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Adaptation

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Registered: 2011-11-22

Posts: 42

Robotic Mining

Under construction is a brilliantly conceived overhead crane that manipulates large objects within a 26,896 sq ft area like a three dimensional tram.  On the moon with less gravity you can probably get it to cover much larger distances, perhaps a whole crater.  The crane could be used to run the whole mine from construction to gathering ore to loading and unloading resources from a smelter or other processing equipment.

Hop

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From: Ajo

Registered: 2004-04-20

Posts: 145

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Re: Robotic Mining

Under construction is a brilliantly conceived overhead crane that manipulates large objects within a 26,896 sq ft area like a three dimensional tram.  On the moon with less gravity you can probably get it to cover much larger distances, perhaps a whole crater.  The crane could be used to run the whole mine from construction to gathering ore to loading and unloading resources from a smelter or other processing equipment.

Interesting! I'd like to check this out. If you could provide more info, I'd be grateful.

Bill Stone & crew built a robot that builds a 3-D map of it's environment. That enables it to move about without human guidance. This ability to make 3-D models of the surrounding area might enhance the power of the crane you describe.

The state of art for telerobotics devices is advancing as the cost for some of the technologies is dropping. I talk about this at Puppets, Telerobots and James Cameron.

If the performance and cost of telerobots improve as I hope, lunar exploitation becomes much more plausible.

Last edited by Hop (2012-01-19 22:17:55)

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Hop's Orbital Mechanics Coloring Book - For kids from kindergarten to college.

Adaptation

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Registered: 2011-11-22

Posts: 42

Re: Robotic Mining

Its an article on popsci

Although telerobotics will be good enough early on the true goal is fully autonomous operation.  Here is an article about a bobcat modified for autonomous operation using open source robot software.

Last edited by Adaptation (2012-01-20 03:32:23)

RGClark

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From: Philadelphia, PA

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 200

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Re: Robotic Mining

Thanks for those links Hop and Adaptation.
Hop, I wanted to pass by you a calculation I did for a relatively low cost Mars mission. It would require though low cost lunar propellant. I'll post it in a day or so.

  Bob Clark

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Single-stage-to-orbit was already shown possible 50 years ago with the Titan II first stage.
Contrary to popular belief, SSTO's in fact are actually easy. Just use the most efficient engines and stages at the same time, and the result will automatically be SSTO.
Blog: exoscientist.blogspot.com

SpaceNut

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From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 5,846

Re: Robotic Mining

I believe that Catapillar was working on robotic control back when we had a moon mission in the pipeline but have not heard anythings since the redirection of Nasa to more private rocket build and NEO missions for man....