On Dec 3, 12:56 pm, "Vincent D. DeSimone"
wrote:
In the late 60s and early 70s, the Soviets landed two Lunokhod rovers
on the moon that drove many km over the surface. These two vehicles
were very successful and the lander and ramp device seemed very
reliable. Instead of a completely new design, could this technology
be updated with new electronics and batteries?

You could do it - in fact, the current Fregat upper stage is based on
the landing stage of the Lunas that landed the Lunokhod rovers. But why
use batteries when the solar arrays the two rovers used let them work
for several months to a year?

Remember, nighttime on the lunar surface lasts 14 days. You're going to
need batteries to store keep-alive power from what the solar panels can
accumulate during daytime. Plus, it gets mighty cold at night. You'll need
those batteries to provide power for heaters, as well (perhaps supplemented
by radioactive decay heaters).

Instead of, or in addition to batteries, they can always use h2o2,
plus a little synfuel to go along with that h2o2 if they need a whole
lot more energy density.


Also, they went up on Proton rockets, so these would not be cheap
missions to redo by any means (Proton is the Russian equivalent of
Saturn I/Titan III), but of course the rovers could be made far more
capable with modern electronics.
To make a mission at reasonable cost, you really want something that
goes up on a Soyuz or Delta II.
The big question is of course what do you expect a rover to find on the
Moon that's worth the cost of the R&D to build it and the launch cost?
That's why there has been so little interest in Moon missions over the
years...it's a pretty boring place.

While you were right about the lack of interest in the past, I think that
the current international consensus is that there is plenty to see and
learn. The Moon has the surface area of North and South America combined.
All of the lunar landers, manned and unmanned, have surveyed a surface area
only equal to a single mid-sized city. Today's rovers could conduct surveys
relatively cheaply with today's technology and techniques.

But that's what Japan, India and China are already doing, and not
costing us hardly a nickel. So why should we bother?

Remember that undocumented and thus unproven fly-by-rocket landers do
not count.

~ BG