President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond

> Greetings Andrew,
>
> I'm begining to understand your position. Please
> comment on the following to see if I have this
> correct.
>
> 1) Simple remote control robots that have no
> 'intelligence' would be fine since a human makes all
> of the judgements and they cost significantly less.
> The robot is just an extention of a human's abilities.
> To prevent being sluggish, avoid the use of batteries
> (which don't last that long) and have a cord of some
> type running back to a central power source.

There are alternatives to batteries, such as fuel cells or
flywheels. These would be recharged by plugging in to the base
station.

>
> 2) The moon is roughly 2.5 seconds away round trip for
> commands. This means that if you had a decent power
> source and a robot that just does simple things like
> moving items and scooping dirt it would be a cheap
> assistant. A little more complicated and you do spot
> welding and setup of simple structures. No where am I
> suggesting anything the complexity of lacing a boot.

I agree, for teleoperation one wants to keep the tasks as simple as
possible. Even so, an operator would quickly get used to the 2.5
second lag.

>
> 3) Setup of infrastructure starts with a power grid.
> The cheapest power by weight that I know of is premade
> solar panels which need to be spread out to collect
> power. Would not a robot be able to do this well?
> All that I see required is the simple moving about of
> panels and wiring them up.

Even cheaper: have the robots assemble sheets of aluminum foil in
the shape of a parabolic reflector, with the focus on a Stirling (or
Brayton or Rankine) cycle heat engine. The only heavy part is the
heat engine, which can be light enough that multiple copies could be
sent, with each set at the focus of large aluminum reflector
fields. The first reflectors can be sent up from earth, but the
remainder may be made simply from lunar regolith. Heat engines are
relatively simple technology compared to solar panels, and have very
few moving parts. Once one is set up and running, the size of the
reflector can be increased simply by adding more aluminum foil
panels, up to the limit of the heat the heat engine can handle.

As a bonus, if an aluminum foil panel is damaged, it can simply be
recycled.

>
> 4) Collection of iron ore, water ice, or setup of the
> berm for a shielded habitat can all be done by simple
> robots. These are the critical resources that need to
> be available to astronauts in quantity to generate
> oxygen and build additional infrastructure. This
> gives you everything needed in a very small place
> ready for utilization.

Agreed.

>
> All of these missions should be cheap as nothing fancy
> is needed. What makes the Mars missions so complex is
> that the solar panels are carried on the rover and
> they leave the central base long behind. The panels
> will get dusty and that will be the end of the power
> supply as the batteries wear out.

KISS is the best method, hands-down.

>
> If you land on one of the perpetually sunlit peaks in
> the North or South lunar pole then you should be fine.

Clementine data shows that on the South pole, there is no one spot
which is sunlit 100% of the time. There are however three areas,
all within about 20km of each other on the rims of the Shackleton
and de Gerlache craters, which together receive sunlight about 95%
of the time.

The same data shows that there are several large crater floors which
are permanently shadowed, including Shackleton and de Gerlache.

> The moon has no wind so dust is not an issue (save
> the electrostatic type). Practice with a couple of
> robots for a year and see what you can do before
> sending in astronauts. Furthermore anything you would
> send astronauts in is well tested prior to use by
> shipping cargo.

Yes. Once unloaded, the cargo container shells should become the
(buried) tanks for oxygen, water, and the habitat interior itself.

>
> Assuming NASA can pass the 6-pack test, this should be
> no problem, right?
>
> Thanks, Thor

What's the 6-pack test?

Ed