Combining the Rover and Hab - Go RV'ing!

Dook · 2004-08-19 22:02:59

I wouldn't expect a crew exploring mars to constantly wear pressure suits. They would sweat to death. Any serious exploration of mars in a vehicle would take weeks, you can't expect them to wear space suits for that long.

MarsDog · 2004-08-20 10:58:53

With enough parts, such LEGO-type versatile mobile equipment could comprise impressive fleet able to do everything we`d like in very modest payload-price

Modular, interchangeable components, would enhance safety. For example, if the power unit broke down for the habitat, and the spare was down for repair, an identical unit could be ta could be taken from the tracktor or bulldozer.

quasar777 · 2004-10-06 05:49:38

i`ve thought of the idea of leaving the suit outside for probably 25 yrs. it keeps dust down/makes more room inside. i`m trying hard to find a picture of a proposed lunar(mars too) suit which attaches to a variety of equipment. i was only able to find a brief description, it was in popular science magazine yrs ago. it didn`t really look too uncomfortable to wear for long periods it seemed always to have something "under" it to support weight. one may understand long term suits would be needed in an emergency. & actually i`d prefer a larger suit as it`d be easier to scratch yourself or spongebathe. i`d imagine there`d be 2 or more types of suits, but i think all suits will eventually be indentical. no more of this russian this/ american that. that`s dangerous as interconnectibility is compromised. i don`t think we hafta worry for awhile yet about childrens suits as we`re nowhere that stage of development. but one thing we should consider: we have on this planet humans who would would take up considerably less space. i won`t say midgets as i`ve been informed this is derrogatory. i don`t see this wasn`t thought of long ago. there are many little people in carnies, circuses, entertainment(film, tv) who have talent similar to astronauts.

SpaceNut · 2005-06-22 10:51:39

Sort of wondering if artic vehicles would lend to making a mars rover possible.
Antarctic Concept Vehicle Unveiled

http://www.spacedaily.com/images/antarc … oon-bg.jpg

The vehicle, called "Ninety Degrees South", uses novel technology to keep drivers safe, warm and protected from the high levels UV exposure that occur under the Antarctic ozone hole.

Commodore · 2005-06-22 12:02:22

Nifty.

Speaking of radiation, crews on long distance treks will need more protection than a tin can on wheels can be expected to have.

Carting a backhoe around with you might be useful scientifically and to dig yourself an inprompto bunker in the event of an approaching solar storms, but we may be better off building a more robust chassis and frame to support to permenent placing of sandbagged-regolith "shell", making a sort of turtle car. This will also protect the electronics and astronauts all the time. If solar panels are applied on top of it, it will also provide more surface area for them. Once we are more established we can swap out the sandbags with far denser and more effective per weight bricks.

Any time you can block out a couple more rads, you should do it. It will allow you to budget outside time to more productive activities.

Palomar · 2005-07-19 11:22:57

Sort of wondering if artic vehicles would lend to making a mars rover possible.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/antarcti … ]Antarctic Concept Vehicle Unveiled
The vehicle, called "Ninety Degrees South", uses novel technology to keep drivers safe, warm and protected from the high levels UV exposure that occur under the Antarctic ozone hole.

*I saw an article about Ninety Degrees South yesterday, and found SpaceNut's post with Search.

It's elegant and sleek and etc...and looks mighty claustrophobic. Maybe they could make it bigger?? Looks like perhaps all of two people could fit into it. Sort of like a high-tech coffin on ... whatever.

--Cindy

idiom · 2005-07-19 16:53:55

If the Hab had Monster wheels it should be able to get across most terrain. You are not trying to go somewhere specific, just somewhere else.

Also replacement crew would not need to bring a new Hab, they just pile into the old one and keep going. Alternatively They could connect their new hab to the back of the previous Hab and trailer adding redundancy, power and chasm crossing ability.

By the third misson you might have six or seven modules forming a wheeled train tootling around Mars wherever they can find access. Whenever they find an interesting spot the train lowers itself to the ground and the astronauts deploy their inflatable circus and set work.

Palomar · 2005-07-19 20:17:23

If the Hab had Monster wheels it should be able to get across most terrain. You are not trying to go somewhere specific, just somewhere else.
Also replacement crew would not need to bring a new Hab, they just pile into the old one and keep going. Alternatively They could connect their new hab to the back of the previous Hab and trailer adding redundancy, power and chasm crossing ability.
By the third misson you might have six or seven modules forming a wheeled train tootling around Mars wherever they can find access. Whenever they find an interesting spot the train lowers itself to the ground and the astronauts deploy their inflatable circus and set work.

*You mean something http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=17447]like this?

I was going to create a thread for it in the Science & Technology folder, but then recalled your post. Haven't seen this article posted yet elsewhere.

--Cindy

C M Edwards · 2005-07-20 07:54:18

That is an excellent idea for a mobile base! Defnitely keep an eye on Camp Halley!

srmeaney · 2005-07-21 10:54:17

I was hoping that BAS would go with the Hovercraft habs for the Halley Base.

ps regarding the darth Vader cards...it wasnt a dream. It was the other reality where every one has gone nuts...

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-22 14:40:32

I think that the biggest objection is that there's no guarantee that you'll be able to go anywhere. Imagine putting wheels on a house (the hab will have to be at least that big) and dricing it around the countryside where there aren't any roads. You can go a few places but overall, you're going to constantly be stopped by impassible terrain features that a smaller rover can easily navigate. Plus, if you end up tipping your hab over or crashing it into something, you're kinda FUBARed. That said, I've seen that many of the modern hab designs have a small set of wheels for some level of mobility.

What if your in a seperate rover and the same thing happened to you then? Doesn't mean that anyone at the base can necessarily rescue you unless he has another rover. Also if you go out on a rover, you spend half the time getting back. Imagine if you had a rover where you could just keep on going and going, never returning to your original landing point.

quasar777 · 2007-03-12 13:39:17

i like this concept. i doubt i`d hang around a base all the time. what w/ a whole planet 2 explore/ not on ur life. as a matter of fact i`d say @least one individual will ba kinda "Coyote" character from KSR`s books.
checkout our thread on Bikes on Mars. just cuz they`re primarily human powered doesn`t mean pedaling all the time. ever heard of a moped? & pedals wouldn`t need 2 just power wheels. a separate human powered human powered rover could even pull a trailer behind. l like the concept too of using lander engines. in addition to hoppers they could be used to "blow" dust.

GCNRevenger · 2007-03-12 15:30:18

Nah, there is no good way to power a mobile rover-hab. A nuclear reactor puts off far too much radiation to have it bolted to your vehicle.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-03-12 22:47:00

Nah, there is no good way to power a mobile rover-hab. A nuclear reactor puts off far too much radiation to have it bolted to your vehicle.

Who said it had to be bolted to the Rover hab? You can have two rovers, one is a rover/Hab, and the other is a rover/reactor. The Rover/reactor stays a long distance away from the rover hab and it manufacture's fuel while on the move and then deposits the fuel in a tank which the rover picks up and then drops an empty tank, which the reactor rover picks up. Actually the Rover had can run on a closed cycle internal combustion engine that collects all the exhaust in another tank with the reactor rover then picks up and recycled back into fuel and oxygen.

The rover hab would start out with a tank full of methane and another tank full of liquid oxygen, and when it has used up its fuel, it ends up with a tank full of water, which it exhanges with the reactor rover for another tank full of methane and liquid oxygen Both rovers can stay far away from each other by simply dropping and picking up tanks as they are needed. You might even have the Return to Orbit vehicle towed on a trailer, it would be a whole mobile base on wheels. No need to be stuck in any particular spot.

GCNRevenger · 2007-03-13 07:11:31

Nonsense, a small Earth-built ISRU plant is not built to make that amount of fuel; with a "split" mission architecture like MarsDirect or NASA DRM the ISRU plant has a full two years to make <100MT of fuel so the thing can be small and light enough to send. If you want to make the thing big enough to not only make Methane/LOX but also crack water recycled from the HAB too, and on top of that have enough power to push itself, plus have the additional mass of chassis/engine/wheels... well lets just say that the ISRU/MAV or ISRU/ERV plant would need a NOVA class ultra-huge rocket.

The situation for the HAB is not much better, that it too will have substantial additional mass for a heavy-duty articulated chassis, engine, tanks, wheels, etc. You've seen the pictures from NASA's DRM-I with the little wheels on the HAB's? I say to you, that these are not intended to move the HAB more than a few hundred feet, at likely no more than inches per hour.

I also really hate the idea of moving all three vehicles around, that two of them won't have drivers, and Mars lacking as nice an ionosphere (to reflect radio waves off of) like Earth doesn't have very good communication beyond line-of-sight, and so continuous communication without a big GMO or a constellation of LMO satellites is iffy at best. Oh, and what happens if the MAV/ERV vehicle gets stuck in a position where the launch vehicle rests at an angle too steep to take off from? Or worse yet, what happens if it falls over? Both vehicles, but especially the MAV, are top heavy. (Imagine it tipping over and blowing up like early Redstone rockets!)

And what happens if the rover-hab or MAV/ERV vehicle engine fails? If the latter fails, you would probably be alright assuming fuel boiloff isn't a big issue but it would end your rover-ing journey real quick. Thats nothing compared to what happens if the former fails, that you would very quickly lose power! Which should send a shivver down your spine something awful... Even providing they bring a backup solar array, that won't work too well if you are in a ravine or steep crater, so you would have to burn fuel to keep from freezing to death... in the hope that the MAV/ERV rover can reach you in time before the CO2 scrubbers give out. Assuming it can at all.

And how exactly do you get these "fuel pods" to the rover-HAB anyway? You can't drive up to the highly radioactive ISRU vehicle and swap tanks, so you would lug yet another heavy rover/tractor just to shuttle fuel pods between them? That adds up...

No no no no no, the right choice is the one NASA already selected in DRM-I, a heavy pressurized rover powered by small plutonium generators (which would not be suited for a massive rover-hab) for two people (with seats for 6 in a pinch) that would operate for a few weeks per trip from the landing site, but no further than an a straight-shot unpressurized rover with extended supply tankage. This fits in the mass budget, provides several hundred kilometers of range, and will do just fine.

I am certain that there will be plenty to do within that 500km radius circle, and yes for a full year and a half, there is no possible justification for the extra trouble imposed by the crazy "mobile hab" business. You are not "stuck" in any boring hole, its MARS for crying out loud, 500km would cover a lot of ground. The whole planet only has a circumferance of 21,000km, so being able to travel 500km east/west and north/south of the landing site would get you around 5% of the whole planet!

Edit: Oh, and unless you are going to send the ISRU plant and ERV/MAV separately, which would give you alot more mass to work with, the crew will have to risk exposure to the still-very-radioactive reactor bolted to the side of the ISRU/ERV-ISRU/MAV rover. And if you do split them up, then you've increased the mission payload at least 25%. And for what? Just how fast and how far are you imagining you can go? What about stopping at promising sites?

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-03-13 11:10:37

Another idea occured to me. what about prepositioning fuel dumps? The in-situ fuel production plant is mostly for the return to orbit vehicle, the rovers just suck up the left overs. There is no need to have a seperate reactor for each fuel production plant. If you have 2 years to produce fuel at the supply depot, then maybe solar panels will suffice, the purpose being to supply enough fuel to the the rover over to the next fuel dump. These fuel stations would be lighter than the reactor powered ones for the return to Orbit vehicle. You could have one return to orbit vehicle at one end of the line of fuel dumps and another return to orbit vehicle at the other end. The fuel production depots could then be sent over on smaller rockets, and each one can be seperated 500 km from the next, it would be the first Martian Highway, and since the fuel dumps are reusable, they could remain for the next mission and the next as they would continue to produce more fuel. The longevity of the Mars rovers testifies to this possibility.

GCNRevenger · 2007-03-14 15:57:33

And what if one of the Mars rovers breaks down? There might be a blurb on the news, or even a sound bite from a non-NASA politician, but that would be about it. Now if the crew of a Mars mission were stranded and doomed to die by starvation/etc, then it would be on every headline of every news paper, television news show, or radio program for a year at least. Following all the empty-coffin funerals by the summery gutting of NASA in congressional subcommittees for taking insane risks.

So maybe you kind of see how I am very nervous of moving the HAB, the place of refuge on Mars, anywhere beyond walking distance from the MAV/ERV unless due to a landing accident. But I digress...

The problem with this scheme is that these "small" rockets still aren't, they will still be as big or likely a little bigger than Delta-IV Heavy or Ares-I, which would run you ~$400M a pop. Thats an awful lot of money I think. I am also worried what would happen if you had multiple stations, but one in the middle broke down. Would you have enough fuel to make it to the next one?

I am also not too happy substantial storage and handling of a great deal of explosive cryogenic fluids, and speaking of which its going to take an awful lot of fuel to move a >50MT (fueled) rover. It will make the rover/hab too heavy.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-03-15 16:20:24

I believe the range was 500 km, that is 500 km out and 500 km back, so if you put a fuel station 500 km out and it breaks down, you can still go back. It should be possible to tell if it broke down before getting there.

Ok $400 a pop, but remember its a solar powered fuel manufacturing facility, it can be used for the next mission and the next. There may be places where its easy to put a lander, and other places that are interesting to investigate, you might want a road that connects the two.

One mission profile would be to have a fixed Hab, and a large rover with an equal volume as the Hab, then you place some fuel stations. About 5 or 6 will cover the entire length of the Valles Marineris. Now you can set the Fixed hab down at the mouth of the Valles Marineris, then you set down six solar power fuel manufacturing stations, and each station manufactures enough fuel over 2 years to fill up the Hab sized rover twice, then the Rover can begin its journey along the canyon. Well at $400 million per station, it will cost 2.4 billion to place 6 of these stations along the floor of the Vallis Marineris. The terrain can be mapped out by satellite to make sure that one station is reachable from the next. At around 20 kph, it should take 25 hours to travel each 500 km, assuming no stops, about a week to travel from one end to the other without stopping, of course the point is to stop, so it might take a month or two to do the whole trip. Also consider that sending an unmanned fuel station would be cheaper than sending seperate manned expeditions to check out these sites along the canyon. Another consideration is the RV Hab will burn fuel even when not moving in order to power the life support system, perhaps Solar panels might be place on the foor for emergency power.

GCNRevenger · 2007-03-16 10:11:45

No no, the rocket used to send these depots cost $400M each or so, the depot will probably cost about as much as the rocket does, so around $800M each. Three such stations adds up to ~$2.4Bn for a total range of ~2000km or so. This doesn't compare favorably to simply sending a second mission, two missions collectively capable of covering the same 2000km. Plus with the string of stations approach, you are limited to areas only a short distance (a few tens of kilometers?) away from the "route," while with a stationary lander+rover you can go any place you like within the radius of the rover.

Back to the subject of power and equipment, the HAB already weighs 40MT or so, and thats with external power delivered by a compact reactor or ground-mounted solar array. How much more will the engine, chassis, tankage, and most of all the fuel weigh? Plus, you have to condense and store the water produced. I think its reasonable to talk about increasing the mass no less than 50-100% over the stationary baseline, which greatly exceeds the mass of the rovers budgeted in the "regular" stationary system. A bad deal again.

Solar arrays will not be a big help for a moving HAB either, since the size of the arrays you could accommodate is fairly small. Plus, if you are down in a canyon or a crater or whatnot, you get even less light per day. And what of the storage batteries and their mass?

And finally, back to the safety issue: that if the rover-HAB is stranded in the middle of your chain of fuel stations, then the crew cannot possibly reach the ERV/MAV on either end of the route, and so they are going to die. Slowly. Publicly.

No, just bring the RTG powered pressurized rover and leave the HAB where it is.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-03-16 22:13:07

A fix for that is to have the Hab sized rover carry or tow a car sized rover with the same range on a tank of fuel. I've seen plenty of RVs towing smaller cars around on the highway, its sort of a convenience when you have two drivers that wish to bring two vehicles that could be driven to seperate locations at the same time, but also have only one driver when doing the long distance driving yet bring two cars such that only one drives at a time. A Hab sized rover would have an engine with alot of horsepower, with a number of different attachments, it could be used as a drilling rig, for instance or an Earth moving machine for building a more permanent base. With the Hab attachment, it could go the same distance as a smaller rover, but bring along a laboratory, a kitchen and dinning area, and bunks for sleeping, a sanitary facility, and a communication center as well, that can directly contact Earth or one of the Com sats around Mars to communicate with the fixed base if need be.

quasar777 · 2007-03-19 08:51:21

it would be kinda like a Unimog RV, pullling one of those new atv`s. i can see that. alot of ppl think there`s going to be rigid system in going to Mars, i don`t think so. many things can happen. everything will need to have @least 2 uses. a shovel can become a sled, for instance, if necessary. a vicegrip can become a trailer hitch. a suit can be an airlock. a helmet can be a window. feces can be fuel. human hair can have many uses. algae can be fuel, etc., as well as food. no doubt rats will come along inadvertantly & they would probably be hunted & eaten., maybe ran on a treadmill. fingernails could be used, maybe made into some kinda plastic.

RedStreak · 2007-03-19 11:35:21

feces can be fuel. human hair can have many uses.

Eww. I understand recycling but that's pretty unhygenic. Personally any waste whether from astronauts or algae needs to be broken down into something...less disgusting to be frank. I imagine the right blend of bacteria might make such a compost pile...or septic tank...into a halfway decent methane plant.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-03-19 13:25:11

feces can be fuel. human hair can have many uses.
Eww. I understand recycling but that's pretty unhygenic. Personally any waste whether from astronauts or algae needs to be broken down into something...less disgusting to be frank. I imagine the right blend of bacteria might make such a compost pile...or septic tank...into a halfway decent methane plant.

What happens if you have a toilet that ejects the crap outside of the hab and deposits it on the ground. Lets say your doing your business on the toilet, and when your done you pull the lever that opens the hatch sucking the crap out of the toilet bowl and out onto the Martian surface. Wouldn't the wet part of it be reduced to a fine powder on the ground, or else part of it would boil away while the other part freezes solid, then some astronaut smashes the chunks with a hammer. After a few weeks, it should be dessicated, you remove the powder to the garder to use as fertilizer.

quasar777 · 2007-03-19 14:38:10

yup, that`s just another example of multiuse. i hope i`m not hijackin thread too far away here, haha.

GCNRevenger · 2007-04-18 13:07:20

The amount of energy derived from the... human effluent can't be worth all that much. It is worth much more for its mineral value for growing plants and its water for drinking/chemical production.

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#26 2004-08-19 22:02:59

Re: Combining the Rover and Hab - Go RV'ing!

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#32 2005-07-19 16:53:55

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#36 2006-08-22 14:40:32

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#37 2007-03-12 13:39:17

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#38 2007-03-12 15:30:18

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#39 2007-03-12 22:47:00

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