Innovative ideas for exploring lunar caves required.

[finneyb]

ESA European Space Agency

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Prepa ... unar_caves

'How would you design a system to detect, map and explore caves on the Moon? Our latest hunt for ideas is seeking novel initiatives that address this question. '

Thought it would be different to solving wood problems and get the grey matter exercised.

Brian

 

[Trevanion]

What about tried and tested methods?

 

[finneyb]

Mining will come later, trust me - need to establish a base camp at the moment.

Brian

 

[Eric The Viking]

Warmbacs are made in Glastonbury - a really good-quality British export, seen in caves all over this planet, at least, and worn in the Thai football team rescue recently. We still make Oldham mining lamps in the UK, too.

See also Survex, Aven, etc. for relevant software.

I suggest they get in touch with the BEC (Bristol Exploration Club) up on the Mendips. That lot are really good at holding their breath for ages (going through sumps). To them, the absence of atmosphere would be a mere nuisance, as long as there was adequate beer available.

By the way, the annual competition between Mendip clubs for the the most newly-discovered cave passage is hotly contested, and the winning margin is often hundreds of metres. So if anybody can...

Sadly I'm too old and decrepit nowadays :-(

 

[Andy Kev.]

Couldn't they just develop space suits for Jack Russell or ferrets?

They're tried and tested, cheap to run and the ferrets would keep the astronauts in the spaceship occupied on what must be a long and tedious journey to the moon. And if they took rabbits as well, food would be no problem for the whole lot.

 

[rafezetter]

What about tried and tested methods?

A seismic charge would only detect, and would require a large number of shotgun shells (or larger) to carry them out - and I doubt ESA will be enmoured of the idea - even if they hadn't thought of it, which they probably have.

Need to be repeatable almost ad infinitum - or at least a reasonable number larger than "a few hundred".

No idea why they aren't considering GPR (a-la "time team") or Lidar come to think of it for mapping, which is a proven techinque.

Both of those systems are small enough now to be able to fit them to a rover sized robotic vehicle.

My alternative idea that relies less on complicated electronics that can go wrong would be some kind of "thumper", either dead weight, or better, on a spring system to send out a waveform of regular pulsed shockwaves.

For exploring that is remote, presumably, a drone seems pretty obvious - gas powered jets. Limited use obviously, but you only really need to know if the cave is large enough to warrent a human exploration - as a possible base site I assume?