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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

#41

Post by ungreased0675 »

I’m sure there’s more to the story, but half a billion dollars seems like a staggeringly expensive price tag for one piece of a moon mission. What does all that money go to? What’s the ROI?

We’ve been sending rovers to other planets for decades, so I assume there’s a good base of knowledge to build on. This isn’t basic research level, it seems like it should be a lot closer to production work. Satellites go up nearly every day, so I’d guess the space-spec supply chain is healthy.

Do post-mortem documents get published on programs like this? I really can’t understand it.

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

#42

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #41

I’m sure there’s more to the story, but half a billion dollars seems like a staggeringly expensive price tag for one piece of a moon mission. What does all that money go to? What’s the ROI? We’ve been sending rovers to other planets for decades, so I assume there’s a good base of knowledge to build on. This isn’t basic research level, it seems like it should be a lot closer to production work. Satellites go up nearly…

We can spend $300M dollars to grade-separate one intersection between a road and a train.

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

#44

Post by dmix »

Alupis wrote: post #31
dylan604 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be a win-win. Just imagine if NASA canceled the Starliner before it launched. Boeing could have been saved the embarrassment they are currently enduring, but they weren't so lucky to have their project canceled.

While NASA helped fund development and lend expertise, Starliner is not a NASA project to cancel. It's a Boeing/ULA project, and it's likely in Boeing/ULA's interest to develop manned space flight capabilities regardless of what NASA's needs might be today or in the near future.

That's a very optimistic view on the history of the project. Of course Boeing wants to compete for these huge contracts and they'd love to have it be sustainable outside of singular NASA projects, but that still doesn't make it the reality of the situation.

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

#45

Post by p0wn »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #28
tjohns wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

weight

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

#46

Post by DaoVeles »

com2kid wrote: post #35
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…

The very first Apple Watch cost a billion dollars to make. Costs got quickly amortized after that first unit. If NASA was in the habit of building hundreds of robots at a time, the cost per unit would drop dramatically.

When you put it in that context, the rovers look like an absolute bargain!

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

#47

Post by xenadu02 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #33
bko wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that most of that budget is earmarked for huge money-wasters like SLS, and those earmarks are growing. So the non-earmarked budget shrinks.

This is a huge part of it.

Congress might increase the budget by 3% but when they force something like SLS on NASA that eats 6% of the budget in real terms it was a 3% cut.

And this assumes the employees don't deserve any raises or bonuses.

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

#48

Post by bryanlarsen »

hansvm wrote: post #40
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…

> avoiding sunk-cost thinking The past is in the past. The half a billion matters insofar as it's given us our current playing hand. The right mentality is some combination of looking forward (we have many options, some of which were bought for half a billion, but even those might be worthless), backward looking (half a billion is probably worth having a retro over; was the outcome regrettable? If so, how can we do l…

The original approval for VIPER was $433M. So at one time they thought that VIPER was worth $433M. Now they need $100M+ to finish it. If it was worth $433M at one point, surely it's worth at least $100M now?

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

#49

Post by esalman »

rvnx wrote: post #17
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-...

Finding someone who agrees to go to the moon with a risk of 1 out 2 of dying, and 1 of 2 of becoming a historical hero is really doable. Plenty of volunteers, and no need for 100M USD. People go to war for less than 50K USD.

The city I'm from, there are people who'll kill for USD equivalent of $100. That does not mean we should encourage it.

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

#50

Post by esalman »

tjohns wrote: post #21
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-...

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.

This. It seems average Americans, including average hn commenters, have their future outlook confined to the next fiscal quarter.
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