NASA To Cancel Lunar Resource Prospector Mission (theverge.com) 95
New submitter XXongo writes: NASA has told the Lunar Resource Prospector Mission team to cease work on developing the mission by the end of May. The proposed mission was in development to send a rover to the lunar pole in 2022, with the objective to drill into ice frozen in permanently shadowed craters. Use of such ice has been proposed as a resource that could be processd into rocket fuel, oxygen, and water for life support systems.
The cancellation apparently is partly due to the mission having been shifted from the Human Exploration directorate of NASA, which is excited by the possibility of lunar resources supporting exploration, to the Science Mission directorate, which does not consider lunar ice a high priority for science. The cancellation of the mission has gotten some controversy from the lunar science community, with the members of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) writing an open letter to new administrator Bridenstine protesting the cancellation.
The cancellation apparently is partly due to the mission having been shifted from the Human Exploration directorate of NASA, which is excited by the possibility of lunar resources supporting exploration, to the Science Mission directorate, which does not consider lunar ice a high priority for science. The cancellation of the mission has gotten some controversy from the lunar science community, with the members of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) writing an open letter to new administrator Bridenstine protesting the cancellation.
Re: Idiots write an open letter (Score:2)
How do you know they don't pay taxes?
Re: Idiots write an open letter (Score:1)
Taxes are not being spent how they want. They weren't elected and don't get to decide a budget for NASA. If they want to probe the ice in the lunar pole, let them write a check. Elon must wanted a human on the red planet, he wrote a check.
Re: Idiots write an open letter (Score:2)
Would it be so easy for him to do if he didn't have a fat NASA contract.
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He earned those contracts himself.
Re: Idiots write an open letter (Score:2)
Yes he did. The taxpayers requesting that their money be spent on something they're interested in also earned that money that they paid taxes on. Are you suggesting that people who pay taxes should be required to pay the full amount for everything before they get a say?
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Are you suggesting that people who pay taxes should be required to pay the full amount for everything before they get a say?
No.
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The only idiots here, as has become the norm, is the slashdot commenters:
1. Trolls;
2. clueless ignorants;
3. Basement dwellers with their worthless lives who delude themselves into thinking that they're smarter than NASA people.
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Speaking of budget, when you work out how much the US spends per person roughly a year. For military it's about $1,800. For NASA it's about $50! Sort of sad when you think about it.
Boston Robots. (Score:2, Funny)
Send Boston Dynamics to the moon.
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We keep sending robots into space, eventually they're going to wise up and quarantine the Earth for the safety of the rest of the universe.
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So bots will build a wall around us and make us pay for it?
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So bots will build a wall around us and make us pay for it?
He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking.
Lunar Base (Score:3, Insightful)
Establishing a permanent lunar base is the logical first step towards a Mars trip.
I heard someone once say that if you want to grind a 6 inch telescope mirror, it is faster and more prudent to grind a 3-inch mirror first and then a 6-inch mirror than to try to go for the 6-inch mirror on the first attempt.
Re:Lunar Base (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never understood how going to the Moon is good practice for manned trip to Mars.
For one thing, the voyages are completely different. Not just the distances and duration, but a Mars vehicle would use aerobraking (not possible on the Moon) which ironically takes total delta-V for a Mars mission below delta-V req for a Moon mission which has to expend propellant to land.
And the destinations are so different. The spacesuits, tools, transports, infrastructure...not much similarity between what would work well on the Moon vis-a-vis what would work ideally on Mars.
I think the manned-mission centric science that needs to be done in space is partial gravity research on biological systems. We have tons of experience and data telling us how bad it is for one's health to be in zero-g for extended periods. We basically have zero data on how bad 50% earth gravity is, or 10% earth gravity. Is the physiological impact of zero g vs. 1 g linear? Such to say if one is in gravity field 20% strong as Earth's for a long time, will they experience only 80% of the deleterious effects of zero G? Whats the scale there? Interesting very important aspect of our entire future in space and we have no data on it. Bizarre.
Re:Lunar Base (Score:4, Insightful)
Ideally the two things could be done in parallel, get people living on the moon at the same time advanced robotic missions to Mars are occurring. I for one would trade the $406 billion dollar F-35 boondoggle for a real space program. Maybe we can reduce the nuclear arsenal to a reasonable 1000 warheads (down from 4000), that's save some cash. Also foreign wars...we should stop participating/starting in wars that do not pose at least somewhat of an existential threat. That should save a ton of money...and lives, and arms and legs.
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Probably the most relevant reason is the idea of people surviving off the 'grid', way off the grid for extended periods of time.
You don't need to practice on the Moon. Go build a self-sufficient habitat in the desert in Nevada. Only allow people outside in a space suit, slow down communication, and limit every transport to what could be done on a rocket.
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Biosphere 2 didn't have a mass/size budget limited by realistic rockets. Also, it was a failure. Looks like there's still a bit of work to do.
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I was listening to an interview with one of the Biosphere 2 team the other day. It wasn't a failure, it was an experiment. One which didn't go exactly as planned. But that's not a bad thing. They learned a crap ton of stuff from it, probably more than they would have if it all went perfectly. The sphere is still out there and still being studied, though it's not a closed system anymore.
The moon is a logical next step. The person interviewed said they had some rough times in Biosphere 2, but at the en
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Practicing anywhere on earth for mars isn't anywhere as realistic as practicing on the moon, as there is still gravity on earth that is higher than on mars
Gravity on the Moon isn't like Mars either. Plus, there's a lot of stuff that can be tested that isn't dependent on gravity. Big advantage of testing on Earth is that it's dirt cheap.
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Re:Lunar Base (Score:4, Insightful)
As all decent Sci-fi readers know the moon will become the industrial center of the solar system once we decide to start working in space for real. Ideally the two things could be done in parallel, get people living on the moon at the same time advanced robotic missions to Mars are occurring.
Aerobraking is not small part of equation. Aerobraking changes delta-V req's and also needs a heatshield and some aerodynamics for atmospheric entry; a Moon lander would essentially be different vehicle from a Mars lander - i.e. there is no practical experience gained practicing Moon landings in Moon-landers as it relates to doing anything like that on Mars. You'd actually get better practice just lobbing Mars lander up close to escape and aerobrake coming back down. (that technique actually employed during Apollo - which is good analog of what I'm talking about...compare the CM to the LM. They are both landers and yet nothing alike).
Also the Moon becoming industrial center of solar system is more fiction than science. What resources are there (beyond the ice) is all diffuse in the regolith. Most everything you'd need on the Moon has to be shipped from somewhere else. It will always cost more delta-V (hence propellant) to ship something from point A to the Moon and then from Moon to point B instead of just going from point A to point B. Delta V is everything in space travel.
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Aerobraking is not small part of equation.
Neither is flight time and that's the main reason to start with the moon. We've already proven we can get to the moon and back in a few days. The issue isn't delta-v; it's life support and consumables for the fleshy humans. A Mars mission would take at minimum months to get to the red planet and months to get back. If anything goes wrong along the way that can't be fixed or compensated for, everybody dies. Shorter voyages mean less probable risk and easier recovery from incidents should they occur.
Now
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However, you're assuming that all delta-V is equal. Delta-V (fuel) being launched from Earth costs much more delta-V to launch to space than delta-V (fuel) being launched from the moon, coming from fuel created from resources mined from the moon's poles, due to Earth's stronger gravity. Now if we had a space elevator, then this might be moot.
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Well if you want to understand long term effects of partial gravity, the moon is the most obvious place to do it.
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Establishing a permanent lunar base is the logical first step towards going anywhere in the solar system; Mars, Venus, the asteroids, Earth-Moon Lagrange points, etc,
Re: Not a priority for science. (Score:3)
Luckily the Earth's resources are infinite and it will always be habitable.
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Luckily the Earth's resources are infinite and it will always be habitable.
Mars and the Moon are not habitable either, and they aren't exactly good places to find resources. Our effort is better spent preserving what we have here.
Re: Not a priority for science. (Score:2)
What do you suggest should be done with the miniscule (relatively speaking) amount of money NASA gets every year?
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Remote exploration. Basically the stuff they've doing already, except for the ISS, which should be deorbited.
Re: Not a priority for science. (Score:2)
How is that going to preserve what we have here?
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It isn't, but you asked me what to do with NASA's budget.
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Who thinks like that? God complex, much? If you're that worried about hypotheticals in the far future:
1) Don't have kids.
2) Realize that evolution is still happening. There were no humans a million years ago, there won't be any in another million.
The Earth is the only place that supports life. There is no way to reach other habitable planets, ever. There is no way to make the other planets in our system habitable. Ever.
You are evading your responsibilities as a human adult right here right now, by invoking
Re: Not a priority for science. (Score:5, Insightful)
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You use 'ever' incorrectly. What can be realistically done in a single human lifetime is sadly very limited yes.
Planets aren't even the optimal colonization real estate in the solar system.
Try SFIA on youtube for some current physics (and reasonable extrapolations) based capabilities.
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This comes up over and over and over, especially with software people who have no concept of the complexities and limits of the real world.
It isn't software people. It's people who read science fiction and think it's real. They talk about "getting off this rock" as if there's some place else to go. And they say things like "all you need to do is break the laws of physics and what I'm imagining is possible".
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We thought the Galaxy was the entire universe up until the 1920s!!!
Astronomers explored the universe more by staring into telescopes in the early 20th century than astronauts ever did.
The knowledge that the universe is billions of times larger than our galaxy is less than a hundred years old, and it was "explored" by nerds sitting at desks!
It seems that people have this romantic sci-fi idea of "exploration" being some kind of 1930s Buck Rogers notion of physically going to other planets that happen to have
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There's hardly a point in having knowledge for its own sake if we aren't going to act on that knowledge.
Sometimes we're just curious. We look at far away pulsars and black holes without any plans to colonize them.
Iron Sky (Score:5, Funny)
NASA doesn't want to disturb the Nazi base under the Lunar ice cap, so they cancelled the project. And all because the president said they were some "very fine people".
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Oh, I've got it alright. In fact, I've got so much of it that I'm full of it.
XX (Score:1)
We need to industrialize space first, but NASA isn't the way.
Mars Underground strikes again (Score:2)
I wonder if it was orchestrated by the Mars Underground. Unlike missions such as Curiosity, many lunar missions are short-lived so not good long-term employment.
Sorry but this "lunar base is essential for Mars settlement" is a bankrupted expression. Otherwise everybody will start working on a lunar exit strategy before we can simply show we can put something on the moon that can do something useful (hey, how minable is that water ice?). Or put a man on the moon and bring him back safely. If we can't do th
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The Moon is closer than Mars, and manned Mars missions have a tendency to get delayed to somewhere inbetween commercial fusion power and Half Life 3.
lots of luck expanding humanity into the solar system.
All that the purse-string-holders want to expand is the hot air coming out of their mouths, and the kickbacks going into their bank accounts.
Tomorrow's headline (Score:1)
What has it done? (Score:2)