Taiwan to make lunar lander for NASA moon-mining mission

Nasa is venturing on its first ever Moon Mining project in the early 2020's and Taiwan is building the lander for Nasa's lofty mission. This is also a first as it's Taiwan's first lander lander. I posted the full article here for ATS to read.

Taipei (AFP) - Taiwan is building a $47 million lunar lander as part of the first ever moon-mining project, officials said Monday. The lander, to be made by the island's Chung-shan Institute of Science and Technology, will carry a rover and touch down on the moon's surface after a three-day journey from Earth. US space agency NASA is leading the project, which is called Resource Prospector and aims to be the first mining expedition on another world. The rover is designed to excavate hydrogen, oxygen and water from the moon, NASA says on its website. "To be honest, the schedule is pressing," Han Kuo-chang, the head of CSIST's international cooperation programme, told AFP, adding that the US would supply the rover and the lander's descent propulsion system. "Should the Resource Prospector prove to be successful, the moon could be used as a base for space journeys into Mars," Han said. It is the first time Taiwan has built a lunar lander. CSIST is required to deliver the 3.7-tonne vehicle to NASA before the end of 2018, according to the agreement signed between Taiwan and the US space agency. NASA is due to launch the moon-mining mission early in the 2020s.

Pretty cool and it's a nice break from all of the violence and political sideshows going on right now here on Earth....The ultimate goal is to mine the Moon and use it as a base for Mars missions, etc. This has been discussed before here on ATS however I just want to give an update because it looks like NASA is getting serious about using the Moon as a base for missions deeper into Space. That's my opinion.....what says ATS?

www.yahoo.com...

a reply to: lostbook

Well what the heck! There's angry space aliens on the dark side of the moon!

Why are we going up there? to mine moon cheese? The aliens are gonna flip when they see what we're doing to their home.
Wait....unless there is no Moon Cheese Aliens?

originally posted by: Macenroe82
a reply to: lostbook

Well what the heck! There's angry space aliens on the dark side of the moon!

Why are we going up there? to mine moon cheese? The aliens are gonna flip when they see what we're doing to their home.
Wait....unless there is no Moon Cheese Aliens?

No worries.............There's plenty of Moon Cheese to go around!

a reply to: lostbook

Thanks for posting.

Its disturbing that Nasa finds the need to build their lander off shore, especially to a company with no experience and a company that has not developed a lander at all!

I wonder if there were any kick backs. Made in Taiwan haha

Holy s#, Taiwan joined the "Aliens"!

The rover is designed to excavate hydrogen, oxygen and water from the moon,

I`m pretty sure we already have enough of those things here on earth, what are going to do with it after they excavate it?

originally posted by: Tardacus

The rover is designed to excavate hydrogen, oxygen and water from the moon,

I`m pretty sure we already have enough of those things here on earth, what are going to do with it after they excavate it?

Use them at the moon base and possibly on interplanetary expeditions. The problem with hydrogen oxygen & water here is that it is here and we need it there, and it's expensive and resource-intensive to get it from here to there.

Imagine if colonists in the New World had to bring all of their food, water and building supplies from Europe. It would be prohibitively expensive. Similarly, would-be lunar colonists will have to have the ability to "live off the land" - use whatever elements are available there to produce what they need.

a reply to: lostbook

Taiwan to make lunar lander for NASA moon-mining mission

fantastic NASA outsourcing jobs American should have. WTF?

a reply to: lostbook

GO! GO! GO! MIT!

Made In Taiwan

This video explains it all:

originally posted by: Saint Exupery

originally posted by: Tardacus

The rover is designed to excavate hydrogen, oxygen and water from the moon,

I`m pretty sure we already have enough of those things here on earth, what are going to do with it after they excavate it?

Use them at the moon base and possibly on interplanetary expeditions. The problem with hydrogen oxygen & water here is that it is here and we need it there, and it's expensive and resource-intensive to get it from here to there.

Imagine if colonists in the New World had to bring all of their food, water and building supplies from Europe. It would be prohibitively expensive. Similarly, would-be lunar colonists will have to have the ability to "live off the land" - use whatever elements are available there to produce what they need.

Couldn't have said it better...!

originally posted by: muSSang
a reply to: lostbook

Thanks for posting.

Its disturbing that Nasa finds the need to build their lander off shore, especially to a company with no experience and a company that has not developed a lander at all!

I wonder if there were any kick backs. Made in Taiwan haha

This isn't a situation in which NASA is building "their" lander off shore. This project was envisioned from the beginning as a joint project with another partner agency. Essentially, NASA told the team proposing the project, "We'll pay for the instruments and the launch vehicle, but you need to find someone else to build and fund the lander and rover, or the whole thing is off."

Initially, partnerships with the Canadian, Japanese, and Korean space agencies were considered. The Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST) hasn't produced any lunar landers, but the only nations that have are the USSR, the United States, and China, so NASA was pretty much guaranteed to partner with an agency that hadn't produced a lunar lander before. CSIST is responsible for some relatively high-tech kit, including suborbital rockets and their scientific payloads, a variety of rockets and missiles for military use, Taiwan's indigenous-build Ching-kuo fighter jet, and (at least until 1976) the bulk of Taiwan's nuclear weapons research program.

originally posted by: Tardacus

The rover is designed to excavate hydrogen, oxygen and water from the moon,

I`m pretty sure we already have enough of those things here on earth, what are going to do with it after they excavate it?

The oxygen and water will be used at the moon base and the hydrogen can be used to power things here on earth, like cars. We have hydrogen and can create hydrogen but the moon is meant to have more hydrogen then we could ever produce here at home so is our best bet for a clean fuel, its only by-product is water

The only thing i'v ever thought about this is if we are bringing back a new resource of water from the hydrogen by-products then wont that eventually raise sea levels, if every car/engine was converted to hydrogen they would all continuously put out water vapour/steam (my wife will be going mental with the hair straighteners) that will evaporate into the air making it rain a lot more thus raising earths water level? it would take more then our life time but surely it would have some effect in the future?

originally posted by: TigStar82
The oxygen and water will be used at the moon base and the hydrogen can be used to power things here on earth, like cars. We have hydrogen and can create hydrogen but the moon is meant to have more hydrogen then we could ever produce here at home so is our best bet for a clean fuel, its only by-product is water

Why would we bring hydrogen to Earth from the moon at such great cost when we have oceans full of H2O here on Earth? I don't see any economic sense in that.

HE3 might be a resource that might make economic sense to bring from the moon to Earth if we can ever build a fusion reactor which can use it as fuel, but we don't have one yet. It's supposed to be all over the moon's surface so it shouldn't be too hard to mine, but that's not the primary purpose of this mission, though anything we learn about mining on the moon might be applied to other mining operations eventually.

These joint projects are pretty cool. NASA can do things with its smaller budget by sharing costs. And other nations can be a part of larger projects without the massive cost of funding an entire program. It also avoids two nations spending money to do the same thing. In this case NASA saves on the cost of building a lander and Taiwan gets to be part of a moon landing they could not afford on their own.

a reply to: lostbook

I don't believe it. They lied too much about going to the moon. They made promises all over the last 40 years but never they kept their word.

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