Going to the moon in 2024

[Justin]

Looks like NASA is looking to throw some cash at three companies to get development of a lunar lander underway.

https://spacenews.com/nasa-outlines-...-partnerships/

WASHINGTON — As NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first crewed landing on the moon, the agency released new details about how it will procure landers to enable humans to return to the moon in the 2020s.

NASA released July 19 a presolicitation notice for its Human Landing System Integrated Lander effort, part of the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) program. The notice included a draft version of a broad agency announcement, with NASA requesting industry comments on it by Aug. 2.

The draft solicitation offers some new details on NASA’s approach to developing landers capable of carrying humans to the surface of the moon and back, and do so in time to meet the 2024 established by the White House earlier this year and reaffirmed by Vice President Mike Pence in a July 20 speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.

[Bailey Guns]

Putting a manned lunar rover on the moon is sooo 1970s...



Seriously, though... Is the (fairly) recent uptick in interest by various countries in launching moon missions fueled by the same reasons we did it in the 60s and 70s?

[Justin]

I would say that current lunar missions are largely driven by national desires for prestige, at least primarily for the non-American nations, e.g. China, India, and Israel. The two Chinese lunar rover missions were explicitly designed as part of an overall architecture with an eye to conducting unmanned sample return missions followed by manned lunar exploration.

However, there's still plenty of science to be done on the lunar surface, not the least of which would involve prospecting for in-situ resource utilization.

Ultimately, though, I think there are additional plans above and beyond what was accomplished with Apollo, not the least of which would be to set up permanent manned facilities to conduct additional research and experimentation. Being able to conduct off-world testing on the moon is seen as a stepping stone to eventual plans for exploring Mars.
Finally, there also seem to be a number of private corporations looking to hitch rides to the moon in order to explore possible business use cases.

[Richard K]

I can think of a number of better ways to spend 20 billion dollars!

[Justin]

I can think of a number of better ways to spend 20 billion dollars!

Yeah, Walter Mondale felt the same way about Apollo.

[Aloha_Shooter]

I can think of a number of better ways to spend 20 billion dollars!

Seeing that the space program has had a better than 7:1 return ratio (i.e., every dollar spent on space science and technology, including Mercury/Gemini/Apollo, has returned at least $7), I'd like to hear your ideas if they can result in more than $140B return -- and that's not including the fact that ROI in federal revenues is necessarily a fraction of what it means for the private economy.

Going to the Moon up through Apollo 17 meant developing whole new technologies in computing, battery technology, remote operations, survival gear, fire suppression, etc. Going to the Moon permanently will require advances in remote medicine, nutrition, agriculture, survival equipment, water reuse, sensing, autonomous operations, etc. Think any of that is going to improve your standard of living or the way you do business?

Yeah, Walter Mondale felt the same way about Apollo.

Yep, he could have wasted all that money on welfare and Medicare for all -- and just increased the demand and wastage. I told Democrats in the run-up to the 1984 elections that if Mondale had his way, the Challenger astronauts would still be alive and probably the Apollo 1 astronauts as well because Mondale would have shut down the space program in order to fund more urban decay and welfare fraud. I hope Mondale is having to argue daily with Grissom, Chaffee, White, Shepard, Glenn, Onizuka, Scobee, Kennedy, etc. over the worth of the space program and that Nixon is getting blowback for having shut Apollo down just when we were getting good at it.

We should have been at this a long time ago:

[Bailey Guns]

Going to the Moon up through Apollo 17 meant developing whole new technologies in computing, battery technology, remote operations, survival gear, fire suppression, etc. Going to the Moon permanently will require advances in remote medicine, nutrition, agriculture, survival equipment, water reuse, sensing, autonomous operations, etc.

And Tang. I learned about Tang thanks to the space program.

[crays]

And Tang. I learned about Tang thanks to the space program.

What about Space Food Sticks?

[JohnnyDrama]

Seeing that the space program has had a better than 7:1 return ratio (i.e., every dollar spent on space science and technology, including Mercury/Gemini/Apollo, has returned at least $7), I'd like to hear your ideas if they can result in more than $140B return -- and that's not including the fact that ROI in federal revenues is necessarily a fraction of what it means for the private economy.

Going to the Moon up through Apollo 17 meant developing whole new technologies in computing, battery technology, remote operations, survival gear, fire suppression, etc. Going to the Moon permanently will require advances in remote medicine, nutrition, agriculture, survival equipment, water reuse, sensing, autonomous operations, etc. Think any of that is going to improve your standard of living or the way you do business?



Yep, he could have wasted all that money on welfare and Medicare for all -- and just increased the demand and wastage. I told Democrats in the run-up to the 1984 elections that if Mondale had his way, the Challenger astronauts would still be alive and probably the Apollo 1 astronauts as well because Mondale would have shut down the space program in order to fund more urban decay and welfare fraud. I hope Mondale is having to argue daily with Grissom, Chaffee, White, Shepard, Glenn, Onizuka, Scobee, Kennedy, etc. over the worth of the space program and that Nixon is getting blowback for having shut Apollo down just when we were getting good at it.

We should have been at this a long time ago:

+1

WTF happened. When I was a kid, that was a sure deal.

[TFOGGER]

$20B is enough to run the entire US government...for about 4 hours and 42 minutes.