NASA awards Firefly Aerospace $177M to drop more bots on the Moon

NASA has awarded Firefly Aerospace $176.7 million to deliver a pair of rovers and a trio of scientific instruments to the Moon as part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander is capable of delivering 240 kg to the lunar surface and will carry an autonomous NASA …

[ParlezVousFranglais]

No coincidence that NASA is laying off thousands of staff. 40 years ago, they've have done this kind of thing in-house, but commercial companies are now seemingly cheaper and more efficient - NASA increasingly just rubber stamping the strategy and acting as a gatekeeper for the money - death by a thousand cuts and a sad decline for an organisation that helped (almost literally) to catapult science into the modern age, and has inspired millions of people for 65+ years...

[Flocke Kroes]

NASA would not have done this type of thing in house. They would have awarded a cost plus contract and retained some 'control'. That 'control' would be to change the requirements based on congress's response to the weather. The project would have gone over budget and been delayed. Congress cheered each delay and awarded more funding each year before NASA asked for it.

The change today is that congress wants to end scientific research. I hope Firefly negotiated payment in advance because the only things congress will fight for have a high return on investment - going to election campaign donations. Firefly cannot come close to wasting a tenth of the money going to any one of SLS, EUS, LOPG or ML-2.

[MachDiamond]

I cheer

I cheer these small missions being done by small and dedicated companies. They can get a lot done for the money if there's room to accept a few failures.

I'd like to see supply drops to the lunar surface around interesting things (caves) of tools, supplies and building materials that can last ages on the surface until they are needed. I'd also like to see some thought to the lander design being made up of components that can be salvaged once the craft is landed (one way or the other). Modular comms gear, that sort of thing. Rovers kitted out to do science are great, but if that science gear can be unbolted to turn the rover into a pack mule, that's really good.

While The Martian had a bunch of hand-wavium to make for a good story, there was a lot of things to make one go "hmmmmm". Common connectors for things is a good one. As one company/space agency solves some issue, they can publish what they've done to be compiled somewhere. Have a solar panel that outputs between 12v and 24v, it gets XYZ connector. Higher voltage, different connector. GOx (gaseous Oxygen), specified connector and so forth. It's good for safety and also good for repurposing things. A rocket engine is a lot of valves and sensors. Once a lander is down, if it's not going to be reused, those parts (if logged) can be used elsewhere.