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NASA Plans Robotic Lunar Scouts
bleckywelcky writes "NASA's plan to send robotic scouts to the moon in advance of astronauts is starting to take shape, but politics and the presidential election are stalling progress. Yet, NASA is already designing the first of the robotic explorers. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter would return a global topographical map of the moon, measure deep space radiation in lunar orbit and attempt to find water ice at the lunar poles. Read the whole story."
Sure sure, and next thing you know they'll tell you they'll send a man on the moon. Sheesh...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Ummm... isn't this a bit backwards? First send men, wait 30 years then send robots?
Will they get special moon badges?
Since NASA, with Lockheed and Boeing, is spending a fair amount of money on developing radio-thermo generator for the Martian surface laboratory, in addition to the chassis, it would seem to make sense to attempt to share the technology (and associated costs) between the two missions. This could save some money and give NASA more long term experience in developing, using, and maintaining standardized systems. I'm sure some of the instruments could be useful. For example, I don't know about current plans, but there had been talk of equipping a Martian mission, I think the sample return, with a drill for taking a deep subsurface core sample, with hopes of finding a permafrost layer. I expect it could be adapted fairly easily to be used on the lunar surface as well.
Leave it to the private companies, they've given ample evidence of capability superior to NASA's
Some dude flying a light aircraft at 360,000 ft for several seconds in 2004 doesn't even remotely qualify as proving superior to NASA's putting tons of men and equipment on another planet and bringing back many pounds of samples back on earth in 1969, sorry.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Well that's cool. It's a lot less expensive to send robots than it is to send people. They'll do more science. It'd be really cool if the robots could manipulate objects and construct a green house or a solar array or a water generating plant to sotre resources for future visits.
Does the lunar soil have nutrients for plant life or would we have to send it up too?
Stuff that matters.
I wonder if it will look like this
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Was wondering what kind of kilts the robots would have.
...going to do a surface magnetic scan to look for the Monolith?
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
from the Lunar Prospector team. They flew a robotic craft around the moon for 19 months and collected detailed surface data all for a cost of only $65 million. Some say this was NASA's most cost effective mission ever. It originally met opposition because no one believed it could be done that cheap. But despite the low price tag, the data it produced was 10 times better than expected.
And your cost estimate is waaay off. While NASA as a whole gets about $15 billion a year, the Genesis mission had a total cost to NASA of about $216 million, spread over several years for design, development, launch, and operations. You were two orders of magnitude wrong: http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlkop/genesis.html
And really, Space Ship One had problems on its first flight. Just check out http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/06/21/suborbita l.test/
It's just lucky that the problems weren't such that they would be fatal. After all, who would expect that a cold day could blow up a Space Shuttle? Or that a piece of foam the size of a backpack would cause another to disintegrate, when dozens of pieces of foam usually strike the leading edge of the wing?
Your comment actually shows that you don't know how complex spacecraft are. Take a look at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/index.cfm
Consider how bad the radiation environment of space is. Without a magnetosphere to guard it, a spacecraft has to take the full brunt of the radiation put out by the sun, as well as any quasars, pulsars, black holes, and other sources. It's not like you can go buy a radiation hardened computer at your local Best Buy.
So, really, you might be tired of NASA, but nobody, and I mean NOBODY but NASA could have made the two Mars rovers, put them on Mars, and kept them functioning as long as they have.
You might be tired of NASA, but we are only just now beginning to understand how the solar system formed, and the Cassini probe is a large part of why we might be able to figure it out.
You might be tired of NASA, but I'm not.
I am so very tired of NASA. They may have accomplished some amazing feats, but they screw up so many things (sensors upside down, feet not meters, bad insulation, etc), and every time someone there miscalculates, BAM! there goes $10 billion of misappropriated taxpayer money.
I rather spend 10 billion in the space program than 120 billion in a stupid war in the Middle East.
The Russian space program sent the Lunokhod 1 rover to the moon in 1970 and Lunakhod 2 in 1973. Lunakhod 1 lived 8 months, moved over 10.5 km, and returned 20,000 pictures. Lunakhod 2 operated 4 months, moved 37 km, and returned 80,000 pictures.
"Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft...and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor."
-Wernher von Braun
This actually makes a lot of sense. The robots can do a lot of scouting ahead of time so that when we do send people back to the moon we can cut out the areas we are sure are of no interest. There are still a lot of things that humans can do that remote controlled robots can't though. At least using robots we can eliminate one of the problems we had with the original Lunar Landing. The original site was too rocky and they had to move over a bit (and wasted fuel) trying to get to a "smooth" landing point. With robots we can get more detailed maps and set down precise landing areas. This will save trouble later on.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars