The Dumbest NASA Decision In Years? Why NASA is Being Forced To Ground Rover and Sent Ballast.
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Published 2024-07-19
Moreover, NASA is contractually required to pay Astrobotic to fly a NASA payload to the moon, so they have to pay for this anyway.
Instead of a rover NASA will send ballast to the moon.
And the worst part is this is triggered by a cost increase to NASA due to the lander being delayed.
www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-ends-viper-project-…
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All Comments (21)
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Seems like a literal perfect scheme. Get a contract with NASA and then go way over budget so that you get shut down with full payment and no requirement to deliver anything at all.
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No, thats not the rover on the lander. That is just a rover shaped mass simulator.
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What a waste...
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If NASA has to keep to no more than 30% over budget, I think defense contractors should need to meet the same requirements.
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The "cost plus" model has got to go as well.
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Just rename the rover "Mass Simulator".
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Strange... they go over budget because they want to do extra testing, now they have to cancel the project and instead develop a mass simulator. That will of course again cost money. Why not just send the already built rover without doing the extra testing?
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Wait, I worked on this Rover! I had not heard much about it after I left the project, I guess this is why. It sucks because it's use of image processing on earth but image capture on the moon could be a model for future moon missions, maybe even for autonomous manufacturing on the moon
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That's the definition of insanity. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
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Something that looks like Sponge Bob Square Pants shouldn't be named "Viper".
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Europa clipper isn't looking very well either...Washington seems like everything goes there to die.
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Why can't they just rename VIPER to "Mass Simulator"?
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Budget management is important and while a 30% overrun is a lot, it should probably trigger a review instead of a cancelation.
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This is the same Congress that limits the debt with a debt ceiling law rather than, you know, the budget.
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Its like when the mechanic calls you and says he cant put in your new tuneup parts you prepaid him for because he already took out the engine so add another $5k to get your car back
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Rule number one when investing in space innovation. 1. Take their budget and 10x it. 2. Take their timeline and 5x it. 3. Take their enthusiasm and cube root it...
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one of the rare cases where people make the sunk cost fallacy in the other direction
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Imagine building and planning a rover for years, and than the mission is cancelled.
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Watching Nelson fumble all these projects and programs set up for him is peak lunacy.
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That's just plain stupid. To think that they would just throw away the money already spent and fly a block of iron rather than something which is mostly paid for, this late in the game is just absurd.
