During the Fall 2004 semester, the students of the graduate astronautics class ASTE 557 (formerly AME 557), Space Exploration Architectures Concept Synthesis Studio, outlined a vision that returns humans to the moon for a sustained presence, fueled by commercial involvement and public support. The rationale for this vision is to tap the elements that elicit the most response from broad segments of humanity, such as competition, excitement, personal involvement and commerce.

This led to the vision of a series of races that culminate in a manned race on the lunar surface. The race series is called HERCULES, an acronym for Human Earth-Moon Rover Competition to Upgrade Lunar Exploration Systems.

The races on Earth, one in the Sahara and the other in the Arctic, allow the contestants to evolve their capabilities in a spiral manner. It also allows corporate participation and sponsorship as the race matures, and sustains public interest over a period of time.

Minimal infrastructure is needed on the moon, to minimize delay and reduce cost. The hardware that is required will flow into future missions and capabilities. Small base camps are landed a priori at the lunar equator and the South Pole. Lunar medevacs enable emergency rescue of stranded rovers in a very short period of time. Resupply depots are landed at several locations along the route, and also act as breakdown and solar flare shelters. A robust communications and navigation system allows good situational awareness and live, commercial, consumer grade televising of much of the mission. The Earth-Moon transportation system is assumed to be a commercial version of the launchers and spacecrafts baselined in NASA's Vision for Space Exploration. The system is designed for safe, versatile and affordable transfer of crew and cargo to and from anywhere on the lunar surface.

And in the spirit of competition, two rover groups of students were formed to design entrants for the race. The two teams, SELENOPEDE and ARTEMIS, took quite different approaches for their designs. Each addressed several aspects of the challenges these rovers would have to face, including propulsion and locomotion, thermal dissipation, radiation shielding, and crew operations.

The team presentations can be found below, along with the class flyer.

These were presented to a select panel that included former moonwalker Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Ron Creel (Apollo rover design team), and several other distinguished members from NASA, industry, and creative professions.

Class Flyer

Team Presentations (PowerPoint format)

Introduction
Vision
Architecture
Earth-Moon Transport

Transport Video (25 MB)

Start/Finish Line Habitat
Waypoints
Communication & Navigation

Satellite Orbits Video (69 MB)
Satellite Ground Tracks Video (69 MB)

EVA
Rescue
Rover Route
Rover A - SELENOPEDE

Design, Life Support, Timeline
Power, Radiation, Thermal,
Navigation, Operations

Rover B - ARTEMIS

Dust Mitigation, Radiation
Race Strategy, Piloting

Download all presentations and videos (zip file, 150 MB)
Download all presentations (zip file, 47 MB)

Participants:

Professor Madhu Thangavelu
Sonya Collier	Sean Fierman	Doro Garcia
Dean Hallmark	Jesse Hecht	Jonathan Hofeller
Mike Luna	Cedrick Ngalande	Jeremy Pollay
Derek Shannon	Kazuya Suzuki	Ryan Woolley
Patrick Zeitouni