Printing Out Rover Models – and Spacecraft Parts

NASA GRC Solicitation: Curiosity Rover Scale Models

“NASA/GRC has a requirement for two (2) high quality 1/10th scale models and one (1) 1/5th scale model of the Curiosity Rover. NASA/GRC intends to purchase the items from Scale Model Company on a sole source basis due to the proprietary restrictions on drawings.”

Keith’s note: “Proprietary restrictions on drawings”? Gee, I wonder were this company got the data for the drawings of Curiosity in the first place? (Likely) answer: one way or another it all comes from NASA – even if the company did additional work on the drawings for their own uses. Too bad NASA has to spend lots of money on these models. There is little, if any, incentive at NASA to find cheaper ways to procure things like this since the expensive way is the way things have always been done. I wonder how much they are paying for these models? If I ask NASA PAO what the models cost they will almost certainly refuse to tell me and will make me file a FOIA request.

More or less every NASA center has 3-D printers these days and is experimenting with 3-D printing of satellite and rocket engine components. Why not take NASA’s Curiosity drawings and make them open source? There’s a large, growing DIY / “Maker” community who’d just love to do this for free. Then anyone (including NASA) can just print the models out – at a variety of scales – in a variety of materials – on an as-needed basis. Not only would this provide a huge audience with a chance to get a more intimate understanding of how these rovers work, it would also end up costing less money to make these models that NASA just loves to spend money on.

That said, I am sure the ITAR enforcers will find reasons why you can’t release things like this – even if the schematics simply show the outside of components – not their internal design. Yet nothing stops a company like Scaled Model Company from producing a model on their own – one of sufficient fidelity that NASA itself wants to buy it.

– 3D Printed CubeSat, Fabbaloo
– PrintSat – An Amateur Radio 3D Printer CubeSat, Southgate
– 3D Printing of cubesat structure, YouTube
– NASA 3D prints rocket parts — with steel, not plastic, ExtremeTech