What would land vehicles designed to operate in a perpetual hurricane look like?

Question

Never mind why there's a perpetual hurricane. This is about the vehicles going into and out of it.

Let's say that there's a perpetual hurricane that constantly "hovers" in one location - say, over northern Africa, if that's relevant to the question. It's been there for 2 million years, if that's relevant either. It doesn't have an eye, if that's relevant either. Yes, I know it's not a normal hurricane. No, that does not matter.

There are a bunch of alien artifacts embedded into the ground within this hurricane. Some of them are too large to move out of it - we're talking "skyscraper-sized".

This means that, in order to research these things, people must go into the hurricane.

Air travel is certainly going to be riskier than land or sea travel, and since the hurricane is entirely over land, sea travel (via something resembling a submarine, probably) is not viable.

Take into account the following conditions:

• Flying vegetation, rock chunks, sand, etc. - if it can be blown, it's flying around in there, and statistically speaking it'll hit something eventually. Sure, most of it was stripped away during the first few thousand years of the hurricane, but occasionally the hurricane pulls some vegetation out of the swamp region, or desert winds funnel sand into the low-pressure region it occupies, or it chips off a chunk of rock, or someone looses a glove, etc.

• Constant wind that ranges from "breeze" (outlying areas) up to 250 kilometers per hour (core). It always blows counterclockwise, if that's relevant.

• Visibility that rapidly decreases the closer to the core you go.

• 100% humidity, all the time, every time, unless you're in the outlying regions and not the hurricane itself.

• High air temperature.

• Potential tornados embedded in the hurricane.

• Constant, constant, constant torrential rainfall; even the outlying swamps see rain on a daily basis.

• Potentially very lumpy (if physically smooth) terrain towards the core where rock formations have been exposed.

What would be the design features of a ground vehicle designed to operate inside this environment?

Answer 1

Trains.

[ https://www.earthmech.com/projects_cut_and_cover_tunnels.php

Your engineers will make a cut-and-cover tunnel from an entry site to a place near the large artifacts of interest. The tunnel will be dug and then covered with precast concrete forms which will be brought through the already-covered section. In the dry desert (as you specify) it will be easy to dig a trench and the concrete should resist wind abrasion for decades. Once covered the tracks will be laid and next stop, alien artifacts!

The covered tunnel will allow safe travel back and forth and also the safe retrieval of large artifacts. And a tunnel through the storm is very cool and full of potential for a fiction. It is very different in the tunnel and in the storm outside.

Answer 2

tread vehicles.

Erosion is going to leave you with little beside rock and gravel, possibly mud in places with water and vegetation. So you are driving over rough rocky ground or muddy swamps. So you need vehicles that can handle slick soft terrain and hard debris fields with equal success. At the same time you want something heavy enough to not be bothered by high wind. That means tread vehicles or at least something like a Stryker with many sets of wheels. they are the only thing that can drive freely over such ground.

preferably something designed for maximum mobility like one of the early trench crossing tanks or the snow vehicle above. It does not need armor or a gun so you can reduce the weight a lot, but you can't make it too light, it needs weight to resist tornado strength winds.

Answer 3

What is the substrate?

The terrain under the hurricane will have a lot more to do with what your vehicles look like than the winds themselves. If the hurricane has worn away all the land, then you'll have shallow seas (with wide shallow barges, or semi-submersibles since you said no submarines). Boats may even push themselves along with long poles to provide both push and traction. If the whole thing is a waterlogged mess, then large airboat-like vehicles will predominate (so the weight slides over the surface) with either swamp wheels or some kind of similar thrust (again, poles might be useful). Rocky, worn aeolian landscape means large all-terrain wheeled or tracked vehicles like big tanks. Expect lots of traction to be needed regardless, so a vehicle consisting mostly of wheels is possible. I could even imagine a large walker vehicle consisting of a double set of large pads that alternately lift and move forward he heavy body of the vehicle.

Your hurricane is predictable, so the worst part of a hurricane is gone. Predictable high winds always coming from a predictable direction will simply be the default. Your vehicles will be HEAVY, regardless of what the local conditions look like. Mass will mean they can move when they want, and sit still when they want. In fact, electric vehicles with wind turbines (robust to withstand abuse, but predictable high winds mean even clunky turbines can make power) would be perfect. They run, and if the charge gets low, they stop until they recharge.

Predictable high winds could even mean that early intrepid explorers have gone before, with ultra-robust sails propelling vehicles using the same rules that apply to sailing ships. I imagine a Romanesque barge with sails resembling the head of a plow resting next to your ruins, where ancient explorers went well before modern times (perhaps there are even ancient accounts of such expeditions to entice modern explorers with hints about the relics).

Answer 4

Large inflated tyres to cope with the surface ... and a variety of sails, right down to a small folding sheet metal sail for the inner core region.

The forces of sailing dictate a wide track to keep the vehicle upright (and constant vigilance on the sheets in gustier conditions : see image below) ... probably adopting the common terrestrial three wheel form to suit.

Image from Wikipedia

Small (personal transport) ones will be relatively light, such that the pilot can manhandle them round most obstacles, relying on protective gear and helmets to cope with dust and flying stones, up to about 120km/h. Using these, (even reefing the metal stormsail) at 250kph is strictly for the Hells Angels. Costumes somewhere between biker leathers, and pirates, but with medieval armour helmets...

If you're venturing into the core regions, streamlined (but somewhat sandblasted) steel hulls with armoured glass windows are the order of the day; and if you get stuck, you need every crew member in suits of armour (Kevlar or medieval) on a lever (probably a spare spar) to recover the vehicle.

Something resembling a junk rig (but smaller, and each sail panel is a steel plate) would be appropriate for the core regions, for the easiest possible sail management. Blondie Hasler, sailing Jester in the first OSTAR (single handed transatlantic race) famously spent most of the race in the cabin, leaving it only six times to adjust sail... (image from the Yachting Monthly article)

But sail plans in the outer region will adapt to lighter winds, and the need for performance.

What makes sails logical for this job?

• Per the terms of the question, you have a guaranteed, reliable, free power source! Why would anyone consider another one?
• It is adaptable to varying wind speeds, by adding sail area in light winds, reefing in heavy winds, and steel stormsails in the core.
• Lightweight engineless vehicles can be levered, pulled, dug out of trouble more easily
• Speeds (on some points of sailing) can be several times the windspeed if terrain allows
• Suitable for use on other planets (image from the Wiki below)
• And of course it's fun!

Answer 5

Your prompt has a couple of contradicting things in it. Your perpetual hurricane would not have constant hurricane-style rainfall in your scenario. You specifically require the hurricane to be over land. Rainfall has to go somewhere, and hurricanes dump rain faster than it can soak into the ground or run off into larger bodies of water. That means the hurricane has either created a body of water under itself (meaning no land), or the hurricane isn't generating appreciable amounts of rainfall. I'm assuming the latter is the case here. That also avoids the conservation-of-mass question of where the storm is sourcing the water for the infinite rain.

To be effective in hurricane-force winds, you want to minimize your cross-section from the wind's point of view. Your vehicle would be very low to the ground, short, and would have a wide base to make it harder to flip. A rigid skirt would almost drag the ground, to minimize the amount of air that can get underneath you. If you know the direction that the wind is blowing, you can angle your top surface slightly to convert that airflow into downforce (similar to how a spoiler works). Staying close to the ground also minimizes the likelihood of being struck by flying debris.

Having a good grip on the ground will keep you from blowing away, but it also makes it hard to move. I don't know what your tech level is here, but the best way to move around in a situation like this would be with a set of stout legs built kind of like an alligator's. Each "foot" would have claws that would penetrate into and grip the ground below you. Your vehicle would slowly crawl forward. Wheel and treads wouldn't work as well; they provide provide plenty of friction in the direction of travel, but they don't do a lot to prevent the storm from pushing you sideways. Clawed feet are more like anchors, preventing you from moving in any direction. Hunkering down with a tight-enough grip can let you survive a brief encounter with a tornado.

A vehicle built like this can also make your excavation easier. Once you arrive to your destination, the vehicle lowers itself all the way to the ground. The underside of the vehicle is mostly one big retractable hatch. By opening it, your researchers have access to the ground while the vehicle provides complete shelter from the storm.

Given your visibility problems, your vehicle would need some sort of radar system. This wouldn't be too dissimilar from what many self-driving cars currently use. The pilot's screen would show an image that was a composite of a normal camera feed and an image reconstructed from radar/lidar data. You don't want a traditional windshield; glass can be shattered by flying debris.

Answer 6

You can't rely on weight alone, because the kind of weight that can't be moved by a tornado, would be very difficult to move at all. You're going to need to be securely anchored to the surface at least some of the time, so I would use a walker with lots of legs and multiple drills on each foot. It would have a turtle like shell with a meter thick, Teflon/Kevlar coated, hard rubber exterior. It would be very heavy and nuclear powered. The vehicle could also be submersible, for traveling through shallow lakes and rivers.

Winds and debris will form laminar flows near the surface that will tend to flip over or at least lift most vehicle designs, so the outer edge of the shell would consist of retractable sections that would conform to the local surface profile and cause a laminar flow over the shell. These would also have a thick brush at the proximal end to the surface, that would help to fill-in the small scale ground features, to reduce wind and debris from getting under the vehicle. At more than a meter thick, they should provide a sufficient barrier, that a small vortex will from near the surface and around the edge of the vehicle, to direct airflow over and around the vehicle.

I would embed thousands of fractal antenna in the outer shell for communications and doppler radar. The later will be needed to detect tornados and large objects heading toward the vehicle. While it probably can't just step out of the way of large projectiles or tornados, it can at least stop, squat and anchor itself.

The vehicle can walk in any direction. It is round for aerodynamic purposes, but also so that it can rotate damaged areas to the leeward side of the vehicle. Shell blocks on the leeward side can be withdrawn into the vehicle and replaced. An internal shop provides repair facilities, particularly rubber extruders, Teflon/Kevlar coaters & antenna printers. When external conditions allow, additional sensors can be deployed as shell blocks when the vehicle reaches any artifacts of interest.

As anyone who has ever lost a boot in the bog can attest, swamps are going to be a problem for a walker. The feet will need to have a vacuum breaking compressed air supply. But some swamps are just going to be too deep even for these. This is where tracks would have to be deployed, but they don't provide anchorage. The vehicle is probably going to be heavy enough that it won't be blown over, but a direct hit from a tornado could be devastating when not anchored to the ground. That's where the doppler radar comes in handy. When you see a tornado coming, you squat down and deploy a number of large augurs, drilling as deep as possible into the muck.

You could conceivably construct a train of these walkers, each with a connecting tunnel between them. If the lead walker got into trouble, the others could help pull it out. It might also be abandoned if necessary. In fact, a train could literally form a walking circle that would eventually surround an artifact. A temporary canopy could be stretched between them, or other structure constructed, providing a shirt-sleeve environment for investigators.

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Addenda:

Addressing @mishan's concerns regarding route erosion:

There's three ways to design a vehicle for the high winds specified by the OP:

1. Construct a heavy/dense enough vehicle that tornados and hurricane winds cannot lift or blow it off course.
2. Construct a vehicle capable of anchoring itself to the terrain.
3. Rely on weight for the average conditions and use anchorage for the worst conditions.

Moving a vehicle that satisfies #1 implies a great deal of difficulty propelling the vehicle at all. The weight of the vehicle tends to pulverize the terrain beneath it. Consider that our largest tanks require specially designed transports that spread their load out, in order to move them over even our best constructed roads without damaging them.

#2 implies considerable erosion, particularly where anchor points cannot be reused.

#3 is a good compromise, as the lower weight causes less damage to the terrain in the average case, and more erosive anchorages happen at random locations, due to the nature of hurricane spawned tornados and random debris.

Tunneling would be a partial solution for the specified conditions, but is so expensive that it would not be worthwhile until you intend to have a lot of traffic on that route. The OP's scenario involves researches wanting to study immobile artifacts, within an extremely hostile environment, not heavily visited tourist sites.

The walkers don't require ideal road bed to travel over. They are designed to move through swamps and over highly variable terrain, while protecting their occupants in the face of high velocity projectiles and tornados. They should be able travel through the same areas, many times, but can also route around less favorable terrain, such as that which has been degraded by earlier trips.