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NASA lays out $28 billion plan to return astronauts to the moon in 2024:
NASA officials released a nearly five-year, $28 billion plan Monday to return astronauts to the surface of the moon before the end of 2024, but the agency's administrator said the "aggressive" timeline set by the Trump administration last year hinges on Congress approving $3.2 billion in the next few months to kick-start development of new human-rated lunar landers.
The plan unveiled Monday contained few new details not previously disclosed by NASA. It assumes crews will launch on NASA's Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket, fly to the moon's vicinity on an Orion capsule, then transfer into a commercially-developed lunar lander to ferry the astronauts to and from the lunar surface.
NASA released a new overview document [(pdf)] Monday describing the agency's approach to landing astronauts on the moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. The program, named Artemis, encompasses the SLS, Orion, Human Landing Systems, and the Gateway, a human-tended platform in lunar orbit that will eventually serve as a staging point for missions to the moon.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 24 2020, @05:25PM
Probably, but as programs drag on their cost integrates over time and can balloon dramatically.
Initially, to land the first robot? Yes. To build a high capacity base which supports mining, manufacturing, assembly, fuel processing and launch capabilities? No. Boots on the ground will be able to overcome challenges faster than the development cycles required to address them as they are identified. There's a healthy quantity of unknown unknowns remaining in moon based operations. Even when most operations have been established and automated, people to install and maintain the robots will be faster to develop and deploy than robots. People have a high overhead, but not as high as complex robot systems development teams.
Of course, unless delay / abandonment of the program is a risk we are including in the definition of "safe/unsafe" evaluation.
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