Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Miners! NASA Wants To License RASSOR Excavator
RASSOR (Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot) is NASA's cool teleoperated mobile robotic platform with a space regolith excavation capability. NASA has just announced that they would like to license this technology!
(RASSOR (Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot) video)
Getting mass into the right shape is one of the goals of NASA’s Swamp Works. The laboratory, based at Kennedy Space Center, in Merritt Island, Fla., occupies a building where Apollo astronauts once trained; it now boasts perhaps the world’s largest collection of “lunar simulant”—artificial moon dirt. Some 120 tons of the stuff, detritus of a mining operation in Black Point, Ariz., sit in a glass-walled room.Here physicist Philip Metzger and his colleagues test the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot, or RASSOR, a rugged-looking industrial rover the size of a bumper car. RASSOR is more or less rectangular when stretched out. At each end, a pair of pivoting arms holds a long, hollow, rotating drum, studded with shovel-shaped openings.
For digging leverage against the moon’s reduced gravity, these drums are rotated in opposite directions, collecting lunar soil as they spin. When full, the robot can drive to a processing station, fold up so as to place a drum above a collection spot, and rotate the drum in reverse to empty it.
Science fiction fans have been gaga over lunar mining for generations. In his excellent 1930 classic Brigands of the Moon, golden age great Ray Cummings describes a lunar mining operation:
The third building seemed a lean-to banked against the cliff wall, a slanting shed-wall of glassite fifty feet high and two hundred in length. Under it, for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff. Braced tunels were hewn penetrating back and downward into the vein of rock.The work was over. The borers had been dismantled and packed away. At one end of the cliff the mining equipment lay piled in a ltter. There was a heap of discarded ore where Grantline had carted and dumped it after his crude refining process had yielded it as waste. The ore slag lay like gray powder flakes strewn down the cliff.
(Read more about a 1930's lunar mining operation)
Don't forget about Robert Heinlein's description of lunar ice mining in his 1966 classic The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
I'd also add a reference to the factory crawler from Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune. Good news for dune men - it can be teleoperated, which reduces the danger of being swallowed by a sandworm!
Via IEEE Spectrum and NASA technology.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/13/2019)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Space Tech ")
Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space
'...the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool?' - Frank K. Kelly, 1935.
Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...' - Murray Leinster, 1953.
SpaceX's Starman Tesla Roadster In Space
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.' - Theodore Sturgeon, 1941.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Robotic Barber Programmed With a Number of Styles
'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout!
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
Caterpillar Electric Mining Loader Not Yet Ready For Moon
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
Centipede Robots Down On The Farm
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
Anthropic's Claude AI Creates Legal Citation From Whole Cloth
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
Students Vie For Lunar Regolith Mining Robot Prize
'About time you got here,' the astronaut said.
'They Erased My Memory' Says Ariana Grande
'...using a neutralizing electronic impulse.'
Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space
'...the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool?'
Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
DARPA Wants 'Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
Robot Hand Creeps Along, Separate From It's Owner
'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
Korean Exoskeleton Suit F1 Helps You Put It On
'Better late than never.'
Have AI Researchers Given Up On 'Bio-Babies'?
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
Bunker Busters and Bore-Pellets
'The first revelation of the new Soviet bore-pellets.'
'Spikeless' Brand Swizzle Stick Detects Spiked Drinks
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
