Slashdot Mirror
Taiwan Building Lunar Lander For NASA Moon-Mining Mission (blastingnews.com)
MarkWhittington quotes a report from Blasting News: According to AFP, the Chung-shan Institute of Science and Technology in Taiwan is building a $47 million, 3.7 metric ton lunar lander on behalf of NASA. The vehicle is designed to carry a rover called Resource Prospector, which would roll about the lunar surface searching out deposits of oxygen, hydrogen, and water. The Resource Prospector mission is still being formulated but is envisioned to be a joint project with several national space agencies and commercial companies. The lunar lander is the first vehicle of its type to be built in Taiwan. "The Resource Prospector would take samples from about a meter beneath the lunar surface and then heat them in an oven to ascertain what the materials are that comprise it," reports Blasting News. The mission is part of the second stage to NASA's Journey to Mars program called "Proving Ground." "Should the Resource Prospector prove to be successful, the moon could be used as a base for space journeys into Mars," says Han Kuo-change, the head of CSIST's international cooperation program.
doesn't nasa have military implications? military products must be made in the USA
Yeah, well, you know... low bid... Kinda sucks that it takes precedence over quality, but at least the damn thing is unmanned.
the moon could be used as a base for space journeys into Mars
It would be nice to use the moon as a fuelling station on the way to Mars, but that only makes economic sense if there are lots of high-payload missions.
And why would anyone do that? Science is getting smaller. The Chinese might want to do a few manned missions to show the world they are no longer stagnating in the 16th century. But once they've proved it, they'll be going back as often as the US goes to the moon.
It's about Taiwan joined the space race. Good to see it.
It's not so simple: the initial investment is huge, and the returns are slow. It takes a visionary (like Musk), with a bottomless well of cash (like Tesla Motors) to enter the playfield. There are safer investments with higher and faster returns if one has that kind of money, and wants to multiply it. Without the "vision" it's simply not going to happen - corporations prefer easy, immediate profits over multi-decade investments, and the asian ones are more conservative that way than the western ones.
For this to happen, it takes a special kind of person in a leadership position. This *might* happen, but I don't see any candidate currently.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Save China the trouble of planting spies and hacking computers just give it to them directly.
You have to wonder if this was a parting deal for Obama or ongoing relations with the Clinton Crime Family(TM)(C)
(and russians) will blast
insightful words in your sentence
I don't think that's realistic. These countries don't have the high level of engineering scrutiny to reliably complete such missions.
Not to say they couldn't ever, given enough time they likely would gain competency, but it's probably more likely that well before they get to that stage they'll collapse into endless civil wars due to the sheer masses of the plebeian members of their states.
China hasn't even managed to make a decent aircraft yet, even with what technology they've managed to steal they can't match the west for technical competency.
What deters the russians and chinese (and indians) from space? They are already free to compete.
because there is no money in it. its not a real market, there is only artificial demand. hence no free market and lots of crony capitalism and subsidies; eg spacex and nasa.
when there is money and its half way free, russians usually get it. even the usa airforce uses russian rockets now.
asian companies (and russians) will blast american ones like spacex to bankruptcy.
That must be why the Korean launch vehicle uses a downgraded Russian engine? :D Not much competition there, apparently.
Ezekiel 23:20
Found the ignoramus. "Only artificial demand", right. (Unless of course you designate all demand as being artificial, because the rest of the animal kingdom doesn't have any use for it. But the designation loses all meaning in that case.)
Ezekiel 23:20
Perhaps, but...$47M for a four tonne lunar lander? Lockheed-Martin probably wouldn't even answer the phone unless you put a $100M deposit in first. :-p
Ezekiel 23:20
So who gets the mineral rights? Or is this like Milo Minderbinder: 'we all get a share'?
Will it have Hello Kitty on it? Everything else in Taiwan does, I think they like it more than the Japanese.
if there is real competition(instead of crony capitalist control) and real money (instead of subsidies) is space transport and infrastructure business
Already there. I can think of a half dozen organizations capable of launching a satellite into orbit and I'm no expert at all. (SpaceX, ULA, Orbital Sciences, NASA, ESA, ROSCOSMOS, CNSA off the top of my head) Several of these are private companies and more are coming online in the near future (Blue Origin, Orbital ATK) Government money is still a thing but becoming less so by the day.
opened to private enterprises, asian companies (and russians) will blast american ones like spacex to bankruptcy.
Based on what exactly? There is nothing preventing asian companies from getting into space now. It's not like the US can tell a company in India that they aren't allowed to launch anything into space. You pretend like the US is incapable of competing but so far the only private companies that are launching stuff into space are based in the US.
but usa is big on preaching free markets but bad at practicing them .
Believe whatever you want but the actual fact is that the US among the strongest advocates of free markets and global trade. Sometimes to a fault. This is unlike countries like China where there are very substantial trade restrictions on foreign companies and currency controls. I would argue that the US isn't especially good at negotiating favorable free trade deals but they keep trying.
So being aware of the fact that dozens of commercial satellites get launched every year makes a person "a space nutter"? Hmm, I guess being aware of the availability of cheap airplane tickets into many countries would make an air nutter? :-p
Ezekiel 23:20
Taiwan! Number One!
Good. Glad to see you are for individual freedom and divorcing ourselves from dependence on the state. There are many Americans who are not hypocrites about such matters. Look at the revolt going on against Paul Ryan in Wisconsin.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
From someone who has been involved in the bidding process, this is not how it works. 1. Does it do what you need it to? 2. Are they able to deliver what they promise? (No fly-by-night ma and pa garage shops). 3. Do they have a quality process and history? 4. Price.
If it was lowest bidder only, then people would be coming in with bids of $1M, and after 6 months showing a picture they drew on a napkin and be happy that they got a million dollars with their cancellation notice.
Commercial satellites is far different from exploring the moon or Mars. There is no immediate economic benefit to exploring those locations. Thus there is no real market or demand, it's artificial. There is market demand for satellites. And immediate profits to be made in launching such.
Satellites deal in information. Photons are sent up, photons are sent down. Do you not understand the difference between dealing in information and dealing in material, physical, massive, stuff?
Is that the best argument you can provide to support your position? "We send photons up, therefore mining the Moon is possible"?
Perhaps you are lacking a sense of scale for what you are proposing?
www.distancetomars.com
Or perhaps you fail to understand that any technology that could work for your fantasy scenario will obviously and immediately work here, cheaper and faster? After all, according to your own religion, this planet is just a "rock", right? We can mine things here and use them here right away.
Or maybe you think the Periodic Table of Elements is local to the Earth, and there will be new and different elements on the Moon or Mars?
Please explain to me the mesh of assumptions you have in order to support your idea.
of the Chicoms getting hold of advanced NASA rover technology. This is an incautious idea.
nonsense, space travel can not be profitable for the next 100 years but must be subsidized by government. someone will get the contracts. Musk is pissing away money, Tesla doesn't make a profit
There is no reason to open government funded R&D missions period. To fund a foreign company is just giving research dollars to other countries. The space program absolutely enhanced our technological capabilities in the 60's. An example of utter stupidity was the state of california giving the contract for the bay bridge to china. In the end, it was over budget, held hostage to pay for the overage and in the end all that expensive tooling to build it stayed in china. Giving that contract to a US company would have meant advanced tooling would be retained in the US, not to mention all the US taxes that would have been paid by US workers and companies, who paid the taxes to build the bridge. It is very short sighted to outsource government dollars.
Why did NASA offshore it? Why not build it *here*... or are they saying that "we're not good enough any more", or was it, "they're cheaper, so we'll give them our tax dollars and technology".
It's not so simple: the initial investment is huge, and the returns are slow. ... There are safer investments with higher and faster returns if one has that kind of money, and wants to multiply it.
As with boats and swimming pools, one doesn't buy a spaceship to save money. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
China hasn't even managed to make a decent aircraft yet, even with what technology they've managed to steal they can't match the west for technical competency.
I'm not aware of your definition of 'decent', but they got one pretty decent one in the making. I'm a little bit worried, since I'm a Embraer stockholder.
NASA is NOT paying taiwan to develop this. THis is a partnership with Taiwan in which Taiwan is paying for their half of this. Basically, they are supplying part of this mission, while NASA is putting it and other items on the ground.
IOW, this does NOT take away from American jobs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I hope none of the parts have been outsourced from China.
"Designed in USA, Assembled in Taiwan from parts Made in China"
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
He's not a space nutter, you're just a luddite who wants to forever live in the stone age.
So projects go where the engineering talent lies. NASA going to Taiwan: (i) builds good relations and allows Taiwan to participate in the space adventures of mankind, (ii) maybe indicates that better skills can be found outside of the US (liberal edumacation, pc policies, evolutionarianism).
So NASA gave up on colonization, they gave up on discovering tech to push into the private sector, they gave up on colonization, they gave up on exploration of other stars, they gave up on launching military craft and they've given up on developing new more advanced propulsion systems.
We are now paying them to outsource sci/tech work to fucking Taiwan?
So, you're saying the Russians and the Chinese are currently being 'held back' in some sense by the USA? You are a fucking retard.
Most if not all of Musk's business ventures rely on government funding. They don't hide this fact and often note it as a major risk to their shareholders.
A "metric ton"? So that would be a tonne then. Come on, really.
I don't think anyone said anything about Mars here. I was simply responding to response to a comment about Russians, Chinese, and Indians trying to compete in space operations. Russians, the Chinese, and Indians, if you're not aware of it yet, have been vying for a piece of the launch business for quite some time, with varying results: Russians have lost quite a lot of trust recently in a string of launch failures, the Chinese do have general trust issues (as pointed out by someone else in this discussion) as well as a lack of heavy sat capability, and Indians have yet to develop a launcher capable of more than 2mt to GTO. (The Japanese have all technical things figured out and are reliable but they are also way too expensive.) What I mean I by this was that the argument that "asian companies (and russians) will blast american ones like spacex to bankruptcy" is silly and easily proven wrong because there already *is* a free market - one that was until recently dominated by Arianespace (that one is kept alive by subsidies, mind you!) - but then SpaceX came along and snagged a lot of the business. Indeed, it would seem that SpaceX is actually bankrupting Russians than the other way round!
Ezekiel 23:20
I fail to see the relevance of your comment. See the response above.
Ezekiel 23:20
Oh, and BTW, I don't have any religion - I'm an atheist - and I don't see how religions have anything to do with this. Furthermore, you're of course right about identical elements being present in other places that are also present on Earth, but you haven't yet explained the difference in their cost in both locations. I'll leave that to you as an exercise.
Ezekiel 23:20
Actually, there is one: to save money and get more bang for the buck. Of course you're right about the fact that one can not simply look at two price tags that are close to each other and decide that the foreign one, being marginally cheaper, is preferable, and ignore the other benefits. On the other hand though, the figure of $47M is so ridiculously low for this kind of project that I seriously doubt that even the advantage of getting domestic expertise and complete tooling at home would bring recurring costs to this level, even if the situation advanced to the point of repeated builds. US contractors are not exactly renowned for this kind of pricing. Just a single engine like the RL-10 easily costs more in the US than an entire Russian upper stage, for example. And that's despite the fact that they had the tooling for fifty years and manufactured hundreds of them - the prices are still ridiculous for many US-sourced components. (And a new planetary/lunar lander is effectively just that - a new upper stage project (just one with legs).)
Ezekiel 23:20