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NASA To Cancel Lunar Resource Prospector Mission (theverge.com)
New submitter XXongo writes: NASA has told the Lunar Resource Prospector Mission team to cease work on developing the mission by the end of May. The proposed mission was in development to send a rover to the lunar pole in 2022, with the objective to drill into ice frozen in permanently shadowed craters. Use of such ice has been proposed as a resource that could be processd into rocket fuel, oxygen, and water for life support systems.
The cancellation apparently is partly due to the mission having been shifted from the Human Exploration directorate of NASA, which is excited by the possibility of lunar resources supporting exploration, to the Science Mission directorate, which does not consider lunar ice a high priority for science. The cancellation of the mission has gotten some controversy from the lunar science community, with the members of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) writing an open letter to new administrator Bridenstine protesting the cancellation.
The cancellation apparently is partly due to the mission having been shifted from the Human Exploration directorate of NASA, which is excited by the possibility of lunar resources supporting exploration, to the Science Mission directorate, which does not consider lunar ice a high priority for science. The cancellation of the mission has gotten some controversy from the lunar science community, with the members of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) writing an open letter to new administrator Bridenstine protesting the cancellation.
Send Boston Dynamics to the moon.
Establishing a permanent lunar base is the logical first step towards a Mars trip.
I heard someone once say that if you want to grind a 6 inch telescope mirror, it is faster and more prudent to grind a 3-inch mirror first and then a 6-inch mirror than to try to go for the 6-inch mirror on the first attempt.
NASA doesn't want to disturb the Nazi base under the Lunar ice cap, so they cancelled the project. And all because the president said they were some "very fine people".
You are welcome on my lawn.
I wonder if it was orchestrated by the Mars Underground. Unlike missions such as Curiosity, many lunar missions are short-lived so not good long-term employment.
Sorry but this "lunar base is essential for Mars settlement" is a bankrupted expression. Otherwise everybody will start working on a lunar exit strategy before we can simply show we can put something on the moon that can do something useful (hey, how minable is that water ice?). Or put a man on the moon and bring him back safely. If we can't do these "simple" things, lots of luck expanding humanity into the solar system.
mfwright@batnet.com
How do you know they don't pay taxes?
Luckily the Earth's resources are infinite and it will always be habitable.
The only idiots here, as has become the norm, is the slashdot commenters:
1. Trolls;
2. clueless ignorants;
3. Basement dwellers with their worthless lives who delude themselves into thinking that they're smarter than NASA people.
Luckily the Earth's resources are infinite and it will always be habitable.
Mars and the Moon are not habitable either, and they aren't exactly good places to find resources. Our effort is better spent preserving what we have here.
There's hardly a point in having knowledge for its own sake if we aren't going to act on that knowledge.
Sometimes we're just curious. We look at far away pulsars and black holes without any plans to colonize them.
Would it be so easy for him to do if he didn't have a fat NASA contract.
He earned those contracts himself.
Who thinks like that? God complex, much? If you're that worried about hypotheticals in the far future:
1) Don't have kids.
2) Realize that evolution is still happening. There were no humans a million years ago, there won't be any in another million.
The Earth is the only place that supports life. There is no way to reach other habitable planets, ever. There is no way to make the other planets in our system habitable. Ever.
You are evading your responsibilities as a human adult right here right now, by invoking quasi-religious sci-fi nonsense for teenagers.
The definition of a Space Nutter.
At the peak of our manned space capability, we were able to send three people at a time to the Moon, for a week.
We are currently increasing our population by 200000 more people. Every. Day.
You'd need 67000 Saturn V launches EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. just to keep up with population growth.
For a week.
There is absolutely no combination of chemical elements, technology, or resources that will prevent us from hitting that wall of reality that the planet is finite, our resources are finite, and our technology is limited, and that physics itself places those limits.
We don't even have the Concorde anymore and you're planning the future of the Human Species in the Galaxy!??
Grow up.
What do you suggest should be done with the miniscule (relatively speaking) amount of money NASA gets every year?
Remote exploration. Basically the stuff they've doing already, except for the ISS, which should be deorbited.
Yes he did. The taxpayers requesting that their money be spent on something they're interested in also earned that money that they paid taxes on. Are you suggesting that people who pay taxes should be required to pay the full amount for everything before they get a say?
How is that going to preserve what we have here?
We thought the Galaxy was the entire universe up until the 1920s!!!
Astronomers explored the universe more by staring into telescopes in the early 20th century than astronauts ever did.
The knowledge that the universe is billions of times larger than our galaxy is less than a hundred years old, and it was "explored" by nerds sitting at desks!
It seems that people have this romantic sci-fi idea of "exploration" being some kind of 1930s Buck Rogers notion of physically going to other planets that happen to have weird people on it and getting voluptuous women. (which Space Nutters can't have access to in reality)
Jesus Christ, space is mostly EMPTY. The density of interplanetary space is 5 particles per cubic centimeter!
There's nothing there! You have Star Wars movie imagery in your mind when the reality is: cold, empty, deadly, radiation-blasted hell.
Are you suggesting that people who pay taxes should be required to pay the full amount for everything before they get a say?
No.
It isn't, but you asked me what to do with NASA's budget.
Speaking of budget, when you work out how much the US spends per person roughly a year. For military it's about $1,800. For NASA it's about $50! Sort of sad when you think about it.
Human civilization was made by nutters, one footstep at a time. Then the practical naysayers came along and just ruined everything.
Maybe you should read up on what real science is.
Fuck the Moon. What has it done for us lately?
You use 'ever' incorrectly. What can be realistically done in a single human lifetime is sadly very limited yes.
Planets aren't even the optimal colonization real estate in the solar system.
Try SFIA on youtube for some current physics (and reasonable extrapolations) based capabilities.
--- Mercutio was right.