Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Monday April 30 2018, @02:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the escape-from-the-return-to-the-moon dept.

The Washington Post reports that NASA "has canceled its only lunar rover currently in development," Resource Prospector. From Wikipedia:

Resource Prospector is a cancelled mission concept by NASA of a rover that would have performed a survey expedition on a polar region of the Moon. The rover was to attempt to detect and map the location of volatiles such as hydrogen, oxygen and lunar water which could foster more affordable and sustainable human exploration to the Moon, Mars, and other Solar System bodies.

The mission concept was still in its pre-formulation stage, when it was scrapped in April 2018. The Resource Prospector mission was proposed to be launched in 2022.

takyon: Meanwhile, NASA is "pushing hard on deep space exploration" with the Moon as its goal.

Also at Space.com, The Verge, and Fortune.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 30 2018, @03:02AM (10 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Monday April 30 2018, @03:02AM (#673579) Journal

    I wonder if NASA has come to the conclusion that this Rover mission would be redundant and only serve to do research that would help the Chinese. The US already has very good mapping and geo-sensing of these areas and a Rover would merely be confirmation of what we already know.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Monday April 30 2018, @03:16AM (9 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday April 30 2018, @03:16AM (#673581) Journal

    only serve to do research that would help the Chinese.

    Well that's a fucked up perspective. Is it about time to throw science out the window and start a resource war on the Moon? Good thing we will have the world's best rocket maker based in the U.S.

    Given its proximity to the Earth, Moon colonists may always be subservient to Earth governments. Mars on the other hand...

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday April 30 2018, @03:48AM (8 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 30 2018, @03:48AM (#673593) Journal

      only serve to do research that would help the Chinese.

      Well that's a fucked up perspective.

      You may be right for the wrong reasons. Since the Chinese exclusion policy of NASA [wikipedia.org]

      , just how exactly are the Chinese going to profit from NASA's research?

      Good thing we will have the world's best rocket maker based in the U.S.

      Let me point that there's no guarantee the things will stay the same. As in any fair race, you need to keep running to keep your position.
      Or the way the banksters put it in small print: "past performance is not an indicator of future results".

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 30 2018, @04:28AM (4 children)

        by frojack (1554) on Monday April 30 2018, @04:28AM (#673598) Journal

        All coms coming from a Rover would certainly be easy to intercept, no?
        NASA has always been open, publishing just about everything.

        If they've already got hi-rez images of the area, maybe they don't need anything more.
        Maybe a Rover is a waste of money, a distraction, and something they feel they don't have to wait for.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 30 2018, @05:27AM (1 child)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 30 2018, @05:27AM (#673604) Journal

          All coms coming from a Rover would certainly be easy to intercept, no?

          So it's the HTTPS traffic going between a WiFi device and router.

          NASA has always been open, publishing just about everything.

          Is anywhere to say this cannot change?

          If they've already got hi-rez images of the area, maybe they don't need anything more.

          Well, the Chinese definitely chang'e-d; three times already, and in their second mission [wikipedia.org] (as early as 2010)

          Chang'e 2 was part of the first phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, and conducted research from a 100-km-high lunar orbit in preparation for the December 2013 soft landing by the Chang'e 3 lander and rover.
          ...
          After completing its primary objective, the probe left lunar orbit for the Earth–Sun L2 Lagrangian point, to test the Chinese tracking and control network, making the China National Space Administration the third space agency after NASA and ESA to have visited this point.
          ...
          In April 2012, Chang'e 2 departed L2 to begin an extended mission to the asteroid 4179 Toutatis, which it successfully flew by in December 2012

          I have this feeling the Chinese are progressing [wikipedia.org] at a higher pace than the current one NASA is showing in regards with Lunar exploration. Maybe I'm wrong.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday April 30 2018, @05:56AM

            by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday April 30 2018, @05:56AM (#673610) Homepage Journal

            Smart tweet, you think like my Generals. Like some of my Generals. My great military has many secret things in outer space. Believe me, we're going to have much more of that. My predecessors promised not to put our nuclear arsenal up there, a treaty. We can cancel that treaty. And we can put our brave soldiers up there. I went to California, I went to Marine Core Air Station Miramar. And I said, space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea. We may even have a Space Force, develop another one, Space Force. We have the Air Force, we'll have the Space Force. Then I said, what a great idea, Maybe we’ll have to do that. So think of that: Space Force, because we are spending a lot and we have a lot of private money coming in, tremendous. Our great military is vital to ensuring America continues to lead the way into the stars. Onward & upward!!

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 30 2018, @05:33AM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday April 30 2018, @05:33AM (#673607) Journal

          How many years or decades will it take for China to begin industrialization of the Moon? No, not a small colony, but significant industrial activity, manned or robotic, with reusable rockets and cheap $/kg to get things onto the surface of the Moon. Will China's current one party system survive that long? We'll see.

          NASA requires authentication to control its spacecraft these days, and may be encrypting the data sent back as well. And your wild speculation that the capabilities would be redundant, unnecessary, and only help the Chinese is just flatly false [theverge.com]:

          Scientists have proposed the idea of mining the water ice at the poles, to turn it into drinking water or rocket fuel. But we won’t know if we can even access this precious resource unless we send a robot up there to check out the area first, and now NASA has canceled its quickest way to find that out. “There are no other [NASA] missions being planned to go to the surface of the Moon,” Phil Metzger, a planetary physicist at University of Central Florida who is part of the science team for Resource Prospector, tells The Verge.

          NASA released a statement after this story’s initial publication, saying that some of the instruments from the Resource Prospector mission would be used in other missions that would land on the moon later. The response was oddly vague about the fate of the rover. “We’re committed to lunar exploration,” said Jim Bridenstein, NASA’s recently sworn-in administrator. “Resource Prospector instruments will go forward in an expanded lunar surface campaign.” The tweet, like the statement, made no reference to the rover itself.

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday April 30 2018, @04:45PM

          by bob_super (1357) on Monday April 30 2018, @04:45PM (#673801)

          If they've already got hi-rez images of the area, maybe they don't need anything more.
          Maybe a Rover is a waste of money, a distraction, and something they feel they don't have to wait for.

          Or maybe, just maybe, NASA's limited budget and ever-shifting priorities have taken yet another victim, which had previously gone through a million reviews and committees agreeing that there was more science per dollar with that rover than with also-attractive alternatives, enough to justify allocating the funding.

          Why would the Chinese have anything to do with this ?

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 30 2018, @05:11AM (2 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday April 30 2018, @05:11AM (#673602) Journal

        Russia is more or less as hostile as China on a number of different fronts, but we still cooperate with them in space. Despite bad relations in recent years and an imminent displacement of Russia's manned launch capability, they are a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway partner.

        I guess the big difference is that Russian know-how helped make the ISS and get astronauts there after the Space Shuttle program ended, whereas China is in "steal copy copy copy" mode, and Russia is a battered, neutered superpower while China is a rising superpower.

        I doubt the exclusion policy will last more than another ten years or so. Xi Jinping will probably meet with President Trump or a successor and someone will propose a space collaboration, and then the President will ask Congress to end or relax the policy.

        In the longer term, China's political system will have to survive growing internal pressure from citizens and the installation of a probable leader-for-life [nytimes.com]. If it doesn't, then the resulting country will probably become weaker, less antagonistic, and the exclusion policy will become obsolete.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday April 30 2018, @06:01AM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 30 2018, @06:01AM (#673612) Journal

          ... whereas China is in "steal copy copy copy" mode,

          So were the Japanese back in the '70-ies. As a single example: they still manufacture better cars than Americans and their auto industry isn't quite in the collapse.

          ... and Russia is a battered, neutered superpower

          Neither US is a fresh chicken. If you look on the number of sciency stories on SN, you'll see that, more often than not, new discoveries are authored by European and Chinese authors (and increasingly less US). My point: in regards with scientific and technology progress, the "superpower" status doesn't seem to do shit for nowadays USA.

          The explanation may be quite simple: while the Europeans and Chinese have state sponsored science, the Sillicon Valey tends to hunt unicorns (and, lately, crypto-currency), while the US national debt has doubled in about 10 years to over 100% of GDP [usgovernmentdebt.us]. Those Trump tax-cuts? They are going to add to this debt.

          In the longer term, China's political system will have to survive growing internal pressure from citizens and the installation of a probable leader-for-life [nytimes.com].

          I'll be dead when China's political system will give way to "internal pressure from citizens".
          Deng Xiaoping was quite a reformist (and it is him that China can thank for the economic reforms [wikipedia.org] and implicitly the status of "raising power" that China now has). Even him could not stop the Tiananmen Square [wikipedia.org] and even a public massacre could not change the China's political system.
          I reckon that China is going to remain like it is for a long time: a country that doesn't quite react as the mind of a Westerner may think it should.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 2, Redundant) by realDonaldTrump on Monday April 30 2018, @06:11AM

          by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday April 30 2018, @06:11AM (#673613) Homepage Journal

          President Xi is a great gentleman, he treated me tremendously well when I visited China. He's the most powerful President they've had in 100 years. He's President for life and I think it’s great. When you change Presidents a lot, you get bad Presidents. Like Bush Jr. and Obama. The global warming we should be worried about is the global warming caused by NUCLEAR WEAPONS in the hands of crazy or incompetent leaders!