Placeholder Image

字幕列表 影片播放

  • Today's sponsor Fasthosts asked SciShow to write a question for their Techie Test!

  • If you're based in the UK and know the answer,

  • you have the chance to win 2 tickets to South by Southwest,

  • including flights and accommodation.

  • Stay tuned for the full video to learn more.

  • [♪ INTRO]

  • In 2019, NASA announced they were working to go back to the Moon,

  • but this time, to stay.

  • And that's really exciting!

  • Except... to live on the Moon, we'll need to do things we've never done before

  • and overcome challenges we've never faced.

  • And to do that, we'll need some brand-new technology.

  • Luckily for us, NASA has a place right here on Earth,

  • in the marshes of Florida where they're preparing for that future.

  • And it's called Swamp Works.

  • And here, science moves fast.

  • Because even though Swamp Works is part of a government organization,

  • they have an extremely collaborative approach.

  • So ideas can be developed, tested, and improved on quickly.

  • Swamp Works's main goal is to develop tech that will support astronauts

  • on long missions to the Moon and, eventually, Mars.

  • And since they were established in 2013, they've made a lot of progress.

  • Swamp Works follows the ethos of the Skunk Works innovation lab at Lockheed Martin,

  • which has been around since the 1940s.

  • The work there gave rise to some of the most-effective stealth and recon aircraft,

  • like the Blackbird and the Nighthawk.

  • And NASA is hoping to achieve the same kind of innovation and success.

  • At first glance, this place looks like a Disneyland for engineers.

  • It's packed with cool tech, exciting projects, and the best sandbox you've ever seen.

  • Seriously. Swamp Works has a massive, climate-controlled testbed of synthetic lunar soil,

  • about 110 metric tons of it.

  • But it's not for playing around.

  • It helps teams quickly design, build, test, and improve prototypes,

  • and it lets them immediately see what works in real-world settings.

  • One project that's benefited from this is RASSOR,

  • or the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot.

  • NASA, you're so good at acronyms.

  • It's designed to help tackle one of the biggest challenges in space exploration:

  • the fact that shipping stuff is expensive.

  • These days, to send one kilogram to the Moon's surface, it costs around a million dollars.

  • So packing things like machinery and building materials

  • would add up to making long missions prohibitively expensive.

  • One possible solution is not to take these things,

  • but to make them using dust, or regolith, from the lunar surface.

  • A lot of scientists have thrown around this idea, but Swamp Works is trying to make it a reality.

  • And RASSOR will play a big part in that.

  • Until now, rovers have mainly been scientific samplers,

  • only able to collect small amounts of rock and soil.

  • They haven't been made to do serious digging on extraterrestrial surfaces.

  • But RASSOR will. This isn't as simple as it sounds, though.

  • You can't just send a backhoe to the Moon and call it a day.

  • The lower gravity there means everything has a lower weight,

  • so construction equipment has lower traction.

  • Also, whatever you're digging is more likely to go flying around all over the place.

  • RASSOR gets around this by using two sets of toothed drums as digging buckets.

  • These drums rotate in opposite directions,

  • so they cancel out any horizontal forces the robot generates while digging.

  • They also allow RASSOR to dig, store, and transport

  • about 90 kilograms of regolith at one time.

  • So far, tests on RASSOR prototypes are going well.

  • The next steps are to test them in lower gravity,

  • to see how they fare digging regolith and ice of different consistencies.

  • So someday, this robot could be carrying huge amounts of regolith

  • across the Moon or even Mars, helping us collect the materials we need.

  • Now, even if digging works perfectly,

  • there are other challenges to overcome on the Moon, like dealing with the dust itself.

  • Lunar dust is worse than glitter.

  • It's very fine, so it gets everywhere.

  • It's electrostatically charged, too, like a balloon rubbed on a sweater,

  • so it likes to stick to stuff.

  • And! Since it's made of crushed volcanic rock, it's very abrasive,

  • and can be hard on equipment.

  • In fact, dust was responsible for many problems on the Apollo missions,

  • from inaccurate sensor readings to imperfect seals.

  • So Swamp Works is developing a dust shield like nothing we've ever seen before.

  • It's called an electrodynamic dust shield, or EDS for short.

  • It uses transparent electrodes to run a weak electric current

  • in a wave across a machine's surface.

  • The wave pushes the dust away, stopping it from sticking.

  • And tests have also shown that switching it on, on an already dusty surface,

  • will remove 99% of what's stuck.

  • Swamp Works scientists envision EDS being used

  • on visors, windows, solar panels, instruments, and even spacesuits.

  • So it could be a huge help.

  • The prototype was sent to the International Space Station for a year of testing in April 2019,

  • so at the time we're filming this video, we don't yet have final results.

  • But if all goes well, the next step will be to integrate EDS into robots like RASSOR

  • and other tech that will be exposed to lunar dust.

  • So, let's say you've got a digging robot and a way to keep your equipment free from lunar dust.

  • Now, you just have to figure out how to build stuff.

  • And Swamp Works is investigating that, too.

  • They're developing what they call the Zero Launch Mass 3-D Print Head,

  • which will be able to build entire structures from scratch,

  • without any materials shipped from Earth.

  • The print head takes volcanic material from regolith

  • and combines it with a custom polymer to make a sticky concrete.

  • Then, once it's given instructions, it can 3-D print materials like similar printers on Earth.

  • So far, Swamp Works has used simulated lunar regolith to build beams and domes.

  • So things are looking promising!

  • But there's still plenty of work to do, like refining the concrete's consistency,

  • and improving the function of the print head itself.

  • Still, this tool, along with RASSOR, EDS, and other Swamp Works tech,

  • is helping us leap toward a new relationship with space.

  • It's helping us transition from exploration to habitation,

  • and from research to practical engineering.

  • So in time, the results are sure to be groundbreaking. Literally, in RASSOR's case!

  • Thanks to Fasthosts for sponsoring this video.

  • Fasthosts is a web hosting company based in the UK,

  • and their goal is to support UK business and entrepreneurs at all levels

  • with a range of web hosting products and services.

  • If you're just getting started, registration is easy.

  • You can choose from a huge range of domains,

  • and you'll get a personalized email along with it.

  • Fasthosts also uses cloud services so you can scale your site as your demand goes up.

  • Fasthosts wants to support all kinds of entrepreneurs

  • so they asked SciShow to come up with a Techie Test.

  • If you're based in the UK and know the answer, you have the chance to win

  • two tickets to South by Southwest (SXSW), including flights and accommodation.

  • Our Techie Test question is:

  • What is the name of the world's first commercially-available video game?

  • If you know the answer, click the link in the description to enter.

  • As always, thanks for watching SciShow Space.

  • [♪ OUTRO]

Today's sponsor Fasthosts asked SciShow to write a question for their Techie Test!

字幕與單字

單字即點即查 點擊單字可以查詢單字解釋

B1 中級

這個鮮為人知的實驗室正在改變太空的未來。 (This Little-Known Lab Is Changing the Future of Space)

  • 9 0
    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
影片單字