I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now, and I was just curious if anyone knew what would be required to do this.

Say I wanted to send a probe to the moon.

A simple video camera that could beam back a feed, mounted on a solar powered remotely controlled little car of some kind.

Compared to what NASA and other space programs cram into their probes, this thing would be a featherweight....

What it would take? How much it would cost?

And please, no flaming Just wondering. I think it'd be interesting if it were at all possible for the average Canadian citizen to pull something like this off.

[edit on 5-8-2004 by TheHeggy]

I once seen a tv progam about amateur rocket builders. Very cool
stuff. And they build bigger and better rockets each year. They now
planning to send the first amateur into space!! I dont remember the
name, but its the oldest rocket building group in the US. I think
your proposal can be done... with the right people...

Yeah, I've seen the amatuer astronaut thing too.

I think that would be a bit expensive, because you'd have to supply accomodations for the passengers....

With a little camera, you don't need anything except a way to get it there, land it and control it.

Cheaper, and safer.

A simple remotely controlled feed from a small probe on the moon could be of great use to the average citizen (and the many many ATS members).

Think of what you could prove/disprove with it. The moon landing hoax, for one. Not that I believe we never went, but it would be concrete proof for all.

Perhaps set it up as a webcam stream....? So there's no chance of image manipulation?

It would still be massively expensive for a private citizen. Even though the vehicle itself is lightweight, it still takes a lot of fuel to get it to the moon. On top of which there is a lot of technology and effort involved in getting the payload safely into lunar orbit then safely landed on the moon. These problems would be massively compounded if you were planning on trying to get the landing accurate enough to be within range of an Apollo landing site.

Millions of dollars worth I would imagine. There actually was a private company making some noise about this a little while back (at least from memory) who planned on landing a RC rover on the moon. From what I remember they were considering letting people pay to have a go at driving it around on the surface. Not sure if that was every anything more than a pipe dream. (Or maybe I dreamed it myself )

Is it possible to use something less advanced? What if the probe were just sent to crash right into the moon? No orbit, just a straight shot?

im sure there is something that you could use that would be "less advanced". RC car is a good example but you would need it to be a gas operated one. You would probably have to build a special kind of tank that would hold a bunch of fuel just for the car itself. Plus you cant really make a straight shot to the moon. The rotation of the earth and moon are constant. You would have to guide the rocket. Plus how would you get it back? My guess on how much it would cost is............125 million-200 million? The materials alone would cost the most. (You would probably need a confrimation from the government to do it also.)

Well, if it were solar powered you wouldn't need the gas though.

And I wouldn't want it back That's just too expensive to do.