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Discovery of 50km cave raises hopes for human colonisation ofmoon
On Tue, 24 Oct 2017, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
"William Elliot" wrote in message 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. Logistics. Caves tend to be windy. So the number of repeaters can climb quickly. That said, research is still ongoing. 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? Cave rescues vary in nature. Get your hands on the American Cave Accident report for an idea. 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. Wow, that's great mission planning. "Well if it breaks, so what?" Since the point is to explore the target, you really can't say, "Eh, so what." 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. Wait a second... you just went from wanting to land a rover in the cave entrance, to accepting people as part of the mission. Guess you do see the value of people. You is the rover. Mission control will have to drive the rover to the cave opening, find or afix an anchor for the rover and jump on in. 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. So you see a pile of rock. Umm. Ok. But that's barely scratch the surface (or below the surface as the case may be). We want to find things out like how large it is, are there flat areas large enough for us to place structures, is it airtight enough that in parts perhaps we can even use the lava tube itself as an air pressure. A rover on the surface could do lots to detect the extend of a cave. No. You'll have to bring an intertube. We're also interested in the geology. How exactly does the magma flow in 1/6th G and zero atmosphere. My guess is noticeably different from here on Earth. 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. Great, and our experience with these on foreign bodies is how much? So you've again changed the engineering problems. Only changled them though I bet there's already work being done for legged walking, two or four. An advantage to three legged walking is greater stability, less need for gryo-balancing. 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. Hardly. It barely tells you anything about the tube. At a hundred feet you'd know the composition of whatever lava remained. 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? Carry it all out. This isn't an issue on the Moon since there is no biosphere you risk contaminating. In many caves they setup their base camps near a water supply so they don't need to carry water IN, but they do need to carry their used water out! Wouldn't a moon base have use for such stuff? Are all meals prepared and ready to eat? Depends. For morale, fresh cooked is usually better. Cooked in the cave or at the base camp and brough in? Are they cabled to the outside of is it an isolation ward? Depends, but generally there's NO outside contact. It's just not feasible. So you need folks who are trained to operate on their own and collect data and do the proper research. It's certainly possible, just very different from the current NASA model where Houston wants to watch you 24/7. But, this is going to have to change if we want to get serious about exploration. 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. 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? If NASA is providing the transportation, I'll find a way! ;-) --- |
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