Tires on the ground ...

Here's the glass buckyball. I split it in half, so that the rod, at rear, can pass through it, it's that which pushes the thing.

Mark, I can thicken the wall but then it won't be able to flick over and still work. Perhaps a piston to right it if that happens?

A sudden thought, perhaps if we build the buckyball with nodes and springs, we could scrunch it up for travel.

<b>[Mark Vitrone] "I own a 35 square inch flat solar panel somewhere in my classroom. I am going to measure its voltage and current output and then design an energy budget around it."</b>

I believe that the average energy density of light on Mars is about 40% of what it is on Earth. And it varies quite a bit over the course of a year because of the eccintricity of Mars' orbit. (Average is around 590 [W/m^2], and the variation from max to min is about 72%.)

There are seldom any clouds to reduce insolation, but those sand storms do a good job. And even when there are no storms the atmosphere is "dusty".

<b>[Stoat] "Mark, I can thicken the wall but then it won't be able to flick over and still work. Perhaps a piston to right it if that happens?"</b>

If the wheel diameter is larger than the thickness of the body, and the axels are on the center plane of the body, then a four wheel rover will have ground clearance whether right side up or up side down.

With my original specs (body 1 cm thick, four wheels each 5 cm in diameter), there should be 2 cm of clearance between the bottom of the body and the ground, whichever way the rover is oriented.

===

Tracks around the wheels are optional. I'm sure NASA looked at tracks vs trackless. Does anyone know why they chose trackless for their rovers?

LB

Stoat,

That's an interesting variation on the mono-ball idea. (I deliberately made my specs minimal, even vague, in the hope that this sort of thing would happen.)

<b>[Stoat] "A sudden thought, perhaps if we build the buckyball with nodes and springs, we could scrunch it up for travel."</b>

Has anyone see those toy "stick figures" with a spring loaded string that runs through it? If you press on the spring the spring tension on the string is reduced and the stick figure collapses. Remove pressure from the spring (restoring spring tension to the string) and the stick figure stands up again.

Re: Stoat's first rover drawing (on page 2)

<b>[Stoat] "A quick go at making a rover. I wanted the simplest steering, which I think would be from the centre, rather like a dumper truck's. The problem I discovered is that the wheels need to be on longish arms to get clearance."</b>

The simplest (and cheapest and lightest) steering will be to stop or reverse the wheels on one side or the other. No suspension (other than a springy axel?), no steering mechanism, just a straight axel. Motor inside the wheel, with the motor bearings doing double duty as the wheel bearings.

Three speeds - forward, off, reverse.

I like the idea of tracked vehicles like the design I proposed because of the ability to crawl well across varied terrain. Pebbles, rocks, and dips in the way can be traversed without making navigational corrections allowing for my energy being spent exploring and less running servos. Cheapness and durability as well as making good use of surface area with the telescoping phototropic solar array. Heck, the thing could probably be made half out of plastic, lets send the plans to radio shack and see what the toy makers can construct. These folks have more experience at this than NASA and JPL put together. Mark