NASA Has Innovative Concept to Build Transport Railway System on the Moon
Call it the Little Engine that Might. NASA says it is exploring the concept of building a railway system on the moon for the day when it becomes not just an object in the sky, but a working mine for minerals that…
Call it the Little Engine that Might.
NASA says it is exploring the concept of building a railway system on the moon for the day when it becomes not just an object in the sky, but a working mine for minerals that Earthlings might covet.
The concept is called Flexible Levitation on a Track, or FLOAT, and it envisions levitating magnetic robots shuttling about 100 tons of materials per day on the surface of the moon, according to the Daily Mail.
Project leader Ethan Schaler, a robotics engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, outlined the goals of the project on NASA’s website.
“We want to build the first lunar railway system, which will provide reliable, autonomous, and efficient payload transport on the Moon,” he wrote.
“A durable, long-life robotic transport system will be critical to the daily operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030’s, as envisioned in NASA