Why Aren't We Hearing More About JSC's Project-M?

Well Keith, because we" have been there and done that" didn't you hear the president? Nasa seems to down play anything that has to do with the moon lately. Before Cx was dumped the latest news about the crater they found with water would have been front an center on their website ,now? Its on the Moon and Mars link.

Damn the Gravity!

I would disagree some with your characterization of this project. I think this is exactly the type of Technology Demonstration project that is being encouraged via the "new" NASA direction. The fact that the target is the Moon, is more out of necessity due to current launch constraints rather than a specific desire to go to the Moon again.

Interesting points:

1. The existing technology video had this in it's description "the project is not fully funded nor vetted at the agency level" Skunk Works?

2. Not a cost-plus operation; at least not in the traditional sense.

3. They don't appear to be developing new hardware as much as helping in the development and use of existing hardware. Kinda matches the aeronautics approach, rather than the HSF operations approach.

4. The Robonaut2 is pre-existing from the GM/NASA joint venture.

5. The lander in the video is a modification to the pre-existing Armadillo Pixel lander. (I'm guessing Armadillo did most of the modifications and still owns the lander?) If Armadillo were to get most of the way to a moon capable lander out of this, that would be worth it right there. (see Astrobotic Technology, etc.)

6. The GN&C looked like someones college project.

7. They were talking about using EELV class vehicles for launch.

8. The engine development is LOX/Liquid Methane which is more appropriate for Mars than the Moon. (See ISRU).

9. LOX/Methane lends itself well to propellant depots. Which was another of the Technology demonstrations being put forward in the new direction.

10. Massive amount of outside participation, with NASA riding herd and providing the needed scientific expertise to further the private technology development.

11. Most of the actual technology development appears to be taking place at partner sites with NASA help, rather than at NASA sites with partner help.

12. This setup could just as easily be targeted at a asteroid, if you can find a way to get this amount of mass to the asteroid. Perhaps some more development in the area of moving massive items to/from deep space is in order?

13. The 1000 day target is really interesting in that it is approximately the length of a college undergrad degree. Have a bunch of these type of projects in the pipeline and you'll have no problem motivating some people to get involved during their college careers.

14. Keeping the costs down and not using exotic technologies appears to let them do lots of real world testing. If you want to motivate students this is the way to do it; less white boards, more trying it out.

It is also funny that they are continuing to press on without engaging other centers. There is no existing methane infrastructure at the KSC and CCAFS, much less the EELV launch complexes. This will be a rather large undertaking to provide this especially plumbing the pads and adding umbilicals for methane and LOX for a payload. This will be more complex than accommodating a spacecraft with an RTG. Project M is already behind with respect to this. A launch vehicle has to be selected first before even talking about methane.

It is a great idea to start using methane, just not on a missions with a short development cycle.

I would really like to know where the funding for this project is coming from. I find it hard to believe that ESMD would fund this project. Is JSC diverting funds from other programs, or using Center overhead? Seems like an ideal thing for GAO auditors to take a hard look at...

All your comments are valid KC...but everytime Iread/hear about this thing...or from Armadillo...

and everything I see...

it has "The Right Stuff" all over it.

Robert G. Oler

To answer some of your questions: Project M started as a means to keep the momentum up on some of the incredible technology work that is going on at NASA under ETDP , ESMD, and SOMD. M provides a technical focus for pushing the development timeline of some of the emerging technologies including: Autonomous landing and hazard avoidance, liquid Oxygen and liquid Methane integrated in space propulsion systems, bipedal robotic assistants with high levels of dexterity and strength, advanced avionics, sensors and flight processors, and composite cryogenic propellant tanks.

Project M as a lunar flight mission is at the proposal phase, however the technology development and integration work to support an M class mission is being done by a variety of engineering disciplines, NASA centers and private companies largely through existing technology funding, center discretionary money and cooperative agreements. These particular technologies have a wide applicability beyond an M robotic lunar lander and are strategic for the Human Spaceflight Enterprise.

Putting a Walking Humanoid Robot on the surface of the moon near an Apollo site in a thousand days is audacious/inspiring to say the least. The value to NASA is that it puts a sharp focus on the processes, acquisition strategies and development approaches that need to be tailored or reinvented to allow for such an aggressive schedule.

As one would expect this type of development lends itself to rapid prototyping and unconventional partnerships. For the R2 Robot, we partnered with IHMC to develop the legs and algorithms for walking. For, the lander/propulsion system, we partnered with Armadillo Aerospace.

The prototype robotic legs, lander and GN&C hardware are all battleship engineering hardware in order to get early validation of our design assumptions and uncover any areas of risk. The Build a Little, Test a Little, Build some more mantra is in full effect. In the roughly 6 months of hardware development there have been over 25 tethered and free flights of the LOX/Methane lander including 3 main engines built, successful deployment of the base ALHAT GN&C Avionics and Software on the lander, and a pair of prototype robotic legs walking in the gravity offload facility simulating lunar gravity.

In the next few months we will have the majority of the second generation lander built, an R2 upper torso delivered for launch to ISS, and a set of liner-less composite cryogenic tanks in qualification. The amount of money spent on integrated testing is shockingly modest since we are able to tie so many funded efforts together for maximum benefit.

As you can imagine, this development approach is not only reinvigorating for the NASA contractor workforce but has had a profound influence on the visitors, students, co-ops, and graduate students that have come into contact with it. Project M is very much about outreach and the stimulation of STEM at all levels. What we have anecdotally found is that robots and rockets are a particularly effective means to influence young minds.

Any idea what the funding level is for Project-M? I'm guessing it's quite small in comparison to manned space projects like Ares I.

It's because the Moon is a red state.....

Does the robot look more like C3P0 than R2 to anyone else, or am I wrong?

GREAT PROJECT!!
If it come to fruition this is just the type of pre-cursor missions to get the general public interested in exploration again.
When left to their own devices NASA can build partnerships with private industry that push science and technology on a small budget.

Masten Space is going to beat Armadillo for the actual contract to land on the Moon because they beat them in the X-Prize competition.

This company is orders of magnitude ahead of Armadillo in this respect. NASA is just using Armadillo because they are cheaper and they want to flaunt to the public how serious they are about landing something on the Moon someday. When the real funding shows up and Congressmen get involved in the lunar lander procurement process, they are going to want to buy the services from the best of the best at the lower end of the cost offerings.

Masten Space is preparing to offer the public tickets to space and send non-astronauts into space and land them safely on the ground and sell tickets just like Virgin Galactic. Smart move.

http://www.masten-space.com/

This is going to get the full attention from NASA since NASA seems to want to trump any effort whatsoever in non-astronauts seeking excitement in space by filling all available seats with astronauts or getting them distracted in lunar landing contract pursuits. They did this to Zero-G and Space Composites to some extent, didn't they?

Hey, I thought NASA wasn't supposed to be doing R&D. Based on what I have read on these pages, NASA does not do tech development anymore, not since Apollo. After all, the new "plan" has NASA going back to doing R&D. What, did these guys not get the memo? :-)

Seriously though, great project guys. I sincerely hope you get to see it through to completion. Pretty exciting stuff.

There is no requirement to launch on the ETR.
It appears:
http://www.okspaceport.state.ok.us/
Wide, Open Space Dedicated to the Aerospace Industries of the Future!

The Oklahoma Spaceport
Ready to Meet Your Needs Today!

The Oklahoma Spaceport Specializes in horizontal take-off and landing for Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs). The Oklahoma Spaceport received its Launch Site Operators License from the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) on June 12, 2006, becoming only the sixth recipient to receive a Launch Site Operators License from AST. The Oklahoma Spaceport became the first inland spaceport to establish a flight corridor for space operations in the national airspace system clear of military operating areas or restricted airspace. This arrangement means that space vehicles will not need military permission to operate because the spaceport will have its own airspace.

This information is published by the FAA, Office of Commercial Space Transportation in their 2009 U.S. Commercial Space Transportation Developments and Concepts: Vehicles, Technologies, and Spaceports Report which is produced annually.

Providing opportunities for space-related business in Oklahoma
Promoting math and science education supporting the space technology of the future
Growing commercial development of the former Clinton-Sherman Airpark
Current test and evaluation location for Armadillo Aerospace http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home

My understanding is the project hasn't been approved yet as a fully integrated thing but a lot of the subtasks are related to other projects and development. So yeah you won't see it highly publicized right now, not unless the project manager wants to commit career suicide. Kind of a two-fer win for NASA if they get funded to actually do this, and an efficient budget win from the public's point of view. The only main nit I have with it is that the actual mission is super lame, land a humanoid robot and have it wave at the earth. Mission time for the robot is about an hour and half total. Seems like they could piggy back some real science to this thing and make it a lot more worthwhile.

This kind of project is exactly what the new proposed Precursor Robotic Mission Program is all about. If you read the President's budget proposal, it specifically talks about robotic precursor missions to the Moon and other places, and one area of research called out in the President's proposal for the precursor missions is lunar resource development. As far as human missions beyond LEO, none will be conducted before Obama leaves office so it really doesn't matter what he says about the moon, asteroids, or Mars. The next President will have his/her own plans, and anything Obama says now will just be a footnote in the history books. Presidents come and Presidents go, or as the Cylons say "This has all happened before, this will all happen again."

This kind of project is exactly what the new proposed Precursor Robotic Mission Program is all about. If you read the President's budget proposal, it specifically talks about robotic precursor missions to the Moon and other places, and one area of research called out in the President's proposal for the precursor missions is lunar resource development. As far as human missions beyond LEO, none will be conducted before Obama leaves office so it really doesn't matter what he says about the moon, asteroids, or Mars. The next President will have his/her own plans, and anything Obama says now will just be a footnote in the history books. Presidents come and Presidents go, or as the Cylons say "This has all happened before, this will all happen again."

> Masten Space is going to beat Armadillo for the actual contract to land on the Moon because they beat them in the X-Prize competition.

Wild, a space groupie. The ignorance is painful to read. You passed the teenager test. Nobody uses "order of magnitude" like that unless they're just copying someone else.

It's because the Moon is a red state AND the project is being managed in a red state at JSC.

Keith the answer to many of your questions is that "Project" M is not a project. It is a "concept" undergoing feasibility study. (This is the buzz word being bantered about within JSC). The bottom line is it has not been officially funded nd is therefore, not officially a project. This also prevents the 1000-day clock from ticking down.

I personally detest this entire project. Let's launch a walking robot and send him to the moon and let him throw rocks at nothing then look back at the Earth. Its ridiculous. Not to mention he'll run for such a limited amount of time due to the thermal situation on the lunar surface.

I can only hope that NASA HQ or some other higher entity will put the kabosh on this before we invest more time and money into it.

If we want to inspire America's youth, let's send PEOPLE into space.

Take a look at the Delta III pad sometime, it could load LOX, RP-1. solids, hypergols, and LH2, and the last was added as a mod for the huge upper stage. The tiny amount of methane to be loaded on the payload for a lunar lander would not be a problem for Delta IV at Complex 37 since it has ample space around the payload in the MST and a methane tank could simply be hoisted up. Probably the Atlas or Falcon would need an additional umbilical line but even this wouldn't be a huge undertaking. An alternative for Falcon and possibly even Atlas would be insulation and perhaps cooling for the payload Lox and Methane tanks that would allow the payload to be fueled before rollout.

Although the connection with science is a little hazy, this is a robotic mission and as such escapes much of the cost and organizational inertia of human spaceflight. The use of a walking, two-legged robot seems a bit fanciful; most of the lunar surface is accessible to wheeled vehicles and the Mars Rovers should demonstrate that a robot can invoke a sense of personal telepresence without having to look like Data in Star Trek. Why not a robot dog?

I think a robot dog is a great idea. We should definitely NOT
risk a human robot before we have tested the system with
a lower robot life form. Just don't anyone tell PETA.