Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 41 posts

Re: Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

#31

Post by vkou »

Is this an Onion piece? Or something from the Beaverton?

They want to land on the moon... To set up a billboard? And here I thought that the Silicon Valley model of startups making money by advertising other startups that make money by advertising other startups was insane.

Oh... They want to start a space economy. That's great, but there is no mention of what will that space economy do. They will maybe consider mining water, for a potential future human settlement that will... Do what? They will put up a billboard, to advertise... To whom?

Re: Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

#32

Post by melling »

pikchurn wrote: post #24
melling wrote: post #2

First, we should accelerate building better robots to do the work of humans, then send thousands throughout the solar system. This will be cheaper and faster than manned space flight... Anyway, I went through this a few years ago on HN after the Virgin Galactic accident. People argued that it was only a minor setback. Any setback that involves humans costs a lot of money and time.

Robots don't get anywhere near the effectiveness of boots on the ground, even with the most advanced robotic explorers we have today. All of the science done by the Martian rovers could have been done by a human geologist in a few hours work (except the traversal itself, so let's add a day's hike on top of a few hours lab work). And the robots are only really able to inspect the stuff that happens to be exposed on th…

"Robots don't get anywhere near the effectiveness of boots on the ground, even with the most advanced robotic explorers we have today"

Yes, that's why I said we accelerate the research into robotics.

No one wants to fund NASA to go to Mars. It'll cost $200 billion to get a dozen people there, then it'll cost even more to stay.

The DoD can spend a few billion in R&D, and that's a small project. We can give tax credits for R&D to private industry. The research doesn't even go on the NASA budget.

Re: Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

#33

Post by pikchurn »

melling wrote: post #32
pikchurn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robots don't get anywhere near the effectiveness of boots on the ground, even with the most advanced robotic explorers we have today. All of the science done by the Martian rovers could have been done by a human geologist in a few hours work (except the traversal itself, so let's add a day's hike on top of a few hours lab work). And the robots are only really able to inspect the stuff that happens to be exposed on th…

"Robots don't get anywhere near the effectiveness of boots on the ground, even with the most advanced robotic explorers we have today" Yes, that's why I said we accelerate the research into robotics. No one wants to fund NASA to go to Mars. It'll cost $200 billion to get a dozen people there, then it'll cost even more to stay. The DoD can spend a few billion in R&D, and that's a small project. We can give tax credits…

I think you don't understand the vast chasm between robotic capability and humans, and what can reasonably be done to close that gap. You're talking about making some sort of robotic geologist/biologist in the literal sense -- a humanoid robot or equivalent functionality that is space hardened, resists abrasive dust like nothing we have on Earth, requires no on-site maintenance, and is autonomous enough to operate for 10's of minutes at a time as good as it would be if humans were at the helm and it was next door.

I don't think you understand the scale of those requirements. It would be cheaper to send humans, even at absolutely ridiculous Apollo-on-steroid prices.

Re: Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

#34

Post by gscott »

Bob2019 wrote: post #5
melling wrote: post #2

First, we should accelerate building better robots to do the work of humans, then send thousands throughout the solar system. This will be cheaper and faster than manned space flight... Anyway, I went through this a few years ago on HN after the Virgin Galactic accident. People argued that it was only a minor setback. Any setback that involves humans costs a lot of money and time.

Such a simple and elegant solution. We could also upload our minds into said robots remotely.

I am not sure if we want to upload our minds... then the robots would be humping each other endlessly and never get anything done.

Re: Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

#35

Post by adrianN »

melling wrote: post #14
indubitable wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curiosity cost us about $2 billion and it has some of the most state of the art systems on board. Among these was its drill, which was supposed to provide some of the most important science from the mission. And as my use of past tense probably belies, it broke after 15 activations. [1] Redundancies and the best NASA has on it notwithstanding, it remains broken. They've now, a year later, developed a high risk idea t…

It will cost $200 billion to get to Mars by 2040? That's a lot of cheaper robotic missions. If something breaks, there's another one in the works. We should also be developing robots that can do what the human can do. That investment will pay off in many ways. Btw, the first DARPA Grand Challenge was a bust in 2004. No one finished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2004_Gra...

Going to Mars doesn't have to cost 200 billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct

Re: Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

#36

Post by pavel_lishin »

melling wrote: post #27
pavel_lishin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheaper, faster, and easier We don't know that, right? We don't know how much it would cost to develop the tech; we don't know how long it would take; we don't know how difficult it would be. It might actually be cheaper to send canned apes throughout the solar system, than human minds in robot bodies; we just don't know yet. This is at best a Fermi problem, where we can start throwing numbers out and hope our esti…

We send what we have now then iterate. Release early, release often. Funding robotics, AI, etc is not a NASA funded goal but goes under defense budget, tax deductions for industry, etc. The real problem is getting the money for space. No one wants to write a big check for Mars. They’ll write big checks for the Pentagon, automation in manufacturing, and strategic national goals.

I was talking specifically about mind uploads.

Re: Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

#37

Post by marze »

sushibowl wrote: post #3

Can you really get to the moon with just $90M? My impression is that SpaceX is just about the cheapest launch provider currently available, and they charge something like $50-60M to get to orbit. And then you need to do all the tech required to land on the lunar surface as well. Do they anticipate getting additional funding or decreasing costs?

Depends a lot of how much mass you plan to land on the moon. Also depends on if you want 80% chance of success or 99% chance of success.

Re: Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

#38

Post by godelski »

sushibowl wrote: post #3

Can you really get to the moon with just $90M? My impression is that SpaceX is just about the cheapest launch provider currently available, and they charge something like $50-60M to get to orbit. And then you need to do all the tech required to land on the lunar surface as well. Do they anticipate getting additional funding or decreasing costs?

Short answer yes.

Slightly longer answer, space technology is really far behind. Look into the RD-180 and RD-170. You might be surprised that a lot of newer engine designs are only slight modifications of these. The 180 and 170 were also used for a long time. Engine design is a very costly process.

That launch cost is going to be the majority of the mission cost. I'm not familiar with Ispace's lander and vehicle, but you can build those for fairly cheap, in comparison. Since it looks like they are going for an X-Prize, I expect that they don't plan to stay there long. This means that they can get away with only slightly rad hardening devices. Sure, if there's a solar event, they are toast, but in their time window, that's just bad luck.

Somewhat related, EEVBlog has a few videos [1][2][3][4] on the Google Lunar X-Prize where he talks to a guy from Audi's team. He mentions there that they do not use space grade electronics. This is actually fairly common for nano sats (like Planet Labs). GEO is where you REALLY need things to last a long time and satellite prices skyrocket.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7NoK2fiUD4

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADJwChUtdDQ

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJLOZDPTp3I

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JwNmdV2QPs

Re: Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

#39

Post by melling »

pikchurn wrote: post #33
melling wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Robots don't get anywhere near the effectiveness of boots on the ground, even with the most advanced robotic explorers we have today" Yes, that's why I said we accelerate the research into robotics. No one wants to fund NASA to go to Mars. It'll cost $200 billion to get a dozen people there, then it'll cost even more to stay. The DoD can spend a few billion in R&D, and that's a small project. We can give tax credits…

I think you don't understand the vast chasm between robotic capability and humans, and what can reasonably be done to close that gap. You're talking about making some sort of robotic geologist/biologist in the literal sense -- a humanoid robot or equivalent functionality that is space hardened, resists abrasive dust like nothing we have on Earth, requires no on-site maintenance, and is autonomous enough to operate fo…

i didn’t say that the robots had to do everything that humans can. I said we should accelerate the improvements of robots and do what we can with them.

Re: Japanese startup Ispace raises $90M, targets landing on moon surface by 2020

#40

Post by greglindahl »

sushibowl wrote: post #3

Can you really get to the moon with just $90M? My impression is that SpaceX is just about the cheapest launch provider currently available, and they charge something like $50-60M to get to orbit. And then you need to do all the tech required to land on the lunar surface as well. Do they anticipate getting additional funding or decreasing costs?

They plan on being a secondary payload. Secondary payloads don't have to buy an entire rocket flight. As an example, SpaceIL (one of the other Xprize competitors) recently explained how they plan on getting to the Moon:

http://spacenews.com/spaceil-making-final-fundraising-push-f...

> "SpaceIL has a contract with Spaceflight Industries to launch the lander as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 mission whose primary payload is a commercial communications satellite. That satellite, which he declined to identify, will be deployed in a supersynchronous transfer orbit, whose apogee is above the altitude of geostationary orbit. The lander will then use its propulsion system to fly to the moon and land there."

The cost for being a secondary payload can be much cheaper than an entire rocket, and much cheaper than other smaller launch vehicles like Soyuz and Vega.

Post reply on HN