NASA is selling a brand-new Moon rover: Never used, one previous owner | Hacker News Reader

NASA is selling a brand-new Moon rover: Never used, one previous owner

economist.com

145 pointshelsinkiandrew78 comments

I just got a very hard block from this link from the `Ministero dell'Interno`...

Scary stuff... Condolences :/ Try TOR?

No need, just a notice to others that would maybe prefer not to support such 'hosting' services. It was not trademark/copyright related I can say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today

Or you could question the reasoning of your Ministry of Interior. Those archiving sites are vital for the internet to have some kind of "memory".

Thats not what it's bocking it for apperantly. Obviously I wouldn't have a problem with simply archiving.

https://imgur.com/a/RSQIKP2

Yikes, mind sharing which country you're in that has those kinds of hard blocks?

https://www.interno.gov.it/it says Italy.

Yes Italy, I'm not sure why but for others it seems to be working.

I'm sure it's down to the DNS / ISP.

I am in Italy as well and the link works fine.

The link i get is :

https://imgur.com/a/RSQIKP2

STOP !

PAGINA INTERDETTA DAL CENTRO NAZIONALE PER IL CONTRASTO DELLA PEDOPORNOGRAFIA ONLINE (C.N.C.P.O.)

Il tuo browser sta tentando di raggiungere un sito Internet contenente immagini e filmati di pedopornografia minorile. L'inibizione dell'accesso a questo sito é prevista dalla legge n. 38/2006.

Questo servizio di protezione della navigazione sulla rete Internet è predisposto grazie alla collaborazione tra il Centro Nazionale per il Contrasto della Pedopornografia Online e gli Internet Service Providers italiani.

La visualizzazione intenzionale, la diffusione, la detenzione, la cessione, la produzione e la commercializzazione di questo tipo di materiale sono puniti dalla legge come reato.

The Danish authorities abuse their filters in a similar way. It's just about the children ..!

What if that's just some illegal content that was reported? Even archived on purpose in the first place. Would that result in banning the whole domain?

I read this as "Ministero dell'Inferno" (Ministry of Hell) and was sad to see that it was actually much more mundane.

Here are the keys. And by the way, we parked it on the Moon.

A fully functioning rover on the moon would be worth significantly more than on earth, no?

Yes, but only if it also comes with all the communication equipment. If it's fully functional, but you can't talk to it, probably not worth anything.

I think the collectible value of “only rover on the moon” would be extraordinary regardless of functionality.

It would be the ninth. The honor of the first lunar rover goes to the Soviets. And in recent times China, India and Japan have all successfully deployed rovers on the moon.

If it had been launched fast enough it could have become the first American (self-driving) rover on the moon. And still among the first ten rovers. That would be worth something to some collector

In 1993, the price of a non-functional lunar rover was $68,500.

That's how much Richard Garriott (son of astronaut Owen Garriott, creator of the Ultima game series, and after that, private astronaut that spent 12 days at the ISS) spent to purchase the rights to Lunokhod 2 and the Luna 21 lander.

I want to know what kind of mental models you used to arrive at that conclusion. Curious.

Personally I would want the purchase to make a tangible difference to my life. If I can't control, communicate with, or see my purchase, that's functionally equivalent to me not owning it

You may own some stock and I guess you can't do much with it other than selling it later

Stocks are ownership in a company, they provide you info disclosed to shareholders, possibly voting rights, and dividends. It's not like the rover provides a passive income.

not all stock pay out dividends.

owning a passive lunar rover will surely give you some publicity and access to something (you can brag about it in some venues). People have successfully monetized more stupid things. I'm not saying _I_ would know how to get returns from that investment but I'm sure there are some people who would.

I have a bridge to sell you in Holland

It hasn't been launched.

Outsider looking in, this article[1] published circa Jul 2022 appears to add some historical color to the status quo...it all seems related to CLPS[2] failures surrounding a few involved primes[3][4].

In any case, sure does look like a nasty Nunn-McCurdy breach that NASA has on their hands.

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/nasa-replans-clps-delivery...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Lunar_Payload_Servi...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobotic_Technology

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masten_Space_Systems

That's not the case.

The rover itself, made by NASA, experienced cost growth. This is a longstanding problem in science missions and so, in an era of fiscal tightening, they chose not to add more money to VIPER.

"Nunn-McCurdy" is weapons regulation. It doesn't apply here directly, but there are Congressional reporting requirements for it.

It's absolutely the case. The rover was built in the middle of Covid. Given the challenges that created, the cost growth on the rover itself was quite reasonable.

The problem right now is that NASA HQ has no confidence in the CLPS contractor building the lander, but it's not politically correct to throw a private company under the bus.

How many moons must a moon rover before you can call it a rover?

> Just wait a sodding minute! You want a question that goes with the answer for 42? Well, how about "What's six times seven?" Or "How many Vogons does it take to change a lightbulb?" Here's one! "How many roads must a man walk down?"

One more for the list!

How much moon could a moon rover rove if a moon cover could rove moon?

If a moon rover could rove as much moon as a moon rover could, that moon rover would rove all the moon it could rove!

If that moon rover roved all the moon it could rove, then the moon it roved would be the roved moon that no other moon rover could hope to rove.

it saddens me to see this site devolve into meaningless reddit like slop. Please do your part to help keep the signal to noise ratio up.

downvote off-topic content and move on

But I am just glad we can keep things light here sometimes

I think you're missing a rover, "(...) must a moon rover rover before (...)"

Wouldn’t it be "(...) must a moon rover rove before (...)"? Isn’t the verb to „rover“ „rove“?

Moon Rover

Wider than a mile

I’m launching you in style one day

Wider than a mole?

The answer my friend, is rovin’ in the wind

"How many moons must a moon rover rover before you can call a rover a moon rover?"

See also: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

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

I think the third Buffalo should not have been Capitalized

How many moons must a moon rover rove over before you can call it a rover? Over.

How many moons must a moon rover rove over until a range rover calls the moon rover the rover of rovers that rovered over the moon?

You mean moon pie isn’t made of moon?

No, it's a cheesecake.

While your comment would normally be considered "humor", and thus automatically subject to downvote, the Committee has noted that it seems, based on the numerous replies, to have tapped into an under-served concept in an upscale demographic segment. Even better, the segment appears to have dubious taste. It got legs, baby. Congratulations, and enjoy your upvote.

We have taken the liberty to pass this along to a VC manager who is very interested in discussing future opportunities with you. Please be prepared to discuss specifics of the LLM we, ah, sort of assumed was involved.

still looks better than the cybertruck

And the moon rover is designed to handle actual craters

At 0.166g thought.

True, the moon’s lower gravity does change how the rover interacts with craters

The OG EV truck.

what doesn't? duh

I'm really disappointed that this isn't listed on GSA Auctions. It could be one of the featured auctions, between the "scrap Lockheed Martin HC-130 Aircraft" (current bid $10,000) and "approximately 8 cords of firewood" (opening bid $10)

Dark side of a Hollywood basement

includes free shipping?

"No low balls. I know what I have."

Does the ac blow cold?

I would buy, but i have no moon

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Heh, I mentioned this to my wife a while back, she said that we've had a pair of shoes since our first (of three) that had never been worn, and that shoes at our second hand store are often labeled that way. Turns out, baby shoes are aesthetic only, baby's feet aren't really foot-shaped yet so they're hard to put on, and if they're moving, they're crawling, and shoes make it impossible to use their feet while crawling. The shoes were either a gift, or something she bought before the baby was born... So that story made her think of the naivety of pre-parents and chuckle, I had to explain why people found it sad, and her response was "those people have never tried to put baby shoes on a baby".

Which is to say, I think that her take makes this even more apt response... the people getting sad about this have never tried to put a rover on the moon.

I tried, but I'm not tall enough. And the big ones are really heavy.

I think the sentence could be made more correct by replacing shoes with booties. Baby booties are the thick, typically woven, often hand-woven footwear used to keep a baby's feet warm.

They're often gifted by family to the expecting parents and sometimes kept as a keepsake, so someone getting rid of never-worn booties works a little better. Though it's typically considered distasteful to sell handmade gifts.

Of course, the sentence seems to work fine as a story regardless of its correctness, based on its enduring popularity.

I'm gonna have to call in my NASA moon rover expert. Best I can do is $40.

Meh. I have few Mars, Europa rover in case anyone is interested.

It is very suspicious that the companies bidding are NASA contractors. This may be a case of corruption. I.E., NASA sells the moon rover for 85 M and then pays 200 M for the moon rover to do something for them for future NASA missions.

This is some pretty heavy speculation based on very little information. Saying "maybe a case" is really doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

"It's petty suspicious that the only companies trying to buy this mining equipment are other mining companies." Did you expect Walmart to make a bid on it?

Museums

In general, I'm with you about being skeptical.

However, in this case, I don't think there is anything weird going on, at least not with the information we have. I've never worked at one of these contractors who service NASA, but in the past I worked for a large defense contractor who in part provided some pretty high-tech stuff to the Air Force among others.

One of the things I worked on specifically was the communications computer for the Predator drone. It was the piece of equipment that received all command and control from the ground station, and sent the video back from the drone camera. The actual plane itself was made by a separate company who was more specialized in that aspect.

We were very proud to work on Predator, and we absolutely would have loved to have bid on something like that. Even though we made part of it, we didn't have a complete unit. Had we have won a bid to get one, it would have gone into a glass case in our visitor area, where we would proudly display it like a trophy. I would not be surprised in the least if that is what these bidders have in mind.

Consider how much fun it would be if you are showing up for a job interview and you see in a glass case in the lobby an actual brand new moon Rover! I know that would be pretty cool for me. I do tend to love museums though, so maybe I'm not the best test case.

Stipulations include performing the science mission and releasing the data. While there the cool factor would be orders of magnitude greater, there are also considerable commitments and risk involved. So the question is: what other benefits would be involved? I'm sure there would be many, particularly if you could prove that you could launch and operate such missions, but I doubt that having a museum piece would be one of them. (And you would only have that museum piece if there is a twin that remains on Earth, which seems to be common for NASA missions.)

Everyone who has the capability to land this on the moon is a NASA contractor or a competing space agency. And I don't know how congress would feel about selling this to Roskosmos, the Chinese CNSA or Indian ISRO. Maybe ESA.

Of course somebody else could buy it and pay somebody to put it on the moon. But that seems unlikely given the provision that findings have to be shared. For companies that sell moon landings it's good marketing, for anyone else there wouldn't be much upside

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