If anyone is interested in other resources and information on this topic, here are a few links. NASA page on In-Situ Resource Utilization: https://www.nasa.gov

If anyone is interested in other resources and information on this topic, here are a few links. NASA page on In-Situ Resource Utilization: https://www.nasa.gov/isru https://www.nasa.gov/isru NASA Swamp Works: https://technology-ksc.ndc.nasa.gov/featurestory/swampworks https://technology-ksc.ndc.nasa.gov/featurestory/swampworks Dr. Phil Metzger, who worked for a long time at Swamp Works before taking a research position at a university. Still very much involved in processing regolith and moon bases. https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill NASA also hosts an annual competition around regolith collection called the NASA Lunabotics Competition. The last 2 years have been a little rough, with a cancellation due to government furloughs, then a cancellation due to the pandemic. Swamp Works engineers, technicians, and machinists attend and are often judges. Where they might make 1 or 2 prototypes per year, they're able to see 30-50 different designs and see their performance. The rules are setup to penalize activity similar to the incentives NASA has. Low bandwidth usage, high material collection, and low vehicle weight are all rewarded. https://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/technology/nasarmc.html https://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/techn... Alabama has had a very good run, accomplishing fully autonomous 10 minute competition runs, avoiding rocks, having a really great systems engineering approach. There has also been a competition in Hawaii on Mauna Kea periodically. I was at Iowa State in 2014 when we attended. There's an area just west of the visitor center with an environment very similar to the moon. Teams tele-operated the robots from ~30 miles away in Hilo, introducing a time lag in communications. It was a really incredible experience, and a lot of logistical planning to ship a robot, spare parts, and tool to Hawaii. Dremels are never the right tool for the job...but a lot of jobs can be done with a Dremel. Here's a video from Alabama at the same site in 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqWpglIwOr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqWpglIwOr4