[HN Gopher] Northrop Grumman Announces Team for NASA's Next-Gene...
___________________________________________________________________
Northrop Grumman Announces Team for NASA's Next-Generation Lunar
Terrain Vehicle
Author : aww_dang
Score : 29 points
Date : 2021-11-21 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.northropgrumman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.northropgrumman.com)
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| For anyone curious, NASA released a RFI (request for information)
| back in August, and the responses were due at the start of
| October. Probably going to be entering RFP phase soon I guess.
|
| The RFI (PDF -
| https://sam.gov/api/prod/opps/v3/opportunities/resources/fil...)
| contains NASA's initial reference guidance on performance
| capabilities.
|
| In terms of how it compares with the Apollo lunar buggy...
|
| * NASA would like the vehicles to last ~10 years on the moon,
| around the South pole - the same vehicles are being re-used
| through different missions
|
| * NASA would like the vehicles to have some degree of autonomous
| or remote control functionality for use between manned missions
|
| * NASA anticipates the vehicle being able to survive in harsher
| environments (specifically south pole lunar nights). It also
| needs to be able to operate within permanently shaped regions
|
| * NASA has identified that meeting the Apollo era speed and
| "cross-country" mobility is sufficient
|
| * NASA wants ~20km of range per 8 hour mission per 24 hour period
|
| I think the 10 year life span and its autonomous/remote control
| mode is the most interesting requirement. From my perspective, it
| certainly looks like at least some degree of confidence crossing
| over from the success of the Mars rover programs.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| I bet with new batteries the rovers left on the moon from Apollo
| would still work fine.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| I know there is a lot of controversy and thoughts around the
| Artemis program/SLS but I personally am extremely excited for it
| all. I missed all of the Apollo missions and while there was some
| exciting things going on the last 10 years, the next 10 look like
| they will be absolutely thrilling.
|
| I cant wait to see the SLS launch and the moon missions come
| along. Launches from private companies (SpaceX, RKLB, Astra, etc)
| are also exciting, and I cant wait to see the options for rocket
| launches increase over the next few years.
| mrjangles wrote:
| Well I got bad news for you. SLS will probably never fly, and
| it will definitely never reach the moon. NASA pretty much
| accepted this publicly when they gave SpaceX the contract to
| have Starship fly itself to the moon and pick up the astronauts
| once there.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| I'm excited about the next 10 years, mostly because of
| commercial crew and similar programs.
|
| SLS is a death trap and an exorbitant expense.
|
| If we wanted to roll the dice with American lives, we could
| play Russian roulette and save $1,000,000,000 each time. Or we
| could just send a bunch of astronauts to the chair. With the
| fabulous savings, we could fund social programs, or multiple
| launches of commercial equivalents.
|
| The one aspect of our space program I have a really hard time
| with is the unnecessary death that's involved. I remember
| watching the astronauts die in 2003 and don't want to see it
| again. The safety issues and poor engineering are even more
| offensive to me than the idea of spending $1,000,000,000 per
| launch, and additional ~$n,000,000,000 to build the
| accessories.
|
| Edit, forgot the link:
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/sls-is-cancell...
| thebigman433 wrote:
| What are the major safety concerns with SLS? Thats something
| I havent seen written much. It seems like it would have
| extremely standard safety features, especially since you can
| jettison the capsule now (unlike the shuttle).
|
| Im excited about commercial crew for sure, but something
| about it actually being done by NASA makes me more excited.
| Private launches are cool and great, but it doesnt quite
| scratch the same itch imo
| wolf550e wrote:
| Your itch scratching costs $4.1B per launch according to
| NASA OIG:
|
| "We also project the current production and operations cost
| of a single SLS/Orion system at $4.1 billion per launch for
| Artemis I through IV, although the Agency's ongoing
| initiatives aimed at increasing affordability seek to
| reduce that cost."
|
| source:
|
| https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-22-003.pdf
| javert wrote:
| They will milk the government for all they're worth and deliver
| an over-engineered, dangerous, fragile, crappy result. I
| guarantee it.
|
| This kind of stuff should be left to the legitimate private
| sector, not the huge welfare-queen defense contractors.
| simonblack wrote:
| That's literally putting the cart before the horse. NASA is
| nowhere near getting back to the Moon yet, but they're talking
| about vehicles.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| Why would they wait to start this until they are ready to get
| back to the moon? This is going to take many years to
| design/build, so there is no reason to not start now. Plus its
| good to keep people innovating/working even if you are a bit
| away from actually needing the fruits of the labor.
| manicdee wrote:
| A cart needs to be designed, tested and built before you get
| the horse to pull it.
|
| For there to be a horse and cart the cart necessarily needs to
| exist before the horse can pull it.
|
| What is really going to bake your noodle is that there is no
| horse.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| That doesn't seem like any reason not to work on this in
| parallel
| Laremere wrote:
| Why not start now? Sure there's a lot to get done before
| landing, but rovers are really helpful once you have landed.
| Besides, SpaceX's lander certainly has enough room for a rover
| (mass budget less certain).
| _ph_ wrote:
| Doesn't the Lunar lander by SpaceX come with free Teslas? /s
| _joel wrote:
| You joke, but there's quite a lot of a tesla (or at least it's
| technologies) inside startship, batteries and motors etc. Not
| sure they've added the infotainment yet though :)
| jonplackett wrote:
| Is there anything that would actually stop a Cyber Truck
| working on the moon?
| gen3 wrote:
| I would imagine cooling would be an issue
| _ph_ wrote:
| Cooling on the one side, making the technology vaccuuum-
| safe on the other side. Batteries must not expand in the
| vaccum for example. But it could be doable, if needed by
| a pressured battery pack. Most of a cybertruck should
| work as a Moon vehicle.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I know, and I wasn't actually joking :p. I wonder how long it
| would take SpaceX to prepare a Tesla for the Moon. Might be
| much quicker than building a Moon rover from scratch,
| especially by "old space" companies.
| thuccess129 wrote:
| The Northrop Grumman coloring book concept art showing two
| individuals and that vehicle looks unimpressively cartoonish
| compared to the actual high definition video footage of the
| Apollo era lunar rover at play in motion.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Is it just me, or did it recently become public that "there is
| enough oxygen on the moon to sustain life" but it is apparently
| diffuse, and not at ground level. I believe I saw a science
| article like that recently, and in thirty years I have never seen
| this stated before..
| kabdib wrote:
| The "air pressure" on the moon is in the sub-nano-Pascal range,
| significantly lower than an electronic vacuum tube (e.g., often
| on the order of 100 micro Pascals). There's not a bunch of air
| on the moon.
| thatcherc wrote:
| There's lots of oxygen on the Moon, but it's locked up in
| aluminum and silicon oxides as rocks. In principle if you had a
| lot of electricity you could do electrolysis on melted moon
| rocks to recover pure oxygen and metals, both very useful for
| living on the Moon. There's definitely not a breathable
| atmosphere of oxygen on the Moon though.
| perl4ever wrote:
| This would probably be better asked on a fiction
| worldbuilding forum, but I wonder what would happen if
| somehow enough oxygen and nitrogen was suddenly dumped on the
| moon to constitute an earthlike atmosphere.
|
| Obviously in the long run, there's neither enough gravity nor
| a magnetosphere to maintain it, right?
|
| But on a human timescale, what would it be like? Titan proves
| that even when it's very, very cold, a thick (it seems to be
| thicker than Earth's) nitrogen atmosphere can last for some
| time.
| simondotau wrote:
| Air is dense because of the quantity of atmosphere above
| you being pulled down by gravity. I intuitively suspect,
| without doing any numbers, that no matter how much nitrogen
| and oxygen you could theoretically scrounge up, there won't
| be enough gravity to make air pressure high enough to be of
| any use to human life.
|
| Also now that you have some air, you would have to start
| being concerned about air temperature. It seems unlikely
| that a moon atmosphere would coincidentally have a
| temperature range useful for humans.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There is a lot of elements on the Moon, but you have to extract
| them from the ground. There might be water ice in some of the
| perpetually shaded craters.
|
| As for atmosphere, there is basically none. A very fine vacuum,
| better than any vacuum we can make on Earth artificially. Or
| possibly about as good. (It is a long time since I checked on
| our vacuum technology.)
|
| This has some advantages, too. For example, without any gas in
| the way, you get full solar power during the Lunar day.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-21 23:01 UTC)