Hello and Welcome back to our fourth Fan Friday. You ask and we reply, while also giving away some sneak a peek at what we are doing. If you want to take a look at the previous questions go to our blog.
We got some new questions from you and selected five out of them this time with focus on statistics and technology.
Stats "How many people are working at PTS and how do you organize yourself?"
Currently we have about 70 people working at PTS; we have Scientists, Engineers and Entrepreneurs helping us to get Asimov to the moon.
We're organized into small sub-teams with a teamleader for each team coordinating the workflow. The most visible team to you is the Press- and Homepage-Team with me, Daniel, as it's leader. Some other teams are the Aerospace-Team with the former Apollo veteran Jack Crenshaw, the Electronics-Team with Karsten, the Mechanical-Engineering-Team with Juergen or our Software-Developement-Team with Wes at their top. All in all we have 12 different sub-teams.
Social “Part Time Scientists often announce new partners. They also eat many pizzas. So will one of your next partners be a pizzeria?”
Well, we haven't thought about that option, but it's a good idea to look for such a partner. I guess it could be an advantage to have someone delivering you pizzas for free. The most difficult part would be to decide which to ask pizzeria, there so many delicious options ...
Stats "How much of your daily time do you spend for PTS?"
That the depends on how much time each person can offer. That ranges from one evening per week to a full time involvement. Most people are quite deeply involved with PTS and very passionate about their part in the team. Some of our part-timers spend more than 5 hours a day on that project although they have a full-time job or even a family with kids. For example Juergen, our Technical-Engineering Lead got a job, a family with four kids and is currently building a house. We have no idea when he finds the time to keep Engineering going. It's somehow mystically! On the other side few of our team members only help from time to time like doing video or image editing works.
Tech "How fast can your rover go?"
It always depends on how heavy the rover is respectively what material it is made of. And it depends on the location of measurement: on earth and moon gravity varies. The measurements are also heavily dependent on the version of the GEP (general electronic package) being used. This simply means all the electronics that make the rover move. These subsystems are always undergoing consequent changes and are being optimized almost weekly for power consumption, speed, dimension, radiation and their temperature profiles. Thus we got drastic speed increases over the past months.
However the first real measurements we're mere 2 meters per minute which we expect to be slightly succeeded by 30 meters a minute in upcoming measurements. Certifications and tests are a consequent process and we're eager to tell you more about it in our video blog soon! One reason to travel the lunar surface a bit more slowly is to avoid running into obstacles due to the 3 second signal delay.
Tech "Why does Asimov only got 4 wheels? Wouldn't 6 be better?"
The decision to only use a 4 wheel configuration depended on multiple factors like the freedom of movement. With 4 wheels mounted freely rotatable you can move and rotate in ways not possible in a 6 or 8 wheel setup. Another reason is a rather practical one, each pair of wheels adds at least 2 more drives with their corresponding electronics to the subsystem, thus means higher processing overhead - yes resources are sparse! And more power consumption which due to the increased weight again could prove fatal for the power budget. Overall balancing all aspects of a lunar rover like weight, power budget, freedom of movement and complexity all against each other confronts you with a lot of complex choices. We believe that our current setup will prove to be most suitable for a equatorial exploration mission.
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