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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Just rename the rover "Mass Simulator".
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No, thats not the rover on the lander. That is just a rover shaped mass simulator.
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Insane to send a "mass simulator" instead of the rover. Doesn't anyone have the balls to just approve sending the already finished rover without environmetal testing and hope it works?
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We don't need individual agencies to be run by an 81 year old anymore than the government as a whole.
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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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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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Never underestimate the stupidity of government.🤔
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What a waste...
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Doing nothing takes an incredible amount of energy and Congress is extremely busy doing that right now.
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They can let Boeing run amok with their horrendous starliner yet they built something that actually works and its over budget. Unbelievable
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"No disassemble Johnny 5!"
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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.
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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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NASA spends 30% over budget, and the project is shut down. ANY military industrial complex company goes 2,000% over budget, and it's further financed even if the project was a total failure.
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Public funding? BTW, how many times has Boeing gone over budget, over time, and still failed? What a waste of time, resources, and science.
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NASA should send the rover as the mass, it can't do anything else with it. I think that qualifies it as inert mass. "Hey, Bob, find us something useless with the exact size and weight as the rover to send to the moon as mass." "OK Bill, we have this hunk of scrap metal which meets the specs perfectly, which we can't use for anything else lets send that." "What is it Bob?" "Its that viper rover which got cancelled." "Perfect"
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Well, ain't that swell? Geez. I'm reminded of Churchill's saying "you can trust America to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all the other options..."
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This just brings to mind the same old irony that Congress critters want to find missions to fly on SLS, but will not fund said missions to be significant enough to justify the SLS cost.
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We really don't miss any opportunity to scuttle success these days.
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Them pockets didn't get deep from handouts.
