[SpaceProgram] NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition

[cole santos]

Ya mining the moon is pointless until way later down the tech tree.
Aluminum, He3, oxygen. The mining strategies are way different as
well. One has gravity one doesn't. Mining on moon will have lots of
dust as well that is hell on anything that moves. If I was an
astronaut I would use a shovel for the quantities required for small
scale stuff like oxygen for habitats. Rather than surface mining we
need a tunneler. This would allow us to mine and build habitat at the
same time. Fusing the walls with a ring of CO2 lasers as you go. If
you did this on mars on a slope you could build a couple mile deep
hole. It would be easier to maintain 1 atm at the bottom. Kinda like a
mine shaft that's hot and pressurized at the bottom.

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 2:04 AM, Alex Cureton-Griffiths <alexcg at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/technology/lunabotics.html
>
> Since we've been talking of asteroid mining and potential habitats (of
> which resource accumulation is a part), I think this could be a really
> interesting challenge to go for. Not sure there's enough time before
> the 2012 deadline, but 2013 application process opens in August 2012.
> It's aimed at university students, so perhaps a hackerspace in
> Academia could have a stab at it.
>
> I'm not an advocate of mining the moon per se, but any mining robot
> that can mine the moon can likely mine Mars, asteroids, etc.
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