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NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon

nature.com

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Re: NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon

#21

Post by tjohns »

doytch wrote: post #13
esalman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of losing 3 dudes is greater than $450m.

People put valuations on lives all the time in risk analysis and I've never seen a cost even close to $100m. DOT puts it at 13.2m: https://www.transportation.gov/office-policy/transportation-...

Factor in the PR impact on the entire space program given the public visibility.

We've never had an astronaut crew get stranded on the moon. though we got close with Apollo 13. If/when that happens for the first time, you'd better believe the entire planet will be paying attention.

Just the congressional inquiries alone will set the space program back by decades.

Re: NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon

#22

Post by choilive »

doytch wrote: post #13
esalman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of losing 3 dudes is greater than $450m.

People put valuations on lives all the time in risk analysis and I've never seen a cost even close to $100m. DOT puts it at 13.2m: https://www.transportation.gov/office-policy/transportation-...

Thats for the average person - whats the cost to replace the average astronaut? I've seen estimates that it costs $15M just to train 1 astronaut, and the pool of qualified candidates is likely extremely small. I would figure a guess of $100M per astronaut is not unreasonable.

Re: NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon

#24

Post by rvnx »

__s wrote: post #19
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right in this specific example, or at least you're probably in-line with NASA's leadership's thinking. I am willing to bet that other parts of society (e.g. traffic planners and automobile manufacturers) have a much lower cost of human life.

For NASA the cost of dead people includes bad PR

Not really, SpaceX would just sell that as an unscheduled disassembly + “we collected data”.

It’s widely accepted that you may die going to space in experimental vehicles, nobody ever said it would be safe, and nobody can reasonably think it is risk-free.

Apollo 1 folks died, not a problem for reputation of NASA.

Re: NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon

#25

Post by bko »

choilive wrote: post #14
hughes wrote: post #2

I'm all for avoiding sunk-cost thinking, but considering that nearly half a billion was spent on this thing and its launch was barely a year away, it's hard to wrap my head around scrapping it entirely. From the lost talent alone, this seems catastrophic - why would any of the country's best engineers want to work on ambitious NASA projects when they can be rug-pulled so close to completion? Also, where's the account…

Not entirely on NASA, Congress slashed their budget causing a -$500M hole, with future years budget not looking to fare much better so they had to make some tough decisions. Sounds like other missions in the same program are going to pick up VIPER's objectives though.

Sure looks like they cut it 2% in 2024, but they've increased it every year over the last 10 years, even in real terms (maybe 2022/2023 was a bit under flat)

Year Budget Change

2000 13,428

2001 14,095 4.97%

2002 14,405 2.20%

2003 14,610 1.42%

2004 15,152 3.71%

2005 15,602 2.97%

2006 15,125 -3.06%

2007 15,861 4.87%

2008 17,833 12.43%

2009 17,782 -0.29%

2010 18,724 5.30%

2011 18,448 -1.47%

2012 17,770 -3.68%

2013 16,865 -5.09%

2014 17,647 4.64%

2015 18,010 2.06%

2016 19,300 7.16%

2017 19,508 1.08%

2018 20,736 6.29%

2019 21,500 3.68%

2020 22,629 5.25%

2021 23,271 2.84%

2022 24,041 3.31%

2023 25,384 5.59%

2024 24,875 -2.01%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

Re: NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon

#26

Post by Rapzid »

idiotsecant wrote: post #20
doytch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People put valuations on lives all the time in risk analysis and I've never seen a cost even close to $100m. DOT puts it at 13.2m: https://www.transportation.gov/office-policy/transportation-...

Astronauts are very visible deaths for politicians whose currency is points in the polls. Having your photo not show up on the news next to a photo of a dead square-jawed captain america astronaut is probably worth 100m of other peoples money.

They wouldn't be "astronauts". They'd be cargo.

Re: NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon

#27

Post by trhway »

I think with SpaceX we have the situation similar to computing - ie. whether to start a 20 year computation today on a $1B hardware or wait 5 years and complete it in 5 years then on a $100K hardware - to proceed to fund the $450M+ for the many years ahead or just wait a couple years until SpaceX gets to it and has it done for $10M in half a year.

Re: NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon

#28

Post by CamperBob2 »

tjohns wrote: post #16
AcerbicZero wrote: post #5

450M just for building the robot seems a bit steep; its not like they're actually getting it to the moon for that price. How much cheaper is it than just sending 3 dudes in a tin can to just dig the holes themselves? Edit: I guess NASA says manned missions will cost billions. Still seems like half a billion is a lot for a glorified DJI drone thats only gotta make it to the moon lol. Regardless, money spent towards an…

You're paying for provably guaranteed reliability. When you're paying billions per rocket launch, you simply can't afford to have your robot break down on day 1 because of a software bug or because a component was accidently installed upside down. (Also, "only gotta make it to the moon" makes it sound like that's a trivial task. There's a lot to unpack in that small sentence.)

You can if you send 10 cheap robots instead of one half-billion dollar one.

Re: NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon

#29

Post by zamadatix »

bko wrote: post #25
choilive wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely on NASA, Congress slashed their budget causing a -$500M hole, with future years budget not looking to fare much better so they had to make some tough decisions. Sounds like other missions in the same program are going to pick up VIPER's objectives though.

Sure looks like they cut it 2% in 2024, but they've increased it every year over the last 10 years, even in real terms (maybe 2022/2023 was a bit under flat) Year Budget Change 2000 13,428 2001 14,095 4.97% 2002 14,405 2.20% 2003 14,610 1.42% 2004 15,152 3.71% 2005 15,602 2.97% 2006 15,125 -3.06% 2007 15,861 4.87% 2008 17,833 12.43% 2009 17,782 -0.29% 2010 18,724 5.30% 2011 18,448 -1.47% 2012 17,770 -3.68% 2013 16,86…

In real terms that looks pretty flat for both the last 10 years and since the beginning of the list. Doesn't explain the project cut but also isn't really real budget growth either.

Re: NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon

#30

Post by bobmcnamara »

hughes wrote: post #2

I'm all for avoiding sunk-cost thinking, but considering that nearly half a billion was spent on this thing and its launch was barely a year away, it's hard to wrap my head around scrapping it entirely. From the lost talent alone, this seems catastrophic - why would any of the country's best engineers want to work on ambitious NASA projects when they can be rug-pulled so close to completion? Also, where's the account…

> From the lost talent alone, this seems catastrophic - why would any of the country's best engineers want to work on ambitious NASA projects when they can be rug-pulled so close to completion?

That's the point! By making government dysfunctional we can point out all the wasted funds and slash the budget /Reagan

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