Re: Discovery Channel ----- Original Message ----- From: Gary McMurtry To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2002 10:32 PM Subject: Re: Discovery Channel
The contacts are: Frank Carsey, JPL--"Frank D. Carsey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Scott Anderson, University of Hawaii--"F. Scott Anderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> NASA has funded and may continue to fund this type of work. Proposals are in review and pending. I think the Icepick group could contribute to this effort. I'll write more later on ideas how this may be accomplished. ______________________ JPL is indeed continuing to do design work on Cryobots (see the following passage from the "list of Icepick-related documents" I sent this group last night): "Unfortunately, the very best detailed document on JPL's current design for a Cryobot isn't yet on the Web: 'Cryobot: An Ice Penetrating Robotic Vehicle for Mars and Europa', by Wayne Zimmerman, Robert Bonitz and Jason Feldman -- but it can be found in print in the proceedings of the 2001 IEEE Aerospace Conference. Zimmerman, however, provides a nice capsule summary of the JPL Cryobot's design in his 1999 document 'Europa: Extreme Communication Technologies for Extreme Conditions' ( http://techreports.jpl.nasa.gov/1999/99-2051.pdf ); and Frank D. Carsey -- another of JPL's prime reserachers on this subject -- has a good overview of the overall problem in his piece 'Exploring Europa's Ocean: A Challenge for Marine Technology of This Century' ( http://techreports.jpl.nasa.gov/2000/00-0221.pdf ). Be warned, however, that for some reason these last two papers -- along with a few of the others in JPL's Technical Reports file -- are stored in a format which is remarkably hard to print out; don't try to print more than 1 or 2 pages of them at a time or your computer's memory is likely to overload, and be prepared to wait for a while." By the way, regarding some of the suggestions being floated around by this group's members: the current plan is to indeed give the Cryobot some ability to veer slowly to the side to avoid obstacles detected by radar and/or sonar below it, using several different jets of hot water (NOT steam) pumped down through different spots spaced around the nose. (Pumped jets of hot water have also turned out to be far more efficient at melting through ice than simply heating the Cryobot's metal nose is; they're now part of the standard design.) Also, there will have to be some peripheral small jets of hot water on the Cryobot's sides to keep the meltwater layer from refreezing around them before the Cryobot has slid all the way down through. As for those radio transponders, J. Michael Parenti is right: the plan is to have each one, on release from the Cryobot's rear, automatically extend several spring-loaded prongs to anchor itself to the walls of the ice tunnel (which is bound to freeze solid again just a fraction of a meter behind the Cryobot). But they will have to be very low frequency to transmit through ice -- so LF that I doubt they're available commercially. A pity the Icepick site doesn't have a file vault to store files sent to it by the readers: I'd love to read out and store that IEEE Aerospace piece by Zimmerman et al, which is an extremely detailed and up to date description of how NASA's own Cryobot design is evolving. See his JPL Technical Paper, though, as a partial substitute. == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
