DIY Moon Probe: Is It Possible with a Small Budget?

  • #1
harkkam
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With a small budget would it be possible to make a rocket capable of delivering a small probe to the moon?

A rocket that puts the probe into Earth orbit and them Hoffman transfer to the moon and guides itself to the surface?

I am talking very small, maybe the size of a baseball, that transmits back to Earth and uses a pre-programmed landing routine with smallish thrusters.

Would it be possible?
 
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  • #2
If by a small budget you mean only fifty million dollars or so, then yes, it's possible. That is an incredibly small figure. None of the serious contenders in the Google Lunar X Prize contest expect the $30 million award (if they win it) to offset the costs. If your definition of small is less than a million, then no, it's not possible.
 
  • #3
But what about a balloon that takes a rocket up to a very high altitude and then fires the rocket away from earth?

Should be less than $10k
 
  • #4
harkkam said:
But what about a balloon that takes a rocket up to a very high altitude and then fires the rocket away from earth?

Should be less than $10k

The rocket will go up a little bit, and then fall back to Earth. Quiz question -- why?
 
  • #6
You might investigate the minimum it would take to get, say 1 kg into Earth orbit before you worry about going to the Moon.

I did this a few years ago and came up with a 4-stage liquid fueled rocket weighing 3300 kg, about 11 m long, with a first stage thrust of about 40000 Newtons. Non-trivial.
 
  • #7
Honestly, for $10k, you'd be hard pressed to even design a sounding rocket that could make it into space (>100km altitude). Orbit is significantly harder, and a lunar trajectory is harder still. I would expect any viable attempt to cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, even with a pretty small payload.
 
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