[EricH]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

I didn't know about Lunabotics, that's pretty cool; is that a yearly thing with different games each year, or is it new, or what?

Go to the site that two of us linked to back on page one. If you can't find it, http://www.nasa.gov/offices/educatio...unabotics.html. You can see prior years by following the YouTube link on the left side of that page.

The game is simple: Dig dirt from a given zone, and bring it back to where you started from. This part doesn't change much if any year-to-year. The part that changes? Size and mass requirements.

So why is this a college-level competition, you ask? Because there is one requirement that makes life miserable, and one feature of the game that does the same thing. Everything has to be lunar-plausible, and the dirt is a lunar soil simulant which has some nasty properties.