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Some Moon ideas: 1) have a small robot bulldozer flatten a landing pad/polygon so there is loads of safe landing area. 2) use same dozer to make a moon highwa
by Zondartul 3y ago
Some Moon ideas:
1) have a small robot bulldozer flatten a landing pad/polygon so there is loads of safe landing area.
2) use same dozer to make a moon highway to other sites of interest around the moon.
3) Moon GPS or laser-based local navigation beacons, so the spacecraft can rely on those if instruments fail.
4) Just stupid-wide landing legs that let the craft ski around the moon even when landing at an angle and with horizontal velocity.
- wongarsu 3y agoThe reason Odysseus's legs are so narrow is that they wanted fixed legs, so there's no leg deployment that could go wrong. But payload fairings are only so wide. The legs are the widest that fit a Falcon 9 payload fairing. I really like the idea of a mission to build infrastructure though.
- bigyikes 3y agoBuilding infrastructure is the only way this stuff will get cheaper and easier
- krasin 3y agoJust like Canadarm ([1]) on ISS considerably simplified docking, I can see a similar approach working for lunar landing: slow down to below 5 m/s, get caught by a robotic arm and gently put into a good spot. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm
- ramses0 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catcher_pouch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catcher_pouch
- panick21_ 3y agoIts called birthing if you use the Canadarm. And there is a reason every modern ship doesn't use that approach.
- T-A 3y ago> Its called birthing But mostly by obstetricians and context-unaware autocorrect software? https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/birthing https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/birthing https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/berthing https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/berthing
- panick21_ 3y agoNo just by me and the dyslexia gang.
- stevage 3y agoBuilding infrastructure doesn't make sense for exploratory missions that each want to land somewhere new though.
- saalweachter 3y agoYou know, we're probably capable of landing on a landing pad on the moon, now. Apollo 11/Eagle landed something like 4 miles off from their target site, but SpaceX nowadays routinely lands on target.
- onethought 3y agoA launch and return to the same rotating body is surely a simpler maneuver than orbital transfer to a different spinning body and landing. No doubt we are better at it but I’m not sure earth landings are an accurate analog.
- stevage 3y agoNah, you can't really compare them like that. And landing on a planet with an atmosphere is completely different from a moon without one. Landing on the moon is easier. It just looks hard because it's so expensive to get there that you don't get many attempts.
- bluGill 3y agoThat depends on how much atmosphere. Mars has enough atmosphere to be annoying, but not really enough to be useful. Winds can throw you off target, but you can't use a parachute for a soft landing.
- stevage 3y agoThat's not true. Many (most?) Mars missions with Landers have used parachutes, though they are not sufficient for a true soft landing. I'm not an expert but I think landing on Mars with no atmosphere would be harder, because you'd need so much more fuel for a controlled descent.
- dylan604 3y agoApollo 11/Eagle was deliberately piloted away from the initial landing site because the pilot did not think the original location was safe. So until a perfectly placed target for a robot to land on like SpaceX does (which seems only likely if establishing a sort of base), the robots will need to be made smarter about landing or built to be more agile on landing on less than ideal sites.
- georgecmu 3y agoI had an interesting experience a few years back as a reviewer for proposals to NASA LuSTR program: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/space-tech-research-grants/lunar-surface-technology-research-lustr-2021/ https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/space-tech-research-g... The topic was exactly that: landing pad preparation solutions. Here's a summary slide for one of the winning proposals: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/lustr2021_quadchart_dreyer.pdf?emrc=268567 https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/lustr2021_qu... The Autonomous Site Preparation: Excavation, Compaction, and Testing (ASPECT) Project will develop tools and methods to clear, level, and compact the lunar surface. ASPECT is a fully autonomous rover with equipment for regolith excavation, boulder moving, and surface compaction.
- ChuckMcM 3y agoThere are a number of well fleshed out plans for doing essentially this. One of the more interesting ones for me was that microwaves can be used to fuse lunar regolith into a solid. One plan had a solar powered rover that sat there and microwaved the ground until is was solid far enough down, then would move forward on to that patch and start with the next patch. As I recall it would take about a month to make an acre sized "pad" which would support landing.
- hinkley 3y agoYou know how the martian landers now use a crane to lower the lander to the ground so the retro rockets are outside of the ground effects range? Someone proposed doing something similar with a lander, where a landing-site-prep robot gets dropped first. But that sounded like a lot of hovering to me, and a solution that would be very specific to lunar landing. I can't see that being successful on anything with higher gravity. Better perhaps to send a separate stage or a scouting mission to do the work, then land later.