One Day You May Work On The Moon ... Remotely

To me, a robot is a machine that is driven autonomously by a computer. Its shape may be human-like (think C3PO) or not (think R2D2), it doesn't really matter.

On the other hand, a waldo is something that looks like a robot but it is 100% driven by a human. This human may be in the same room, in the next room, in the next county or on another continent. The waldo could even be on the International Space Station (ISS) while the operator is on Earth.

For example, the Astrobee is a little cube waldo used onboard the ISS to give ground controllers additional monitoring capability and to assist the astronauts with a limited range of tasks.

The technology is in its early stages but it looks promising and has the potential to provide a lot more manpower all over the space station. Remote waldos could even one day greatly reduce the need for astronauts to go on extra-vehicular activities (EVAs).

On To The Moon

Lately, there is a lot of talk about a space station around the Moon and even a possible Moon colony. At first, manpower at this lunar space station or the new lunar colony will be severely limited.

Supplying food, water and oxygen will be a major expense and it will greatly limit the number people that could be sent on any moon base construction job. Also, humans need to rest which is an economic problem because it cost so much to get them there in the first place.

Enter the waldos.

Instead of sending people to the Moon to perform a hazardous vacuum construction job, send a small army of waldos. This would completely eliminate the hazard to human life and each waldo could work 24 hours a day just by passing its control off to different people through the day.

There would need to be several different waldo designs to work on the several different aspects of moon base construction.

Bulldozer Waldos:

As the name suggests, this would be a simple bulldozer remotely operated by people here on Earth. The regolith for the base will need to be leveled and prepared to make way for the large base modules.

Driller Waldos:

From time-to-time drilling and blasting activities may be needed especially if the base needs to go underground. The bulldozer waldo and the driller waldo could even be combined.

Assembler and Moving Waldos:

Modules will be arriving from Earth at a steady pace on autonomous rockets no doubt. These might be flat packed items, in the same manner that Ikea furniture is shipped, and it will need to be unloaded and then assembled. It might even be best to contract this remote waldo control job to an Ikea factory employee or even a regular Ikea customer :)

Overhead Crane Waldos:

One of the first items that will need to be unloaded and assembled will be an overhead crane of some type. No doubt some of the moon base components will be quite large and need hefty equipment to erect them into place. A mobile and/or stationary cranes or cranes could do the trick here.

Fine Control Waldos:

Once built there will be delicate and complicated life support and science equipment that will need to get up and running to generate oxygen and heat etc. for the soon-to-arrive astronauts. The equipment will need to be cleaned of dust, maintained and repaired from time-to-time. This will mean that waldos with manipulators that have very fine and dexterous controls will be a necessity. Even after the astronauts arrive they will likely be too busy to do many of the more mundane tasks so these waldos will always be needed.

Prospecting Waldos:

What are humans going to do on the Moon? Mine valuable resources of course (if it has any). At the very least sources of water would be valuable as well as any minerals that could be chemically reduced to release oxygen for breathing.

What About the Time-Lag?

The Moon is about 360,000 to 400,000 kilometres from the Earth depending on where it is in its orbit, meaning that it takes light about 1.2 to 1.3 seconds for a signal to get from there to here. The overall round trip would therefore be at least 2.4 to 2.6 seconds.

This time lag is going to cause some minor control difficulties but should be something that an operator here on Earth would likely get used to fairly easily.

If the waldo had some advanced AI onboard with just the operator overseeing its actions then the job could proceed much more smoothly.

The Work Day

As already mentioned, the waldos themselves would be working 24 hours a day and seven days a week to build the moon base. An individual operator may only sign in to work for a 4 hour shift before logging out and passing control over to the next operator.

The Deep Space Network has radio dishes in Goldstone California, near Madrid Spain and near Canberra Australia so that communication with the Moon base construction team can be continuous no matter where the Moon is in the sky. Actually I rather doubt that those large dishes will be needed for the communication anyways (small ones should suffice).

Closing Words

If the remote waldos had binocular cameras for imaging then the operator could wear a VR helmet and get a real feel of being on the Moon itself. This would likely be a necessity as it would give the person a depth of field so that the job could proceed more quickly, more safely and more efficiently.

In general, working remotely on the Moon would be a unique work day.

Wake up here on Earth, get breakfast, drive to work, strap on your VR helmet, sit down in your bulldozer control rig and start working on the Moon. Watching the Sun rise on a lovely lunar morning would be a sight indeed.

As long as you didn't run over any astronauts by accident it would always be a good work day. Also it never rains on the Moon so it is always a sunny day. Except when it is night time, which is two weeks long. Sigh.

Thank you for reading my post.

Post Sources

[1] ISS research experiments.
[2] Astrobee.
[3] Remote space robots.
[4] ISS Remote Servicing Systems.
[5] The Moon.
[6] International Space Station.
[7] Deep Space Network.

Check this one out. It is a web site that tells you what space probes are downloading data right now.
[8] Deep Space Network Now.