NASA Developing Mining Robot for Moon, Mars

[@ragsdale9]

finally, ive been waiting to see a miner.

[@bradwestwick154]

Have we seen any mining on mars recently? I just watched a video of mining rock in the crater that took out the dinosaurs and they showed some pretty sweet stuff. I want to see the same thing on mars.

[@thatyoudliketoknow1628]

What's the video? @Brad Westwick

[@mechadense]

Great to see serious designs coming up. With this design though I'd be terribly worried that the sharp non-eroded regolith shrapnel dust would wear down the drive in less than a month of nonstop operation. I think a good regolith defense strategy would be to seal all the moving hinges with a flexible cover. But: A) This probably excludes a tank like design. And: B) Extreme temperatures make finding suitable materials hard. But I think that is still much easier than dealing with regolith dust getting in. What would be suitable sealing materials? Silicones?? NiTi alloy bellows??

[@lowearthsurfer]

What would be a good material simulator for regolith that would be jagged, sharp, and not like earth dirt? I thought about it. We need a inert gas room at 1 atmosphere of pressure. We need to make a pie chart of all the metals in lunar regolith and mimic the "corns carrots and peas in your poop" amalgamation and molecular structure of the types of jagged, spikey sharp regolith dust. So a lab with these metals in an inert gas room, because the oxygen might rust the metals and there is no oxygen on the moon (unless if it was already oxidized idk I'm not smart), make a ton of that dirt, put it in a sand box. Let the Diggy McDiggyHole robit play in the metal sawdust until it chokes, then FMEA it, redesign, rinse repeat.

[@mechadense]

Given we have samples from the moon we should have such a "piechart". Making jagged unoxidized regilith simulant starting from Earth sources is probably not easy. Some are at it I think. Haven't investigated. Quantity is a question. An inert atmosphere helps in needing less beefy walls, but not in keeping air out since partial pressures are independent. That is: Oxygen sees a 1atm argon atmosphere as a vacuum that it loves to seep in through untight spots.

[@lowearthsurfer]

@@mechadense we get a very very large condom, an three tanks of helium. Then we will make a ton of very sharp dust inside of the helium condom bubble. Durex could sponsor the research grant, and demonstrate how strong their latex is.

[@johnmarquez3807]

Send that into the battle bots arena!

[@SimonGjerX]

At 0:14 the video says "The moon for example is full of oxygen and methane in the soil" I guess they in this sentence are referring to the moon Titan and not Earth's moon. Otherwise I really doubt the claim about methan in the soil of Earth's moon - or can anyone elaborate?

[@RadioactivePretzels]

Obviously a technical error in the script.

[@mechadense]

Probably not an error in the script. They likely refer to the spots of eternal darkness in some craters at the moons poles where beside water ice also methane ice likely resides in decent quantities (there are strong evidences by now). Maybe enough for big scale moon colonies but probably not enough for an earth scale economy in the farther future. The water ice provides hydrogen and makes oxygen more easily accessible. Oxygen is also present in the dry regolith but much harder to extract. Regolith is slightly sub-oxidized to the point where pure native non-noble metals like iron lie around in the open but still most of the stuff is oxidized.

[@scottwilliams846]

Hey can we send some to Mercury with fabricators to make more and then make them into a Dyson Swarm? I know we wouldn't have Mercury as amplanet anymore, but think of it.

[@brightax7502]

I hope I will still be alive when humans colonise mars I would like to go there

[@brightax7502]

Sam M-L sand and dust low gravity

[@tommyzDad]

Hey, NASA, how about concurrently developing something to collect some of that Helium-3 being emitted by the Sun?

[@ammarmaaliki2808]

2021?

[@johncookie4415]

I doubt you'd be able to fully automate mining. If it were working, we'd have it already in Earth's coal, ore, stone mines. But equipment breaks down in regular intervals, and you need people to fix it. And that little backyard garden digger won't be able to dig up anything valuable, let alone enough material to create space ship fuel.

[@mikehand5881]

already mining on mars

[@mizar_copernicus138]

1578 views over 1,5 year... nicky minajs anaconda 314 036 690 views over 3 months :I i dont want to liveo n this planet anymore

[@Bloodgod40]

Cute, but almost already obsolete. It's a tiny little thing the size of an RC car that carries 40 pounds of regolith at at time. It's obsolete because such little machines were designed with the constraints of post-Apollo, pre-private-renaissance launch capacity in mind. But when the ITS debuts next decade, suddenly it will be possible to transport machines weighing up to 300 tons to Mars, or the moon. At that point, it will be practical to transport enormous mining machines weighing hundreds of tons to Mars / the moon. Giant mine trucks, face shovels, backhoes, front loaders, that kind of thing. Able to scoop up many tons of regolith at a time, load trucks with hundreds of tons, and transport that to the processing centers.

[@ROTEsimplemachines]

timeoffset hypergolic drives

[@AC-iz6fg]

Why don't making them work here to avoid people working in deplorable conditions?

[@mechadense]

According to this interesting information dense article: www.investinestonia.com/en/about-estonia/news/article/1221-to-the-moon-indefinitely A little known company called "OffWorld" is working on automation and miniaturization of mining here down on earth as a first early cash bringing step towards space mining. ... more ... At the moment it seems hard to find more details about OffWorld. Googling "OffWold" currently brings up mostly off-topic game stuff. (maybe not the best choice for a company name) I think this is their website: www.offworld.ai/ It's still very sparse but the article says: >>in June (2017) they will be “coming out of the closet” at NewSpace

[@shyguyninjanarutomaster0418]

...

[@sapnasomyasomya2204]

Csingh bsc zoology

[@DesertVox]

BS fairy tales. They never landed a single human there.