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Now that JPL has a design, they could crank out dozens of Curiosities and do lots of science with little more money.
by WalterBright 5mo ago
Now that JPL has a design, they could crank out dozens of Curiosities and do lots of science with little more money.
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoIf they actually want to do that they'd need to come up with a design more suited to serial production. Not sure how much modification that would take. If SpaceX ever credibly gets to the point of preparing to send people to Mars I'd think that that would have to happen because how else do you vet your landing sites.
- WalterBright 5mo agoThe simple fact that in order to build the first one, you have to build jigs and set up machinery and make a test plan and make test equipment, and debug it means doing a twin would likely be less than 10% of the cost of the original.
- rtkwe 5mo agoThey'd need to source the plutonium for the RTGs for that and from what I've read that's in pretty precious supply. Though maybe we could start disassembling bombs to source it.