NASA funds 11 moon projects to help mission to 'live off the land | Hacker News Reader

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

washingtonpost.com

72 pointsfnordpiglet32 comments

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.

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

The perfect environment for a heatpump.

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

Well, not for long anyway!

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

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

Or is this somewhere conveniently nearer the poles :)

The Moon is about a quarter of the Earth in size (not in weight!), so its equator should be ~ 10 thousand km long.

30 days are ~ 720 hours. Yeah, 15 km/h should do it even on the lunar equator.

Ofc the terrain isn't exactly flat, so even 15 km/h might translate into a very bumpy ride.

A very slow atomic train you say?

Pack a beach umbrella.

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'

> 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

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

Glad they didn't put more money into Starshit

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

That means NASA won't ever land a human on the moon again.

I wouldn't bet my money into scam like that. THere are way more sane options to bet on. And on the plus side Starshit won't probably get human rated anyway.

Would you hop on a bomb knowing that you're just part of an idiots interpretation of rapid development and also knowing you're doomed and with 100% certainty going to die in any case of failure? No thanks!

Not enough that they're going to destroy the whole wildlife at boca chica and not feel any need to clean up their mess. Honestly I wish them to be grounded at starbase until they handpicked and cleaned every single piece of dust they produced in the area.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

> 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?

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

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

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.

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

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)

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

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.

I think it’s fair though a space economy has more than lift capability companies. Landers, in situ production, habitats, etc, will require a large variety of companies with vastly different specializations. Perhaps blue origin is meant to focus elsewhere ? Reading their Wikipedia page sounds like their real success is in engines but their launch vehicles are delayed but on track for 2024 missions.

I'd hardly say they have been having success in engines either. they can't get working engines to ULA and they keep exploding on the test stand. they also can't seem to hit a deadline they set for themselves.

This is a VERY exciting time in Space!

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