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It is very suspicious that the companies bidding are NASA contractors. This may be a case of corruption. I.E., NASA sells the moon rover for 85 M and then pays

It is very suspicious that the companies bidding are NASA contractors. This may be a case of corruption. I.E., NASA sells the moon rover for 85 M and then pays 200 M for the moon rover to do something for them for future NASA missions.

Forgeties79 2y ago
This is some pretty heavy speculation based on very little information. Saying "maybe a case" is really doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
KyleBerezin 2y ago
"It's petty suspicious that the only companies trying to buy this mining equipment are other mining companies." Did you expect Walmart to make a bid on it?
- JSDevOps 2y ago
  Museums
freedomben 2y ago
In general, I'm with you about being skeptical. However, in this case, I don't think there is anything weird going on, at least not with the information we have. I've never worked at one of these contractors who service NASA, but in the past I worked for a large defense contractor who in part provided some pretty high-tech stuff to the Air Force among others. One of the things I worked on specifically was the communications computer for the Predator drone. It was the piece of equipment that received all command and control from the ground station, and sent the video back from the drone camera. The actual plane itself was made by a separate company who was more specialized in that aspect. We were very proud to work on Predator, and we absolutely would have loved to have bid on something like that. Even though we made part of it, we didn't have a complete unit. Had we have won a bid to get one, it would have gone into a glass case in our visitor area, where we would proudly display it like a trophy. I would not be surprised in the least if that is what these bidders have in mind. Consider how much fun it would be if you are showing up for a job interview and you see in a glass case in the lobby an actual brand new moon Rover! I know that would be pretty cool for me. I do tend to love museums though, so maybe I'm not the best test case.
- II2II 2y ago
  Stipulations include performing the science mission and releasing the data. While there the cool factor would be orders of magnitude greater, there are also considerable commitments and risk involved. So the question is: what other benefits would be involved? I'm sure there would be many, particularly if you could prove that you could launch and operate such missions, but I doubt that having a museum piece would be one of them. (And you would only have that museum piece if there is a twin that remains on Earth, which seems to be common for NASA missions.)
wongarsu 2y ago
Everyone who has the capability to land this on the moon is a NASA contractor or a competing space agency. And I don't know how congress would feel about selling this to Roskosmos, the Chinese CNSA or Indian ISRO. Maybe ESA. Of course somebody else could buy it and pay somebody to put it on the moon. But that seems unlikely given the provision that findings have to be shared. For companies that sell moon landings it's good marketing, for anyone else there wouldn't be much upside

Forgeties79 2y ago

This is some pretty heavy speculation based on very little information. Saying "maybe a case" is really doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

KyleBerezin 2y ago

"It's petty suspicious that the only companies trying to buy this mining equipment are other mining companies." Did you expect Walmart to make a bid on it?

JSDevOps 2y ago
Museums

freedomben 2y ago

In general, I'm with you about being skeptical. However, in this case, I don't think there is anything weird going on, at least not with the information we have. I've never worked at one of these contractors who service NASA, but in the past I worked for a large defense contractor who in part provided some pretty high-tech stuff to the Air Force among others. One of the things I worked on specifically was the communications computer for the Predator drone. It was the piece of equipment that received all command and control from the ground station, and sent the video back from the drone camera. The actual plane itself was made by a separate company who was more specialized in that aspect. We were very proud to work on Predator, and we absolutely would have loved to have bid on something like that. Even though we made part of it, we didn't have a complete unit. Had we have won a bid to get one, it would have gone into a glass case in our visitor area, where we would proudly display it like a trophy. I would not be surprised in the least if that is what these bidders have in mind. Consider how much fun it would be if you are showing up for a job interview and you see in a glass case in the lobby an actual brand new moon Rover! I know that would be pretty cool for me. I do tend to love museums though, so maybe I'm not the best test case.

II2II 2y ago
Stipulations include performing the science mission and releasing the data. While there the cool factor would be orders of magnitude greater, there are also considerable commitments and risk involved. So the question is: what other benefits would be involved? I'm sure there would be many, particularly if you could prove that you could launch and operate such missions, but I doubt that having a museum piece would be one of them. (And you would only have that museum piece if there is a twin that remains on Earth, which seems to be common for NASA missions.)

wongarsu 2y ago

Everyone who has the capability to land this on the moon is a NASA contractor or a competing space agency. And I don't know how congress would feel about selling this to Roskosmos, the Chinese CNSA or Indian ISRO. Maybe ESA. Of course somebody else could buy it and pay somebody to put it on the moon. But that seems unlikely given the provision that findings have to be shared. For companies that sell moon landings it's good marketing, for anyone else there wouldn't be much upside