Looks Like OU Senior Member Avalon Has DONE IT! New Video!

[picowatt]

A lovely long post PW,and you have made it look like building a lunar rover would be an enormous feat. But this is where people start to get fooled into believing that the cost's are justified. Every question you have asked in regards as to !how or what! is very basic stuff,and i will take the time tonight when i finish work, to answer every question you asked. But let's have a look at a couple of them right now,so as you start to see that it really is not as difficult as you are trying to make it out to be. If you are an engineer as MH claim's,then the questions you have asked,you should be able to answer your self.

1-How are you going to lube the motor and wheel bearings?
As i have worked in the the dairy construction industry for many years,and been the designer and installer of high end vacuum system's of milking machine's,i can tell you right now that there need not be anything special about bearings or motors that operate in high vacuum and high temperature environment. It is all about pressure differentials,and making sure that there is no pressure difference between the inside and outside of the bearing's. When this is done,then no lubricant will flow out of the bearings. Why do you believe that there is a difference between a bearing running in 1 atmosphere as they do here on earth,and the vacuum of space?. Bearings self equalize,if they did not,then they would blow all the lubricant out when they heated up,and the air inside them expanded--but as we know,they do not do this. So to answer your question,we simply use good quality bearings. We can test this quit accurately in a vacuum chamber,but im sure (being the engineer that MH claims you are)that this will not be needed.

2-Of what design will the suspension damper be.
Funny thing you should ask this question,as suspension is exactly what i do for a living these days.
Do you think that the shock absorber has to be anything special?--if so,why?
Think about pressure differentials again,and think about the pressure differentials between the inside and outside that shock absorber see's when in an off road vehicle going at speed over rough terrain. The shock absorber-or damper as you call it,is already designed to cope with extreme pressure differentials. Being that the vehicle will weigh 1/6th of that that it would here on earth,and the lunar terrain is an unknown,then i would use a negative up-positive down adjustable shock absorber. With a simple twist of a knob,the astronaut's can then adjust the damper rate of the shockie to suit the terrain of the lunar surface. If we are to stick with 60's tech,then we can use the design of old,and run the twist cables right up to the control panel of the lunar rover,so as the astronauts can adjust the damper rate on the fly. Did the lunar rovers take this into consideration?-did they have adjustable damper rate's,so as they could adjust the shock absorbers to suit !the yet to be known! lunar surface?-->i dont think so.How did they know the dampers would be suited to the lunar terrain if they were yet to find out what that terrain was?. Like i said,i could build twice the machine on half the budget.

I will answer the rest of your questions tonight.


Brad

Tinman,

Don't bother, the questions were rhetorical.  It seems rather apparent that you have never done any design work for life critical systems or flight/spaceflight rated systems.  If you believe human spaceflight is such a piece of cake, perhaps you should consider consulting for, or at least setting straight, the likes of Elon Musk or Sir Richard.  That you think it is so easy and a bunch of "rubbish" borders on delusions of grandeur.

How do you even know what the max temperature will be?  Are you using the lunar surface temp with its given thermal reflection, absorption, and conduction characteristics or will you be making your own thermodynamic modeling to determine what the actual Tmax will be when parked in the sun or driving around dissipating power?  How are you going to cool components and shed waste heat from motoring and braking?  How hot are your motors actually going to get?  Will you be starting from scratch and doing your own designs and environmental testing or will you be relying on the previous work of others?  Again, these are just rhetorical questions attempting to describe just a very few of the questions that must be addressed by engineers designing a lunar rover.. 

Consider the amount of R&D and testing just to make something as mundane as an explosive bolt.  These bolts must synchronously separate when commanded, never separate when not commanded, fracture in a predetermined way and not damage critical structures with unexpected shrapnel.  One misfire could completely destroy a a very expensive spacecraft and/or kill all on board.  Yet explosive bolts are common place in spaceflight.

I would not want to venture a guess at the number of scientists, chemists, metallurgists, engineers, technicians and financial costs associated with designing and producing such a "lowly component", but I am sure there was a great deal of all involved.

PW

[picowatt]

Bearings self equalize,if they did not,then they would blow all the lubricant out when they heated up,and the air inside them expanded--but as we know,they do not do this. So to answer your question,we simply use good quality bearings. We can test this quit accurately in a vacuum chamber,but im sure (being the engineer that MH claims you are)that this will not be needed.

Yeah right, presumably off the shelf, good quality bearings with no well engineered testing criteria required for a bearing to be launched into outer space and used in a lunar environment.  That will surely go very well.  If the G forces, vibration and rapid pressure change during the launch sequence doesn't blow the seals off, will the lubricant used boil off when exposed to the temperature extremes and vacuum of the lunar surface? 

Imagine if just one seal blows during launch or fails in use and becomes contaminated with dust, locks up, and strands the rover, possibly causing the death of two astronauts.  This possibility is why everything must be tested at and beyond the environmental extremes within which any system will operate, affectionately referred to as "shake and bake".

Any life-critical or flight/spaceflight related designs must be fully tested to be certified.  Merely assuming something will probably work OK is not allowed.  Many systems are tested to the point of failure.  Most certifications even require a report from a statistician detailing the mathematical probabilities of a failure of individual components or complete systems over a given life cycle (I have a pretty funny story regarding statisticians, but it is probably not suitable for the internet).

PW

[picowatt]

"First and foremost is just the fact that the dust just sticks to everything," said Jasper Halekas, a research physicist at University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, California.

From gauge dials, helmet sun shades to spacesuits and tools, the "stick-to-itness" of dust during the Apollo missions proved to be a noteworthy problem, Halekas reported. Most amusingly, he added, even the vacuum cleaner that was designed to clean off the dust clogged down and jammed.

... Although the lunar environment is often considered to be essentially static, Halekas and his fellow researchers reported at the workshop that, in fact, it is very electrically active.

The surface of the Moon charges in response to currents incident on its surface, and is exposed to a variety of different charging environments during its orbit around the Earth. Those charging currents span several orders of magnitude, he said.

Dust adhesion is likely increased by the angular barbed shapes of lunar dust, found to quickly and effectively coat all surfaces it comes into contact with. Additionally, that clinging is possibly due to electrostatic charging, Halekas explained. 

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15607792/#.VqGeBVJrNpM

[sm0ky2]

Brads question was is it electrons in motion that produces the magnetic field of a magnet.

Could you elaborate on that?

Mags

an atom is an LRC circuit... the proton has an inductance. 
The "magnetic moment" induces an electromagnetic field as well as a purely magnetic one, proportional to the electrons' energy and its' velocity.
and the permeability of a proton * the number of protons in the atom.
the magnitude of this moment will depend on how many electrons are aligned in a single plane, and in which shell these electrons orbit.
an element like iron, only the outer shells will align.
Something like neodymium compounds, or samarium, more shells can be aligned in the magnetizing plane. This allows for a greater degree of
magnetization per mass of magnetic material. i.e. - smaller, stronger magnets.

new research into nanomagnets, has shown that tiny chains of monoatomic magnets, can almost completely align all electron shells of certain elements. allowing for the greatest magnetic intensities ever measured (albeit in a very tiny space).

[sm0ky2]

@ Tinman

The lunar landing conspiracies were created to bring doubt to the validity of the event.
This distracts the general populous from the reality of the U.S.A.F. base that's been on the moons horizon for
the past 40 yrs....