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The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
- valuearb 9y agoThe Lunar X prize competition is really neat, and I'll follow raptly. But it's unlikely to do much for actually space exploration, just as the original X-Prize did little to advance access to space. If SpaceX sends a manned Dragon around the moon, that's only going to be a thousand times more important than landing tiny rovers on the moon.
- valuearb 9y agoThe Lunar X prize competition is really neat, and I'll follow raptly. But it's unlikely to do much for actually space exploration, just as the original X-Prize did little to advance access to space. If SpaceX sends a manned Dragon around the moon, that's only going to be a thousand times more important than landing tiny rovers on the moon.
- swatkat 9y agoI have great hopes on Team Indus. Hoping they'll pull of this mission. They've signed a PSLV-XL launch contract with ISRO, and they seem to be on track with spacecraft and rover development[0]. Japan's X-prize entrant HAKUTO will also be ride-sharing on this mission[1]. It'll be an exciting 2018 for us, we have two moon rover missions from India - Chandrayaan 2 from ISRO[2], and Team Indus. [0] https://medium.com/teamindus/teamindus-missionlog-august-67ececc8e4e5 https://medium.com/teamindus/teamindus-missionlog-august-67e... [1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14023336/google-lunar-x-prize-teams-moon-pslv-rocket-hakuto-indus https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14023336/google-lunar-x-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2
- isostatic 9y ago"we have two moon rover missions from India" How can India justify a moon mission when you can barely walk round Delhi with tripping over homeless children?
- iUsedToCode 9y agoI'm guessing that's the reason they are doing a moon mission. Have to give them hope, have to jump start the economy. Can't saw trousers for eternity, can they? Educated people will continue fleeing if nothing is done to keep them in. You cannot solve homelessness by giving out houses, jobs are the biggest help.
- isostatic 9y agoYou cannot solve homelessness by giving out houses https://medium.com/homes-for-the-homeless/solving-homelessness-in-san-francisco-65d13ce12a9 https://medium.com/homes-for-the-homeless/solving-homelessne... "If you take one thing away from this post, remember that the very best way to help the homeless, and how we can turn things around, is to provide them housing in safe areas surrounded by supportive services."
- aphextron 9y agoThese prizes really confuse me. Wouldn't it cost more than $20 million just to get something into LEO with existing technology? How can mounting a robotic lunar mission possibly be done for less than that?
- taf2 9y agoyes - according to this: https://futurism.com/elon-musk-launching-a-satellite-with-spacex-is-300-million-cheaper/ https://futurism.com/elon-musk-launching-a-satellite-with-sp... even spacex is maybe at least 68M for a satellite launch not even to the moon
- foota 9y agoTrue, but it could potentially be coupled with government grants or other funding.
- ceejayoz 9y ago> Wouldn't it cost more than $20 million just to get something into LEO with existing technology? Don't underestimate the PR value. Space Ship One cost $25M to win the $10M X-Prize, but having a big prize can capture the imagination of the media and by extension the public.
- jk4930 9y agoI work with PTScientists.com/ (a GLXP team until end of 2016). You keep launch costs low by ride-sharing (secondary payload). One revenue source is to sell payload space to third parties (what we did). Additional funding can come from sponsors (in our case Audi and Vodafone). The intention of the prize is not to cover the costs but to kickstart an ambitious private space movement. One needs to be very lean, inventive, and somewhat risk-taking under those conditions. It forces one to think of business models that make the whole thing independent from a possible prize money (and government funding, which under GLXP rules is limited to 10%).
- WalterBright 9y agoThe foreseeable future for man in space is the moon, not Mars. The moon is close - orders of magnitude easier to get there and back again. Its gravity well isn't a prison. You can probably launch stuff from there to earth with a linear accelerator. It's full of natural resources that can be used to build colonies and space ships. There's no environment to degrade. Mars doesn't make any sense. The moon does. And besides, once we learn how to build bases on the moon, which will take trial and error, it will make it a LOT easier to build one on Mars where mistakes are not recoverable. What are you gonna do on Mars when you find out you forgot the soldering iron? Die. Moon bases can be resupplied.
- olivaw_daneel 9y agoThe moon is certainly more accessible, but the purpose of having a base there is more less clear from both a practical and a scientific perspective. The scientific/engineering (and cultural/sociological) gains from a human return to the moon would be tiny compared to a Mars mission, and any funding (think tens of billions) allocated to such a mission will necessarily push a Mars mission back by a decade or more. First, the science -- while the robotic mission to Mars have yielded many insights about the early history and present state of the planet, a human geologist could do more in a day or two than all of the rovers have done thus far. A small group of human scientists could completely rewrite the textbooks in a short stay on Mars. Can the same be said about a moon mission? Second, living on the moon would be much more difficult (temperatures, micrometeorites, lack of ISRU, etc. etc.), and involve very different challenges than living on Mars. Most of what we learn on the moon will simply not translate to Mars--it will certainly not be a lot easier to live on Mars once a moon base is established, we would nearly be starting from scratch. This is a perennial debate in the human spaceflight program, and I understand the desire to do something given decades of inaction. However, we must be honest about what we stand to lose if we shift our focus to a return to the moon. There is precious little gain from both a science and engineering perspective.
- WOOKIE_pizza 9y agoGood points on both sides of the debate. Why not do both? Imagine the "we" is really 7.4 billion people (~195 countries) so it would seem that surely we could support each others' efforts to reach both destinations. What an achievement for humanity that would be!
- reed1 9y agoOk I'm a complete idiot on astronomics. Seeing how difficult it is to land on moon even with recent technology and such, also keeping in mind that no manned moon landings was made on 21st century, can we say that Neil Armstrong landing was a fraud?
- sdrothrock 9y ago> Seeing how difficult it is to land on moon even with recent technology and such, also keeping in mind that no manned moon landings was made on 21st century, can we say that Neil Armstrong landing was a fraud? Seeing how difficult it is to circumnavigate the world in a wooden ship with recent technology and stuff, also keeping in mind that nobody has circumnavigated the world in a galleon in the 21st century, is it safe to say that Magellan was a fraud?
- 1812Overture 9y agoObviously. He'd have fallen of the edge.
- JoeDaDude 9y agoSee the response from Patrick Germain on Quora. After reading it, it all makes sense... https://www.quora.com/Even-when-proof-exists-that-the-moon-landing-was-a-hoax-why-do-school-textbooks-continue-to-glorify-the-Apollo-mission/answer/Patrick-Germain?srid=FJMI https://www.quora.com/Even-when-proof-exists-that-the-moon-l...
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- alsadi 9y agoOr possibly first /s
- jcslzr 9y agowhat do you mean, if guys did it in 1969, why is now so hard? or you are saying that it was fake almost 50 years ago?