Moon Express Lunar Lander Program | Hacker News Reader

Moon Express Lunar Lander Program

moonexpress.com

26 pointsChuckMcM19 comments

> "Moon Express engineers have combined the latest exponential technologies in micro-avionics with advanced propulsion and materials to create an innovative approach to spacecraft design and fabrication, empowered by leading edge Autodesk digital design tools to help make the impossible possible and reach for the Moon."

The web site is filled with vapid copy, but this rather meaningless sentence takes the cake. There are a bunch of interesting XPrize teams working to land rovers on the moon; I wouldn't put any money on these guys.

Where on Earth do people learn to write this crap? Someone must be teaching it, because it's extremely prevalent, particularly from people in marketing.

One if the minor joys of my life is that as a native English speaker leaving in France, people often ask me to "correct the English" of press releases. When I run into word salad like your example I just tell my interlocutor that I don't understand what they are trying to say. After many minutes of them explaining, I rewrite the paragraph in plain English :) begone marketing-speak, I hereby banish thee to the low gates of Hell!

Exactly! I'm only aware of two teams who have booked launch reservations: Astrobotic and Barcelona Moon Team.

The exciting thing is that Astrobotic has been booked for October 2015 since may and Barcelona Moon Team just moved their date (which had not been specific) up to June 2015. At this point, it is hard to see anyone without a launch reservation as a serious contender.

I'm skeptical about the stated reasons to go back. The only one that seems of any actual rarity is the moon rocks themselves, but that seems unlikely to be a sufficient recurring revenue stream. Aka, once everyone can get one, what's the attraction?

Rare Earth are available, just most terrestrial mines have shut down because there is not a sufficient market place to make it worth while.

Helium-3 can be manufactured. So again, terrestrial production can be increased.

Not going to comment on platinum.

Honestly the most value I could see on the moon is the production of resources to sustain life and fuel to act as a higher orbit refueling platform. Both are critical to get humans and machines active in space.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum

As to why the Moon would make a good refueling platform

  http://xkcd.com/681_large/

Deimos is a better place to refuel.

http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/the_deimos_water_company....

I like the idea of manufacturing spacecraft parts on the Moon. There is no oxygen so metallurgy may be easier, gravity is lower, so some alloys should be easier to make and there is abundant energy in the form of sunlight. I don't know about its mineralogy, but I would suspect it's rich in light metals.

Also, a radiotelescope on the far side would be shielded from Earth's interferences.

And, of course, someone has to bury a big black brick in Tycho so future generations can be puzzled.

Nah, the big black box thing only works if you haven't left a bunch if other less mysterious crap lying around. If we colonise the Moon, we'll have to leave the monolith elsewhere. Callisto or Ganymede look like likely customers... Though quite frankly we're starting to get to the point where we've left enough stuff lying around that our entire solar system's mystery quotient has been seriously compromised...

    Also, a radiotelescope on the far side would be shielded from Earth's interferences.

While that would be really awesome, I'm pretty sure a radio telescope could be shielded just as well with a few sheets of metal (like the James Webb telescope). And if it's stuck to the surface of the moon, it's a lot more restricted in where it can point at any one time than one free-floating in space would be.

You can't shield an earth ground-based telescope from the atmosphere. And the Arecebo fixed telescope seems to work quite well - one of those in a moon crater would be an extremely sensitive instrument.

Space travel (even to LEO) is pretty bloody expensive. I'm not sure any type of mining will become worthwhile or even feasible without significant breakthroughs in equipment/fuel costs in the next few years. Without them, I don't think any costs of going to the Moon are recoverable by mining - unless, of course, we find out the cheese turns out to be a solid lump of Platinum.

Of course if the visits are purely scientific, then the costs will be worthwhile. As a commercial venture, I don't see the point.

Reasons they listed for going to the moon seem pretty weak. Need expert opinion on their lander/engine tech for I am no rocket scientist. I find very interesting use of word "proprietary" in design of their lander, why would they emphasize that?

All that said I applaud all and any efforts to advance space technologies.

Ok, had to share this. Not sure if these guys have any shot at all about getting to the Moon but they have just dumped a large amount of information about what they are going to attempt on to their web site.

"RESOUCES".... really? I know it might seem picky but having an error that glaring on a site is a good way to get people to not take you seriously.

What kind of people are you talking about? How many investors would discount a company based on a typo? The kind of people that matter to them would never form an opinion based on something so trivial.

Missing a typo on a website is trivial, but it leads to wondering if they missed something more important. You don't want to see your investment impact the Moon 10x faster than it was supposed to because somebody misplaced a decimal point.

Yep I'm sure the people who write the website copy also calculate the orbital dynamics, and I'm sure they give both items the same scrutiny. I would love to see one iota of evidence that the occurrence of typos in web copy is a good predictor of anything whatsoever.

I mean come on, the plaque placed on the moon by Apollo 11 has a typo on it! http://timdroogsma.blogspot.com/2009/07/typo-on-moon.html

I don't buy it. I can't remember seeing AD/BC go before the year number even once, and I see it after all the time.

The whole website looks far from professional and well funded...

Oh, it could be much worse. The first website of SpaceX was, IMO, with questionable design.

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