Michelle's school is putting on a production of Les Mis this week, we caught the matinee (how can I make a french e with an accent?) and I was really impressed. That's an ambitious musical to perform for a professional troupe, let alone some high school students. And I have to say it was nice to walk in on Michelle's grade 7 class and have them remember me and start shouting out the details of my story that I read to them, waaay back in September. They wanted me to make up another story for them on the spot but I was literally saved by the bell.
And now, in true Victor Hugo fashion, I will completely change the subject and ramble on about something altogether unrelated for a while.
NASA put on a Regolith Excavation Challenge, in which the object was to design a machine for digging Lunar regolith. The rules were fairly straightforward- it had to be less than 40 kilos, totally autonomous and had to dig 150 kilos (330 lbs) of regolith in a half hour. No one won. At first I was a little surprised by that- I mean I can dig over 80 tons- 160,000 lbs- in one scoop, not even a minute. How hard would it be to design a little miniature shovel or loader that could do the scale equivalent? But I guess the point is to develop something lightweight enough to be economically feasible to send to the moon, that can work in a vacuum, under radiation and micrometeorite bombardment. And it has to be a robot.
But still. Next year they're offering $750,000. How much you figure it would cost to build something?