[time-nuts] Re: constructing a moon base

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

--------
Bob kb8tq writes:

> Road building and graders sort of implies moving large amounts of “stuff” 
> onto the lunar surface. While a “road to nowhere” on earth might happen,
> I’d bet you only build one on the moon to connect inhabited installations 
> to other full blown (inhabited or not) sites of some sort. 

It's funny how peoples thinking about this is still firmly cast in
a 1950'ies NASA/science-fiction mindset.

People really do not grasp how much work robots can do.

One place I really see this is when people look at my lawnmower robot
and go "There's no /way/ that can handle 5000 m² of lawn..."

But the thing is: If a human did it on a garden-tractor once a week,
we'd want it done quickly, so lots of power, wide cutting board and
so on.

But the robot has 168 times as much time[1] for the same job, so
it does not even need one percent of the power of the garden-tractor,
in particular because it does not have to lug 100 kg of human &
associated creature-comforts around.

If we need a road on the moon, we will launch robots and let them
get on with the job, and they'll be done way ahead of when we arrive,
probably not even leaving us a few really largish boulders to blow up.

In other words: The grader on the moon will at most be a meter wide.

Poul-Henning


[1] The quoted capacity for lawn-mower robots is for 24hx7d, but
in general you should not let it work while dark, for the sake
of the other inhabitants in your lawn:  Porcupines etc.

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