The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
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The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
1–10 of 73 posts
Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
#2The Lunar X prize competition is really neat, and I'll follow raptly. But it's unlikely to do much for actually space exploration, just as the original X-Prize did little to advance access to space.
If SpaceX sends a manned Dragon around the moon, that's only going to be a thousand times more important than landing tiny rovers on the moon.
Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
#3The Lunar X prize competition is really neat, and I'll follow raptly. But it's unlikely to do much for actually space exploration, just as the original X-Prize did little to advance access to space.
If SpaceX sends a manned Dragon around the moon, that's only going to be a thousand times more important than landing tiny rovers on the moon.
Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
#4The Lunar X prize competition is really neat, and I'll follow raptly. But it's unlikely to do much for actually space exploration, just as the original X-Prize did little to advance access to space. If SpaceX sends a manned Dragon around the moon, that's only going to be a thousand times more important than landing tiny rovers on the moon.
Are you talking about spaceshipone?
Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
#5The Lunar X prize competition is really neat, and I'll follow raptly. But it's unlikely to do much for actually space exploration, just as the original X-Prize did little to advance access to space. If SpaceX sends a manned Dragon around the moon, that's only going to be a thousand times more important than landing tiny rovers on the moon.
Are you talking about spaceshipone?
I have often heard it refereed to as, Not A Space Ship One.
Even 160 kilometers has quite a bit of atmospheric drag, and Spaceshipone only just broke 100 kilometers.
Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
#6I have great hopes on Team Indus. Hoping they'll pull of this mission. They've signed a PSLV-XL launch contract with ISRO, and they seem to be on track with spacecraft and rover development[0]. Japan's X-prize entrant HAKUTO will also be ride-sharing on this mission[1].
It'll be an exciting 2018 for us, we have two moon rover missions from India - Chandrayaan 2 from ISRO[2], and Team Indus.
[0] https://medium.com/teamindus/teamindus-missionlog-august-67e...
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14023336/google-lunar-x-...
Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
#7These prizes really confuse me. Wouldn't it cost more than $20 million just to get something into LEO with existing technology? How can mounting a robotic lunar mission possibly be done for less than that?
Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
#8These prizes really confuse me. Wouldn't it cost more than $20 million just to get something into LEO with existing technology? How can mounting a robotic lunar mission possibly be done for less than that?
yes - according to this: https://futurism.com/elon-musk-launching-a-satellite-with-sp... even spacex is maybe at least 68M for a satellite launch not even to the moon
Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
#9These prizes really confuse me. Wouldn't it cost more than $20 million just to get something into LEO with existing technology? How can mounting a robotic lunar mission possibly be done for less than that?
True, but it could potentially be coupled with government grants or other funding.
Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers
#10The Lunar X prize competition is really neat, and I'll follow raptly. But it's unlikely to do much for actually space exploration, just as the original X-Prize did little to advance access to space. If SpaceX sends a manned Dragon around the moon, that's only going to be a thousand times more important than landing tiny rovers on the moon.
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