With new, lower-cost heavy lift capabilities coming online soon such as SpaceX Starhip it would make sense to explore the outer solar system with a mass manufactured probes.

So instead of designing totally bespoke multi-billion-dollar probes, build dozens of hundred-million dollar probes that leverage efficiencies of scale just like any other industrial product.

Send them to every outer planet, every moon, and every large asteroid like Ceres!

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nephihaha 2 days ago | parent [-]

The problem is that landers will study very different conditions. Some would land on rocks, others would land on ice, others could land in volcanic areas. Some would be looking to be rovers, while others would be trying to drill down to an ocean under deep ice.

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jiggawatts a day ago | parent [-]

Most would be landing on rock-like cold surfaces in hard vacuum. The exceptions are rare.

Similarly, you obviously couldn't use exact replicas of the same design for the space probes, you'd need variants to deal with the greater distance from the Sun.

You would need close/medium/far probe designs with small/medium/large solar panels, radio antennas, and camera optics to compensate for the lower light levels.

For each design variant you could make 10-20 exact clones, and the variants would be very similar to each other.

We do this now!

Just not for science.

Spy satellites tend to be serially produced, as are GPS satellites, and of course Starlink satellites, which are made in their thousands.

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nephihaha a day ago | parent [-]

Landing on Io would be completely different from Titan. Because of the violent nature of Io, a cheaper probe may actually be a benefit, because like Venus, we would have to study the local conditions before sending more complex landers.

Of course another trick would be to put orbiters around Jupiter, Saturn etc which could be used to relay signals.

	▲	jiggawatts 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Landing on Io would be completely different from Titan. Sure, but landing is not necessary for doing much more science than we are right now! An orbiter dedicated to Io would dramatically increase our knowledge of this unique and special moon.