Die NASA erwägt ernsthaft, Promise, das groß angelegte technische Modell von Perseverance, zum Mond zu schicken, um ihre Bemühungen zur Erforschung der Südpolregion zu beschleunigen

I wonder why they would choose to use an RTG for Promise on the Moon. It might be because of the drastic temperature cycles and use the waste heat during the lunar night, which is far colder and more everlasting than a Martian night. However, solar panels would make a lot of sense if the rover itself would be able to survive the temperature cycles, would it not?

I love the idea of reusing currently existing hardware to make much cheaper missions based on missions already in operation however.

No. When are the terrible ideas going to stop? 

1. It would likely cost more to engineer a new lander then it would to just build a new probe. Sky Crane can’t be used on the moon. We have no CLPS-class lander that is large enough.
2. The engineering model is essential as Perseverance is still active. As it continues to age the model will get more and more use to resolve issues. NASA had JPL build two identical craft for this very reason.
3. It’s engineered for a long duration mission not a one shot quick lunar mission. It’s slow AF and was built specifically for Mars not vacuum. It’s as insane as sending a 15+ year gateway module on a one shot trip to Mars.
4. We can’t communicate with it without placing satellites first. That’s what LCRNS is about.
5. JPL (and a bunch of private companies) already have a rapid bus that could be used to deliver a lunar rover. Low endurance is pretty easy, long endurance and survive a trip to Mars are much harder.
6. It’s not clear we have launch capability to get it there. Heavy has possibly enough mass to polar TLI but it’s well beyond any previous flights. We don’t have an upper on any US stack that can do it until ULA stops exploding. ESA do but also have a very long runway and are not very happy with NASA right now. JAXA do not.

Also I find it hilarious when they call RTGs nuclear powered, I know NASA do sometimes too but it’s so silly. It’s like calling a smoke detector nuclear powered 🙂

A better idea would be to make SR1 an actually useful mission for testing the kilopower/HALEU reactors instead of just wasting billions. They have already been tested just not in a real probe, use that misappropriated funding to build an actual probe (or multiple). If you want a flight test of HALEU do so in orbit, the science and engineering are the same and you get a long term test vehicle as it ages.

It’s all hypothetical until we have a vehicle that could deliver the Perseverance engineering model to the moon’s surface. „Promise“ weighs just over 1,000 kg / 2,200 pounds, and it’s the size of a small SUV– much larger than the recent probes we’ve sent to the moon.

Realistically, Promise would need a SpaceX lunar cargo lander, or a Blue Origin „Blue Moon“ lander. Neither one is close to mission-ready.

By the time we have the capability to deliver „Promise“ to the lunar south pole, we may have already located ice by other means.

I’m not getting worked up about this yet.

Perseverance used a parachute. That’s out. The Skycrane is a possibility but it’s going to kick up endless dust, and probably need more DeltaV than on Mars if it’s the only braking system.

Do we even want to do the same research on the Moon as we do on Mars?