A Wet Moon Is Hot Once Again

Hoo boy. It's come to this. The careful leaks intended to get the public excited about space flight are about things done decades ago, even by countries that don't exist anymore. Placing a lander on the Moon! Wow. What a concept.

Now, if the leak had been that JSC was going to do something interesting and innovative with such a lander, that might be exciting.

Hint to JSC space marketing people. If you're going to plant leaks, plant ones that really get people excited.

Word is Plan M has already been by Bolden and involves putting JSC's Robonaut on the moon - first completing the rest of its body below the torso.

Plans would leverage off of the X-Prize lander concepts. The expedited project cycle would "streamline" current processes, and minimize participation from orgs outside of JSC's Engineering Directorate.

This should heat up the debate of robotic missions versus manned exploration...

Word is Plan M has already been by Bolden and involves putting JSC's Robonaut on the moon - first completing the rest of its body below the torso.

Ah, now THAT'S something.

I assume that completing the rest of the body below the torso involves development of a lunar-qualified vehicle. Most of the space functionality right now is arms, hands, and eyes.

I'm not sure if I trust JSC to manage any debate on robotic missions versus manned missions to the Moon. Robonaut itself has always been considered an astronaut-assistance device. One might wonder if JSC would use such a mission to highlight what one particular telerobot can't do as opposed to what telerobotics in general could do.

It's called "Project M', not "Plan M".

I seriously doubt the leak was intentional. If it was, they would have at least mentioned that it's meant to inspire, not generate the sort of scorn I'm reading here.

If you're old enough, dig deep and remember the excitement many people felt during Apollo (or at least when you had your first encounter with an astronaut or someone who worked on a space program).

Some of us actually pursued a lifetime of work in science and engineering because of that inspiration. I urge readers to cast off at least a little of their scorn and skepticism, and replace it with that kind of faith in a brighter future.

'Planted leak' idea is probably bogus - mainly because the lander payload is rumored to be able to walk from the lander not drive. That info would have been included in a planted leak.

I am old enough to remember the excitement (and I don't even have to dig deep) and actually pursued that lifetime. So let's get that out of the way.

The original report was about a "lander"in 1000 days. That's it. Not interesting at all. Surveyor? Lunokhod? Uh, cool. A subsequent post turned that original thin report into something halfway interesting. The idea of putting a robotnaut on the Moon is indeed an exciting one, though one would like to have some idea what it is supposed to accomplish there, such that we can assess success. A high five? Juggle some rocks?

I urge readers to offer plenty of scorn and scepticism to plans for space flight that would achieve what had already been done long ago. This, fortunately, seems not to be that after all.

JSC Engineering appears to be the best positioned to carry a project like this out. If Bolden has seen this, it should meet all the elements of Augustine, engagement, excitement and innovation. Keeps the public aware of NASA. Who knows, he may even come back from his asian trip with a deal to fly a Chinese payload on the vehicle, as a show of good will of course.

Lunar Rovers are something I would be happy with FOR NOW as far as beyond LEO and although they say all the data shows water ice it would be nice to have a rover up there take a sample and or return a sample to earth. I mean don't they have old centaur rockets just sitting around? Slap one of those bad boys on an old atlas or titan. LRO/LCROSS proved you can get maximum bang for your buck. As with Kaguya that took less fuel because of the extended orbit or long way around approach ( I don't the technical jargon). Only reason why Apollo had to do it in as little time as possible is because well , humans aren't as good with radiation as robots are. I think they could put 2 rovers or even 3 on the moon at the same time one shot.. weight isn't as much as factor as is was for MIR (rovers) on mars.NO parachutes to deploy. NO wind turbulence or atmospheric pressure to worry about. What about lunar regolith and dust you say? Well ask any engineer/scientist which has a better shot a rover on mars sitting through a sand storm ( which has happened) or a rover scooting across the mare tranquilis at a steady clip in the vacuum of space.I was happy with the LCROSS results took long enough. Funny I check LRO's orbit almost everyday and I was just wondering are they taking pictures all the time or what because they are being very stingy.

"...whereby it would place a lander on the Moon in 1,000 days - once approved."

Keith, this is a NASA program.

MSL will take a thousand days and $400 million just to fix some bad motors.

You are obviously incorrect by missing a zero in that figure.

Having half the NASA budget at JSC certainly puts JSC Engineering in the "best position" to carry out this kind of project. How are they paying for this? Engineering is a matrixed organization that gets all of its resources from projects. So some unsuspecting project is paying for this.

This guy seems to have some extra information. Looks like the 1000 days might be accurate.

http://www.americaspace.org/?p=364

Editor's note: This website americaspace.org belongs to Jim Hillhouse

The budget will need to be assigned to JSC Engineering, its not something they can skim off other projects, its too large. That said wouldn't it add more drama and excitement to the 1000 day milestone if a similar but with slightly different objectives project were also announced and led from another center like say MSFC. This would add a little competition to the mix and serve the role the REDS did during Apollo. JSC vs. MSFC, Texas vs. Alabama where can I buy tickets. And KSC wins either way(so much for one NASA... Hehehehehe)

The only issue that I can see on this is that this was tried before with just in house engineering and it was canceled. It was the X-38 See Wayne Hale's 11/5/09 blog.
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/waynehalesblog. Too bad the engineers that were developing this spacecraft didn't do what Franklin Chang-Diaz did with the VASIMR technology and sign a deal with NASA to take it private. I guess it may be hard to be think like an entrepreneur when you're a civil servant engineer.

Three years to put a lander on the moon?
Seems a bit redundant at this point.

Lcross worked the way it did to get around the need for a more expensive ground robot. We've learned about as much as we're going to before someone goes to the moon and takes hundreds of direct samples from multiple target craters.

Not to say another robot is a bad idea, but the chances are good its results will be either inconclusive or the selection too limited for scientists to believe there is as much water as long range scans show.

X-38 was cancelled in 2002. Flight-testing began in March of 1998 with vehicle 131, which means it was in design and fab long before that. Hale, in his blog, refers to X-38 as a skunk work project. He might try to attach that description to X-38, but truth be told it missed one key idea -> skunk work type projects should not take that long. The real issue with X-38 was it took too darn long. If you look at almost every major Lockheed Skunk Works project, they were all completed very quickly. Extraordinarily quickly. So, it appears that JSC Engineering has read the history books, and has evidently learned quite a lot, hence the aggressive schedule. 1000 days. Quickly get it done.