For the First Time NASA Has Asked Industry About Private Missions To Mars (arstechnica.com) 38
NASA is starting to take its first steps toward opening a commercial pathway to Mars. From a report: This week, the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued a new solicitation to the industry titled "Exploring Mars Together: Commercial Services Studies." This is a request for proposals from the US space industry to tell NASA how they would complete one of four private missions to Mars, including delivering small satellites into orbit or providing imaging services around the red planet.
"The Mars Exploration Program Draft Plan through the next two decades would utilize more frequent lower cost missions to achieve compelling science and exploration for a larger community," the document states. "To realize the goals of the plan, government and US industry would partner to leverage current and emerging Earth and lunar products and commercial services to substantially lower the overall cost and accelerate leadership in deep space exploration."
NASA will pay proposers $200,000 for a study of one of the reference missions or $300,000 for a maximum of two studies. The space agency said it intends to award "multiple" contract awards. In its 496-page solicitation, NASA outlines four "design reference missions" that companies can bid on. Basically, the space agency is asking companies how they would go about fulfilling these tasks.
"The Mars Exploration Program Draft Plan through the next two decades would utilize more frequent lower cost missions to achieve compelling science and exploration for a larger community," the document states. "To realize the goals of the plan, government and US industry would partner to leverage current and emerging Earth and lunar products and commercial services to substantially lower the overall cost and accelerate leadership in deep space exploration."
NASA will pay proposers $200,000 for a study of one of the reference missions or $300,000 for a maximum of two studies. The space agency said it intends to award "multiple" contract awards. In its 496-page solicitation, NASA outlines four "design reference missions" that companies can bid on. Basically, the space agency is asking companies how they would go about fulfilling these tasks.
I bet that was a really hard band aid to rip off. (Score:2)
Robotted (Score:4, Informative)
None of these are for a manned mission. Don't get excited.
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Re:I would prefer (Score:5, Informative)
to keep this sort of thing in house at NASA. After what happened in Ukraine I don't like having a single individual with control over space. That's too much power for one man. Maybe you agree with what happened, maybe you don't. But do you think one man making that decision is a good idea?
Elon doesn't "control space" and he doesn't own internet service,. He owns a satellite internet service provider. He was asked to provide service in an area that did not have service, for the specific purpose of waging war. This is a violation of the TOS and puts his satellites at risk. He said in an interview though that he would do it if the president asked and they should be paying for his service and cover him if his $10B investment gets blown up in the process
Re:I would prefer (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks for factual information and rational analysis, which has disappeared during this most recent outbreak of anti-Musk spew
I would suggest that people look at what Musk has done to the oil industry, since a wholesale most to electric vehicles and solar panels will inevitably cost them money, and realize the source of these anti-Musk astroturfing exercises
Oil companies are good at it, just look at what they have stirred up to fight the facts on global warming and prevent the use of nuclear power... they have been at it for decades and most likely own the media outlets that report this stuff
Re:I would prefer (Score:4, Interesting)
I was never a Musk fan, nor hater but I do find it amusing how he went from super Uber nerd hero to worst man to ever be born almost over night.
That's what happens when you piss off the wrong people.
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Before Musk, twitter was being used globally to spread political propagandize and even get people killed
https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... [nytimes.com]
https://www.brookings.edu/arti... [brookings.edu]
After Musk, it is widely known to be a source for misinformation and not nearly as usable for that purpose
You can thank Musk for falling on that grenade whenever you get around to realizing what happened
I think you're missing the point (Score:2)
You're going to have to try to support that claim about it being less useful as a source of misinformation. I mean I guess it's technically true because they've chased away about 20% of their users at least. But there's still a lot of users and the nastiness of the misinformation has incre
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imo twitter mods were an ineffective attempt to make mob rule look civil, and they were about as effective as mods on 4chan, because of the abuse of anonymous and sock puppet accounts
While I think it may be naive, the idea of keeping a person to an account, that is firmly attached to their identity, does have some appeal solely at the level of social accountability [theguardian.com]
Accountability as in, you could stand on a soap box in the town square and tell everybody what you really think, and they all know who it is comi [pinterest.com]
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Oh, in case you are interested in where Musk _may_ have gotten that idea, take a shot at reading this timely Neal Stephenson work, FALL, or Dodge in Hell [amazon.com] where they intentionally muck up social media in order to reduce it's negative impact.
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My only Twitter use is when an article I'm reading has a link there. I don't know why anyone spends any significant amount of time there. It is now and has always been a cess pool of stupidity and the worst of humanity. What are people doing there? Yelling at other people about unresolvable world view issues? Did you "win" a debate on Twitter with some rabid right winger? Did that person leave Twitter forever? Was the world a better safer smarter place for humanity when you "won" a Twitter fight? I'
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Re:Doesn't his company launch most satellites? (Score:5, Informative)
No, Starlink remains available to Uktraine forces within their uncontested areas, they wanted access in Crimea, which was refused due to the previously stated reasons [wikipedia.org]
You may want to wonder why the operator of a satellite network would want to avoid getting said network destroyed by a country with robust orbital capabilities, but it is pretty obvious to most people, that if russia decides to take it down for military use over their claimed borders, then NOBODY in Ukraine is going to be able to use it for any purpose
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As for Ukraine he gave them access and then pulled it away despite the fact that the US government wanted them to have that access. What he appeared to be doing was playing hardball with the US military during wartime undermining the strategic goals of our Ally.
From Wikipedia: "In September 2022, Ukrainian drone boats strapped with explosives were attempting a sneak attack the Russian fleet in Sevastopol using Starlink to guide them to target.[40][14][80] This was the first time Ukraine attempted such an attack.[81] Ukraine requested Musk to enable Starlink up to Crimea.[82][14] Musk declined the request but did not disable any existing coverage.[82]The Atlantic said that some drone boats lost connectivity and washed ashore without exploding.[83] Brigadier Genera
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Your information is false. Here is what actually happened. [snopes.com]
Starlink was never deactivated. It would require DoD authorization to activate it in Crimea. That authorization never came. It was never asked for.
Re:I would prefer (Score:4, Interesting)
First, transferring it to NASA doesn't guarantee "one man" can't decide to block or enable what Ukraine's needs. In this case, Ukraine tried to compel SpaceX to enable access in Crimea -- access that didn't exist before. If the US government needs something, there are existing provisions in the law to compel a business to do it. We don't need NASA taking administrative control over a business built by private citizens. It's called stealing. That aside, you'r forgetting Starlink would not even exist if SpaceX was NASA -- they'd be blowing billions of dollars on paying Boeing for SLS/Artemis expendible rockets. Effectively giving Starlink to NASA will eliminate anyone from making ANY decision because the service, or future innovations won't even exist for anyone .. not one man, not ten .. to make decisions on.
Over the next decade, multiple competing Starlink-like services will exist such as OneWeb, Kuiper, and others (I forget the name of the Chinese one). If the government (ours, not a foreign government) needs something they can make a phone call and ask for it. Ukraine had no business asking Elon Musk for shit directly.
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Note, the government can't make requests to SpaceX willy nilly .. it has to serve a US national security interest. In this case it was Ukraine directly trying to compel SpaceX to enable a service. Ukraine should have called Biden, and asked Biden to ask Elon to enable that service. If NASA owned Starlink, they STILL would have to call Biden .. then Biden would tell the NASA Administrator to do it. I'm not seeing the difference here.
It does exactly that (Score:1)
A private company is not beholdened to anyone but potentially shareholders. In the case of a company like SpaceX it's not even beholden to that because SpaceX is still a private company with a single owner who can make and does make unilateral d
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What do you think government officials are motivated by? Their JOB should be to REGULATE business, not run businesses. They need to make sure SpaceX and other businesses follow the various regulations. They shouldn't be involved in business decisions. Ukraine called Elon directly and of course he refused. As he should have. If Ukraine had a legit request, why didn't they ask the president? It's like them calling someone working at Mission Control in NASA and telling him what buttons to press. They can do th
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It's also BS to say "SpaceX is accountable to nobody" .. the EPA delayed Starship launch for weeks with some cooked up environmental review. They can't even inconvenience a mosquito in Boca Chica, you're saying they can do stuff to humans without accountability? If so, whose fault is that? As we speak, SpaceX is being harassed by two different government departments .. one because they hired foreigners and thus violated ITAR and the other because they didn't hire enough foreigners and thus broke EEOC laws.
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If anyone can do anything to people "without accountability" .. it's the government. Government controls the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders .. AND the media that reports on crime. You want to hand all that over to one entity, because you thinks they will help you make an informed vote? To be clear .. in such a system even if they did let you vote for their pre-selected candidates, they'll rig it. Kim Jong Un gets 99.9% of the vote in North Korea? (Refe
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After what happened in Ukraine I don't like having a single individual with control over space. That's too much power for one man.
Are you by chance referring to this? [snopes.com]
In which case what you apparently believe about Musk and Ukraine is most likely total bullshit. Starlink was never deactivated during a Ukraine combat operation.
I'm of two minds about this (Score:1)
On the one hand, this is really exciting! Man may be on the brink of commercializing space travel and establishing an outpost in our solar system, as a prelude to more distant manned explorations. Yes, those goals are a long way down the road, but these first steps are inspiring.
On the other hand, it's corporations. The same ones that have pillaged Earth and, especially in the case of oil companies, left us with global warming even though they knew six decades ago what the results of their actions would be.
Not entirely new: (Score:2)
From early last year: "NASA has unveiled a draft strategy for long-term robotic exploration of Mars that emphasizes low-cost missions and potential commercial partnerships."
-- https://spacenews.com/nasa-rel... [spacenews.com]
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Shall we exploit, pillage or sully icy lifeless hell-holes of rock and methane? Call them left-over sewage of star formation. Do such creatures deserve sympathy? Your personification of lifeless rocks displays a certain dissembling mindset; emotion misplaced. You might have started with the posts last sentence ... which is well-spoken. Humans ought to secure and perfect their home planet before dashing off to monetize another.
I implied no personification - you inferred it based on a false premise. Let's look at the first word that it seems you've taken issue with, namely "exploit". That one's easy - it didn't appear in my comment, so I accept no responsibility for it.
Pillage? Well, it seems to me that there's a 'tragedy of the commons' argument to be made here, and corporations are all about externalizing costs. Since at first they'll probably be doing it before any average citizens make it to Mars, call it "pillaging before the
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Capitalism has proven to be the most effective way for humans to get stuff done, we just need to remember the need to regulate it
This has proven difficult as well funded think tanks spew propaganda (think Chicago School of Economics) and PACs buy congress critters to advocate for corporate breaks
Consumers need to realize that even our capitalist economy is demand-driven and we can beat back the corporate interests by working together
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Consumers need to realize that even our capitalist economy is demand-driven and we can beat back the corporate interests by working together
We have a very disparate mix of multiple classes and ethnicities of people, with different needs and interests, spread across a large continent, many of whom are working two or three jobs to keep their heads above water. But sure, somehow a significant number of us are going to join forces and "work together" long enough and coordinatedly enough to "beat back the corporate interests"? I don't think so. We can't even organize ourselves to promote and elect politicians to effectively and consistently rein in
Send a walker (Score:2)
Rovers are old hat now, we need to send something like a robot dog .. with dextrous paws. Oh and when are we going to the polar region? MPL failed in 1999, why haven't we retried? I want to see some photos of what ice structures look like on Mars. The problem with NASA is they are not resilient anymore.
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And of course a helicopter/drone. Every mission must have a drone now that Ingenuity proved it's possible.
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Haley's comet (Score:3)
Why aren't we sending a multiple-lander mission to Haley's comet? We need to start planning it NOW so we can send it early so to get there in the 2030s, BEFORE the tail starts forming.
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Haaaaaaaaa! (Score:1)
"The Mars Exploration Program Draft Plan through the next two decades would utilize more frequent lower cost missions to achieve compelling science and exploration for a larger community," the document states. "To realize the goals of the plan, government and US industry would partner to leverage current and emerging Earth and lunar products and commercial services to substantially lower the overall cost and accelerate leadership in deep space exploration." https://arstechnica.com/space/... [arstechnica.com]
It's fun