NASA funds 11 moon projects to help mission to 'live off the land

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/25/nasa-moon-artemis/

by fnordpiglet • 3 years ago

72 32 3 years ago

redeux2• 3 years ago

Living off the land: Listen up folks! The lunar day is roughly 29 1/2 Earth days, the length of a lunar month, and the time of which includes a full day-night cycle. During that time the temperatures can vary from 120° C in the day to -130° C. So consider dressing in layers for a more comfortable moon experience.

hulitu3• 3 years ago

During that time the temperatures can vary from 120° C in the day to -130° C.

The perfect environment for a heatpump.

api• 3 years ago

Lunar settlements would probably be underground or "hobbit homes" piled over with regolith. Nobody's sunbathing on the Moon.

redeux2• 3 years ago

Well, not for long anyway!

tjoff• 3 years ago

You just need to have a rolling house going at around 15 km/h to be somewhere in the transition sweetspot all the time!

albert_e• 3 years ago

is that really the approx. speed needed to circumnavigate the Moon in 30 days?

Or is this somewhere conveniently nearer the poles :)

swarnie• 3 years ago

A very slow atomic train you say?

BurningFrog• 3 years ago

Pack a beach umbrella.

ourmandave• 3 years ago

Without continued support like this, the Moon economy would be cratering.

KineticLensman• 3 years ago

The NASA actual announcement is at https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-partners-with-americ...

I notice that the projects all seem to be hardware focussed (construction, power, etc). There don't seem to be any that look at the biological requirements of 'living off the land'

hulitu3• 3 years ago

There don't seem to be any that look at the biological requirements of 'living off the land'

They want to send robots instead of humans. The AI is there with ChatGPT so they only need some HW to run the LLM. /s

fnordpiglet4• 3 years ago

Oxygen and water are discussed, as well as infrastructure for earth imports. That’s probably the basic framework, and the terrariums come later.

coffeebeanHH2• 3 years ago

Glad they didn't put more money into Starshit

Shawnj22• 3 years ago

Don’t worry, under the current NASA plan NASA can’t land people on the moon until both Starship and Starship HLS are ready

Shawnj22• 3 years ago

I mean all of these projects have hilariously low budgets lol

The biggest budget on this list is $37 million, that’s a decent amount of money but you can’t launch a human habitat to the moon for that price.

hanniabu• 3 years ago

It's likely just for technology development and someone else will launch it

zizee• 3 years ago

11 companies that received awards are required to invest their own money to pay at least 10 to 25 percent of their projects’ costs.

I'm curious to know if these award "winners" expect to make money on terrestrial applications, or they believe they can make money on the moon. Or perhaps these companies are happy to chip in their own cash for the bragging rights of helping humans return to the moon?

fnordpiglet4• 3 years ago

I am going to conjecture that this is development cost funding and equipment acquisition funding includes profit margin.

adastra22• 3 years ago

Follow-on purchases from NASA would more than make up for that investment cost. If they are successful and win follow-on contracts.

Oarch• 3 years ago

The heart of the article appears to be about BlueOrigin, which has the same owner as the WaPo (the article does note this in fairness)

fnordpiglet4• 3 years ago

They’re also the big “winner” in the allocation so it seems reasonable.

vrosas• 3 years ago

They've been pitching and winning a fair few moonshot (heh) projects as of late, mostly due to their war chest and lobbying power. As a space company they've yet to have a spacecraft (or even one of their BE-4 engines) make it to orbit.

urda• 3 years ago

This is a VERY exciting time in Space!

queuebert• 3 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230726145615/https://www.washi...

WhereIsTheTruth• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Lunar_Research_S...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog...

NASA's plan seems too shy and selfish in contrast

raldi• 3 years ago

I don’t understand what you mean; could you elaborate?

panick21_• 3 years ago

Man, why can't we just build nuclear reactors. Land a big nuclear reactor and you have enough power for a very, very large base. We don't need to live of the land anytime soon if we can land 100t of cargo per flight.

hulitu3• 3 years ago

Nuclear is dirty energy. To be green we need to build wind and solar farms on the moon. /s

NASA funds 11 moon projects to help mission to 'live off the land

Related Stories