Northrop Grumman Announces Team for NASA’s Next-Generation Lunar Terrain Vehicle | Hacker News Reader

Northrop Grumman Announces Team for NASA’s Next-Generation Lunar Terrain Vehicle

news.northropgrumman.com

35 pointsaww_dang31 comments

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.

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...

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

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

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.

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.

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.

What I see here is basically a rover with seats. Which is fine, really.

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.

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..

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.

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.

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.

>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.

Since mass can only increase gravity, I think that must be wrong regardless of specific numbers.

I guess the same amount of nitrogen, etc. as is in a column of atmosphere on earth would have to weigh less, but that's not a constraint. There can be more!

In support of this, here is a similar question on stackexchange:

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/26639/how-...

In my opinion, (because it agrees with my prejudices) the best answer is not the accepted one and is at the bottom of the page (Foskey).

"It is also incorrect to say that the atmosphere could never be thick enough to breathe. Titan has a surface gravity similar to the moon, and has an atmosphere thicker than the earth's. Because the gravity is less, it takes a higher column of air to achieve that pressure, but it can be achieved."

"Part of the reason Titan has been able to retain that atmosphere over the history of the solar system is that it is much colder than the moon, and is less affected by the solar wind since it's much farther from the sun. But, again, time scales matter. I have not found a source estimating the exact timeframe for atmospheric loss, but I recall reading that it would take thousands of years or more."

There is also a link to this essay:

https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/terraforming-the-moon-i...

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.

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.

I bet with new batteries the rovers left on the moon from Apollo would still work fine.

Doesn't the Lunar lander by SpaceX come with free Teslas? /s

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 :)

Is there anything that would actually stop a Cyber Truck working on the moon?

I would imagine cooling would be an issue

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.

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.

I honestly would love to see them drop a Model X on the moon to see how it goes

(Hypothesis: not well)

I think this would mainly depend on making the vehicle vacuum safe, that is the batteries and all cooling circuits. If they did, it could work reasonably well (with properly studded tires).

If JWST was any indication, most engineers will retire on this program.

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.

That doesn't seem like any reason not to work on this in parallel

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).

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.

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.

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