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."

Bullshit!

[Vectronic]

"Dr. Alan Weston, who previously invented bungee jumping"

Yeah, and I invented bicycle jumping... and I was a mere 7 years old...

He may have helped (along with some others) re-invent it, or modernize it... but he did not invent it...

Re:LADEE

[jkua]

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?

Re:Bullshit!

[MidnightBrewer]

Yes, ignoring the entire country of New Zealand and its native Maori, who have been using vines to bungee jump from wooden towers for hundreds of years, it's possible that he invented it.

Re:NASA cutting costs? Hardly.

[Concerned Onlooker]

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.

Re:invented bungee jumping eh?

[camperdave]

sorry don't know how to provide the link to the page

• Go to the wiki page in another browser tab.
• click on the address bar, press [ctrl-a] to highlight the entire address, and then [ctrl-c] to copy the URL to your clipboard.
• go back to your Slashdot tab, and type <a href="
• press [ctrl-v] to paste the URL.
• type "> followed by some clever text for the link
• type </a> at the end of the clever text.
• Make sure your slashdot comment type is HTML Formatted

For example, <a href="www.example.com">like this</a> looks like this [example.com].

Re:Bullshit!

[yuda]

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

Try 30 years ago

[GileadGreene]

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:Pandaemonium

[Zoxed]

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 ).

The west handed technology to China on a plate

[Viol8]

Otherwise they wouldn't be able to manufacture highly complex microchips, lasers etc simply because western companies were too mean to build the stuff in the west. Naturally all the knowledge the chinese gain from making this stuff will reach the chinese military so who frankly is surprised they're building a GPS rival? And if they're anything like the japanese it'll probably be *better* than the orginal.

Re:Still no better method than rockets?

[maxume]

Look up the launch mass of small satellite. Bringing it up 1 mile with a balloon would be a non trivial endeavor, and then you are a whole 0.0045% closer to geosynchronous orbit.

Re:Bullshit!

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ;)