NASA Builds a Cheap Standardized Space Probe

TangAddict writes "Dr. Alan Weston, who previously invented bungee jumping, led a team of scientists at NASA Ames Research Center to build a $4 million spacecraft in less than two years. The Modular Common Spacecraft Bus is designed to accept payloads of up to 50kg. and can be used for a variety of missions including a rendezvous with asteroids, orbiting Earth or Mars, and landing on the moon. When NASA officials saw the first flight test, they offered Weston and his team $80 million to use their design for the LADEE mission, which will gather dust and atmosphere samples from the moon in 2011."

Is it big enough for a dead Vulcan to fit in?

I was just asking.

Pandaemonium

This is the first time I've heard of technology that's DESIGNED to gather dust. Usually that just happens by accident.

Re:Pandaemonium

All technology is designed to gather dust... eventually. It's called 'functional obsolescence'. The breakthrough development that separates this technology from previous technologies (such as the C64 in your attic and the 64MB thumb drive lodged somewhere behind your monitor) is that this gathers dust right away. Since this gathers dust virtually immediately, you can theoretically sell dust gatherers to consumers at a vastly increased rate.

$4million$

> a $4 million dollar spacecraft

So what's a square dollar worth these days?

(this _is_ news for nerds)

Re:Pandaemonium

OK, you were probably going for Funny mods, but the Stardust Spacecraft [wikipedia.org] was also designed to gather dust (I am not sure if it was the first ).

LADEE

From the summary:

.... they offered Weston and his team $80 million to use their design for the LADEE mission, which will gather dust....

Well, if they're just going to let it sit around, I'll take it.

Re:LADEE

The summary is incorrect - Weston was not offered $80 million for the design, NASA simply wanted to use their design for an $80 million dollar mission.

From TFA:

When high-ranking NASA officials saw a flight test, they were impressed enough to include the team in an $80 million dollar mission to the moon.

Which makes far more sense - why would NASA pay money for a design that was developed with its own money?

what took the so long?

Seriously, why didn't they start with this like 20 years ago? Basic platform with propulsion, power and communication, with a few slots for special equipment, like cameras, radars, sample collection, or whatever is needed for that probe?

Two words:

Seriously, why didn't they start with this like 20 years ago? Basic platform with propulsion, power and communication, with a few slots for special equipment, like cameras, radars, sample collection, or whatever is needed for that probe?

Gentoo users.

Try 30 years ago

Around 30 years ago NASA was messing with the Multimission Modular Spacecraft (MMS) [nasa.gov], which was in use for 10+ years [nasa.gov]. Some 10 years ago there was a lot of activity around the highly modular SMEX-Lite [nasa.gov] bus for smaller missions. On the other side of the pond, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. [sstl.co.uk] has been doing cheap, highly modular spacecraft buses since the early 1980s. The US DoD and its various contractors have played with the idea at various times in the last couple of decades as well, most recently in the guise of "operationally responsive space" and "plug-and-play spacecraft". Needless to say, the concept is not particularly new. It just waxes and wanes in popularity depending on what kind of tradeoffs between mission cost and mission performance are acceptable.

Re:what took the so long?

We did start with this 20 years ago. We had 5 pioneers, a handful of rangers, a pair of voyagers and so forth. Every one of those was a learning experience getting us to the point we are today. We are now at a point that we are relatively confident enough in our abilities and have enough knowledge about what will and won't work to go forward with a generic platform. This _is_ the cumulation of 20 years of working on the problem of space exploration.

Re:what took the so long?

Seriously, why didn't they start with this like 20 years ago? Basic platform with propulsion, power and communication, with a few slots for special equipment, like cameras, radars, sample collection, or whatever is needed for that probe?

They've started with it, and subsequently dropped it, multiple times. Mostly because this is one of those ideas that seems great on paper, but doesn't actually work out too well in real life.
 
Some probes need 3 axis stabilization, others can simply spin, yet others can use gravity gradient. Some probes need to dissipate a lot of heat from their instruments, others much less. One probe has a handful of instruments each the size of your PC desktop, another probe has a single instrument the size of a small car. Etc... Etc...
 
The number of possible permutations is simply too large to be accommodated by any single standard bus, or even a reasonable number of standardized buses. To get an idea of the scale of the problem - imagine trying to base every wheeled vehicle on the road from an 18-wheeler down to a motor scooter off of a single standard bus

Re:what took the so long?

They've tried, but it has never been popular with the people who build new satellites. They're not adverse to stealing good designs from existing satellites. The problem with "one size fits all" is that it's often a poor fit. They would rather tailor the satellite to the mission.

Finally using some common sense

It's been so long since these guys used common sense in looking at budgets and what they could do with them, it's a damned fine refreshing change.

If only this "lets make the best with what we have while someone else tries to get us more" approach would filter through to more government bodies/groups.

Re:

Watch as this project never sees use.

Pork belly politics doesn't work this way.

NASA cutting costs? Hardly.

Suppose you were to ask NASA why they don't provide the complete blueprints for their spacecraft to the general public.. not the launch vehicles mind you, the actual spacecraft - there's no national security concerns here. They'll tell you that they don't *own* the blueprints.. the companies they contract to do. So if you ask them why they don't demand the blueprints when they contract for the spacecraft, they'll tell you that this would cost more. So they're saving money by not demanding the blueprints.

This, of course, is crazy. If they were to demand blueprints from the contractor for the first model of a particular spacecraft and then make those blueprints available to the general public then, the next time they want to contract for a similar spacecraft, they'll find there are a whole mess of companies lining up to bid.. and to bid very low indeed - as they don't have to spend all that money designing a basic spacecraft - they don't have to re-invent the wheel.

As the bids are so much lower, NASA could then start asking for more capable spacecraft.. and quickly a publicly owned repository of blueprints would be built up that all the various contractors could work with.

But instead, we get million dollar spacecraft from the same 3 contractors, over and over again. No standardization, no spin-offs for other purposes.

Re:NASA cutting costs? Hardly.

I'm not sure about the veracity of your statements, but I would conjecture that the blueprints would be nothing more than very cool wallpaper as most craft built to date have been ad hoc creations to house specific instruments with specific needs. The new design will no doubt save money but the instruments will now have to be shoe-horned into that architecture. And that may very well work for the most part.

In addition, here is a site that people should be aware of. It is a database of all the NASA tech that has been spun off into private industry [nasa.gov]. For instance, JPL developed shake testers to test spacecraft and instruments for their ability to withstand launch stress. Now JPL buys their shake testers from a an outside company.

Not such a great idea.

This idea of doing spacecraft on the cheap comes up every few years.

In general, it's poor economy.

You see you have the fixed cost of the rocket, launchpad, and launch team. Many tens of millions of dollars. Even if you drove the spacecraft cost down to zero, it won't affect the total very much.

Meanwhile all the cost is at risk if the spacecraft fails.

In general it's penny wise and pound foolish to economize on the spacecraft.

No Payload, No Spacecraft

A common satellite bus is a good thing, but it does not constitute a viable spacecraft. Like a transit bus that never carries passengers, it serves no useful purpose. The payload has always been the driving element in any satellite or probe, in schedule, budget and trade-offs. And rightfully so IMHO. I believe that's why a common bus hasn't been succesful in the past. Both NASA and the DoD have tried, but the needs of the payload outweigh the needs of the bus.

The Space Ground Link System, SGLS (note to self: submit wikipedia page in copious spare time) is analagous to a common satellite bus protocol at the physical to network layers and provides some commonality of bus structure for DoD satellites. The upper protocol layers vary but the foundation is the same.

Ask anyone who's worked in the essential, but unglamorous world of satellite control. Their biggest problem is upgrading the control network quickly enough to satisfy all the new requirements of the next big launch. New datalink frequencies, stronger encryption, faster throughput rates, etc. All the while, they have to maintain the capability to control and pamper the oldest bird flying and monitor everything in between.

It's not a bad thing that satellites outlive their design life, but it has to be considered when operating and budgeting for the control network.

Is it spherical?

I hope the probe is spherical, because a globe-shaped space device designed to suck up dust would logically be called ... a Dyson Sphere.

Its actually all been done before.

At least by 1990, NASA, DOD and Fairchild/Orbital used to run a system called "Multi Mission Modular Satellite".

So what have they done? For 4 million they built a prototype that will never work in space? Notice that when they were added to some other project the total real project price was $80M - and I'm not so sure that includes launch vehicle (ie the rocket).

Back in the day, the radio receiver (arguably the most critical part of a satellite) was $2 million all by itself. It had to be radiation hardened (cosmic rays) and work flawlessly for 5+ years. If something really went wrong, the receiver would send the pulses that actually re-booted or reset the other on board computers.

Also satellites that have instruments, like the hubble, need to point very precisely at stars - the instruments to do this are very expensive, the controls that orient the satellites are relatively cheap - but you have to buy extra (redundancy).

Imagine this, the Hubble Space Telescope has to point at a spot in space for long time - once for 1 million seconds ( Hubble Site [hubblesite.org]) During that period of time, the solar arrays, antennas etc. couldn't move because even the ultra smooth stepper motors they use would have shaken the spacecraft enough to blur the image.

That being said, there are 100s, if not 1000s of neat little projects that potentially save NASA money - like using standard Internet protocols to talk to spacecraft (tweak the timeouts a bit) - which would mean ground stations would use pretty much standard router hardware vs. custom stuff. It good to see some of these ideas get the exposure they deserve.

However, most satellites are designed with requirements for the instrumentation. The rest of the satellite is designed around those requirements. Unless you have a very flexible design in your spacecraft bus, the scientific part of the mission might be compromised.

So this lander might work - how many g's on impact? (err... landing). What is the success chance? Do I take my $50million instrument and put it on a $10 million lander that has a 30% chance of success? Or do I build a $20 million lander that has an 80% chance? or a $30 Million that has 95% chance? If I pick wrong, I'm sure that I will not get another $100 million to fly the mission again. Perhaps a lifetime of research goes down the toilet...

Re:$4 million to make it work...

The Russians invented Space travel... with dogs... they were also the first in human orbit/flight...

NASA does have the first human to visit and return from another (tries to find the word)...the moon...

They do have an impressive roster though, the Saturn V, the Shuttle, etc... but most of their accomplishments can't really even be claimed as "American" (as in the 'United States Of') because most of their key employees were/are form other countries... they are kind of like Microsoft (or any other large company) in that way, we'll buy them so we can say its ours...

Re:$4 million to make it work...

Yes, obviously, because no matter what anyone else claims, the US of A is naturally the best. The scientists in Russia was of course FORCED to work, and the scientists in USA were happy to do it! And yeah well, maybe some other countries are technically better, but that's because USA didn't want to be better. And also it only looks like they are better, but they did it in the wrong way, and if USA would have done it the same way, USA would have been even better!

Re:Bullshit!

It wasn't the Maori that pioneered bungy jumping, it was the 'land divers' of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu that pioneered it. It was first filmed in the '50s by David Attenborough and the first credited bungee jump using modern materials was done by the 'Dangerous Sports Club' which included Dr. Alan Weston in 1979. Later A.J Hackett of New Zealand pioneered the commercial bungee jump operation

So the article is slightly inaccurate and perhaps should have said: "Dr. Alan Weston, who previously help pioneer modern bungee jumping".

And yes wikipedia is my firend

Re:Bullshit!

About misquotes...

Article:
When high-ranking NASA officials saw a flight test, they were impressed enough to include the team in an $80 million dollar mission to the moon.

Slashdot story:
When NASA officials saw the first flight test, they offered Weston and his team $80 million to use their design

Ask Weston if he can tell the difference ;)