NASA Wants Fast Moonbuggies and Solid Lunar Lander

coondoggie writes "NASA may have its eyes on the Sun and Mercury this week but it is clearly focusing on the moon for the future. NASA is soliciting proposals from the scientific and aerospace communities for design ideas for its next lunar lander. NASA officials said the Altair spacecraft will deliver four astronauts to the lunar surface late during the next decade. According to NASA Altair will be capable of landing four astronauts on the moon, providing life support and a base for weeklong initial surface exploration missions, and returning the crew to the Orion spacecraft that will bring them home to Earth. And while they won't be flying to the moon but rather flying around the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., the space agency has set April 4-5 as the dates for 'The 15th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race'. The race is for high school and college teams where they build and race their lightweight, two-person lunar vehicles. More than 40 student teams from 18 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada and India have already registered." My proposal just features a domo-kun mouth and giant pink ears attached to an El Camino. Money please!

Re:NASA Wants Fast Moonbuggies

[C0rinthian]

Only if it's called The Crushinator.

Sun, Mercury, Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA has eyes on Sun and Mercury? Why does NASA care about the MySQL purchase? I can see the interest in mercury though - breaking open a thermometer and trying to catch the mercury is fun. As for the moon... I take it this time there's going to be a mini series filmed on some secret Hollywood set. Don't forget to position the prop rocks properly this time -- remember, showing the prop number makes the conspiracy theorists theorize conspiracies. ;)

Rims & Ground FX

[Rob T Firefly]

Also a really good sound system for blasting the theme to "2001" at all hours of the night.

No room for Bender, huh?

[Big_Monkey_Bird]

Fine then. I'm going build my own lunar lander. With blackjack, and hookers. In fact, forget the lunar lander and the blackjack. Ah, screw the whole thing.

Apologies to the Simpsons.

[jellomizer]

Can you name the Moonbuggie with four wheel drive,
Smells like a steak, and seats thirty five?
Lunorero! Lunorero!
Well, it goes real slow with the hammer down
It's the country-fried Moonbuggie endorsed by a clown
Lunorero! Lunorero!
Hey, hey!
Twelve yards long, two lanes wide,
Sixty five tons of American pride!
Lunorero! Lunorero!
Top of the line in Lunar works,
Unexplained fires are for the managers of the dorks!
Lunorero! Lunorero!
She blinds everybody with her super high beams
She's a rock-crusin', sand-spuin' drivin' machine
Lunorero! Lunorero! Lunorero!
Whoa, Lunorero! Whoa!

It's about time

[Cathoderoytube]

Finally, it looks like NASA is investing serious resources into researching sweet jumps in low gravity.

Domo-kun mouth and giant pink ears

[lbmouse]

Like this one? [picvalley.net]

Fast buggies and low gravity

[IBBoard]

So NASA want fast buggies? On the moon? Where the gravity is low? And no-one pointed out the potential problem of astronauts flooring it, leaping over a big ridge and crashing it worse than the Mars lander?

Oh well, at least the UK gets to share its space funding with the rest of Europe, so we don't spend only our money hot-rodding cars for low gravity :)

Solid Lunar Lander

[jmichaelg]

Gosh! I'm glad they finally got that spec'ed right. The fluid landers were just piss down the drain.