NASA Details Its Plan to Build a Lunar Base At the Moon's South Pole (wired.com) 79
NASA has outlined a three-phase plan to build a lunar base at the moon's south pole. The first phase, from 2026 to 2029, will focus on robotic missions, landers, rovers, reactors, satellites, and Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance test. Later phases will add habitats, power systems, communications, cargo logistics, and rotating crews. Wired reports: According to a recent press conference, phase one will be particularly active: at least 25 missions and 21 surface landings. Without detailing specific dates, the agency said that over the next three years it will send rovers, including manned models for future mobility, drones, surface reactors, new-generation satellites, and payloads to prepare the ground.
One of the first key missions will be the test of the Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance module in fall 2026. Its purpose is to evaluate conditions for a controlled descent and validate navigation and positioning technology. It will not carry astronauts. If the mission is successful, Blue Origin plans a manned version around 2028, possibly with Blue Moon Mark 2. Moon Base II and III missions are also part of the program's 2026 startup. One will send rovers and payloads to evaluate more complex rover operations; the other will carry scientific instruments to study the behavior of materials and systems under extreme lunar conditions.
Phase two, starting in 2029, marks the beginning of semipermanent infrastructure assembly and first occupancy operations. NASA plans to install advanced energy systems, including surface reactors, initial habitat elements, and more robust communication networks. Up to 60 tons of cargo will be delivered in 24 missions during this period.
Phase three is for scale-up. The infrastructure in place will be strengthened and expanded to form durable centers with constant turnover of personnel. NASA envisions a lunar south pole with habitable modules, reliable power systems, logistics networks for cargo and crew transportation, and the shipment of about 38 tons of cargo annually for maintenance and expansion. "Every mission, crewed and uncrewed, will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable," said administrator Jared Isaacman in a NASA statement. "We will go for the science, for all we stand to gain from an economic and technological perspective, for the innovations that will make life better here on Earth, and to prepare for where we will inevitably go next."
One of the first key missions will be the test of the Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance module in fall 2026. Its purpose is to evaluate conditions for a controlled descent and validate navigation and positioning technology. It will not carry astronauts. If the mission is successful, Blue Origin plans a manned version around 2028, possibly with Blue Moon Mark 2. Moon Base II and III missions are also part of the program's 2026 startup. One will send rovers and payloads to evaluate more complex rover operations; the other will carry scientific instruments to study the behavior of materials and systems under extreme lunar conditions.
Phase two, starting in 2029, marks the beginning of semipermanent infrastructure assembly and first occupancy operations. NASA plans to install advanced energy systems, including surface reactors, initial habitat elements, and more robust communication networks. Up to 60 tons of cargo will be delivered in 24 missions during this period.
Phase three is for scale-up. The infrastructure in place will be strengthened and expanded to form durable centers with constant turnover of personnel. NASA envisions a lunar south pole with habitable modules, reliable power systems, logistics networks for cargo and crew transportation, and the shipment of about 38 tons of cargo annually for maintenance and expansion. "Every mission, crewed and uncrewed, will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable," said administrator Jared Isaacman in a NASA statement. "We will go for the science, for all we stand to gain from an economic and technological perspective, for the innovations that will make life better here on Earth, and to prepare for where we will inevitably go next."
Drones? (Score:2)
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Rocket-powered drones (Score:2)
Only thing I can think of is they will use tiny rockets or air jets in place of propellors...
Right, these are rocket-powered drones.
That means their total flight time will be limited by the amount of fuel they start with, but it should be enough to hop around to multiple sites, including (I'll hope) sites too uneven to land a large lunar lander.
Re:Drones? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they are naming "drones" just multipurpose rovers. Not flying drones, but rovers dedicated to menial tasks.
We've operated drones on mars (Score:4, Insightful)
How are drones going to work on the moon?
Faster than those we have already operated on Mars. :-)
Drones can be land based. We've operated drones on mars, typically calling them rovers.
Re:We've operated drones on mars (Score:5, Informative)
" We've operated drones on mars, typically calling them rovers."
We have ALSO operated a flying drone on Mars.
It was called Ingenuity.
It hitched a ride on the Perseverance rover and was originally meant as a 30-day tech demo with 5 flights. It massively exceeded expectations.
Final stats:
72 flights total, from April 19, 2021 to January 18, 2024
Total distance flown: 11 miles (about 17.7 km)
Total time in the air: 128.8 minutes
Maximum altitude: 79 feet (24 meters) on Flight 61
Maximum speed: 22.4 mph (10 m/s), reached during Flights 62, 68, and 69
It ended when one of its carbon fiber rotor blades was damaged during landing on its final flight, likely from striking the ground.
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We have ALSO operated a flying drone on Mars
Of course, but this particular tech is difficult to move to the lunar environment. :-)
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Having an atmosphere makes using prop-powered aircraft possible.
The moon has no such convenience. Good thing "drone" doesn't necessarily restrict to flying - there's land-based drones (Mars rovers that have been in operation for a decade+), etc.
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Drone just means autonomous. Drones we use today all we are doing is giving them commands. Flying drones for example automatically compensate for level, drift, speed so that their behaviour matches the operators inputs.
It would be near impossible for a single person to control each of 4 rotors on a common drone. Onboard electronics take care of that for us.
This is the "autonomous" part.
On the moon it would be a rocket propelled or wheel based device that would to give commands. From as simple as travel
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Well they're not going to be flying, obviously'
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European or African drone?
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They'll have to carry reaction mass and use a thruster jet.
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How? It's the South-Pole, they'll look like penguins and no polar bears anywhere.
Why do we need a giant publicly funded moon base? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is... is this just a way to give musk & bezos even more goverment money?
I'm beginning to get a little suspicious.
Re: Why do we need a giant publicly funded moon ba (Score:3, Interesting)
Because China.
This isn't some anti-communist post. This is just a fact that one of the US's primary rivals is doing something in regards to moon exploration, so therefore the US needs to show off. Think about the last set of landings. Incentive was USSR. There's been no reason since.
Re: Why do we need a giant publicly funded moon ba (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC Kennedy originally wanted to do something spectacular to show the world how advanced the US was, and things like desalinating water were considered. But he also wanted to improve relations with the USSR, and when he proposed going to the moon he then started putting forward the idea of a joint mission.
It was still in the early stages when he was assassinated, so the mission profile hadn't been decided upon and most people were expecting there to be a moon orbit rendezvous between a crew capsule and lander launched separately. So the thought was that the US and USSR could send their own crew capsules, and then both board a joint lander, and go down together. Presumably they would have had to figure out how to have an astronaut and cosmonaut step onto the surface at the same time.
So it was a dick measuring contest, but there was also the possibility of it fostering cooperation. Shame it didn't happen until Apollo/Soyuz.
Re: Why do we need a giant publicly funded moon b (Score:2)
IIRC Kennedy originally wanted to do something spectacular to show the world how advanced the US was, and things like desalinating water were considered. But he also wanted to improve relations with the USSR
This doesn't sound like something Kennedy would do. You do know he provoked the Cuban Missile Crisis and was ultimately the one who committed the United States into Vietnam, right? A lot of people like to pin that on either Johnson or Nixon, but it was in fact Kennedy who ordered boots on the ground and ordered the CIA to manipulate local elections, the overthrow oh the government it originally put into place, ultimately leading to the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem.
Either way, there's no way in hell the US
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Because China.
This isn't some anti-communist post.
We knew that already, because you were talking about China.
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Commercial for low orbit, NASA for farther out (Score:4)
The current feeling seems to be that commercial outfits are ready for low earth orbit, but not moon or mars. So NASA hands over orbital stuff to commercial entities and focus on things farther out.
Re:Why do we need a giant publicly funded moon bas (Score:5, Informative)
Staking a claim maybe. China is probably headed to the same area, because there are resources there. China has already demonstrated some of the required capability, and has installed relay satellites at key positions to facilitate it.
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I don't think most people in the world, even americans, would agree that just because you are operating some absurdly expensive moon base gives you the right to claim the entire moon. If we did try saying that I would expect China to just ignore us, which would be the reasonable thing to do. Of course its also probably in China's best interests to let us burn even more of our money on stupid nonsense like a moon race where only one side is actually racing while the other side is taking over world trade and
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NASA is already talking about a "perimeter".
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But whoever gets to resources first has the strongest claim to them.
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Staking a claim maybe. China is probably headed to the same area, because there are resources there.
"There", defines places on Earth that are cost prohibitive to go and get "resources".
Are we to assume the Chinese found 376 metric fucktons of adamantium right next to the billion-gallon reservoir holding unrefined warp drive fuel, to justify THAT mining fun?
Re:Why do we need a giant publicly funded moon bas (Score:4, Funny)
eventually... theme park?
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Trump Hotel.
Re: Why do we need a giant publicly funded moon ba (Score:4, Funny)
Whaling station.
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No. Blue Origin blew up their only launch pad last night static firing the rocket that detonated. Jeff is likely grounded for a year and this stuff isn't going to happen.
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Slashdot now the home of Luddites? "Why do we need a SPACE BASE?"
A lot of people write off space 'competition' as just militaristic dick-flexing.
You do understand where ICBMs came from? There isn't a serious question that space is absolutely now a context for global-state competition; it's not dick-flexing to recognize that this will shortly expand from orbital space to really the entire cislunar sphere.
It is, in fact, one of the generally-undisputed roles of government to try to recognize a strategic vuln
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Manned spacecraft came from ICBMs, not the other way around. Mercury is properly called Mercury-Redstone after the Redstone ICBM.
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Or Mercury-Atlas, based on the SM-65 Atlas ICBM.
And Gemini's Titan II GLV was based on the LGM-25C Titan ICBM.
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Slashdot now the home of Luddites? "Why do we need a SPACE BASE?" A lot of people write off space 'competition' as just militaristic dick-flexing. You do understand where ICBMs came from?
Yeah. They came from human engineers. Back on Earth. Who "justified" wasting trillions building thousands of them, and not one of them has ever actually been used in warfare after 80 fucking years.
If the goal is to piss away trillions fueled by bullshit and FUD, then expect to be building two of them at thrice the price.
Re: Why do we need a giant publicly funded moon ba (Score:2)
... space competition as just militaristic dick-flexing.
You do understand where ICBMs came from?
ICBMs are literally the #1 encyclopedia article example of militaristic dick-flexing. My rocket can touch you from all the way over here.
Did you just make an argument for the benefits of dual-use research by citing the bad part?? A lot of people associate the space race with a sort of cover for arms research... but think of all the cool weapons we got! Even from you man, wow, lol
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I think the Mars thing has always been Musk's social hack to both force humans to expand beyond Earth and make him a lot of money. Step 1: build the only private rocket company that can send humans to Mars; step 2: strand a bunch of people there; step 3: effectively forcing the government to pay you gobs of money to save them. This moon thing seems like a similar scheme that is just slightly less ambitious, or just another step added to the beginning to get the government to fund a larger chunk of your st
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I think the Mars thing has always been Musk's social hack to both force humans to expand beyond Earth and make him a lot of money. Step 1: build the only private rocket company that can send humans to Mars; step 2: strand a bunch of people there; step 3: effectively forcing the government to pay you gobs of money to save them..
Hell of an assumption considering which company volunteered to retrieve astronauts from the ISS after "only" another rocket company failed to do so.
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Hell of an assumption considering which company volunteered to retrieve astronauts from the ISS after "only" another rocket company failed to do so.
Not sure what you mean by "volunteered". SpaceX was paid to retrieve the astronauts, which they did as part of their contracted flights to the space station.
If they're building it on the south pole.. (Score:2)
I bet the first thing they're building is a still.
Rocket fuel manufacturing (Score:2)
I bet the first thing they're building is a still.
Look for things sneaked into the budget / payload manifest under rocket fuel manufacturing. :-)
Blue Origin's New Glenn Exploded (Score:4, Informative)
taking out a heap of pad infrastructure, so that's not good. Anticipate something like a year's delay to plans involving their rockets. This was Blue Origin's only launch pad.
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Blue Origin's lander doesn't fly with a Blue Origin Rocket, afaik.
In fact, the Blue Moon lander is designed to launch on New Glenn. It's designed to fit the NG's 7-meter fairing.
https://www.blueorigin.com/blu... [blueorigin.com]
We may have altered the plan. (Score:4, Informative)
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You mean that company that sued the US government in 2021 because they awarded a lander contract to another space company that was already operating in space?
Re:We may have altered the plan. (Score:4, Interesting)
SpaceX had a comparable anomaly ten years ago, when SLC-40 was destroyed along with the $200M AMOS-6 satellite.
It took 15 months to rebuild.
So I figure 3 years for BO.
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I'm not an expert on rebuilding massively exploded launch infrastructure; but I have a suspicion that a 2026-2029 plan is now going to involve less Blue Origin than previously believed.
Ars Technica has an article discussing how this is a major setback in the NASA lunar plan: https://arstechnica.com/space/... [arstechnica.com]
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I'm not an expert on rebuilding massively exploded launch infrastructure; but I have a suspicion that a 2026-2029 plan is now going to involve less Blue Origin than previously believed.
(Financial Auditor) "OK, OK, so if it was truly an 'unscheduled' disassembly as you claim, then can someone please explain why Micheal Bay is still running around high-fiving everyone? The hell do you mean he's on the payroll?"
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Diplomacy with Muslim nations
Hardly seems relevant nor appropriate as the perhaps foremost directive for NASA.
NASA is America's space agency. The only feeling it is supposed to give any foreign nation is that they have a small pp and we have the biggest missiles with the most advanced technology. The literal reason that NASA was created.
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If accurate, it sounds like Obama told the guy to do three things that were completely unrelated to the agency's mission.
And then Obama went on to bomb how many Muslim nations?
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It is.
https://www.nasa.gov/history/n... [nasa.gov]
National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958:
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Space:1999 redux anyone? (Score:2)
I'm waiting for some genius to put a nuclear waste dump on the moon to go along with the base and it'll surely then be a reboot of the classic Space:1999 series?
Re: Space:1999 redux anyone? (Score:2)
How did moonbase get to lightspeed to travel to the ... wait! Is it moon base or moonbase?
Re: Space:1999 redux anyone? (Score:2)
It's Moon Base Alpha.
Er, hang on.
Moonbase Alpha...Moon Base Alpha...Moonbase Alpha.
Give me a minute.
A Lunar Base on the Moon ? (Score:3)
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Location, location, location (Score:2)
A deep crater at the south pole in eternal darkness, with the ability to raise solar collectors above the rim for eternal sunshine, and you have excellent conditions for observing the skies.
Its Name MUST Be... (Score:4, Funny)
Alpha.
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Totally!!!
A need for OSCOMAK or C2C or similar (Score:2)
As I talked about circa 2001 at the Thirteenth SSI/Princeton Conference on Space Manufacturing May 7-9, 2001:
https://www.kurtz-fernhout.com... [kurtz-fernhout.com]
And earlier: https://www.kurtz-fernhout.com... [kurtz-fernhout.com]
And a later version: https://www.oscomak.net/ [oscomak.net]
And Slashdot in 2005 and later:
"We need DOGS as well as CATS!"
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
https://science.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org]
"So, what is a bottleneck is that we do not know how to make that seed self-replicating factory, or have plans for what it
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Moonbase Alpha (Score:4, Funny)
Always wondered (Score:2)
why not due a test run using robots to build a base by a volcano, or in the antarctic?
Waste of taxpayer money (Score:1)