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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

Now that SpaceX can blast cargo into space cheaply, what we need to do is send a probe to every planet and moon in the solar system.

Just because:

1. we can

2. we have no idea what we'll find

No excuses!

Oh, and 10 more James Webb telescopes, too!

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The problem with probes, landers and satellites, especially what, is that the rocket isn't the limiting factor. Development of the payload is the vast majority of the cost & time

Well, the more you make of something, the cheaper it gets. Things also get easier when you're less constrained for weight and volume. I imagine that Starship delivering a robot all the way to the Mars surface would make things significantly cheaper. Mars is also a difficult place to land on, as it's very big for its thin atmosphere. If we had a system that can successfully land on Mars, it could be fairly easily used on other planets and moons.

SpaceX plans on sending 5 starships to Mars in 2 years (optimistic) or 4 years (pessimistic). Wonder what sort of stuff they'll send in the payload. Just supplies for the astronauts who come 2 years later or will they allow for rideshare of scientific payloads?

We have a system that has landed successfully on Mars, several different ones.

A lot of that is because getting something launched was so hard (time, money, dealing with government grants, etc.) that they made damn sure the thing was going to be robust and work. The prices SpaceX will be launching at allows us to just chuck some off-the-shelf hardware together and not care so much if half of the hundreds of probes we send out fail.

We've already developed the JWST. Unless, of course, all the tooling and test equipment was thrown away.

I believe a standardized, "mass producible" probe design where the engineering parts (propulsion, power, communications, etc) are the same from one to the next or easily swapped with modules of a common architecture when you need a different option, with several hardpoints that custom scientific instruments can be mounted is really the way to go. You build say 3 flyby probes and a lander every year and the only thing you're scheduling is where they're going. If a particular science instrument isn't ready for a launch, it'll go on the next one to that destination. The design doesn't need to be static, indeed it makes a lot of sense to be continually improving it, but instead of investing all that engineering time into a one off, you get 10 to 15 missions out of each iteration. There might be some missions that really need a completely custom architecture, but these can be limited in scope and highly optimized instead of a $10 billion dollar omnibus. With greater numbers you can both implement process improvements to reduce defects and costs, and also because individual missions are less critical you can lower standards and take greater risks. Further, budgeting becomes so much easier - you don't have things getting cancelled after 80% of the money has already been spent, or repeated delays that triple your program costs, to say nothing of project management not having to reinvent the wheel each time. And from a science perspective you can follow up interesting findings much more quickly.

We've been able to send probes to other planets for many decades. Cost of the actual rocket doesn't appear to be the obstacle.

Part of the reason why the probes are expensive is the limitations on the size and mass imposed by existing rockets.

I think indirectly it does. When your launch vehicle costs hundreds of millions of dollars to use once on a scientific mission you try to put as much engineering into the scientific payload to (1) make damn sure it works when you are paying $200 million for a launch and (2) make sure you can do as much science as possible.

With something like Starship I wouldn't be surprised to see SpaceX cheaply provide a starship approaching end of life to a scientific mission. With cheaper and readily available launch opportunities we could see deep space missions that utilize larger amounts of probes manufactured more cheaply that have much less longevity (die after a year of data collecting) but can do a greater amount of science over their shorter lives. Essentially, using a large launch vehicle like starship as a mothership until they get to their destination. Reducing the need for RTGs.

A billion dollars a launch is definitely an obstacle.

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