Quote from: Jim on 12/21/2013 12:33 amNASA has no project to design actual lunar landing. This has been stated over and overFor a manned lunar lander. But what about unmanned?
NASA has no project to design actual lunar landing. This has been stated over and over
Quote from: Jim on 12/21/2013 12:33 amNASA has no project to design actual lunar landing. This has been stated over and overFor a manned lunar lander. But what about unmanned? NASA also didn't have any plans to redirect and visit an asteroid until a few short years ago. Obviously your point is well taken, but I don't think we can say exactly where morpheus applications will end.
What'd ya have in mind Jon? I mean, to hear some people talk about Morpheus, they seem to think you could just launch it to LLO now and it'd be able to soft land on the Moon. Personally, I have trouble seeing the engine even starting...
Well, you pretty much need to have all the capabilities of a 3DOF stabilized spacecraft (space-based ADCS, space rated electronics, power systems, comms..
I don't want this to sound like sour grapes, but seriously? Morpheus is a good VTVL testbed, but it's really no more sophisticated than what we built and flew at Masten 4 years ago
{snip}I see you keep comparing Morpheus to NGLLC vehicles and their costs, but there is a fundamental difference to these projects. Morpheus is working as a tech testbed, and they leave behind a trail of tech reports, papers and presumably volumes of internal technical documentation like CAD models, test datasets etc. I.e. they have continuity.They can kill the project tomorrow and someone can come back to a similar project 5 years later and still learn from what was done before.Even a simple search on NTRS brings out 34 documents right now, about half of these look like technical docs on various related subjects, and that's just whats out on NTRS.
Quote from: jongoff on 12/21/2013 05:01 amI don't want this to sound like sour grapes, but seriously? Morpheus is a good VTVL testbed, but it's really no more sophisticated than what we built and flew at Masten 4 years agoFully agreed on the sophistication angle but there is something on a tangent here..I see you keep comparing Morpheus to NGLLC vehicles and their costs, but there is a fundamental difference to these projects. Morpheus is working as a tech testbed, and they leave behind a trail of tech reports, papers and presumably volumes of internal technical documentation like CAD models, test datasets etc. I.e. they have continuity.They can kill the project tomorrow and someone can come back to a similar project 5 years later and still learn from what was done before.Even a simple search on NTRS brings out 34 documents right now, about half of these look like technical docs on various related subjects, and that's just whats out on NTRS.
Quote from: savuporo on 12/22/2013 06:07 pmQuote from: jongoff on 12/21/2013 05:01 amI don't want this to sound like sour grapes, but seriously? Morpheus is a good VTVL testbed, but it's really no more sophisticated than what we built and flew at Masten 4 years agoFully agreed on the sophistication angle but there is something on a tangent here..I see you keep comparing Morpheus to NGLLC vehicles and their costs, but there is a fundamental difference to these projects. Morpheus is working as a tech testbed, and they leave behind a trail of tech reports, papers and presumably volumes of internal technical documentation like CAD models, test datasets etc. I.e. they have continuity.They can kill the project tomorrow and someone can come back to a similar project 5 years later and still learn from what was done before.Even a simple search on NTRS brings out 34 documents right now, about half of these look like technical docs on various related subjects, and that's just whats out on NTRS.For a fraction of the cost delta between Morpheus and Xoie, you could've hired two technical writers per Masten engineer to document the wazoo out of everything they did.~Jon
... it's not doing anything fundamentally new. Sure, it gives experience to the people working on it, and that has some value. But working on something truly new or something that will really be operational gives experience too while also achieving other goals.
Probably another Phoenix / InSight platform copy built by LockMart would be your quickest way to an actual lunar lander.
No, those were Mars landers and depended on an aeroshell and parachute for most of the braking. The platform doesn't have enough DV for lunar landing.
I'm just guessing that starting with the basic flight proven controlled landing platform without the aeroshell and parachutes and adding a fixed center engine to the propulsion system is faster than a scratch design of a completely new platform.
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 12/23/2013 07:25 am... it's not doing anything fundamentally new. Sure, it gives experience to the people working on it, and that has some value. But working on something truly new or something that will really be operational gives experience too while also achieving other goals.Did you read the thread above at all ? Morpheus is currently in a flight campaign maturing a fundamentally new technical capability for NASA that they have never flown before, its called Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT)They'll probably keep doing fundamentally new things with it after that.
While this is true, there's a lot of backstory you're missing...
There's nothing Morpheus is doing that couldn't have been tested on existing commercial vehicles, had NASA had that desire.
There have been a bunch of calls for NASA to operate more like NACA, and here they are doing exactly that. But now its not cool.
They were initially sort of trying to do that, but the team that was building a "perfectly workable airplane" sort of pulled out of that engagement.