A remote-control robot that will pack them in at theme parks could also prove whether life on the moon is viable. Robin McKie reports
IN a few weeks, a strange driverless vehicle will be dumped in the Atacama desert in northern Chile and sent trundling over its dunes in a two-month, 200km odyssey. The test drive will determine the future of Nomad, a craft that may one day transform moon exploration and also become one of the world’s most unusual theme-park attractions.
LunaCorp, Nomad’s maker, intends to send two similar vehicles to the moon. Video images sent back by their cameras will be displayed on panoramic screens at theme parks. Customers sitting on motion platforms – which replicate the rover’s movements, transmitted by on-board sensors – will experience the sensation of lunar travel. “We are going to transport people’s senses to the moon,” says LunaCorp’s president, David Gump.
The Chilean project – called Desert Trek and scheduled to start in May – has another, more serious aim. If successful, the prototype rover could be used on a Nasa mission to seek ice at the moon’s south pole. Reports sent back by an earlier probe, Clementine, suggest some craters there contain ice.
And it has been proposed that Icebreaker, a robot surveyor based on Nomad, could be launched in the year 2000. This four-wheel, 300kg buggy would travel up to 9km a day, prospecting and occasionally drilling for ice.
“A few years ago, it would have been heresy to suggest that humans were not the best `machines’ for exploring the moon and planets,” says Nomad’s designer, William “Red” Whittaker, head of the robotics institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
“There has been a cultural change since then and robots are increasingly being seen as the main means for surveying other worlds.” His robots include machines that were used to help repair the damaged Three Mile Island nuclear reactor.
Apart from lunar rovers, several robot vehicles are projected for launch to Mars, including one small craft, Sojourner – an oversized metal shoebox on wheels – which is already en route and scheduled to be dropped on to the Martian surface in July. This landing will be exploited to the full by LunaCorp. “There is going to be masses of public interest in Sojourner,” says Gump.
His company is negotiating “with several Florida theme parks” to sign contracts to buy pictures from Nomad, which will be in the middle of its trek. Live, panoramic images of the Chilean desert will be used to recreate the experience of travelling through Atacama – the same process that LunaCorp plans to repeat for the moon.
“The next few weeks are absolutely crucial to us,” says Gump. “We have to show that our robot will operate properly, that we can return panoramic images via satellite, and that the public will be interested enough to make it worthwhile for theme parks and television networks to invest in our lunar rover expedition.” It is expected that the project, currently earmarked for launch in 2000, will cost $250-million.
Theme park visitors will be able to experience moon journeys as the rovers trundle across the lunar terrain between the landing sites of the Apollo spacecraft. In addition, some individuals, including VIPs picked by companies sponsoring LunaCorp, may be allowed to take over the controls – although the safeguards will have to be introduced to stop over- enthusiastic punters from dumping a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth of hardware over a crater cliff.
In addition, the project faces other drawbacks. If a lunar rover is driven at even modest speeds, it will heat up too quickly, dust clouds will be thrown up over its cameras and precious power will be wasted.
Critics say the rover should only be driven about 8km an hour. “That is scarcely going to make this the real world’s answer to Disney’s Space Mountain,” says one British engineer. On the other hand, Whittaker has probably built more robot, roving vehicles than any other engineer. These machines include devices for repairing nuclear reactors – as well as Dante II, an eight- legged robot that was sent down Alaska’s Mount Spurr volcano in 1994.
This machine was able to navigate its own way as well as respond to complex commands from human controllers.
It was the success of Dante II that led to the creation of LunaCorp and the prospect of the first commercial development of the Moon. Scientifically, the company looks sound. Financially, the idea is so radical that few will speculate about its prospects.
Some say Whittaker’s robots may spur men and women to return to the moon. If Icebreaker is successful, it will have proved the existence of the one ingredient that would make lunar colonisation practical.
“If we find that there is water on the moon, then we will know for the first time that we can sustain astronauts there and that we will have a source for making hydrogen for fuel to run colonies,” said Whittaker.
“It would be the breakthrough that would transform mankind’s attitude to the moon quite utterly. It would no longer be a dead world to us, but one brimming with potential.”
For more information, see LunaCorp’s website at http://lunacorp.com/lcrobcyb.htm and Carnegie Mellon’s robotics department at http://www.ri.cmu.edu/lri/