This is foolish, just use a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, like they did on the Mars Viking program in the 1970's. NASA has yet to formulate the detailed rules for this challenge, so one can't even come up with a possible solution yet.
@SiXiam I agree RTG is the way to go. But if that's unavailable, go with NASA's initial plan for 1980's rovers and lunar rockets and burn Silane from the surrounding regolith. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silane
Silane may be available on Mars as well as the moon.
Could also use a closed-cycle liquid ammonia engine, with a low boiling point (-28F) maybe use the fresnel concentrated light/heat from reflected earthshine(on the moon)?
Silane, assuming one can easily harvest it, is only half what is needed. I assume you are using a fuel cell, so we still need an oxidant. Mars perchlorate would work, but I don't know if any oxidant could be easily harvested on the moon. For all the weight & equipment needed you probably would need another device just to do all of that, which actually brings up a great point!
Why not have a base, charging station?
The little rover has a nice small battery that is used just for say a 2 day power supply. Every 2 days (or whatever) it goes to the little charging station & gets the batteries topped off. The charging station has nice big batteries, is stationary, & has big solar panels. It can be used by multiple rovers of different sizes and at any time of the day!
Dependence on stationary charging station would greatly limit the area a rover can explore. NASA wants to explore as much as possible, that's the whole idea.
During his WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs touted iCloud as a service that will sync many of your Apple devices, for free. Macs, iPhones, iPads, and even Windows computers can synchronize documents, contacts, calendar appointments, and other data.
The most commented posts on Engadget over the past 24 hours.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
This is foolish, just use a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, like they did on the Mars Viking program in the 1970's. NASA has yet to formulate the detailed rules for this challenge, so one can't even come up with a possible solution yet.
@SiXiam I agree RTG is the way to go.
But if that's unavailable, go with NASA's initial plan for 1980's rovers and lunar rockets and burn Silane from the surrounding regolith.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silane
Silane may be available on Mars as well as the moon.
Could also use a closed-cycle liquid ammonia engine, with a low boiling point (-28F) maybe use the fresnel concentrated light/heat from reflected earthshine(on the moon)?
@0crabby0
Silane, assuming one can easily harvest it, is only half what is needed. I assume you are using a fuel cell, so we still need an oxidant. Mars perchlorate would work, but I don't know if any oxidant could be easily harvested on the moon. For all the weight & equipment needed you probably would need another device just to do all of that, which actually brings up a great point!
Why not have a base, charging station?
The little rover has a nice small battery that is used just for say a 2 day power supply. Every 2 days (or whatever) it goes to the little charging station & gets the batteries topped off. The charging station has nice big batteries, is stationary, & has big solar panels. It can be used by multiple rovers of different sizes and at any time of the day!
@SiXiam
Dependence on stationary charging station would greatly limit the area a rover can explore. NASA wants to explore as much as possible, that's the whole idea.