready to go mano-a-mano with these guys and gals this time around, next year you've all got $750,000 on the line."
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No Winner In NASA's Moon-Dirt Digging Competition More

No Winner In NASA's Moon-Dirt Digging Competition

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  • If not for the participants.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by madprogrammer ( 214633 )
      They could have been more successful (participants *and* program) if they had been better organized and provided better information to the competitors about how the competition would be run.

      I was working with a team that was going to compete, and as of last August they still hadn't been told the rules, or even what material would be used to simulate lunar soil.

  • Better Link (Score:5, Informative)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohnNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday May 14, 2007 @03:08PM (#19120167) Journal
    A better link [newscientist.com] with no subscription required.

    It should be noted that this is the sixth of seven Centennial Challenges to go unawarded since 2005 by NASA. They have strict contests because they actually intend to implement the winner's idea. 150 kgs on 30 Watts? Good luck, nobody should be ashamed not to hit that mark!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jandrese ( 485 )
      It was 30Kw IIRC, still no mean feat given the weight constraints.
      • This came up on the other posting and if you go back to the .pdf on it (check the original story), you will see that it is 30 watts. Pretty wicked.

      • Re:Better Link (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14, 2007 @03:40PM (#19120755)

        It was 30Kw IIRC
        According to the competition page [california...hority.org], it is 30 Watts, not 30 Kilowatts:

        • Each team's excavation system must be fully autonomous
        • Systems will perform in a square sandbox filled with compressed lunar regolith simulant.
        • Mass of the system cannot exceed 40 kilograms.
        • 30 Watts of DC power will be provided to the system.
        • Each system will have 30 minutes to excavate as much regolith as possible and deliver it to a fixed collector adjacent to the sandbox.
        • The total purse of $250,000 will go to the winning teams excavating the most regolith above 150 kilograms.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mpe ( 36238 )
        It was 30Kw IIRC, still no mean feat given the weight constraints.

        No it was 30W, which is actually quite a bit of power for something intended to be soft landed on the Moon. Where your only practical power source is however many photovoltaic cells the thing can carry with it.
    • Give me 3 spacesuits and a truck. I'll go by Home Depot on the way home and pick-up an excellent set of moon-dirt digging machinery. All for less than $20/hour - for the 3 items. NASA can figure out the getting to the moon bit.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by jgoemat ( 565882 )
        As long as you, your three friends and the equipment all weigh less than 40 kg total, that is probably ok. Also if strapping 30 watts of DC power to your testicles will make you work :)
      • While you're there, pick up some illegal beaners in the parking lot. They're just doing the work moonies won't!!!

    • Re:Better Luck (Score:2, Interesting)

      by IhuntCIA ( 1099827 )
      150 kgs on 30 Watts ... on Earth. On the Moon should be more than enough. However low gravity on the Moon might make the scooping inefective if not dificult at least. ... why this competition anyway? Surface of the Earth is diferent than that of the Moon. On the Moon it might be more eficient to throw packed regolith in to the container, and use recoil momentum to power the scoop. Regolith is not the sand and dust only, it contains irregular shaped grains that may vary in size. If the competition is to ma
  • it looks like the quarter-million dollars in prize money will indeed be rolled over to next year.

    Just like the lottery. Think of all the entries as the prize money goes up.

  • What you can't move with 30 Watts... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Notquitecajun ( 1073646 ) on Monday May 14, 2007 @03:16PM (#19120305)
    I can move with 3 pounds of dynamite....or c-4 if you want something actually --stable-- you weenies. Explosives have worked well at moving dirt for a good while.

    Oh, sorry, you wanted it moved from here to there, not just "moved."
    • We really just need to send people and supplies, and let them do their jobs.

    • This was really my thought as well... but serious. Put a big bag around some location, drill some holes, explode some small charges inserted to some depth... profit? wait I mean, the regolith goes flying, a winch closes up the bag... then something drags the regoltih where it needs to go.

  • ...build an "mechanic yellow press journalist"[MYPJ](tm). they are used to muckrake all day long. so they'd easily perform the task.

  • I figure... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mockylock ( 1087585 ) on Monday May 14, 2007 @03:19PM (#19120359) Homepage
    If you could stop at your local day-worker site with some space suits, I bet those fuckers could move some moon dirt in wholesale fashion. We're talking 1000 kilos in 30 minutes, for $50 a head. Saves you lots of money in R&D and I guarantee you can fit 40 of them in one capsule.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) *
      Just don't ask them to write their essays about it.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) *

      Saves you lots of money in R&D and I guarantee you can fit 40 of them in one capsule.


      The problem isn't fitting 40 in 1 capsule, but fitting 40 in 1 capsule, plus all the 40 oz. Colt 45s and/or Mickey's. Additionally, you have to figure in the expensive of removing the gang tags once they get there.

  • Does this officially mean we have a device to move planets?

  • oblignignokt (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Monday May 14, 2007 @03:22PM (#19120421) Homepage Journal
    The entrants all made the mistake of constructing the means to move dirt in Earth's three puny dimensions.

    On the moon, they have five.

    Thousand.
    Yes, five thousand. Don't question it.

  • Conveyor belt (Score:5, Funny)

    by markov_chain ( 202465 ) on Monday May 14, 2007 @03:24PM (#19120465)
    It looks like Slashdot's resident armchair engineers made a pretty good call. That's what the top entrant used.

  • Not good enough? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Normal Dan ( 1053064 ) on Monday May 14, 2007 @03:30PM (#19120573)
    It seems odd NASA would need to move so much in such a short time. Although I have no problem with there being no winners in a competition where the guidelines are set, however, once on the moon, I would imagine time is not of a great significance. The cost of getting there is far more important than the cost of the time it take to move dirt. I would be more interested in who could build the lightest machine to move rock.

    Then again, as I think about it, 140 lbs is not a whole lot of rock. Doing some quick calculations if might take several months to excavate a useful cavern at that rate. Hrmm... *goes back to his calculations*

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by umStefa ( 583709 )
      140 lbs might not be a whole lot, but in order to win the competition you need to be able to move 150 kilograms (333 lbs). The best entry was only able to move 43% of that.
    • 140lbs isn't a lot of anything. I mean, I could make a machine to throw some dead bodies around in no time.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) *

      140 lbs is not a whole lot of rock.
      In doing your calculations, you might want to note that the contest calls for 150kg of rock/dirt (~330 lbs) in 30 minutes.
    • The lbs/kg comments aside, you do make a good point. Why is the 30 minute rule so important? Clearly some time constraint is reasonable, but with the very low power requirement, it seems reasonable that they could ease up the time restriction a little and greatly increase their chances of success.

      Could it be related to the amount of soil they expect to need over a given timeframe to generate adequate oxygen or other resources for consumption or usage by humans?
    • A)It's kilograms
      B)That's earth weight.
      On the moon that's close to a ton of rock every 30 mins.
      • Kilograms are a measure of mass not weight, so your mass in kilos is the same on the moon (well, minus the fairly miniscule relativistic effects of changing your frame of reference), even though your weigh in pounds will go down. The SI unit of weight is the Newton.
        • Your point? The experiment was conducted on earth therefore the conversion is proper.
          If a machine moves 150kg on the earth (330 pounds) then on the moon where gravity is ~1/6th the strength it's reasonable to assume the machine could move 6 times as much; 1980 pounds also known as a ton.
          (There are of course problem with moving more like that since the machine has to do things like spin faster or have bigger buckets which it might not be able to do, but 6 times as much is still a good ballpark figure)
          Now go

          • A)It's kilograms
            B)That's earth weight.
            On the moon that's close to a ton of rock every 30 mins.

            Point B is redundant/incorrect. Kilograms are not a measure of weight and are the same everywhere +/- the effects of Relativity, so once you say "it's kilograms" there's no need to say "earth weight," since kilograms are the virtually the same on the Earth and the Moon and are not a weight.

            It might however be helpful to say, "the machine will move 150kg on Earth," since you are right that a machine that can move 15

    • I think this is for moving loose rock & sand, not excavating through solid material.
    • It seems odd NASA would need to move so much in such a short time.
      There are couple of potential uses for regolith digging. In order of technical feasibility : cooking out oxygen from it, sintering and depositing solar cells on the surface, extracting HE3.
      As a side product of oxygen processing, you can get metals like aluminium and iron.

      Looking at oxygen alone, its primary use would be to refill the propellant tanks of some future lunar lander, secondary to provide breathable atmosphere for astronauts

  • turn around? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    NASA: "To all contestants, thanks for your for your effort. Now that we have some ideas and research, we're building it ourselves.

    Congress, more funding please..."

  • The Moon Rulez #1!
  • Isn't it "mono-a-mono..." or "one-on-one?" Am I mistaken/not getting a joke?

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Mono a mono means monkey on monkey. You were thinking 'mano a mano' :P
    • mano-a-mano => man to man mono-a-mono => ??? (Although I get your drift)

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Mano = hand, so it's "hand-to-hand," as in combat.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      mono = monkey
      mano = hand
      uno = one

      "mano-a-mano" or "uno-a-uno" is the same.
      "mono-a-mono" it's a different story.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tejin ( 818001 )
      "Mano-a-mano" is "hand to hand" in, I believe its Spanish. Some Latin based language at any rate.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by PezJunkie42 ( 837065 )
      As pointed out in one of the other posts, "mano" is hand.
      "Mono" is spanish for monkey. =)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cching ( 179312 )
      I always thought it was mano y mano, but maybe I'm wrong.
  • Who needs to move dirt. How about who can dispose of the greatest number of AOL CD's in 30 minutes?
  • Wouldn't 150 kg be easier to move on the moon than on earth? The gravity on the moon is only 1.6 m/s^2, so it should require significantly less work to move a given mass on the moon.
    • Perhaps NASA already calculated the difference in asking for 150kg here.

      They're pretty good at conversions.. well.. except for meters to feet...
    • short: Yes.
      long: Yes, but moving heavily loaded excavator might be difficult on the moon surface since the "soil" might be loose and soft.

      There is no atmosphere on the moon so it is possible to throw the regolith in to the container without any need to use the conveyor belt or to move the excavator to the destination box. I am surprised that no one used any similar design ( no details on excavators ) as it eliminates the need for moving the excavator to and from the collector and such design might be mor
  • I guess we need sand worms after all
  • The trick is to use dark matter engines [wikipedia.org] and move everything, but the dirt...
  • That the sums stated in TFS are wrong?

    In the article its stated that the prize this year was 125,000$ and not 250,000$. it is then stated that next years prize will be 375,000$ and not 750,000$.

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