[SpaceProgram] Fwd: [tt] (Open Manufacturing) Telebase Alpha (concat) (fwd)

Sat May 28 03:47:08 CEST 2016

"micro mining is a great entry point for hobbyists and students alike."

Funny you should mention that. I'm getting some pushback about an idea for
creating rich artificial ores near the lunar surface at targeted areas,
while getting rid of old ICBM parts in the process: crash Peacekeeper ICBM
upper stages at proposed ESA Moon Village sites.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2988/1

The problems being addressed in my proposal are primarily political (the
threat of unfair competition for the smallsat launcher startups, and the
problems that the ESA director is having in selling Moon Village to ESA
partners.) But I'm pretty sure there's a new technological problem created:
how to get the vehicle debris out of the regolith.

Part of the pushback is that people apparently can't easily imagine that
picking a lot of metal fragments out of regolith would be a lot easier and
cheaper (to start, anyway) than separating the metals out of metal oxides.
I'm pretty sure it would be possible to figure out what happens when
aluminum or titanium rocket parts hit the moon at over 2 km/sec. If
photographic evidence of previous probe impacts is any guide, a lot of it
ends up on the surface, in a fairly small area. But what about the pieces?
How do you collect them? They might be almost dust.

It hadn't occurred to me that a very tiny robot could do this. But I
suppose if it has tweezers and an ohmeter, it can "sift" by just grasping
small objects and determining if they are highly conductive -- perhaps even
grading and categorizing based on resistance measured over the tweezer-tip
distance.

This sounds absurdly inefficient, I know. But /soft/ landing of anything on
the moon could cost up to $1 million/kilogram. Even if the costs of the
mining femtobots amounted to a few hundred dollars per gram of rocket metal
identified, you'd be competitive. If you can semi-soft-land femtobots that
are only tens of grams and they can do some collection (or at least
mapping), you could save a fair amount of money and time for any future
moon mission that depends more on metallic 3D printing than on metallic
spare parts.

Regards,
Michael Turner
Executive Director
Project Persephone
K-1 bldg 3F
7-2-6 Nishishinjuku
Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0023
Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
Fax: +81 (3) 6890-1158
Mobile: +81 (90) 5203-8682
turner at projectpersephone.org
http://www.projectpersephone.org/

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

On Sat, May 28, 2016 at 4:16 AM, Silence Dogood <matt at nycresistor.com>
wrote:

> micro mining is a great entry point for hobbyists and students alike.
> why build 'fire fighting' robots when you can instead target the needs of
> femto mining with full automation.... we could call it FAM ( femto
> automated mining ).  Hella potential for memes will ensure popularity, fam.
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Michael Turner <
> michael.eugene.turner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "Hacking" as a term applied to high-end technology hobbyist projects got
>> its start with the MIT Model Railroaders. In the forwarded email, Eric
>> Hunting muses, after seeing how fantastically it has morphed toward
>> stunning realism,
>>
>> "Strangely, despite the relative ease and economy of such a
>> demonstration, for a year now ESA has made no attempt to do this. No one in
>> the space establishment is proposing anything like this.
>>
>> In general, there's much that can be done at subscale; probably
>> everything that ever worked in space was first done that way. And that's
>> not changing any time soon. Note, for example, that Deep Space Industries,
>> despite its dolby-ized CGI depiction of colossal asteroid mining
>> operations, e.g.,
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIY_fmvFDhM
>>
>> has recently headed more in a direction I started taking in late 2012:
>> DSI has retained femtosatellite pioneer Mason Peck to look into how
>> sprinkling Sprites onto asteroids from nanosat probes might aid in
>> prospecting.
>>
>>
>> https://deepspaceindustries.com/nasa-selects-deep-space-for-two-asteroid-contracts/
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>> Michael Turner
>> Executive Director
>> Project Persephone
>> K-1 bldg 3F
>> 7-2-6 Nishishinjuku
>> Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0023
>> Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
>> Fax: +81 (3) 6890-1158
>> Mobile: +81 (90) 5203-8682
>> turner at projectpersephone.org
>> http://www.projectpersephone.org/
>>
>> "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
>> together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl>
>> Date: Fri, May 27, 2016 at 6:26 AM
>> Subject: [tt] (Open Manufacturing) Telebase Alpha (concat) (fwd)
>> To: rtomek at ceti.pl
>>
>>
>> ----- Forwarded message from Eric Hunting <erichunting at gmail.com> -----
>>
>> Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 17:53:07 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: Eric Hunting <erichunting at gmail.com>
>> To: Open Manufacturing <openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com>
>> Subject: [Open Manufacturing] Telebase Alpha
>>
>> Trying to distract myself from other depressing matters, I've been
>> thinking
>> a lot lately about the persistently retrofuturist nature of the space
>> establishment vision, the transhumanist prospect of space development, the
>> course of amateur robotics development, and the concept of the telebase.
>> I've also been watching a lot of Youtube videos about the hobby of RC
>> construction models <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdWH12ethew
>> >--something
>> more popular in Europe than the US, where RC racing dominates. I find them
>> calming, like watching an aquarium. But what's interesting about them is
>> how sophisticated these models have become in recent years. Now featuring
>> digital controls, powerful mini-hydraulics systems, digital sound effects
>> systems, and sometimes first-person video systems, these models have
>> become
>> real telerobots. And their builders aren't just interested in realism of
>> appearance. They seek realism in function too. So, all across the year,
>> you
>> have these meets and shows, sometimes in dedicated venues
>> <http://www.rc-glashaus.de/>, where miniature villages are created and
>> these machines are put through their paces. Excavators and earth movers
>> move earth around, sometimes building scale landscape features with
>> retaining walls, pilings, gabion baskets, and concrete blocks. Little
>> earth
>> screening drums sort soil into various grades. Little forklifts shift
>> pallets around little shipping depots and load and unload trucks.
>> Container
>> lifts manage little shipping container terminals. Little farm vehicles
>> till
>> and sow miniature fields. Snow cats sculpt miniature ski slopes. Fire and
>> emergency vehicles put out actual fires. Cranes and tow trucks rescue
>> vehicles if they get stuck in ditches or tip over. And it's all
>> cooperative. When I look at these things I see more than just a bunch of
>> models simulating mundane activity. I see hints of a machine civilization.
>> I see machines homesteading.
>>
>> One of the often overlooked bits of computer history is that the idea of
>> 'hacking', along with many other principles of modern computing and
>> digital
>> control, had its roots in the MIT Tech Model Railway Club
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STVdCJaG0bY>; a very large communal
>> model
>> train layout created in a disused campus industrial building that exists
>> to
>> this day. Models trains were a good petri dish for exploring principles of
>> automated control theory while offering a fun creative outlet and a good
>> social venue. I've often wondered what might be a more contemporary form
>> of
>> this. Amateur robotics today tends to be about 'sports'. Competition and
>> war. Racing, analogs of team sports, and cockfighting. Today's robot
>> events
>> seem to rarely feature any sort of cooperative activity. Perhaps this is a
>> reflection of a common Darwinian or Objectivist philosophy. Everything is
>> a
>> contest of survival of the fittest. Or maybe it's just that no model of
>> cooperative robot activity has ever occurred to anyone in this community.
>> What would they do?
>>
>> A year ago ESA announced their latest plans for development of a moonbase
>> showcasing a design developed by Fosters and Partners
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBZopB4356U> that, jumping on the 3D
>> printing bandwagon, was based on the idea of using a pair of modest robots
>> to 3D print a hard shell for an inflatable habitat made from fused
>> regolith. It's a fairly plausible concept since, despite Fosters'
>> suggestion of employing 'advanced construction methods', it's actually a
>> derivative of a very old, well proven, and simple construction method once
>> used in WWII by German military engineers to build bunkers and underground
>> bomb-resistant aircraft hangars and which has quite often been suggested a
>> the basis of Lunar and Mars base construction. Known as mound-formed shell
>> construction, it uses sculpted mounds of gravel with reinforcement placed
>> over them as a form over which a relatively dry concrete is layered. Once
>> the shell has cured, it is covered in earth and the gravel is excavated
>> from the hollow shell to be reused in further construction. A very
>> interesting park in Fukuoka Japan called Grin-Grin Park
>> <
>> http://architecturalmoleskine.blogspot.com/2013/03/toyo-ito-grin-grin-park-fukuoka.html>
>> features
>> this very type of construction and I often refer to it as a plausible
>> visual analog of future space settlements. Many variations of this
>> technique have been proposed for space use since the 1960s. SuperAdobe
>> inventor Nader Khalili once proposed the use of solar thermal fusion in a
>> variation of the ancient Persian technique of fired adobe construction.
>>
>> The interesting thing about this building technique is that it's really so
>> simple right now a group of hobbyists or students could go buy a bunch of
>> those RC construction models right off the shelf and demonstrate, full
>> scale, this moonbase construction using them. Though they wouldn't be
>> quite
>> as efficient as more purpose-designed robots, they could probably
>> accomplish this in about the same time as projected for the Fosters
>> design--roughly half a year. Given that the 1/8th scale construction
>> models
>> are about the same size as the robots proposed, repurposing the components
>> from these models for more efficient purpose-built systems would be
>> straightforward. Ideally, one would want a better teleoperation analog
>> than
>> having a bunch of people standing around with RC transmitters and so a new
>> WiFi based first-person video and control platform would be preferred
>> allowing long distance cooperative control by PC over the internet. This
>> is
>> all perfectly feasible. It could be started in a week.
>>
>> Strangely, despite the relative ease and economy of such a demonstration,
>> for a year now ESA has made no attempt to do this. No one in the space
>> establishment is proposing anything like this. Could such a project be the
>> new TMRC? A potentially vastly larger, global access, TMRC? For a long
>> time
>> I've been proposing the idea of an open source space program based on
>> telebase development, but few people seem to have been able to comprehend
>> what I was talking about. I keep referring to it as "the best community
>> model train layout ever--the kind you might one day move into" but no one
>> gets it. Here, however, is a project that could very plainly illustrate
>> the
>> concept. A specific, cooperative, physical building project that a team of
>> amateur telerobots and their builders could actually build and, through
>> that, refine their technology. A direct way to personally participate in
>> real space development activity. And this is just one of a large host of
>> space analog structures that could be explored using similar facilities
>> right here on Earth, indoors and out, local and remote. There are orbital
>> platforms based on space frames, enclosed orbital labs, open and enclosed
>> surface habitats, excavated habitats, and so on. There are many kinds of
>> tele-construction and in-situ resource utilization concepts to explore.
>> The
>> Earth offers even more challenging environments like the open ocean or the
>> sea floor, forests, caves, hot springs and volcanoes, the poles. There are
>> all kinds of interesting design and engineering problems on offer here.
>> And
>> best of all, it could be a hell of a lot of fun. But is anyone else
>> interested? Is there a way to get to critical mass? Those RC model shows
>> often have many companies sponsoring them--often the same vehicle
>> manufacturers represented by the models on display. Why wouldn't those
>> some
>> construction machine companies be interested in this?
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
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>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>>
>> ----- End forwarded message -----
>> ----- Forwarded message from Eric Hunting <erichunting at gmail.com> -----
>>
>> Date: Thu, 19 May 2016 19:04:52 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: Eric Hunting <erichunting at gmail.com>
>> To: Open Manufacturing <openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com>
>> Subject: [Open Manufacturing] Re: Telebase Alpha
>>
>> Thinking more about how to get started with this. Step one would seem to
>> be
>> to identify some likely control hardware and software. As it turns out,
>> there's a variety of RC-over-WiFi/IP hardware available off-the-shelf and
>> cheap now whose development has been driven by people wanting to use their
>> smartphones and tablets as RC transmitters. These are small and designed
>> as
>> drop-in replacements for conventional RC receivers and so will suit most
>> off-the-shelf models.There are also some RC-over-IP tool kits for Arduinos
>> <http://www.airspayce.com/mikem/arduino/RCKit/> using WiFi shields, and
>> probably comparable toolkits for the other popular microcontrollers. These
>> are based on smartphone/tablet apps that simulate a simple conventional RC
>> transmitter user interface with a couple of virtual joysticks. We need to
>> support more sophisticated workstations able to combine multiple
>> controllers (as a single robot may have multiple controllers), video
>> displays, and telemetry displays and switch them as grouped workstation
>> sets between different robots and other base hardware. We might also want
>> to support some of the same kind of control panels used with flight
>> simulator programs. I suspect this has been done before with Linux
>> workstations--I would be very surprised if it hasn't, but maybe it hasn't
>> been done over IP. But if at first we would have to make do with a
>> 'workstation' composed of a set of modest cost tablets that might be OK.
>> It
>> might just be a hassle to switch them between different robots.
>>
>> We would also need to figure out if this can be run in a mesh network
>> environment as an 'in the field' telebase is most-likely to employ mesh
>> networking using deployable 'trail marker' transponders. Not much of a
>> concern at the start as an initial setup is most-likely going to be
>> indoors.
>>
>> Power is an important concern if we're doing everything by remote control.
>> It's the biggest logistical issue for a telebase. On-board solar power is
>> a
>> possibility but if a prototype is done indoors this may not be too
>> effective. I expected this to be problematic, but it seems many amateur
>> robot builders have been experimenting with near field wireless charging
>> enough that off-the-shelf wireless charging hardware is commonly found in
>> current robot parts catalogs. A few, smaller, off-the-shelf RC models are
>> now adopting this as well. There are also a variety of wireless chargers
>> for cell phones that could be hacked. So a more-or-less standardized
>> solution for this could be possible. There may still be an issue with
>> charging the high-power LiPoly batteries now common for larger or more
>> high
>> performance RC models. Also, direct cabling is not unusual in the full
>> scale mining and construction field, which has been on a long trend of
>> transitioning to electric power. It may be quite practical to have robots
>> operating on tethers where their range of movement is relatively modest.
>> But reliable quick-connect in a relatively dirty environment would be a
>> challenge.
>>
>> The Fosters moonbase concept is rather over-simplistic, at least in
>> illustration, and seems to assume that lunar regolith is much more uniform
>> and homogenous than is likely, thus allowing for a single kind of robot to
>> assume both material gathering and deposition functions. In practice, it
>> is
>> likely that considerable site preparation will be necessary and there will
>> need to be some dedicated facility for the collection and screening of
>> regolith in large volume akin to that commonly used in terrestrial
>> landscape work. The use of an inflatable dome as a form potentially
>> reduces
>> the construction time compared to screening and piling up a gravel mound
>> form, but in gathering a suitable volume of uniform shell material one
>> would be simultaneously separating and collecting this gravel sized
>> material, the ratios of granular sizes varying widely with location. This
>> inflatable dome must also survive, fully exposed, for the duration of the
>> construction process, demanding a multilayer Whipple-shield like structure
>> akin to the semi-rigid TransHab module hull. Thus a much heavier, less
>> compactable, dome envelope would be needed with this approach than would
>> be
>> needed for a system where the envelope was deployed within a
>> pre-fabricated
>> shell. So it's difficult to suggest any particular advantage to an
>> inflatable form over the much simpler mound form.
>>
>> A formless approach is also feasible with a radial boom crane based
>> deposition mechanism and has been proposed for lunar construction in the
>> past, but would require a very fine and uniform shell material, possibly
>> using a gas or liquid transport method, deposited in very thin layers that
>> may not be possible without a significant local refinery process.
>>
>> The Fosters concept doesn't get into any details on the nature of the
>> 'printing' process used in shell construction. It appears that it is based
>> on fluid deposition of a binding agent into thin regolith layers--much
>> like
>> the polyjet 3D printing process. I imagine some exotic epoxy. Mound formed
>> shell construction usually employs a dry but convention cement based
>> concrete mix, which could be fine in demonstration but is a little messy
>> to
>> deal with for small machines. This is usually a material intended for
>> large
>> volumes applied very quickly rather than built-up in many thin layers. An
>> analogous oxidizing liquid binder could be explored or perhaps an
>> off-the-shelf geopolymer which can be mixed in small batches and applied
>> in
>> very liquid form. This would still be the messiest and least reliable part
>> of the building process. In the past, methods of regolith construction
>> have
>> proposed vitrifying regolith in situ, sometimes using solar energy, but
>> the
>> amount of energy needed to accomplish this is very high. A variety of
>> lunar
>> regolith simulant materials have been developed, but are not produced in
>> quantity sufficient to be affordable in the volumes this project would
>> requires and so we would likely have to go with something that is more of
>> a
>> physical than chemical simulation. This probably doesn't need to be too
>> close an analog or terribly strong to adequately demonstrate the
>> construction process.
>>
>> The use of ISS-style cupolas in the Fosters dome design doesn't make much
>> sense. It defeats the purpose of the radiation shielding of the regolith
>> shell, creates a lot of failure points, and would not be an efficient
>> lighting system. It is much more likely that such habitats would rely
>> either on electric lighting alone or the use of fiber optic lighting with
>> easily positioned and replaceable modular heliostat array collectors and
>> fiber cables to bring light in through the bulkhead entrances.
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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>>
>>
>> ----- End forwarded message -----
>> ----- Forwarded message from Eric Hunting <erichunting at gmail.com> -----
>>
>> Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 17:09:31 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: Eric Hunting <erichunting at gmail.com>
>> To: Open Manufacturing <openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com>
>> Subject: [Open Manufacturing] Re: Telebase Alpha
>>
>> Thinking some more about this idea and what sort of robot designs might be
>> used. I've been considering which of the RC construction vehicle
>> types/parts would offer the most potential 'hackability' for robot
>> adaptation. Construction/excavation machine designs have tended to be
>> rather specialized. But one type stands out as, potentially, the most
>> versatile or multi-functional; the crawler excavator. The crawler seems to
>> be the one drive platform used in the most variations of construction
>> equipment, employed where surfaces are unstable and maximum traction and
>> wide distribution of vehicle loads are desired. The crawler excavator form
>> of this is interesting in that it's swiveling crawler base is used by some
>> equipment companies, largely unchanged, in a number of different machines.
>> The same chassis used for a bucket excavator may also be used for what is
>> called a 'swivel crawler dumper', often using the very same kind of
>> operator cabin. This video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2u0aaTOykQ>
>> shows these machines side-by-side. This may also be used for cranes, cargo
>> handling with a small loading crane, and to host all sorts of other
>> equipment. The crawler is also used in a kind of landscape sculpting role
>> on ski slopes where a winch is employed to support the vehicle
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abvkRTjH9uo> traversing steep slopes as
>> it
>> sculpts them. Here we can see the same mechanism being used for earth
>> sculpting. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C_Q205umDw> This mechanism
>> has
>> been reproduced in scale models
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnFqvavlk1k> and could be a useful tool
>> in
>> the shaping of a gravel mound form. These crawler chassis can also be
>> ganged to support long or wide platforms or long articulated chains, like
>> LeTourneau
>> Trains
>> <
>> http://www.autoblog.net.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/overland-train-4.jpg
>> >,
>> though that would be more efficient with wheeled vehicles.
>>
>> The form-factor of these crawlers is such that adapting them to
>> robots--whether as scale models or full-scale machines, would be as simple
>> as replacing the operator cabin with an electronics enclosure and adding a
>> 'radar arch' to host lights, sensors, and cameras. In the nautical world a
>> radar or communications arch, also called a boat tower, is a simple space
>> frame arch
>> <
>> https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/7dc9caed/dms3rep/multi/mobile/pict0541-600x450.JPG>
>> suspended
>> over the deck or pilot cabin/station of a boat used to host radar units,
>> lights, satellite, and radio equipment. On fishing charter boats these are
>> also used to hold fishing rods and a high lofted pilot station for 'sight
>> fishing' (using height to avoid glare and spot fish by sight) while other
>> boats use them to support towlines for water skiing. For robots one would
>> want to employ a frame with many equipment mounting options so T-slot or
>> holed tubular profiles are likely.
>>
>> The compromise of the crawler is that it's very slow and unsuited to long
>> distance travel. When doing real scale construction with small robots this
>> is an important consideration. It also has a large number of parts, and
>> thus needs more maintenance. It is likely one would need additional
>> wheeled
>> vehicles or possibly the use of rail systems, like a deployable banana
>> monorail <https://www.earth.ac.cr/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/20-Foto7.jpg
>> >,
>> to support the longer distance transport of materials. Wheeled excavators
>> are common and offer similar potential versatility from their chassis,
>> though this is not commonly exploited in construction equipment design,
>> perhaps because it's considered redundant to existing conventional wheeled
>> vehicle designs. The wheeled excavator is much more mobile and faster, but
>> requires more maneuvering room and a much more stable, level, surface to
>> traverse. When excavating, they deploy a narrow dozer blade and outrigger
>> stabilizers, requiring a flat resting area. In the past decade, a new
>> class
>> of wheeled excavator has emerged called 'walking' or 'spider' excavators
>> that use independent steered pneumatically powered wheels on the ends of
>> articulated legs. This allows for traversing extreme terrain, performing
>> elaborate maneuvers, and level operation on steep slopes and is very
>> useful
>> in shallow water and swampy locations. It's also based on very minimalist
>> base chassis like the crawlers and so could suit the same large variety of
>> applications. There have been some experiments in modeling these with
>> Lego,
>> but I haven't yet seen off-the-shelf RC models, possibly because this
>> drive
>> system remains a bit difficult to replicate in miniature. But it's, no
>> doubt, on the way and this could offer a superior alternative to the
>> crawler. Certainly, a number of large scale space robot designs already
>> employ systems like this.
>>
>>
>> --
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