On Mon, 23 Oct 2017, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:

The chasm, 50km (31 miles) long and 100 metres wide,
appears to be structurally sound and its rocks may
contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into
fuel, according to data sent back by the orbiter,
nicknamed Kaguya after the moon princess in a Japanese
fairytale."

Rovers can't do spelunking. You'd have to send people.
Why? A rover could go in, take a look around and come back to
tell us what it saw.

And how do you navigate? Radio isn't going to work well, and
while an autonomous rover sounds like a good idea, they work
best when we already know the terrain.

Place a transmission station at the entrance.
That'll do until there's a bend.
So bring along a relay for each bend.
Otherwise, a cable connection would have to be laid as the rover
roves. Let's ask Comcast. :-)

It's funny you mention this. The first idea has been looked at for
cave rescue, but so far hasn't been done, at least routinely. It
may work better in lava tube because they tend to be straighter and
less mazy (but that's far from true too). But there's no guarantee
until we go.

Why not? More expensive than cables? On the other hand, for
twisting, winding, narrow caves, cables would be better, at
least for those portions.

As for laying cable, actually that's what we do now for cave rescues
(where shortening communication times is paramount), but it's not as
straightforward as you might think.

What's happened? Tangle foot had to be rescued?

And woe be the rover that catches the cable on something or jams the
reel. (We've already had this issue with a tether deployment in
LEO).

That would be far as it would go.

So possible, but like any engineering challenge, there are
questions and it's not quite as straightforward as you'd think.

Keep in mind too, you have to land the rover in the lava tube,
that's going to take some pin-point aiming too. We'll definitely
want to get a MUCH better map of the floor.

Why expect the impossible? Go over to the edge and jump in or lower
yourself with a cable into the cave. With luck, a walkin opening
would be found.

Most likely because the roof has caved in, the floor will be
littered with chunks of rock. A rover is NOT going to easily
traverse those.

Even with a lift from above. So if you get stuck, at least you made a
landing and have in place look see.

To give you an example, a lava tube in Oregon I was in earlier this
summer had a width that was probably 200' wide and distance from floor
to ceiling varied from probably 25' to 100' because of the piles of
basalt that formed basically small hills inside the lava tube. Even
as an experienced caver, this was NOT easy ground to traverse.

The heck with six wheel. Let's crawl like six legged insects.

I can NOT imagine an form of a Mars based rover making it more than
100' beyond the entrance in this particular lava tube.

That's as big of a deal as hours on Venus or days on Titan.

In theory a lava tube should be relatively smooth on the inside
except for chunks that have fallen from the ceiling, there's no
guarantee what we know about lava tubes here on Earth cleanly
translates to how they'd form on the Moon, or how this
particular one would form.

So, you really want to have someone on site. And once you do, you
might as well just use them to explore the tube.

On their own without outside communication?

Sure, why not. We have cavers who routinely spend 3 days to weeks
underground. Granted, it's NOT a mode NASA is used to operating in,
but there's no guarantee NASA will be the ones doing the exploration.

What do they do with all their poop, **** and crud?
Are all meals prepared and ready to eat?
Are they cabled to the outside of is it an isolation ward?

The logistics are more complicated, because you will have to bring
shelter and air and the like, but it's definitely doable.

Look at some of the work Bill Stone has done in Sistema Huautla. Oh
and he has experience working with NASA.

What was that?

I'm pretty sure he'd be willing to go.

And trust me, there's no shortage of cavers here on Earth that
would be willing to check out a lunar lava tube.

I'm probably a bit too old to go, but you know, I've got some
time to spare if NASA is willing to provide transportation.

How about lodging and supplies? Pack your own backpack?

Sure. I can be packed and ready to go any time!

With all of your needed supplies?