Space Penguin Could Hop Around The Moon

notdanielp writes "A robotic Lunar Penguin explorer could be hopping around on the moon by 2009, said Raytheon on Tuesday, as it unveiled the concept lander at an aerospace conference. The unmanned lunar device, in development for two years, is 3 feet tall and weighs approximately 230 pounds. It "hops" by reigniting small propulsion engines ... President Bush last year refocused the space program on sending people to the moon, Mars and beyond. Raytheon said the Penguin could be a robotic precursor to future manned space missions and that it was being proposed to NASA."

Affordable?

[Red Flayer]

"The Lunar Penguin, originally intended to land on the south pole of the moon to search for ice, is based on tactical weapons technologies, which should make it much more affordable, Raytheon said, without disclosing a price.

See how much great stuff comes out of military research? This is why all you tech-happy people should support increased military funding, instead of something so silly as direct funding of research.

Seriously, this is much more affordable only because we've already paid for the research. That's like a waiter saying, "Your meal will be 10% off, because you gave us the chicken we made it out of."

It's great that we can apply some of our military tech to space / lunar exploration. But don't say it's more affordable just because we already paid for it.

jumping around

[javiercr]

The risks involved in all those small take offs and landings are probably too high.

Also, we are not looking for life in the moon, we already have lunar rocks, what the point of jumping around the moon?

We should a) get a cheap and reliable way to get to space b) build a base on the moon and explore other planets.

NASA uses battle-tested Wind River UNIX

[peter303]

NASA has been using a version of realtime UNIX called VxWorks from Wind River in many of its space probes and robots. It has been evolving for decades along with various NASA probes. Its not perfect, having brought down the rovers for a couple weeks with a thread blocking problem. [cmu.edu] But it has been field tested for a long time.

Where was Raytheon in 1991?

[Baldrson]

In 1991 I went to work at E'Prime Aerospace [eprimeaerospace.com] as VP of Public Affairs getting the first Ka-band satellite license issued [lta.com]. While doing that work it occurred to me that the MX-missile warhead bus we were using as the basis of the Norstar satellite could, with minor modifications, be turned into a lunar lander that could hop around the lunar surface.

We did a study of the tankage sizing changes required and a few other features and actually got some quotes back from some of the contractors. It would have been a relatively cheap mission, about the same as a geostationary satellite launch.

I don't recall whether Raytheon was one of the contractors we contacted for pricing.

Credit the President

[amightywind]

President Bush also cut NASA funding. They can't even get the shuttle into space without it falling to bits, despite a $1bn re-fit.

The fact that we are even debating the post shuttle/ISS space program is a credit to President Bush. The 'failure' to fix the space shuttle is illusory. The shuttle performs consistent with its design. It's just that the design can never be safer than 1 failure in 100 launches. First it was the SRB O-rings, then frayed wiring, and latest ET foam. If it keeps flying some other problem will reveal itself.