Quote from: Phil Stooke on 08/20/2018 10:24 pmhttps://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2018/EPSC2018-349.pdfAlain Berinstain and Bob Richards are still promoting their missions. Whatever people may think of Naveen Jain, they are not the same. They've started including LOP-G in their plans, see extract below. A MX1 should be able to do round trip from LOP-G to surface and back, with upto 30kg of lunar sample. Although the current architectures for Moon Express missions involve going from Low Earth Orbit directly to Lunar orbit, then Lunar surface, or to other destinations in the solar system, integrating the MX family spacecraft into an architecture that involves the Lunar Orbital Platform (LOP) presents new and exciting opportunities for science and for cis-lunar operations in general. Mission concepts that assume that the LOP is available as a hub of operations in Lunar orbit can enable much larger landed masses on the lunar surface and/or continuous shuttle service for assets on the surface or for returned samples to LOP. Moon Express has been able to collapse the cost of Lunar missions, and the incorporation of LOP into mission scenarios enable even lower mission costs with a workhorse for small payloads to and from the surface of the Moon, and from the Lunar Orbital Platform itself.
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2018/EPSC2018-349.pdfAlain Berinstain and Bob Richards are still promoting their missions. Whatever people may think of Naveen Jain, they are not the same.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 08/21/2018 10:38 amQuote from: ChrisWilson68 on 08/21/2018 08:27 amQuote from: TrevorMonty on 08/21/2018 08:04 amMoon Express has been able to collapse the cost of Lunar missionsNo, they haven't. They've claimed that in the future they will. That's very far from the same thing.The evidence suggests they've burned through their financing or have lost it and are unable to get more financing, so their operations have slowed to a crawl. That indicates they are very unlikely to collapse the cost of lunar missions or do anything else they've claimed they would do.Don't you DARE quote and edit mine postings out of content.I didn't mean to remove any relevant context. I was addressing just one thing that you said, and the rest didn't seem relevant to that point, so I kept just what seemed relevant.In what way does your statement that I quoted ("Moon Express has been able to collapse the cost of Lunar missions") have a different meaning on its own than it does in the context in which you made it?
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 08/21/2018 08:27 amQuote from: TrevorMonty on 08/21/2018 08:04 amMoon Express has been able to collapse the cost of Lunar missionsNo, they haven't. They've claimed that in the future they will. That's very far from the same thing.The evidence suggests they've burned through their financing or have lost it and are unable to get more financing, so their operations have slowed to a crawl. That indicates they are very unlikely to collapse the cost of lunar missions or do anything else they've claimed they would do.Don't you DARE quote and edit mine postings out of content.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 08/21/2018 08:04 amMoon Express has been able to collapse the cost of Lunar missionsNo, they haven't. They've claimed that in the future they will. That's very far from the same thing.The evidence suggests they've burned through their financing or have lost it and are unable to get more financing, so their operations have slowed to a crawl. That indicates they are very unlikely to collapse the cost of lunar missions or do anything else they've claimed they would do.
Moon Express has been able to collapse the cost of Lunar missions
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 08/21/2018 08:04 amQuote from: Phil Stooke on 08/20/2018 10:24 pmhttps://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2018/EPSC2018-349.pdfAlain Berinstain and Bob Richards are still promoting their missions. Whatever people may think of Naveen Jain, they are not the same. They've started including LOP-G in their plans, see extract below. A MX1 should be able to do round trip from LOP-G to surface and back, with upto 30kg of lunar sample. Although the current architectures for Moon Express missions involve going from Low Earth Orbit directly to Lunar orbit, then Lunar surface, or to other destinations in the solar system, integrating the MX family spacecraft into an architecture that involves the Lunar Orbital Platform (LOP) presents new and exciting opportunities for science and for cis-lunar operations in general. Mission concepts that assume that the LOP is available as a hub of operations in Lunar orbit can enable much larger landed masses on the lunar surface and/or continuous shuttle service for assets on the surface or for returned samples to LOP. Moon Express has been able to collapse the cost of Lunar missions, and the incorporation of LOP into mission scenarios enable even lower mission costs with a workhorse for small payloads to and from the surface of the Moon, and from the Lunar Orbital Platform itself. A basic reading of your post above left at least two readers, myself and apparently Chris Wilson -- and likely the majority of the remainder -- thinking you'd written the second paragraph, as there is absolutely nothing in your post to indicate otherwise, except possibly some odd word spacing.I'd highly recommend that you edit the post and put the quoted paragraph within quote tags, so the writing may be correctly attributed, and the resulting confusion ameliorated.Mods: please remove this post as appropriate.
Apparently Moon express managed to raise a large investment.moon express raises 12.5 million (spacenews)After all the recent news this sounds like a very risky investment to me.
Moon Express, Inc. has announced the creation of Moon Express Canada to leverage Canadian space science and technology in the exploration of the Moon and its resources. The announcement follows quickly after the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Moon Express on October 3rd, enabling Canadian firms and researchers to offer their expertise and capabilities to Moon Express. Moon Express Founder and CEO Bob Richards made the announcement today at the CSA Fall 2018 Industry Days, a three-day event hosted at its headquarters in Longueuil, Quebec to promote Canadian space capabilities and expertise.Moon Express, Inc. also signed collaboration agreements with a number of Canadian industry and academic partners, including:Canadensys Aerospace Corporation, Caledon, OntarioDeltion Innovations, Sudbury, OntarioGedex Systems Inc., Mississauga, OntarioMission Control Space Services, Inc., Ottawa, OntarioNGC Aerospace, Sherbrooke, QuebecTeledyne Optech, Vaughan, OntarioUniversity of Guelph, Ontario"We are excited to partner with the Canadian space sector at the dawn of an exciting new era of lunar exploration," Canadian-born Bob Richards stated. "We look forward to working with the CSA and our industry and academic partners to develop new opportunities for Canadian science and technology in the exploration of the Moon and its vast resources."
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/space/go-for-launch/os-bz-moon-express-update-20181114-story.html
If Moon Express isn't a serious company, then why did NASA selected it twice - in 2014 for CATALYST and in 2018 for CLPS ? A review of COTS, CCdev CRS and CRS-2 shows that NASA is rarey mistaken when assessing a private company. Despite their flaws in 2007 Kistler seemd to have serious chances at COTS. After they failed, SpaceX Dragon 1 and 2, proved valuable investments, Orbital Cygnus is doing well, CTS-100 and Cargo DreamChaser are well on track. By contrast Excalibur Almaz, when at their "zenith" in 2012, was given a small encouragement - a non funded SAA. When they proved to be a scam, at least they didn't cost NASA a penny.
Quote from: synchrotron on 07/17/2017 01:54 pmQuote from: meberbs on 07/14/2017 04:52 pmQuote from: synchrotron on 07/14/2017 02:34 pmI repeat. They have not funded it and they are not the design authority. A prime contractor needs to be in charge of how the money is spent. Aligning yourself publicly via twitter and youtube with people who have funding and technologies in development does not make you the mission lead.So who is this mystery organization that is letting Moon Express take credit for all of their accomplishments?Are you claiming this is somehow an unauthorized NASA mission, where the truth of the situation is being cleverly hidden from the organizers of the google lunar x-prize?Are you claiming that Moon Express's employees just sit around and do PR pieces and none of them have done any design work at all on the missions they claim to be selling?Yes, it appears to me that most of the activity is PR. I have not said that any NASA center is doing anything unauthorized - you are making stuff up. No NASA entities are touting that there is a Moon Express mission in the offing.If it's not all just PR, can you tell me who is on the Moon Express design team? Who is the chief engineer? Or has any spacecraft equipment organization received a request for proposal for a flight delivery from Moon Express? If launch is in Q2 2019, they must be a year away from delivering flight units for integration into the spacecraft. Why no tweets of the copious amounts of hardware they are building? They seem to have time to send out CGI graphics of the "mission after then next one we gonna fly", so it can't just be that they are too busy.They have already built and tested hardware in the past. You are the one who needs to answer who did that if it wasn't Moon Express. I was not making stuff up, but trying to figure out what you were talking about when you claimed they didn't do the funding or designing, yet didn't explain who did. You imagining some NASA conspiracy was the only explanation I could come up with for your nonsensical statements.As for their team, go look up the company on linkedin. The company profile shows 39 employees, of which 21 are on linked in based on the search results I linked.QuoteIf launch is in Q2 2019, they must be a year away from delivering flight units for integration into the spacecraft.Even major spacecraft aren't delivered until a few months before, not a year in advance, and especially for a smallsat, 2 years before a launch it wouldn't need to be started.Anyway, you again seem to be talking about an entirely different company since as I already stated, planned launch is by the end of the year, which is why your original claim about year-for-year slips was wrong. As for hardware for this launch, they have stated they are in component assembly and test. This does make it seem extremely difficult for them to make the end of year deadline (not quite impossible yet). Ideally, they would be getting started on spacecraft I&T by now.
Quote from: meberbs on 07/14/2017 04:52 pmQuote from: synchrotron on 07/14/2017 02:34 pmI repeat. They have not funded it and they are not the design authority. A prime contractor needs to be in charge of how the money is spent. Aligning yourself publicly via twitter and youtube with people who have funding and technologies in development does not make you the mission lead.So who is this mystery organization that is letting Moon Express take credit for all of their accomplishments?Are you claiming this is somehow an unauthorized NASA mission, where the truth of the situation is being cleverly hidden from the organizers of the google lunar x-prize?Are you claiming that Moon Express's employees just sit around and do PR pieces and none of them have done any design work at all on the missions they claim to be selling?Yes, it appears to me that most of the activity is PR. I have not said that any NASA center is doing anything unauthorized - you are making stuff up. No NASA entities are touting that there is a Moon Express mission in the offing.If it's not all just PR, can you tell me who is on the Moon Express design team? Who is the chief engineer? Or has any spacecraft equipment organization received a request for proposal for a flight delivery from Moon Express? If launch is in Q2 2019, they must be a year away from delivering flight units for integration into the spacecraft. Why no tweets of the copious amounts of hardware they are building? They seem to have time to send out CGI graphics of the "mission after then next one we gonna fly", so it can't just be that they are too busy.
Quote from: synchrotron on 07/14/2017 02:34 pmI repeat. They have not funded it and they are not the design authority. A prime contractor needs to be in charge of how the money is spent. Aligning yourself publicly via twitter and youtube with people who have funding and technologies in development does not make you the mission lead.So who is this mystery organization that is letting Moon Express take credit for all of their accomplishments?Are you claiming this is somehow an unauthorized NASA mission, where the truth of the situation is being cleverly hidden from the organizers of the google lunar x-prize?Are you claiming that Moon Express's employees just sit around and do PR pieces and none of them have done any design work at all on the missions they claim to be selling?
I repeat. They have not funded it and they are not the design authority. A prime contractor needs to be in charge of how the money is spent. Aligning yourself publicly via twitter and youtube with people who have funding and technologies in development does not make you the mission lead.
If launch is in Q2 2019, they must be a year away from delivering flight units for integration into the spacecraft.
Just checking on on all that hardware you said they were building and testing. How's that going?
