NASA cancels $450M mission to drill for ice on the Moon • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by antonvs » Fri, Jul 19, 2024, 1:49 AM UTC

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…

> a glorified DJI drone

Where "glorified" means "can withstand temperature, radiation, and dust conditions that would brick a DJI drone in short order.

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

#52

Post by hansvm » Fri, Jul 19, 2024, 4:22 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #48

hansvm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

That was $433M with less information than they have now. To be clear, my personal bias is that there's some sort of graft or other major problem, and it would be worth $100M, but we might have also spent that money as a high-risk, high-reward endeavor and simply found out later that the rewards aren't worth it. That isn't even necessarily a bad outcome, if true.

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

#53

Post by Alupis » Fri, Jul 19, 2024, 8:28 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #44

Alupis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a lot more parties interested in putting things and people into space than just NASA...

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

#54

Post by talldatethrow » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 6:05 AM UTC

rvnx wrote: post #36

talldatethrow wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odds of dying in a war are less than 1 in 2, and for joining the military in general it is far far less.

?! I was like, "oh really?" and I checked... you're right, "a German soldier had approximately a 1 in 3 chance of dying during the WW2 conflict" Dying to protect a political system vs dying to advance science, better pick science.

And that is an exceptional example. For most modern wars or major conflicts it's nowhere near as bad as 1 in 3.