6-legged Robots Heading to Mars, Building Outpost

[ravewulf]

Cool. Looks a little like an early/primative version of a tachikoma.

For those not familiar with Ghost in the Shell's tachikomas http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachikoma

 

[kansur0]

I guess they should have used the term "earth tonnes"?

 

[ananke]

Force is not measured by metric tons, but kg in second per square meter. I.e. they are talking about mass in the article. Keep in mind that mass also have a moment (inertia, so while that vehicle can lift 4.5 metric tons, it may not be able to maneuvre.

 

[maestintaolius]

The usage of tons was a poor choice because it can be used in reference to both weight and mass in the vernacular (because there's pounds(mass), pounds(force) and slugs - because SAE is a stupid system). It's officially based on mass now, but the mass/weight historical issue still exists (I occasionally run into it when I'm getting things out of older engineering books). Unfortunately, most Americans haven't a clue what a Newton is in day to day life so they dumbed it down to tons. My guess is they mean tons based on the force required to lift a 14.5 ton object on earth to make it understandable to the day to day life of your average american.

@sliem - If the device is capable of lifting a 14.5 ton object on earth, yes, it'll be able to lift that same object on mars. In fact, it'll be able to lift it more easily.

 

[bogcotton]

[citation][nom]kansur0[/nom]I guess they should have used the term "earth tonnes"?[/citation]

Or said, is capable of carrying 14.5 tons in a gravitational field strength of 9.8 N/Kg (or about 3 I think if they calculated for Mars).

Or they could be all imperial and actually be saying the weight tonnes.

:-|. Why couldn't people just give up the old measures!?

 

[LLJones]

Fantastic, people can ride them. Mech warrior is one step closer(ha-ha)to reality. Sorry, the mass vs weight dialogue was taking the fun out of this story.

 

[NightLight]

Way to go! It's good to see nasa still hasn't given up on projects such as these. If only I could live to see humanity living on other planets...

 

[Guest]

"...and of course the rusty Marian landscape."

Hopefully Marian won't mind robots traversing her landscape

 

[Pyroflea]

This is pretty cool. Now we just need to improve propulsion methods so that we can get to Mars in a decent amount of time. Them start terraforming

 

[husker]

[citation][nom]ananke[/nom]Force is not measured by metric tons, but kg in second per square meter. I.e. they are talking about mass in the article. Keep in mind that mass also have a moment (inertia, so while that vehicle can lift 4.5 metric tons, it may not be able to maneuvre.[/citation]
+1 Good luck to you. I said about the same thing at the top of these comments and got voted down.

 

[eemaker]

A bit of Nasa's ducktap to hold the million dollar pen (http/urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_zero_gravity_pen.htm) and maybe a glock and you've got yourself a pretty sweet war machine.
I bet NASA has already sent one to the moon to deal with there little problem... (http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moongate_(book))

 

[Gin Fushicho]

Well... hopefully we can colonize ad terraform mars? I'm sure it won't be done in my lifetime.

 

[ta152h]

Are any of you people actually thinking before you post?

Of course the measurement is weight, not mass. The carrying capacity of something would be limited by the weight of the object, not the mass. In a weightless environment, I could carry any amount of mass that I could wrap my arms around. Where there is gravity, this would be untrue. The strength of a vehicle like this would have the same limitation. Mass without gravity would not stress the materials, only with gravity accelerating the object would stresses be put on the components.

So, clearly, it's weight they are talking about.

 

[mtyermom]

[citation][nom]l_mckeon[/nom]"NASA said that it is currently working on a six-legged robot that can walk or roll on wheels."Tachikoma?[/citation]

That's EXACTLY what my first thought was as well...

 

[anamaniac]

Why not throw them to the moon right now?
NASA, stop wasting time. You've done nothing interesting in a long time. We should at least have a moon colony by now...

 

[JOSHSKORN]

According to this site, 14.5 tons on Earth is equal to approximately 5.47 tons on Mars, or 10,933 lbs. According to this site, the calculation is Mars Weight = Weight x 0.377. Not sure where they get THAT information from, though. It probably mentions it, though.

 

[nebun]

such a waste

 

[husker]

[citation][nom]TA152H[/nom]Are any of you people actually thinking before you post? Of course the measurement is weight, not mass. The carrying capacity of something would be limited by the weight of the object, not the mass. In a weightless environment, I could carry any amount of mass that I could wrap my arms around. Where there is gravity, this would be untrue. The strength of a vehicle like this would have the same limitation. Mass without gravity would not stress the materials, only with gravity accelerating the object would stresses be put on the components. So, clearly, it's weight they are talking about.[/citation]
Not only did I think first, I did research.
If you go to the NASA website, which I did, and look up the information they specify the lifting capacity of the robot in kilograms (kg). See my earlier post where I quoted the website if you do not want to look it up. They specify the lifting capacity of one robot as 450kg and 10 working together at 4500kg = 4.5 metric tons. If you now look up either "mass" or "kilogram" on wikipedia you will see that a kilogram is a unit of mass not weight. If you do not understand the difference between mass and weight then you should look it up.

Therefore clearly you are wrong, and they are indeed talking about mass not weight. Mass does not change when moving from one gravitational field to another.

 

[jellico]

[citation][nom]Rab1d-BDGR[/nom]You write a great explanation, but in the spirit of internet pedantry I feel the need to point out that you are confusing affect with *effect*.Weight is the *effect* of gravitational acceleration on that mass.Like you said: "It's an unfortunate tendency to use the two terms interchangably."[/citation]
Well, now you're just degenerating to a specificity.

 

[Pei-chen]

Good luck getting it over there as NASA will lose all space launching capability after OBAMA is done with it.