There are a lot of similarities though, rocket ships run on software.
That said, there are huge challenges in robot manipulators, signals management (space is noisy) and vacuum operations.
One of the things I've been noodling on is a self contained mineral extraction pipeline. You know you suck in raw material on one side and pull out some useful mineral or minerals out of the other. There are several challenges here, one being that many existing extraction processes rely on either an abundance of water or power or both, and often were designed assuming gravity worked :-). So for grins and giggles I've been noodling on "The Mosquito" which is a cross between a well auger and a science payload. It combines three things I find fascinating, robotics, space, and systems design so it is a lot of fun.
That said, there are huge challenges in robot manipulators, signals management (space is noisy) and vacuum operations.
One of the things I've been noodling on is a self contained mineral extraction pipeline. You know you suck in raw material on one side and pull out some useful mineral or minerals out of the other. There are several challenges here, one being that many existing extraction processes rely on either an abundance of water or power or both, and often were designed assuming gravity worked :-). So for grins and giggles I've been noodling on "The Mosquito" which is a cross between a well auger and a science payload. It combines three things I find fascinating, robotics, space, and systems design so it is a lot of fun.