Mars Society Proposed Using Robotic Cybertrucks
- by NextBigFuture
- Sep 20, 2024
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Brian Wang
The Mars Society explored the idea of using advanced robotics for Mars exploration, as evidenced by competitions like the Telerobotic Mars Expedition Design Competition. Elon Musk and Tesla and SpaceX teams have talked about adapting the Cybertruck for Mars. Elon has joked that the Cybertruck is the official truck of Mars.
Robotically controlled Cybertrucks could be part of a Mars exploration system that also includes SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket according to mission plans suggested by Mars Society co-founder Robert Zubrin, retired NASA engineer Tony Muscatello and business analyst Kent Nebergall. September 20, 2024 at 11:36 am
The cybertruck would need a LOT of work to operate on Mars. It relies pretty heavily on air cooling of components, and Martian air is a pretty decent vacuum by most standards, certainly not dense enough for air cooling, or at least not at high power levels. You’d probably have to connect heat pipes between a large radiator and the major heat producing components. Though the reduced gravity, and lack of surfaces allowing for high speeds would probably keep power usage down.
Temperatures are typically low enough to give the battery packs problems, it would need to be insulated. Ideally you’d add an RTG to continually top off the battery, and use some of the waste heat to keep it at a good operating temperature. But you might go for a second best solution just to avoid regulatory problems, like a phase change heat reservoir to get through the night.
The cybertruck suspension and ground clearance, frankly, are NOT off road rated. You’d need to bump up the ground clearance a lot, and retune the suspension.
I think a Mars truck could easily use a lot of the cybertruck’s components, of course. But it would be a substantially new design once you had altered it enough to operate long term on Mars.
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