If they don't, they'll be out of business, because their one-off robots
will be greeted by hundreds of others when they arrive. Just as the
first astronauts to get to the Moon The NASA Way in Apollo redux will be
greeted by the concierge at the Luna Hilton.
On 10/6/21 19:23, Robert Steinke wrote:
+1
When I was at JPL as Spirit & Opportunity were winding down and Curiosity was winding up people would say things like we can't just do another Spirit & Opportunity because we want capability X (like the ability to reach a specific location) so we need technology Y (like hypersonic guidance or long distance autonomous driving).
I would ask have you looked at the probability of success of a shotgun approach of sending N Spirit & Opportunities where you only need one to succeed, and compared the cost of that to the development cost of a brand new design that you will only ever make one of?
People didn't like when I asked that, especially the people who had spent their careers developing technology Y.
I think some universities and nonprofits will do amazing things when IMLEO becomes (relatively) cheap, but I would not be optimistic about JPL making the paradigm shift.
On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 5:17 PM Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Decades ago, I was talking to people at JPL about massively
parallel exploration with mass-produced rovers. But they couldn't
break out of the one-off mindset. And imagine what we're going to
do sending flocks of cubesats with motherships to the ocean moons.
Yuri Milner may actually be planning that for Enceladus. I put a
bug in Pete's ear about that.
On 10/6/21 16:33, Doug Jones wrote:
I wrote the following last year-
I think most people don't see the revolution that SpaceX's
Starship will usher in. Most of the extreme cost of those Mars
missions was in the non-recurring expense of building low mass
bleeding-edge one-off hardware.
When you can put 100 tons into LEO for a few million dollars,
most of that goes out the window. Rovers will be bulky, have four
times the mass, and look like something out of Junkyard Wars.
They can be built in groups of 5-10 for pennies on the dollar.
Computer array? Build a 5x redundant system using standard rack
mount hardware and put it in a pressure can with tungsten
shielding to get the single event upset rate down to something
that can be handled routinely.
Cameras? Get a few top-of-the-line mirrorless DSLRs, put them in
another pressure can with a good window, done. Sure it has ten
times the mass of the exquisitely optimized jewelry on
Perseverance, but who cares?
RTGs? Just put huge solar arrays on the rover. Massive things,
overbuilt, rugged, with built-in compressed gas nozzles to blow
the dust off as needed. A vacuum pump feeds an oilless air
compressor- or rather, two of each. Maybe a robotic arm with a
whisk broom. Or both systems.
Drive train? Baja Rally buggy with major parts machined down to
add a little lightness but not too much. Install boots over the
articulated sections to keep the dust out. Send the vehicles in
pairs with winches and tow straps.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Much smaller university consortia, working
with existing smallsat builders, can go wild. With delta-V to
(literally) burn, missions to the outer planets won't take a
freaking decade to get there, either.
Brute force all the way. It'll be glorious.
On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 5:05 PM Rand Simberg
<simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Actually, it's available now, but only for subcribers:
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/walmart-but-for-space
It will be out from behind the paywall in a few weeks.
On 10/6/21 07:38, Rand Simberg wrote:
I have an essay on this in the current issue of The New
Atlantis. It should be available on line soon.
On 10/6/21 06:28, Doug Jones wrote:
Perzackly. Who needs fancy-shmancy custom rad-hard
featherweight liquid-cooled vacuum-rated electronics when
you can buy standard 19" rack mount packages, put 'em in a
steel pressure hull an inch thick with a polyethylene liner
to catch the secondaries, blow the cooling fans through a
flat plate heat exchanger, and call it good?
We're talking _literal_ battleship construction.
On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 1:22 AM J Farmer
<jfarmer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think one of the points being overlooked,
inadvertently or not, is the
sea change that the shear lift capacity StarShip will
in have in size
and mass. To date, every payload has to watch every
kg, every cubic
cm. What happens when you can throw another cubic
meter, lift another
100kg mass at a problem? How much time and money will
be saved when you
don't have to sweat that last one percent of your lift
budget?
As Henry pointed out in an earlier thread about dealing
with atmospheric
& water leaks, with reliable lift schedules, just lift
enough to
replenish for several cycles while fixing the problem.
What changes in
your planning when that supply run can be 50 or 100
tons of air or water?
John