Questions on Teleoperation

--- "victoriatangoman victoriatangoman@...
> Can you think of an operation that can't be
> performed with more
> autonomy in the moon-based equipment. I listed the
> operations that
> came immediately to mind, but I wonder what kind of
> operations on
> the moon would relly present difficulty for
> tele-operation?

first thing that comes to mind are repairs. to a
certain extent you can develop some expert systems for
diagnostics, but this is a very expensive and time
comsuming process. GE actually developed a fairly
good one that they used for repairing locomotives. It
cost several million dollars and still required a
human for inputs. So while it would be nice, there
are limitations given today's current ai programming.

> Am I correct in stating that we would actually need
> two sets of
> geostationary satellites; one orbiting the moon and
> one orbiting the
> earth (assuming there is one earth receiver rather
> than a NASA-like
> chain of radio telescopes.)
no need for satellites surroundng the earth. Just put
up about three major ground station (kinda like nasa's
deep space network. or heck, just use their deep
space network!). You can also rent time on some of
the numerous ground station out there curently being
used for telecom sat station keeping.
>
> Thanks for the link. I had no idea this organization
> existed. A lot
> of information there but I fear that much of it is
> over my head :)
>
well, you asked if something existed :) There is also
a movement to create a standard spacecraft scripting
language for commanding that he government agencies
are pushing. The big five commercial sat
manufacturers have not embraced it though.

>
> Am I correct in understanding that there would need
> to be at least
> three of these satellites orbiting the moon and
> another three
> orbiting earth, thus $1.2 billion per 1200 channels.
>
just 3 around the moon per my earlier comment. Note
these prices do not include transportatoin costs.
When talking 8000kg we are talking arianne 5, the new
atlas and delta and heavy launchers like that. So we
are talking over 100 mill per lanuch too. You can
reduce this cost dramatically if you lower the weight
of the s/c. It all comes down to how many
transponders you think you are going to need.
>
> Would you venture an opinion on what kind of
> computing power would
> be required to process 1,200 channels of video and
> another 1,200,
> lets say, of associated data?
>
it all comes down to what oyu want to do with the
data. If all you want to do is just archive the
footage in case something bad happens and you want a
human to review it, we are talking you don't need much
other then some vcrs. Now if your talking about
collecting science data and processing this into
useful data for reports, validations or any other post
analysis, that is when you start needing more
computing power.

I saw a presentation by Ames and Goddard on their
earth obs system data and information system (EOSDIS)
and this is the single most difficult issue they are
currently facing. They spent millions working with
raytheon on a system for processing and distributing
information from its fleet (terra alone sends down a
few hundred gigabytes of data every day). In quite a
few circles, this project was considered a failure and
Ames is looking at alternatives for a newer system.
(for those interested in learning about this system:
http://spsosun.gsfc.nasa.gov/eosinfo/Welcome/index.html)

You can by a low end super computer for a couple of
million. However, you can build linux clusters for
alot cheaper (on the scale of a few hundred thousand
total). They are now trying this at the stanford
linear accelerator.

So to summarize the point, it all comes down to how
much processing needs to be done on the data.

> This is one part of tele-operation that I didn't
> consider. Thanks
> for the info.
>
> TangoMan
>
no prob, always fun to stretch the noodle.

Ryan Z