Carnegie Mellon unveils its Google X-Prize lunar rover
The lunar rover that one of the competitors wants to use to win the Google Lunar X-prize was unveiled on Monday.
The rover was built by students as part of a college school project. Whether it ever flies is entirely unknown. The effort, however, has helped train a new generation of space engineers.
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The lunar rover that one of the competitors wants to use to win the Google Lunar X-prize was unveiled on Monday.
The rover was built by students as part of a college school project. Whether it ever flies is entirely unknown. The effort, however, has helped train a new generation of space engineers.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Is this the 100th lunar rover developed, which will never fly? Why waste clever students efforts on what is worthless?
Note that the article mentions how they want to explore the lunar pits we have discussed in this forum before.
“One possibility is to use Andy to explore lunar pits. These are giant, newly discovered, steep-sided holes created by the collapse of underground voids. ”
These pits are astounding and unexplored; it will be like coming upon the Grand Canyon,” Whittaker said. “Some pits might be entrances to caves. You can’t explore caves from a satellite; you’ve got to be there, on the ground, so robots are the next big step.”
“Andy will visit a pit in the Moon’s Lacus Mortis region, which is Latin for “Lake of Death”.”
http://lunar.cs.cmu.edu/#robot
http://web.archive.org/web/20140529052003/http://www.astrobotic.com/2014/03/03/lunar-destination-lacus-mortis/
Outer funnel
Size (m) Depth (m)
Latitude: 44.962 deg
Longitude: 25.610 deg
Central pit Size: 140 by 110 m
Central pit Depth: 80 m
Outer funnel Size: 280 by 210 m
Outer funnel Depth: 35 m
What an interesting question.
So, let us assume that your premise is true, that the rover is worthless (which it isn’t). As I recall, I performed quite a few experiments and built several do-dads (read: devices) during my time in school, all of which had been built before and none of which had any use other than to teach me some new skill.
So let’s say that these students put a rover on the moon and that it fails to rove. Was it really worthless?
Several space companies have been started by people who had never put anything into space. Yet this project is going to give enthusiasm and some amount of confidence (and more confidence if it actually roves) into students who are potential entrepreneurs. Is it really worthless then?
And if a group of students can do it, then what is wrong with the rest of us that we don’t do it, too? If the students make it look easy, then those of us with a lot of experience have a better shot at raising capital in order to reach for our own goals in space (and maybe increased enthusiasm and confidence). Was it really worthless?
Sometimes a transcontinental railroad has to be built by a bunch of people who have no railroading experience in order to show the other railroads that it *can* be done.
(My brother, with no electrical or electronics experience, once designed and built his own computer and made it run. When he decided to turn the wire wrap into a circuit board, the guy selling him the software that was needed to design it told him that very few electrical engineers design and make there own computers, because even with all that experience they think that it is too hard to do. I’m sure that Elon Musk started his own space company only because no one warned him just how hard it is to get into space.)
Not very impressive, looks like its designed to explore the parking lot at a local Walmart.