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That headline/title "NASA Awards $57M Contract to Build Roads on the Moon" condenses information so much that is becomes both false and deliberately misleading.
by shkkmo 4y ago
That headline/title "NASA Awards $57M Contract to Build Roads on the Moon" condenses information so much that is becomes both false and deliberately misleading.
The actual article says:
> to develop construction technologies to build infrastructure on the moon—including landing pads, habitats and roads.
So the contract isn't to build anything but to develop technologies that could be used to build a wide variety of needed infrastructure on the moon.
- dotnet00 4y agoPlus, most of that money is probably intended to focus on building landing pads since that's still NASA's biggest "unknown" risk factor regarding bringing large amounts of cargo down to the lunar surface. It isn't really clear if a large lander like Starship would be at risk of digging itself into a hole (and potentially tossing regolith into an orbit such that it comes around and hits the lander or surrounding infrastructure) if it landed using its main thrusters. For now the HLS design includes separate landing thrusters higher up, but since those add more complexity they're probably fairly interested in exploring other possibilities.
- Arrath 4y agoThat does make much more sense, thank you.