WEBVTT

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Hello, my name is Mike Benji and
I work for NASA at Kennedy Space

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Center in our Research and
Technology Management Program

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Office.

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I'm here today to tell you about
a 2024 Phase One STTR subtopic.

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It's titled T704 Lunar Surface
Site Preparation.

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The objective of this subtopic
is to help us in our plans to

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establish a sustained presence
on the surface of the Moon.

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Specifically, as we are working
to build structures and

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habitats, even landing pads and
different sorts of facilities,

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we will need to be preparing the
surface much as we do for

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construction on the surface of
the Earth.

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Normally this involves site
preparation where we have to do

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some grading and some smoothing
out of the land and preparing it

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so that we can build it on top
of it.

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These are standard practices on
Earth, and they've been done

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within the civil engineering
realm for for many years.

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However, we now have the
challenge of taking those types

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of skill sets and adapting them
to the surface of the moon.

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The surface of the moon has 1/6
of gravity.

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It has no atmosphere and has
other environmental factors that

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make this tool set something
that's going to be a fairly

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unique and new experience.

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And this is what we're looking
for within the subtopic.

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Typically, a lot of subtopics
that NASA puts out are seeking

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incremental improvements on
existing technologies.

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For example, we want to see more
efficient solar panels or

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something like that.

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This case is a little bit
different.

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This is a clean page.

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There are no civil engineering
tool sets for doing work on

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lunar surfaces.

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This is a brand new area.

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So the gap that we're dealing
with here is actually pretty

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large and we have a lot of
interest in seeing what sort of

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creative solutions the industry
can provide.

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So what does a successful
proposal to this subtopic look

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like?

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Well, you are in the STTR
solicitation.

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That means we are looking for a
strong partnership between the

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small business and a Research
Institute.

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The idea here is to leverage a
partnership with the Research

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Institute to help you on the
areas that you may not be

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familiar with or more
importantly, the areas that

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academia has really helped prove
out over the years.

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Civil engineering is a fairly
mature subject, but the idea is,

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let's take the best out of this
mature subject with some

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innovative thoughts from a small
business and combine them.

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It's that teamwork that we
really want to see for a

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successful proposal.

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The impacts of this sort of work
will extend past the lunar

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infrastructure development we're
doing as well.

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Typically, we tend to see that
companies who have been

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successful in developing new
space technology can often see

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some sort of benefits for
terrestrial use as well.

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In our cases, as we've been
working on the problems and

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challenges of moving the lunar
regolith, which is the lunar

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dirt around, and figuring out a
lot of these infrastructure

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challenges, we've noticed that
there's a lot of parallels with

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the mining industry.

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For example, Our efforts to try
to see how much of this stuff

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can be done remotely or unmanned
really closely match the

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interest in the mining industry
for hazardous situations in

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areas where robotics can really
help improve mining safety.

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That's just one quick example.

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But we think the mining industry
as well as the construction

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industry could stand to benefit
from any sort of developments

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that come out of the subtopic.