Red and The Robots
February 24, 2009 by david.gump
Red Whittaker’s rovers have already gone where no robot
has gone before. Will one of them make it to the moon?
By Geoffrey Little
Air & Space Magazine, January 01, 2009
The scraping of metal wheels on loose rocks and the clicking sounds of mechanical actuators alert me to the lunar rover’s presence before I see it. Turning, I come face to face with the robot as it emerges from a shallow ditch, its two mast-mounted camera “eyes” gazing at the ground, then tilting up to scout a way forward. Less than five feet tall and three feet across, it’s an unassuming ’bot: a truncated pyramid plastered with solar panels, moving on four wheels tucked underneath. As it passes me, the rover steers off to the right and trundles slowly on a 500-yard trek toward its goal: a crude mockup of the Apollo 11 lunar lander base, spray-painted gold— an incongruous sight here on the banks of the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh. …more
