NASA swings budget axe, kills $400M+ VIPER lunar trundlebot The budget axe has swung, and NASA's VIPER rover will not be trundling around the lunar surface any time soon. NASA_VIPER_rover NASA revealed last night that it would discontinue the development of the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) project. The trundlebot is pretty much complete, but rather than …
I don't know how it works in the space industry, but I would not imagine they can use off the shelf parts, and usually when a custom fit one is made its very difficult to properly integrate it into a different design that wasn't made for it originally.
I'm glad its not a total waste... Mostly, but I dont think its as easy as they say.
Likely more akin to fitting Samsung parts into an iPhone. Might be made to work, but not as well as either original.
Reading some of the analysis by Scott Manley on twitter, he says NASA have already paid for the rocket launch and they're going to put a lump of concrete mass simulator in the rocket. Why not just throw the lander in there untested? If it works, great! If it doesn't, what have you lost? I bet a lot of the cost of the lander isn't the components but the paperwork.
If they expect to find problems and to have to make changes from the testing then skipping the testing is likely to result in some embarrassing failure. Stuck at a 90 degree angle to the lunar surface or something. Saving the embarrassment is probably worth a lot to NASA and there's costs in running the mission besides the hardware too - staff running the mission, mostly.
Because rockets vibrate during launch. If that breaks the rover, then that may destroy the rocket during launch. For example, debris hitting the rocket, or a rover battery explosion due to a short or mechanical damage. It may also destroy any other payloads, even if the rocket survives.
You can't launch without a successful vibration test.
You also have to test that the radios and other electronics on the rover won't interfere with the rocket or other payloads, possibly destroying or damaging them or stopping them from working at a critical time. Or accidentally jamming the communication of some other payloads with Earth. In particular, note that jamming the rockets self destruct system may mean that an out of control rocket can't be destroyed before it hits a populated area, causing deaths. And rockets being loaded contain explosives that could be set off by RF transmissions, causing deaths of launch team people.
So again, you can't launch without successful EMC compatibility testing and analysis.
You also have to know that the rover isn't going to start doing anything until you command it. If it suddenly starts doing something it shouldn't, then that may destroy or damage the rocket or other payloads. That requires testing of the electronics and software.
So that's more testing that you can't skip.
You might think that I am being over cautious. I can assure you that I have done this, and launch providers really ARE this cautious.
NASA may have its own "shelf" for parts that are qualified for hostile environments that can be re-used in other projects. Maybe the wheels on this were the same wheels they'd already designed for a Mars lander, re-used the robotic arm and so forth. The camera(s) on this lander could probably be re-used for future landers - even if there are better cameras if it isn't the primary camera (i.e. some body camera designed to show what the left side wheels are on) that probably doesn't matter.
So you've paid for the thing, which has been constructed, and you've paid for the rocket to deliver it but you're cancelling it because testing would be too expensive?
How many millions of dollars of taxpayers' money have NASA already spent that they have now decided just to throw in the bin? If I were an American taxpayer I'd be pissed.
NASA has a contractional limited budget per project, a fixed percentage of the total NASA budget. If a project exceeds it, NASA has to trash the project.
They would have to ask congress for an exception, to save the project.
A portion of the budget was wasted on unexpected delays and as they now approach the limit, they have to scrap it.
I know it would be considered 'dead weight' and never make it past the design committee, but a pair of huge googly eyes stuck on the front would be an amazing addition.
Call them, "Superfluous Autonomously Articulated Lunar Observation Augmentation Apparatus" Primary A and Backup B. No power required.
In Chinese culture, the rabbit is considered lucky. Best to to compare those sort of naming conventions when there are significant cultural difference.
After all, looked at another way, naming a moon rover after a belly crawling poisonous reptile which usually inspire fear in people and that really only does well in the warmth of the sun and tends to sleep or even die in severe cold might not be seen as a clever naming convention.
Of course, some people may have grown up flying the Cobra in Elite or wish they were flying Vipers in Battlestar Galactica and think a snake is some sort of good name for a combat vehicle because of those association. It's a shame they used the name for an unarmed, unmanned slow moving moon rover :-)
As a non US person I am not inspired by the US huge investment in weapons & warfare & getting involved in warmongering across the globe*
What has inspired me about the US, since a kid has been the space exploration of NASA, from "back in the day stuff" such as manned moon landings, through Voyager to recent things such as the stunning JWST images.
NASA achievements are a classic example of "soft power" example (something that makes the US more attractive than it otherwise would based on its geo-political behaviour)
* UK based, for balance not impressed by UK being a US lapdog in many of these wars, cosying up to dubious regimes either (but sadly UK does not have any recent** amazing space achievements as a plus point)
** Jodrell Bank & a few other things all a bit long ago
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