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That's a much simpler project. It's deployment, not construction. Two metric tons of mesh have to be soft landed at the bottom of the crater. Then mobile robots
by Animats 2y ago
That's a much simpler project. It's deployment, not construction. Two metric tons of mesh have to be soft landed at the bottom of the crater. Then mobile robots pull it open into a large dish.[1] There's a cheaper approach where the mesh is pulled open by weights shot out from the central lander. Cost estimates are in the US$1 billion to US$10 billion range, most of which is shipping cost to Luna Farside.
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/d4pivfipd9rpb19fm87lq/LCRT_NIAC_Phase_1_Final_Report.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/d4pivfipd9rpb19fm87lq/LCRT_NI...
- yinser 2y agoIf you don't see the contradiction in JPL having an active research project to put a radio telescope on the moon and your original statement then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
- Animats 2y agoFrom the article: "FarView would comprise a hundred thousand metal antennas made on-site by autonomous robots. It would cover a Baltimore-size swath of the moon." That's way beyond anything possible today. What JPL proposes is just packing up a big thing tightly and unpacking it at the destination. Space projects have been doing that for decades. When someone assembles a solar farm in the desert with no humans on site, we can talk about doing something like that on Luna.