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by jdelman 849 days ago
It's interesting how this feels like a big deal; when I learned of this yesterday, I almost forgot that there have been almost 30 missions to Mars (which I assume is much harder and more expensive) in the years since the last moon landing.
3 comments
JonChesterfield 849 days ago
I'm more excited about the moon. Being that much closer is a big deal. This company is looking to make sending stuff to the moon (not sure about getting stuff back) a reliable & vaguely cost effective thing to do.

There's probably valuable stuff on the moon and even if not, it's learning a load of things about going further afield. Lots of science fiction about the asteroid belt beyond mars.

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danavar 849 days ago
It is a big deal!

While just landing on the moon is definitely much simpler than a Mars mission, this lander is a part of the Artemis program; it's one of the first steps towards developing the Artemis base camp on the moon.

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gwbas1c 849 days ago
> which I assume is much harder and more expensive

Manned space missions are significantly more expensive (and complicated) than robotic missions. (Otherwise, we'd be sending a lot more people into space.)

Let's do a little bit of back-of-the-envelope Googling:

From https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo

> The United States spent $25.8 billion on Project Apollo between 1960 and 1973, or approximately $257 billion when adjusted for inflation to 2020 dollars.

From https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-the-mars-expl....

> The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission cost $1.08 billion. Of that amount, $744 million was spent on spacecraft development and launch; $335.8 million was spent on 15 years of mission operations.

So it looks like "manned" space missions cost at least 100x the cost of sending a robot.

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idlewords 849 days ago
The post you're replying to is comparing robotic missions to Mars vs. the moon.

Mars is orders of magnitude harder to land on because of its atmosphere, stronger gravity, and the need to keep your robot healthy on the long trip over.

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gwbas1c 848 days ago
Maybe you can come up with a better comparison?
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