Author Topic: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.  (Read 121246 times)

Offline ThereIWas3

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #20 on: 05/19/2016 05:14 pm »
Some NASA guy was being interviewed on the Planetary.org podcast this week, and gave out some statistic about how long it would take a human geologist to complete the same work done by one of the rovers.  The answer was something like a few hours.

I disagree with using that comparison to justify human filghts to Mars.  It would not take a few hours, it would take 20 years.  Because the geologist is not on Mars, he is standing on Earth, at some space conference, wearing a business suit.  The robots have already been there, working.

By the time humans (geologists or otherwise) get to Mars, they will not have to compete against what robots can do now, but what they will be doing then.  Advances in AI and robot technology is advancing a lot faster than the willingness of politicians to fund manned Mars trips.

Offline MattMason

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #21 on: 05/19/2016 05:54 pm »
Something about creating a viable, yet cool, Mars orbital habitat for astronauts to study the Red Planet with droned robots from orbit seems ridiculously odd.

If you can send and assemble what's needed to survive in orbit, sending a lander as part of the deal shouldn't be an impossible thing.
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Offline redliox

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #22 on: 05/19/2016 06:17 pm »
Something about creating a viable, yet cool, Mars orbital habitat for astronauts to study the Red Planet with droned robots from orbit seems ridiculously odd.

If you can send and assemble what's needed to survive in orbit, sending a lander as part of the deal shouldn't be an impossible thing.

Robert Zubrin was making the same point roughly 20 years ago when he conceived Mars Direct, and I likewise agree with your point on how the focus should be Mars itself as much as I'd like to see exploration of its moons.  It makes more sense to put things directly on the surface.  The 2 most useful applications this orbital lab could make would be as a propellant depot and a staging point, both for Mars, its moons, and Earth return.
« Last Edit: 05/19/2016 06:18 pm by redliox »
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #23 on: 05/19/2016 11:51 pm »
I think it is reasonable to expect astronauts to be able to control a surface operations for the full 540 days in Mars orbit.

It's not going to be "full" anything. Half the time the rover will be in darkness--no operations there. Then what about the human spacecraft being out of line of sight? Then what about crew operations requirements? Do you have a crew person up during their sleep time to control a rover during its day time? How many crew do you devote to this? If you have a 4-person crew, do you devote 100% of 1 crewmembers' time to running the rover? And if so, then that person has to sleep, so now you probably need another crewmember as backup. And can you do that? Can you devote a lot of crew time to running a rover?

Astronauts will have to sleep of course, so by "full day" I mean full working day, in line with local time at the landing site.  Unless of course teleoperation is so demanding that they can only work a shorter shift. Do we have any data on that?  What shifts do UAV and ROV pilots work?  I have no idea, it would be helpful to find out. I know remote mining operators work 12 hour shifts.  Any data from remote surgery?

If you are doing a teoperations on Mars I assume that there are relay satellites.  Otherwise as you say, actual time would be very short, in which, what would be the point.

Looking at work load from past missions I suspect that even with a four person crew devoting one person per day to teleoperations is not unreasonable.

Quote
So you quickly end up with the ability to only have an astronaut interact with the rover for a very limited amount of time, possibly for a very limited amount of time that the rover can actually do stuff. So the rover has all kinds of capabilities and the human isn't adding much.

Except eliminating latency in operations.

Quote
Now my limited understanding of modern human-robot interactions is that the human is in the loop for a short period of time--they look at the data, figure out what to do, and then use some pull down menus to say "Do X, Y and Z" and then press "Engage." Then the robot figures out how to do all that stuff. So the human may be involved in small increments over a long period of time.... which of course goes back to the earlier question of whether reducing that lag-time in communications is worthwhile? Are you gaining anything? Are you gaining enough for it to be worth doing?

With my understanding that's much how Mars surface operations happen today, with the caveat that the communications sessions are only twice daily.  Teleoperation is much more direct.  It is still operate by wire (especially over a satellite link) but much more direct, especially with complex operations.  UAVs can spend a lot of time on autopilot.  Less so with many remote mining operations, none (AFAIK)with ROVs and telesurgery.

Other issues with this sort of mission that isn't discussed much is that you have to develop a whole fleet of specialised surface platforms and land them, and how they operate.  This is normally just arm waved away. With teleoperation you can (indeed must to make it worthwhile) work much faster than current Mars rovers, which means more powerful power sources - batteries, fuel cells, or internal combustion.  Which require ways of recharging or refuelling them.

Then there is the question of how these are landed.  Separately or one big lander?  If the former, that might mean a lot of (relatively) small launches.  A large lander could be a test for later crewed landings, which are implied in this study.

I would love to see the full development of the idea, not just a one page summary!
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #24 on: 05/20/2016 12:05 am »
I'm trying to understand the reference mission of humans-to-Mars-orbit. Presumably we're talking about an opposition class mission, as spending 2.5+ years in zero-g is beyond our mitigation capabilities at present. So what? A ~560 day mission with ~40 days in Mars orbit?
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Offline ncb1397

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #25 on: 05/20/2016 01:00 am »
Stored LH2 was done during Apollo. No point in designing a mission orbit based on remote imaging from the manned platform. As far as science, it would aid in operation of Mars 2020 and potentially other international rovers.

As far as Apollo, that stored LH2 didn't have to loiter for more than 24 hours - HUGE difference from trying to keep it chilled for months.  As far as imaging, true but that doesn't stop the ISS from doing it.  The rovers via telepresence, possibly.


You must be referring to the Saturn V third stage. The CSM used cryogenic hydrogen tanks for fuel cells. The supply lasted for a lot longer than 24 hours. This diagram seems to indicate that at least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Command/Service_Module#/media/File:Apollo-linedrawing.png

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #26 on: 05/20/2016 02:29 am »
Stored LH2 was done during Apollo. No point in designing a mission orbit based on remote imaging from the manned platform. As far as science, it would aid in operation of Mars 2020 and potentially other international rovers.

As far as Apollo, that stored LH2 didn't have to loiter for more than 24 hours - HUGE difference from trying to keep it chilled for months.  As far as imaging, true but that doesn't stop the ISS from doing it.  The rovers via telepresence, possibly.


You must be referring to the Saturn V third stage. The CSM used cryogenic hydrogen tanks for fuel cells. The supply lasted for a lot longer than 24 hours. This diagram seems to indicate that at least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Command/Service_Module#/media/File:Apollo-linedrawing.png

Yep -- and the fuel cells in Apollo used hydrogen from two tanks that each held about 28 pounds of liquid hydrogen at about 225 psia -- at that density, you're not talking about keeping the LH2 as cold as needful under less pressure.  And the system was designed to self-pressurize to that pressure through heat leaks through the tank walls, although tank heaters could also be used to help out as the quantities drew down over the course of the mission.

It is an extremely far reach to go from keeping 56 lbs of LH2 at high pressure liquid for two weeks to keeping tens of tons of the stuff liquid (and keep it from overpressurizing) for months or years.  The technologies are quite different, as are the challenges.

Really.  Truly.
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline AegeanBlue

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #27 on: 05/20/2016 02:30 am »
I'm trying to understand the reference mission of humans-to-Mars-orbit. Presumably we're talking about an opposition class mission, as spending 2.5+ years in zero-g is beyond our mitigation capabilities at present. So what? A ~560 day mission with ~40 days in Mars orbit?

There are two types of reference mission families, conjunction and opposition. Opposition missions expect up to an earth year on Mars, conjunction expect 30 days. In practice design planning of hardware is for opposition missions but first missions tend to be conjunction. Apollo 11 lasted far less than Apollo 17 but the the hardware was originally designed for Apollo 17 duration. The first missions to Mars will most likely be conjunction, 15 months total trip lies within our knowledge, marginally. After we conquer that frontier we will see opposition.

Online Blackstar

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #28 on: 05/20/2016 12:07 pm »

So you quickly end up with the ability to only have an astronaut interact with the rover for a very limited amount of time, possibly for a very limited amount of time that the rover can actually do stuff. So the rover has all kinds of capabilities and the human isn't adding much.

Except eliminating latency in operations.


And still that question is unanswered--what is the benefit of doing that and for what operation? Eliminating latency for driving the rover? Or moving its arm? Or pressing "start" on the science instruments? Which rover operation is dramatically improved with a human much closer to make that decision? I've just seen this asserted repeatedly, but never actually analyzed.

Something that is also not examined is how you would design a rover for dual use so that it could be briefly (i.e. a few months) operated by somebody locally vs. many years of operations by somebody on Earth. That has not been done before, but may require careful systems design because of the way you would be communicating with it.
« Last Edit: 05/20/2016 12:08 pm by Blackstar »

Online Blackstar

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #29 on: 05/20/2016 12:12 pm »
Something about creating a viable, yet cool, Mars orbital habitat for astronauts to study the Red Planet with droned robots from orbit seems ridiculously odd.

If you can send and assemble what's needed to survive in orbit, sending a lander as part of the deal shouldn't be an impossible thing.

Robert Zubrin was making the same point roughly 20 years ago when he conceived Mars Direct, and I likewise agree with your point on how the focus should be Mars itself as much as I'd like to see exploration of its moons.  It makes more sense to put things directly on the surface.  The 2 most useful applications this orbital lab could make would be as a propellant depot and a staging point, both for Mars, its moons, and Earth return.

There is a simple reason why they focus on orbit and it is not about exploring the moons first--it is about saving the cost of developing a lander. The lander (and associated ground systems) is considered a major chunk of the cost of any Mars mission. When NASA has costed these things out end-to-end the price tag is really high. If they lop off the lander part, they can eliminate (perhaps) one third of the cost. When they start comparing the total price tag to available funding, that can make the difference between the mission being affordable and not affordable.

That was the entire basis behind the Planetary Society's workshop in March 2015--they were searching for an affordable human Mars mission, and they realized they could get there roughly within existing budget levels by eliminating the lander.

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #30 on: 05/20/2016 12:52 pm »

So you quickly end up with the ability to only have an astronaut interact with the rover for a very limited amount of time, possibly for a very limited amount of time that the rover can actually do stuff. So the rover has all kinds of capabilities and the human isn't adding much.

Except eliminating latency in operations.


And still that question is unanswered--what is the benefit of doing that and for what operation? Eliminating latency for driving the rover? Or moving its arm? Or pressing "start" on the science instruments? Which rover operation is dramatically improved with a human much closer to make that decision? I've just seen this asserted repeatedly, but never actually analyzed.

Something that is also not examined is how you would design a rover for dual use so that it could be briefly (i.e. a few months) operated by somebody locally vs. many years of operations by somebody on Earth. That has not been done before, but may require careful systems design because of the way you would be communicating with it.

I would love to see some kind of study on the matter.  Direct low-latency manual control lets you look around in real-time and say "Hey, let's go 200 meters to the south and take a look at that crater rim" and just go and do it, be there in 20 minutes.  Then you look around, again in real--time, and say "Let's pick up that rock and break a chunk off of it," and then "Let's shoot the newly broken face of the rock with ChemCam."

That operation would take on the order of three to 30 days using a MER or MSL, involving tens of people planning and coding instruction sets, over a period of many days.  It's perhaps an afternoon's worth of work with low-latency tele-operations.  (Obviously, the rover would have to be programmed a lot differently from the current rover to allow this; you would need some kind of immediate video feed, for one thing, and not just still pictures snapped, processed and sent back to the operators hours-to-days after they were taken.)

You would need to study the operations patterns under such a low-latency tele-operation paradigm to see what actual savings of time, and increase in flexibility, such a system could offer.  It would obviously have different overall goals from the remotely-operated, send-up-a-day's-worth-of-actions-and-let-'er-go kind of rovers we've landed in the past.

The people to ask, really, are those who planned and operated the Lunakhods back in the '70s.  These were the only rovers ever landed on an extra-terrestrial body that were operated in a low-latency, run-it-with-a-joystick mode.  From the simple measure of distance traveled divided by time, we can obviously see that the Lunakhods had a much greater capability of traveling longer distances over shorter timeframes -- one of them was able to cram 30-plus km of travel in just a few months.  Compare this to the several years it took for Oppie to travel the same distance.

Unfortunately, the people who designed the operations processes for the Lunakhods, and the people who actually operated them, are mostly long-dead (or at least long-retired); I'd have doubts about being able to pull out their lessons learned, or why they decided on such a low-latency paradigm vs. the plan-a-day's-worth-of-operations-and-let-'er-go paradigm we've used for our American Mars rovers.  It would be really interesting to see or hear any oral histories captured from those people.

Now, total travel distance over time is not necessarily the best metric for how to design tele-operations.  But it is one area where low-latency operations make a difference.  Again, though, it would be very interesting to see a rigorous study done to analyze both paradigms and see what might be gained by deploying tele-operators from Mars orbit and operating them in low-latency modes.
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline su27k

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #31 on: 05/21/2016 03:42 pm »
Some NASA guy was being interviewed on the Planetary.org podcast this week, and gave out some statistic about how long it would take a human geologist to complete the same work done by one of the rovers.  The answer was something like a few hours.

I disagree with using that comparison to justify human filghts to Mars.  It would not take a few hours, it would take 20 years.  Because the geologist is not on Mars, he is standing on Earth, at some space conference, wearing a business suit.  The robots have already been there, working.

By the time humans (geologists or otherwise) get to Mars, they will not have to compete against what robots can do now, but what they will be doing then.  Advances in AI and robot technology is advancing a lot faster than the willingness of politicians to fund manned Mars trips.

I think people need to be careful about applying the latest advances in AI and robotic technology to hypothetical Mars robotic missions. The traditional way of doing Mars robots are very conservative, MSL was launched in 2011, it uses RAD750 which is released in 2001, and RAD750 is the rad-hardened version of PowerPC 750, which is first released in 1997! So basically what we're seeing is Mars robotic hardware is 14 years behind the state of art at the time of launch, unless the developers of Mars robotic missions embrace COTS electronics I don't see this changes any time soon. So 20 years from now, humans on Mars wouldn't be competing with the AI/robotics 20 years in the future, they would only be competing with AI/robots about 5 years in the future, and that's assuming anyone bothers to develop a rad-hardened GPU...

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #32 on: 05/22/2016 10:39 pm »

So you quickly end up with the ability to only have an astronaut interact with the rover for a very limited amount of time, possibly for a very limited amount of time that the rover can actually do stuff. So the rover has all kinds of capabilities and the human isn't adding much.

Except eliminating latency in operations.


And still that question is unanswered--what is the benefit of doing that and for what operation? Eliminating latency for driving the rover? Or moving its arm? Or pressing "start" on the science instruments? Which rover operation is dramatically improved with a human much closer to make that decision? I've just seen this asserted repeatedly, but never actually analyzed.

Something that is also not examined is how you would design a rover for dual use so that it could be briefly (i.e. a few months) operated by somebody locally vs. many years of operations by somebody on Earth. That has not been done before, but may require careful systems design because of the way you would be communicating with it.

I quite agree that these are unanswered questions, the surface end of teloperated Mars missions has had very little thought, IMHO.

I would question the utility of an extended teleoperated mission, unless there is some driving need not to land. 
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #33 on: 05/22/2016 10:54 pm »
Some NASA guy was being interviewed on the Planetary.org podcast this week, and gave out some statistic about how long it would take a human geologist to complete the same work done by one of the rovers.  The answer was something like a few hours.

This has been said by many many people who have worked on actual Mars missions, not just some random NASA guy.  Steve Squyres, Steve Ruff, Jim Bell, Mike Malin, Ken Edgett, Colin Pillinger, Aaron Kindsi, Fredrick Taylor, and Paul Spudis come to mind. 

Quote
I disagree with using that comparison to justify human filghts to Mars.  It would not take a few hours, it would take 20 years.  Because the geologist is not on Mars, he is standing on Earth, at some space conference, wearing a business suit.  The robots have already been there, working.

Robots don't explore, people do. Robots are just tools. How much work would you expect to be done in 20 years by such tools?  That's nine windows, We know what will be send for two of those - Insight, ExoMars 2020, a Chinese rover, 2020

By the time humans (geologists or otherwise) get to Mars, they will not have to compete against what robots can do now, but what they will be doing then.  Advances in AI and robot technology is advancing a lot faster than the willingness of politicians to fund manned Mars trips.
[/quote]

Unmanned exploration is not advancing as fast as people imagine.  PLanetary landers today are not as advanced people were predicting 20 years ago.  There is no reason to expect that those in 20 years time will be that much more capable than those we have now.

I hope there are unmanned missions to Mars at every opportunity for the next 20 years.  They will be very useful pathfinders and context setters. But they will only achieve a tiny fraction of what a crewed mission will.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline savuporo

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #34 on: 05/23/2016 03:52 am »
Unfortunately, the people who designed the operations processes for the Lunakhods, and the people who actually operated them, are mostly long-dead (or at least long-retired); I'd have doubts about being able to pull out their lessons learned, or why they decided on such a low-latency paradigm vs. the plan-a-day's-worth-of-operations-and-let-'er-go paradigm we've used for our American Mars rovers.  It would be really interesting to see or hear any oral histories captured from those people.
Are you aware that NASA actually collaborated with Russian Lunokhod and Marsokhod designers starting from 1994 1992 ? TwoFour years before Sojourner
« Last Edit: 05/23/2016 05:05 am by savuporo »
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Offline kkattula

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #35 on: 05/23/2016 07:16 am »

And still that question is unanswered--what is the benefit of doing that and for what operation? Eliminating latency for driving the rover? Or moving its arm? Or pressing "start" on the science instruments? Which rover operation is dramatically improved with a human much closer to make that decision? I've just seen this asserted repeatedly, but never actually analyzed.

Something that is also not examined is how you would design a rover for dual use so that it could be briefly (i.e. a few months) operated by somebody locally vs. many years of operations by somebody on Earth. That has not been done before, but may require careful systems design because of the way you would be communicating with it.

You seem to have missed the bit about Base Camp.  Base camps are about support infrastructure for the final goal, in this case, Human Landing.

Using ROVs to clear a landing site, set up beacons for precision landing, start building a base with prelanded components, supplies etc.  Construction activities, not just science.

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #36 on: 05/23/2016 02:09 pm »
Unfortunately, the people who designed the operations processes for the Lunakhods, and the people who actually operated them, are mostly long-dead (or at least long-retired); I'd have doubts about being able to pull out their lessons learned, or why they decided on such a low-latency paradigm vs. the plan-a-day's-worth-of-operations-and-let-'er-go paradigm we've used for our American Mars rovers.  It would be really interesting to see or hear any oral histories captured from those people.
Are you aware that NASA actually collaborated with Russian Lunokhod and Marsokhod designers starting from 1994 1992 ? TwoFour years before Sojourner

Yep.  And JPL seemed to say "Thanks for your information, but it was Not Invented Here, so we won't be using any of it."

And it wasn't so much the Lunokhod/Marsokhod designers, it was the designer, singular.  A guy named Alexander Kemurdzhian.  Yes, he had a design team in the USSR back in the '60s, but I'm pretty certain he was the only person invited to "compare approaches on the design of planetary rovers" with designers at JPL.

IIRC, he brought a small test rover he had been playing with and demonstrated it for the JPL people, but again, this one didn't have any design heritage that was built into later JPL-designed rovers.  And from what I've seen of JPL people describing this encounter, they seemed more interested in the design aspect of the Soviet hardware -- not so much the operational paradigm, which is what I was suggesting we check into and see if there's any documentation about.

I think Kemurdzhian's biggest claim to fame, outside of Lunokhod, was the fact that he was able to put together, on extremely short notice, remote-operated rovers used to survey the damage on the roof of the reactor building at Chernobyl after the explosion and fire there.

Unfortunately, Kemurdzhian has been gone for more than a decade, and I'm pretty certain most of the people who operated the Lunokhods are no longer with us, either -- it's been coming up on half a century since they were active, after all.  So, that one encounter JPL had with Kemurdzhian was pretty much it, in terms of checking with those who operated the only real-time rovers ever operated off-Earth.

I'd love to see oral histories captured at that time that give details on rover operations discussions JPL may have had with Kemurdzhian, but I've never seen such come to light -- and, just to point out the obvious, the people at JPL who talked with Kemurdzhian back in the '90s are likely now, too, getting long in the tooth, are gone, or are retired.  Think about the scene in "The Martian" where they had to gather up surviving members of the Pathfinder team, and recall thinking to yourself "I bet there wouldn't be that many survivors of that team by the 2030s..."   ;)
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline savuporo

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #37 on: 05/23/2016 04:17 pm »
Yep.  And JPL seemed to say "Thanks for your information, but it was Not Invented Here, so we won't be using any of it."

And it wasn't so much the Lunokhod/Marsokhod designers, it was the designer, singular.  A guy named Alexander Kemurdzhian.  Yes, he had a design team in the USSR back in the '60s, but I'm pretty certain he was the only person invited to "compare approaches on the design of planetary rovers" with designers at JPL

IIRC, he brought a small test rover he had been playing with and demonstrated it for the JPL people, but again, this one didn't have any design heritage that was built into later JPL-designed rovers.  And from what I've seen of JPL people describing this encounter, they seemed more interested in the design aspect of the Soviet hardware -- not so much the operational paradigm, which is what I was suggesting we check into and see if there's any documentation about.

I think Kemurdzhian's biggest claim to fame, outside of Lunokhod, was the fact that he was able to put together, on extremely short notice, remote-operated rovers used to survey the damage on the roof of the reactor building at Chernobyl after the explosion and fire there.

Unfortunately, Kemurdzhian has been gone for more than a decade, and I'm pretty certain most of the people who operated the Lunokhods are no longer with us, either -- it's been coming up on half a century since they were active, after all.  So, that one encounter JPL had with Kemurdzhian was pretty much it, in terms of checking with those who operated the only real-time rovers ever operated off-Earth.

I'd love to see oral histories captured at that time that give details on rover operations discussions JPL may have had with Kemurdzhian, but I've never seen such come to light -- and, just to point out the obvious, the people at JPL who talked with Kemurdzhian back in the '90s are likely now, too, getting long in the tooth, are gone, or are retired.  Think about the scene in "The Martian" where they had to gather up surviving members of the Pathfinder team, and recall thinking to yourself "I bet there wouldn't be that many survivors of that team by the 2030s..."   ;)

Thats quite a limited view of the history. No, it wasnt A. Kemurdzhian alone. No, it wasnt a demonstration to 'JPL people' - Marsokhod based field campaigns were mainly run by NASA Ames and McDonnell Douglas, with instigation by Planetary Society, and continued well into 1999.
And, the field tests of Marsokhod and multiple other rover designs from different NASA field centers ended up contributing mostly exactly to operational side of missions like Pathfinder and MERs. There were simulated field tests with long time delays as well.
Reports are available on NTRS and referenced in other publications - for instance, Marsokhod fields tests are referenced in landing site workshops for Pathfinder.
The hardware itself was subject to multiple iterations of mission proposals like Mars Together, which all died for multiple reasons.
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Offline redliox

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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #38 on: 05/23/2016 06:43 pm »
Do we have any idea what orbit around Mars this station would occupy?  I can only assume it'd end up somewhere near synchronous orbit, or at least somewhere between Deimos' (30 hours) and Phobos' (8 hour) orbit.
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Re: Lockheed Martin Orbiting Mars Laboratory discussion thread.
« Reply #39 on: 05/23/2016 06:48 pm »
Using ROVs to clear a landing site, set up beacons for precision landing, start building a base with prelanded components, supplies etc.  Construction activities, not just science.

And again, I note that the value of low-latency telerobotics is usually asserted, but not actually studied or demonstrated. People say "of course you want to eliminate the time delay," without looking carefully at each operation (driving, moving an arm, operating a science payload, surveying terrain) and asking what is the difference between low-latency and high-latency for that operation.

So, for example, "set up beacons for precision landing"--why do you need low-latency telerobotics to do that? If all you're doing is dropping some radar reflectors or some active beacons in several locations, for a landing that is going to happen at least two years in the future, who cares if it takes a week to do that or a day?

Looking at these things also requires not only that you look at the benefit to doing that, but also the cost. For example, if it requires 50% of one crewmember's time for months on end, might it be cheaper even if you had to use a dozen or more people on the ground for a year to do the same thing? It is a big systems engineering question.

I'm not saying that low-latency telerobotics have no value, but that there has been almost no evaluation done to demonstrate that they have some value, and precisely what that value is.

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