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After half-century absence, U.S. returns to moon as lunar lander Odysseus touches down:
America has returned to the moon after a 52-year absence. The unmanned Odysseus spacecraft touched down on the lunar surface shortly before 6:30 p.m. EST Thursday.
"We can confirm without a doubt that our equipment is on the surface and we are on the moon. Odysseus has found a new home," said Dr. Tim Crain, mission director of the IM-1, the first American private venture to send a module to the moon.
It's the first time the United States has had a new presence on the lunar surface since NASA's Apollo 11 in July 1969.
The Intuitive Machines Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed "Odie" or "IM-1," settled on the moon's surface after a day's long trek but immediately began experiencing communication problems, preventing the transmission of data.
The general tone of this story here and elsewhere seems to be that this heralds a new era of a commercial space industry, but until one can show that there is any commercial value to being on the Moon besides directly supporting NASA/ESA/etc., is this a watershed moment, or is this just slightly expanding the potential NASA/ESA/etc. contractor pool? --hubie
Previously: Private US Moon Lander Successfully Launches 24 Hours After Flight Was Delayed
(Score: 4, Interesting) by khallow on Friday February 23 2024, @01:46PM (5 children)
Right now, not much is going on. My take though is that the Moon could have a significant early industry once there's fueling of vehicles in Earth orbit. While the prices have gone down considerably, it's still somewhere around $1-2k per kg to put anything in LEO. Moon could beat that. Second, space tourism. I know a lot of people aren't impressed by billionaire tourists in space, but their money could kickstart that as well. Someone has to demonstrate the technology to support lunar tourism before it'll be funded.
A third thing is that the Moon is near unique in that one can work on the Moon without actually being on the Moon via teleoperation. It's a bit over two seconds of round trip communication delay consistently (that is, you send a signal, such as a command to move something and then it takes two seconds for returning signals to show you the results of that command). No other large body in the Solar System is anywhere near that close. Aside from some asteroids, Venus is the next closest large body. At closest approach (42 million km), it's a bit under 5 minutes of round trip communication delay. Mars at 56 million km closest approach is next with a round trip delay of over six minutes. Of course, when these planets aren't right next to the Earth, the round trip delays can be much greater, two hours for Mars (ignoring the challenging problem of routing signals around the Sun).
So the Moon can tap in a useful way the huge labor pool of Earth in a way that almost nothing else can in the Solar System.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday February 23 2024, @03:55PM (1 child)
And when the lunar residents get mad at the financial exploitation the Earthlings are imposing on them, what are they going to do, throw rocks at us [wikipedia.org]?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday February 23 2024, @04:28PM
So the trick is to get them to throw the right kind of rocks, you know, the rocks that we want. And then the robots just have to go round and pick them up. I've got a business idea.....
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by agr on Friday February 23 2024, @04:05PM (1 child)
Absolutely correct. I can’t think of anything that humans can do on the Moon that couldn’t be done more cheaply by robots, perhaps by a factor of 100. They can survive in vacuum, work continuously, and don’t need to be brought back to earth. The humans controlling them can work in shifts and go home after work, with zero personal risk. Macros can be developed (“pick up that rock”) and tested on Earth before uploading. Robots could be designed to be repaired by other robots. Only the electronics needs protection from radiation and even if a severe Solar storm wiped out all the electronics, a few fresh robots with a supply of spares could get everything running again.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 23 2024, @04:37PM
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Friday February 23 2024, @04:34PM
We'll have folks on the Moon for PR, and to develop tech for resource exploitation further out. It won't make private financial sense until advancing tech produces a new niche where it's cheaper/better to do it. (other than a handful of folks for the unanticipated once there is significant automated presence).
I'm betting there will be something that drives settlement eventually. It may just be because the prices fall and it's cheap because we build multiple space elevators and orbital mass launchers. At that point - vacation destination and resort staff would be enough...