Sixth Part-Time Scientists Fan Friday

Submitted by Part-Time Scientists on February 18, 2011 07:36 am

Welcome to the sixth Fan Friday.

Here comes the sixth Fan Friday. You ask and we reply. If you want to take a look at the previous questions go to our blog.

This week we chose five questions with focus and technology and a little bit on social.

Tech "What about your lander?"

What about it? In software lifecycle terms it's at an alpha stage in it's life. Internally we call that an R0 version. That means it exists in physical form made out of a plastic fused together by a process called “Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM)”. Our partners over at 1zu1 Prototypen are helping us with that. That's usually done for several reasons, like putting electronics in it and checking how well the design performs in physical form. Also they make kid’s eyes go wiiiide. It makes everything real having the thing in front of you.

At the same time we have a full working digitial version of the lander where it's completely designed and undergoes heavy testing and improvement in CAD programs like Solidworks and self programmed applications. In theory our lander has lived through all stages of a lunar mission already. Once we're completely satisfied with the performance of our digital version of Jules (In honor of Jules Verne) we built an R1 (a beta if you will) version of it. That version will have all the components of the final and will undergo stress, extreme cold/heat, vacuum tests and everything else we can come up with. After that we will built the real thing, a R2 that is actually going to put the PTS flag on the moon.

Social “When is the deadline for this XPrize?”

31.12.2015. But as mentioned last week: the price money will be reduced if a government mission beats us to the moon by then.

Tech "Is your Rover capable of IPv6?"

Technically there is no problem implementing IP6. But since IP6 can only address about half of all the Regolith particles on the moon we feel that it's not the right move for Asimov to go 6 just yet. But you're bringing up a very important point that's equally important to the entire mission than the rover/lander/rocket. Communication.

Something we are working on independently from out efforts in the GLXP we are working on a communication network that will allow Earth – Moon, Earth Mars, Earth – anything in the Solar system communication. It's called COMRAY and you can check it out the official website at http://www.comray.net. Also we talked about it on Evadot here and for good measure here. For more information on space and IP6 check out our blog entry on the topic.

Social "If I win in the lottery can I then buy a rocket and send something to space on my own?"

Why certainly you can dear Madam or Sir. Head over to SpaceX.com, pick a rocket and go bananas. Want to get rid of your old car in a spectacular way? Shoot it into the Sun with a slick Falcon 9. Too much? You can always acquire a Cubesat and put that into orbit like our resident lead software engineer Wes Faler.
If you're a real developer nut go ahead and do the Cubesat. It's awesome space geek fun and a great conversation starter at cocktail parties.

But if you're not I implore you to just sell your old car instead of shooting it into the Sun and invest. Invest in this new business of private space exploration. Invest in schools and universities that forge the minds of students. Invest in outreach projects like Moonbots that inspire kids to become astronauts and engineers.

Tech "Is it possible to build a structure 100 km high which is made out of balloons so we can use it to climb up to the space? The structure would have the shape of the mountain and we could use its surface and/or its interior to place traffic lines going from the surface of the Earth to the space."

Several things, when you have mass A and you are at height B from the ground you need to achieve velocity C to overcome Earth' gravity. At 100km you still need a rocket to propel you into space. If that really interests you, you can still head over to Wolfram|Alpha and to the calculations very simple. As for the balloons. No. Figure Rockoons times a million. That is not plausible on so many levels. I'd love to see something like that but Newton will have our heads first.

[update]I've created a Wolfram|Alpha Widget for you to show the effect of starting a rocket somewhere above groundlevel. The widget calculates the orbital velocity for the altitude you enter (in km above sealevel). The orbital velocity is the speed needed to make it round the earth at least once without crashing somewhere along the path cause you are too slow. So if you enter 1km it solves to 7,906km/s, which means you have to be faster than that to have a stable orbit. For 100km it solves to 7,845km/s. As you can see even this dramtic change in height has almost no effekt on the required speed. Do the same for 400km. But remember: the ISS is in 360km height!
Conclusion: This idea only lifts the issue out of sight, but the problem remains.[/update]

That's it for FanFriday this week. If you have a question for us and want them answered from a genuine Part-Time Scientists send us your questions to q@part-time-scientists.com

One more thing...

Last weekend some of us were in Hamburg (Germany) meeting with our Agency for some Press and Homepage related topics. We recorded the meeting. Well, we don't know why on earth we did that but here's a short clip.