The Dumbest NASA Decision In Years? Why NASA is Being Forced To Ground Rover and Sent Ballast.
Summary
TLDRScott Manley discusses the cancellation of NASA's Viper Rover mission due to budgetary constraints, despite the project nearing completion. The cancellation is mandated by a 2005 law that prohibits projects exceeding 30% over budget from continuing without congressional approval. Manley highlights the irony of NASA potentially sending a mass simulator instead of the Viper to the Moon and calls for political intervention or private funding to salvage the mission, emphasizing its importance for lunar exploration and future space endeavors.
Takeaways
- 📉 NASA recently held press conferences discussing the deorbiting of the International Space Station and the cancellation of the Viper Rover mission.
- 🛠️ Viper, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, was designed to explore the South Pole of the Moon with a drill and spectrometer to find ice.
- 🚀 Viper was to be delivered by the Griffin Lander, built by Astrobotic as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
- 💰 Due to budgetary constraints and laws, NASA has to replace the completed Viper Rover with a mass simulator on the Griffin Lander.
- 📉 The cancellation is partly due to the 2005 law that stops NASA from proceeding with projects exceeding 30% over their initial budget without congressional approval.
- 🔄 Delays and additional testing for the Griffin Lander contributed to the budget overrun, pushing the project over the 30% threshold.
- 🔧 The extra year of delay due to the Lander's postponement added costs for maintaining the project team and infrastructure, further increasing the budget.
- 🔬 The mission aimed to investigate the presence of water on the Moon, which is crucial for in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) and future human settlements.
- 🌑 The unique design of Viper accommodated the low sun angles at the lunar poles, with solar panels on the sides of the boxy rover for maximum sunlight exposure.
- 🔦 Viper was the first rover designed with its own lighting to explore permanently shadowed regions of the Moon.
- 🚨 The cancellation of Viper could be influenced by internal NASA policy debates or political moves, rather than purely operational or scientific reasons.
Q & A
Who is Scott Manley?
-Scott Manley is the person speaking in the video transcript, likely a space enthusiast or commentator discussing recent NASA news.
What were the two NASA press conferences about?
-The first press conference was about the deorbiting of the International Space Station, and the second was about the cancellation of the Viper Rover mission.
What is the Viper Rover?
-The Viper Rover, or Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is a 430 kg rover designed to explore the lunar South Pole, drill into the surface, and analyze ice using its spectrometer.
Why was the Viper Rover mission cancelled?
-The mission was cancelled because the project exceeded its initial budget by more than 30%, triggering a legal requirement to halt the project unless additional funds are authorized by Congress.
What will NASA send instead of the Viper Rover?
-NASA will send a mass simulator, which is essentially a chunk of mass, instead of the Viper Rover to fulfill the terms of the CLPS contract with Astrobotic.
What is the CLPS program?
-The CLPS, or Commercial Lunar Payload Services, program is a NASA initiative to work with commercial partners to deliver payloads to the Moon.
What are the reasons for the Viper Rover project going over budget?
-The project went over budget due to typical construction issues, pandemic-related supply delays, inflation, additional testing requirements for the Griffin Lander, and delays in the Lander's launch.
What are some potential ways to save the Viper Rover mission?
-Potential ways to save the mission include getting additional funding authorized by Congress or finding a private partner or university to help fund the project.
What was the predecessor of the Viper Rover?
-The predecessor of the Viper Rover was the Resource Prospector mission, which had a similar goal of exploring the lunar poles and analyzing water ice.
What are some unique features of the Viper Rover?
-The Viper Rover has features like a neutron spectrometer, infrared spectrometer, mass spectrometer, and a drill. It is also designed with headlamps to explore permanently shadowed regions and has solar panels mounted on its sides due to the low Sun angles at the lunar poles.
Outlines
🚀 Cancellation of NASA's Viper Rover Mission
Scott Manley discusses the unfortunate cancellation of NASA's Viper Rover due to budgetary constraints. Viper, the 'volatiles investigating polar exploration Rover,' was designed to explore the South Pole of the Moon for ice deposits. The cancellation is a result of budget overruns triggering a 2005 law that halts projects exceeding their initial budget by 30%. Despite NASA having already paid for the Griffin Lander and the payload, they must now send a mass simulator instead of the Rover. Manley highlights the irony and frustration of this situation, especially in the context of international space exploration advancements.
🌑 Viper's Mission and Potential Alternatives
This paragraph delves into the purpose of the Viper mission, which aimed to investigate the presence of water at the lunar poles, crucial for potential in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) and human sustainability on the Moon. The cancellation could lead to the disassembly of the Rover and the possibility of its instruments being repurposed for other projects, such as the endurance Rover. Manley also speculates on potential private sector involvement in saving the mission, emphasizing the importance of such exploration for the future of space travel and the potential embarrassment for NASA if the mission is not salvaged.
🛰️ The Impact of Viper's Cancellation on NASA's CLPS Program
The cancellation of the Viper mission reflects negatively on NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which is intended to foster private-public partnerships for lunar exploration. Manley criticizes the performance of commercial partners like Astrobotic, which has contributed to the delay and budget overruns. He also touches upon the potential internal NASA politics that may be influencing the cancellation, suggesting that some within the agency may prefer traditional NASA-led missions over commercial partnerships.
🔄 The Future of Lunar Exploration and Viper's Legacy
In the final paragraph, Manley summarizes the situation surrounding Viper's cancellation and its implications for future lunar missions. He expresses hope for congressional intervention or private funding to prevent the disassembly of the Rover and to allow it to fulfill its scientific mission. The summary also considers the potential redirection of Viper's instruments to other missions and the broader impact on public perception and international space competition.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡International Space Station (ISS)
💡Viper Rover
💡Griffin Lander
💡CLPS Program
💡30% Budget Cap
💡Astrobotic
💡Resource Prospector
💡ISRU
💡Environmental Testing
💡Neutron Spectrometer
Highlights
NASA discussed the deorbiting of the International Space Station and the cancellation of the Viper Rover.
Viper Rover, designed to explore the Moon's South Pole, has been constructed but will not be flying due to budgetary constraints.
NASA has to send a mass simulator instead of the Viper Rover due to funding laws.
The cancellation is because the project exceeded 30% over its initial budget, triggering a legal limit on NASA spending.
Delays and increased testing requirements added significantly to the budget, pushing it over the limit.
The Griffin Lander, which was to carry the Viper Rover, has also faced delays, adding further costs.
The Viper Rover was intended to drill for ice at the lunar poles and analyze it using various spectrometers.
The project Viper originally began as the Resource Prospector in 2015 and was later reborn as Viper under the CLPS program.
Viper's design features include a big box shape with solar panels on the sides to operate at the Moon's poles.
The mission plan involved navigating areas with variable sunlight, a unique challenge due to the lunar pole's illumination cycle.
If the Viper mission proceeds, it will undergo environmental testing, including vacuum chamber tests.
If Viper is not saved, its components may be repurposed for other projects, such as the Endurance Rover.
The CLPS program, which Viper is part of, aims to use commercial services for lunar payload deliveries, but has faced criticism and challenges.
Scott Manley hopes for a resolution that allows Viper to fly, either through additional funding or private partnerships.
There is a possibility that Congress or private entities might step in to save the Viper project from cancellation.
Transcripts
hello it's Scott Manley here on
Wednesday this week there were a couple
of NASA press conferences which were
both a bit of a downer one was about
discussing the deorbiting of the
International Space Station but more
immediately the second one was about the
cancellation of the Viper Rover a Rover
which has just finished
construction and will now not be flying
to the Moon because of the way budgetary
laws kick in so the Viper is the
volatiles investigating polar
exploration Rover it's being built uh
just down the road from me at Nasa as it
was a 430 kg design designed to go to
the South Pole it had a drill it would
drill into the surface it had a
spectrometer to analyze and find ice and
it would be delivered on the Griffin
Lander built by astrobotic as part of
the clips program the commercial lunar
payload services and the weirdest and
most bizarre thing about this is because
of the way Clips is funded NASA has
already paid for the Lander and the
payload and since the Rover is being
cancelled they have to send something
else they will be sending a mass
simulator rather than the Rover which
has just been finished building right
this is one of the most bizarre bits of
news and I'm sure you know like the
China space fans out there are just
going to be laughing at this because
China's landed a couple over India space
they're going to be laugh they just
landed their Rover but no and NASA is
going to take the Rover that has just
built and disassemble it and instead fly
a chunk of mass you know chunk of block
of something instead maybe they'll send
like a big you know Pizza to the moon or
something just to show that this
commercial Lander works so look the
reason why this is getting cancelled is
because back in 2005 uh NASA there was a
law written that basically says if NASA
any NASA project exceeds 30% % over its
initial budget then NASA on its own is
not allowed to proceed with a project
from that point the only money they can
spend is money to shut the project down
now they can go to Congress and they can
get uh politicians to say well we think
you know put some money in or whatever
to rewrite the law to allow them to
proceed with this project but I'm not
sure I'm going to see that happen it's
an election year not sure uh
there are politicians that want to risk
this because putting stuff like this on
a commercial service was seen as pretty
risky um but yeah look why is it 30%
over budget well a big part of this is
because well you've got all the usual
stuff you know you have issues with
construction needs sorted they had a lot
of delays in getting things delivered
that was partly because of the supply
issues related to the pandemic there was
a little bit of inflation in there but
also as they got through the design
process they get a little Cy about this
Griffin Lander and asked astrobotic to
do some more testings that added $50
million to their budget I think the
original budget was $450 million or
thereabouts and the by the time they're
done it would be more than this the uh
also then the Ro sorry then the Lander
got delayed so it was potentially going
to launch at the end of this year now
it's not and that's going to add a whole
other year and that means a whole year
that you have to keep all the key
project staff on hand you have to keep
the spares around you have to give
people something to do so they're being
pay they're paying extra for this and
that extra year is enough to push them
over their prospected budget and so the
whole project goes off to Congress and
yeah one of the most frustrating things
about this is that I can see why uh
politicians might pass this 30% cap you
know to provide some incentive right a
to keep missions in line and stop them
expanding over their resources by huge
amounts unchecked
but the problem is when the clips
contracts were written by you know back
in 2020 they clearly didn't include any
enough penalties for the likes of
astrobotic who have been able to go way
over schedule and therefore are are the
ones that are causing the mission itself
to get canceled and they're not the ones
getting punished because they are still
getting paid they're just not flying
anything that they could lose in an
embarrassing fashion and so it's bizarre
that over the last few years we have
seen lots of people try to land stuff on
the surface and fail because of software
because of code issues chandrian 2 baret
Luna 25 Haku are all failed because of
problems with their computer
code but Viper is going to fail because
of problems with Le code how about that
for innovation in America now look it's
not guaranteed at this point that this
is going to shut down sure there's a
chance that Congress does something
there is also uh like NASA is looking
for potential Partners who might want to
do something with the Rover before they
start disassembling it and putting the
parts into other Rovers it's entirely
possible that some University says well
this is only going to cost us $20
million and then we can you know put our
name on there and get exclusive access
to the science and stuff that may or may
not happen maybe Jeff Bezos he's big on
the moon why why doesn't Jeff come along
with his very Deep Pockets so anyway
look let's just talk about Viper in
general I actually got to sit in on one
of the live build streams at Nasa it was
very interesting to talk about it with
the the developers and the designers of
this so the lunar South poles are the
lunar poles are interesting because they
don't get nearly as much sunlight and
because uh various satellites like lunar
prospector uh and lady have found
evidence that there is water trapped at
the lunar poles but we're not quite sure
where it is so we wanted to send a Rover
down there and actually dig into the
surface and see whether there was enough
water that whether it was in a form that
could be easily extracted because then
you can do uh you know insitu resource
reextraction right utilization isru is
what they call it and the idea is you
can take water out you know heat up your
soil it comes off as vapor and then you
maybe crack it into hydrogen and oxygen
and then you have rocket propellant and
it's great because a lot of Rocket
propellant is spent getting rocket
propellant to space so if you could get
it from the moon suddenly that makes
expanding and exploiting and you
industrializing the solar system vastly
easier also of course humans need water
so it'd be nice to find that on the moon
as well this project Viper actually goes
back to a previous Mission design called
a resource prospector which was I think
it started out in like 2015 and it had
pretty much the same idea they would
have a drill they would have a little
little oven and a spectrometer they
built like an example Rover tested it
and they were working towards developing
this into a proper Mission and then on
April 23rd 2018 someone at NASA decided
to cancel the mission and what's really
interesting about 23rd of April 2018 is
that it's the same day that Jim
brightenstein started as the NASA
director so somebody at Nasa literally
cancelled this Mission hours before a
new administrator came in who was
actually quite interested in doing stuff
on the moon and he wasn't in any
position to reverse this but he was in a
position to as part of the clips program
move Viper into being and make that part
of the clips program so yeah essentially
resource perspector was reborn as Viper
and it became part of the clips program
it was moved to NASA as and it's worked
through all its design its construction
it is ready to go the main thing that
has to happen to the Rover is it needs
to go through environmental testing it
needs to uh go into like vacuum Chambers
and verify that all the electronics work
you know run through the different
thermal Cycles when you put things in a
vacuum sometimes you'll find the
electrical stuff arcs across the Gap
because as you reduce the pressure
passions law basically says that you
know your resistance of the gas goes or
the the medium goes down and you can get
electrical arcs in places where they
shouldn't be or they wouldn't be in the
earth uh in in the Earth's atmosphere so
because the Viper was designed to
operate at the poles with low Sun angle
it doesn't look like other Rovers it's a
big box and the sides of the Box have
the solar panels right because it has to
stick up high the antenna sticks up a
whole lot higher the panels have to
stick up higher rather than sitting flat
on the top and that makes the Rover look
big and boxy but actually most of that
space above the top uh you know the top
half is empty it's just you know
structure to carry those solar panels
the Rover is still actually kind of low
Center of mass with all the drive and
the Power Systems close to the ground
the middle of the Rover does have this
big long drill that needs to go
vertically so that is actually part of
the structure in addition to the drill
the other instruments it had was like a
neutron spectrometer infrared
spectrometer a mass spectrometer all
this stuff would be used to analyze the
stuff that was brought out from the
surface of the Moon now uh it was
interesting that when they looked at the
resource prospector it had like an oven
that they could use to heat up the
material and look at the gases coming
off they didn't do that in this case
they just said well let's extract the
stuff with a drill dump it into a pile
and then move the Rover around so that
instruments can actually look at this
pile of stuff that we just pulled out
from underneath the surface rather than
having a specific you know section of
the the U Rover that would actually
contain and analyze this stuff and that
would be not as good but it would be
more than adequate to actually make some
amazing discoveries I'm sure see one of
the really cool things about Viper was
that because it was going to the South
Pole its operations were going to be
very different from other Rovers so at
the pole the sun doesn't get very high
above the Horizon and it doesn't get
very low above the Horizon but the way
the Shadows move are like the way
Shadows move close to Sunset you know
you will see the Shadows get very long
you will find areas where it's hidden
where you know the sun is blocked and
you'll have areas that remain in
sunlight longer the mission plan had to
really take this into account they had
designed traverses where they would go
from one light area to another area and
they would have to cross this time this
distance in the time when the sun was
high of above the Horizon and then they
would reach a safe spot while the sun
started to get low for like you know
about half the Year this the moon's
poles are illuminated by the Sun and
then for 6 months they're not
illuminated by the Sun so Viper could
only operate for a limited amount of
time and even then it had to be very
careful moving through these spaces and
you know there would be times when it
would have the opportunity to descend
into a permanently shadowed region with
headlamps it was the first Rover
actually designed with its own lighting
so that it could actually investigate
some of these
regions because of this because of the
six-month cycle It could only really
launch towards the end of 2024 and then
a year later in 2025 if it launched too
late once it got to the moon the sun
would be going down and it wouldn't have
enough time for this so any delay pushed
it back and honestly when I heard that
Griffin was going to be delayed I was
actually quite happy with that because I
felt that the clips program while it has
great potential right now it's a bit of
a mess you know we've had astrobotics
parag grin fail we had U intuitive
machines Odyssey barely get to the moon
after this problem with the ground
checklist and honestly the commercial
people may want to act like they're the
future of space flight but they have to
step up and actually start doing it and
and unfortunately this just makes Clips
program look even worse and it could be
that look this cancellation is part of
like some internal policy at Nasa there
are people at Nasa that still want to
handle all these Landers they argue that
they should be the ones doing this not
some we shouldn't be buying it from some
outside company I'm I'm thinking that
you know if you get this going then you
get the sort of SpaceX effect and
suddenly don't have to worry about these
minutia but there's definitely a lot of
people at Nasa that want this still to
be happening and they could absolutely
be ones that are responsible for this in
as a political move rather than a
operational or scientific move they are
following the letter of the law they're
not moving funds in the way that
agencies move funds around but maybe I
don't know enough about internal NASA
funding right this thing could be
complicated in ways that I don't don't
understand right there's all sorts of
magic that happens when you're
administrating funds that uh it's not
rocket science and frankly I'm not sure
what NASA's doing if it's not rocket
science so now what happens if Viper
isn't saved well the it's going to be
disassembled the instruments are going
to be made available to other projects
and one possible project that would make
sense would be the endurance Rover which
is more or less Viper but instead of
using solar power it uses nuclear power
and that means that it could operate for
much longer it could operate essentially
year round now it might have issues with
thermals at night and it would also need
a relay satellite because for a
significant part of the time Earth is
very low in the Horizon and unavailable
but yeah that is a possibility and it
might make more sense but I think that
you would be talking a fairly
significant delay during which of course
uh it's highly likely that the human
Landing system emus 3 gets to the Moon
before the Rovers and then you know
they've got to do a whole bunch of stuff
that the Rovers would normally be doing
so it's not really I I I strongly think
that Viper should get to the moon before
the current emis stuff but the problem
of course is that yeah you require
someone at Congress to actually look at
this and say well we spent all this
money on this thing and we're going to
spend another bunch of money to send a
block of metal to the Moon why don't we
just put the r over on there oh yeah
this law says well screw that law I'm a
lawar right you know that's the kind of
person someone with imagination that's
able to like see the sensible thing and
also see that yeah other countries are
essentially going to laugh at this if
NASA shuts this down under this
circumstances yeah space politics
sometimes makes me makes me
angry uh but yes uh I'm I'm just hoping
that we see something going I I'm hoping
that the clips program actually starts
producing some real results soon because
otherwise uh it's it's uh it's not
looking that great okay so once again
let's summarize things Viper was
supposed to go to the moon at the end of
this year because of delays and other
stuff it is not going moreover it's
possibly going to get disassembled and
the Lander is going to land without the
Rover it's going to land with a block of
stuff instead the only way to save it is
for someone at Congress to actually go
in and authorize this right to authorize
spending just little bit more money to
actually get it to the moon or for a
private company or individual or
university to come along and put up some
part of the funding to keep this project
below the 30% cap or it's potentially
getting disassembled and flown to the
moon the instruments may get flown to
the Moon in future missions which are
likely to get there long after humans
have put boots on the moon again uh
which you know it will still be valuable
scientifically it won't be a cool thing
in the Public's imagination a lot of
people know about Neil Armstrong landing
on the moon they don't know about the
two Soviet Rovers that moved around the
moon for longer than any of the Apollo
Astronauts ever did so yeah look I'm
hoping this gets sorted out in the best
way possible I want to see a win for the
US Space Program I'm Scott Manley fly
safe
[Music]
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