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posted by mrpg on Tuesday November 20 2018, @03:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the to-the-moon-and-back dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

NASA to pay private space companies for moon rides

Next month, almost a half-century since the United States last landed a spacecraft on the moon, NASA is expected to announce plans for a return. But the agency will just be along for the ride. Rather than unveiling plans for its own spacecraft, NASA will name the private companies it will pay to carry science experiments to the moon on small robotic landers.

Under a program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), NASA would buy space aboard a couple of launches a year, starting in 2021. The effort is similar to an agency program that paid private space companies such as Elon Musk's SpaceX to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). "This a new way of doing business," says Sarah Noble, a planetary scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., who is leading the science side of NASA's lunar plans.

Scientists are lining up for a ride. "It really feels like the future of lunar exploration," says Erica Jawin, a planetary scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. She and other attendees at the annual meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group in Columbia, Maryland, last week were eager to show NASA why their small experiments would be worthy hitchhikers on the landers.


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @05:54AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @05:54AM (#764157)

    So how much are they willing to pay for the astronaut mustache rides? What is the ratio between astronaut rides and Cosmonaut rides? And what about the Chinese, Ben-wah Space station option? I fear that Nasa is selling out to whores, and not just SpaceX (Whores to the Galaxy!, and Boring)

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday November 20 2018, @09:06AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 20 2018, @09:06AM (#764183) Journal

    I fear that Nasa is selling out to whores, and not just SpaceX (Whores to the Galaxy!, and Boring)

    Why exactly do you complain? NASA never built their own rockets, it was buying expandable rockets from other 'whores' (Russian ones included) until recently. Here [wikipedia.org], find me one rocket that was manufactured by NASA in that list.

    Saturn V [wikipedia.org], the one used to put the first man on the Moon:

    The Saturn V was principally designed by the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, although numerous major systems, including propulsion, were designed by subcontractors.
    ...
    Manufacturers
    Boeing (S-IC)
    North American (S-II)
    Douglas (S-IVB)

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday November 20 2018, @01:59PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 20 2018, @01:59PM (#764237) Journal

    I fear that Nasa is selling out to whores, and not just SpaceX (Whores to the Galaxy!, and Boring)

    I suggest looking at NASA's historical record sometime, particularly, their exploration of the Moon after the end of Apollo. If they really were interested in exploration for the future of the US (and a few related goals that they're tasked with), it wouldn't have taken them almost two decades to send another mission (of any sort) to the Moon. One can't use the bogeyman of congressional funding to explain why there was this huge gap. It's not that hard to slip something into the budget and get it approved.

    NASA sold out a long time ago. What's going on now is that launch vehicle white elephants are no longer viable. This will result in a huge reduction in cost for NASA. Terrible isn't it?

    • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday November 21 2018, @03:52PM (1 child)

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday November 21 2018, @03:52PM (#764769) Journal

      One surely can use the bogeyman of congressional funding to explain why NASA hasn't returned to manned exploration beyond LEO. NASA has half the budget they did of the Apollo days in adjusted dollars. Multiple unmanned missions can be ran for the cost of running one manned mission, let alone the costs in developing them. Neither political side seems to be truly interested in pure space research beyond what the direct beneficiaries (both corporate and state) get out of it. ISS takes up about 25% of the NASA budget as best as I can make it out on back-of-envelope calculations. Shuttle launches (each one) took about 13% of the annual NASA budget in retrospect. And were NASA to make moves to shift priorities around (defund unmanned, fund manned) without congressional approval they would find their budget cut even further. So I think a manned mission would require a significant upgrade of budget approved by congress and the President. I'm happy to blame them.

      NASA was indeed sold out a long time ago. 1970 to be precise. But it wasn't NASA who sold out.

      --
      This sig for rent.
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 22 2018, @02:46AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 22 2018, @02:46AM (#765049) Journal

        One surely can use the bogeyman of congressional funding to explain why NASA hasn't returned to manned exploration beyond LEO.

        Well, not reasonably. When the entire bureaucracy shuts down lunar missions, you have to look for the explanation elsewhere.

        Multiple unmanned missions can be ran for the cost of running one manned mission, let alone the costs in developing them.

        And yet, they didn't even propose further unmanned missions to the Moon.