Back to the Moon?

An anonymous reader writes "This BBC story discusses the prospects of probes returning to the moon. The article first mentions the ESA's SMART-1 probe, which will overfly the Apollo landing sites during 2003, and then talks with US scientists about why NASA should send probes back."

Comments

Re:The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth

[eggsovereasy]

*scratches head*

Re:The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth

[xidix]

When people post writings which are not their own, they should at least credit the source. I have seen this before, among other places, here:

http://spiralx.dyndns.org/texts/troll1.html

Someone should mod this down for blatant plagiarism.

Re:The moon.

[fernd1]

There were in fact 5 missions that landed on the moon.
Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17.

Landing Coordinates:
Apollo 11: 0.71 degrees North, 23.63 degrees East
Apollo 12: 3.04 degrees South, 23.42 degrees West
Apollo 14: 3.65 degrees south, 17.48 degrees West
Apollo 15: 26.08 degrees North, 3.66 degrees East
Apollo 16: 8.97 degrees South, 15.51 degrees East
Apollo 17: 20.16 degrees North, 30.77 degrees East
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/flight- summary.txt

-always look up the facts before posting-

Re:btw, there is not "dark" side of the moon

[Skyfire]

um, what? actually, my dear friend, the period of the moon's revolution is exactly the same as it's period of rotation. Therefore, the same side of the moon (the "light" side) is always facing the earth. It doesn't really matter where you are.

Re:SMART-1 Is Not First With Ion Propulsion

[TomV]

To be fair, the BBC article brushes over the Ion Drive aspect of the mission in favour of the exciting return-to-the-moon side of the story.

As the SMART-1 site itself makes clear:

SMART-1 is to be the first European spacecraft to travel to and orbit around the Moon. It will also be the first time that ESA employ electric propulsion as the mission's primary propulsion. Electric propulsion on an interplanetary mission has been used only once to date, on NASA's Deep Space 1 probe launched in October 1998.

...

The electric propulsion technology to be employed by SMART-1 was initially developed over 30 years ago, notably in Russia which, since 1972, has launched a number of operational spacecraft placed in Earth orbit. They used electric propulsion for attitude and orbit control in addition to the classical chemical propulsion. In the early 90s, agreements were reached between Russian, American and European industry, notably SNECMA, France, to pursue the development and commercialisation of such thrusters.

...

In recent years commercial telecommunications spacecraft built in the United States using different types of electric thrusters have been launched. The first was the Hughes PanAmSat-5 in 1997

source

Now compared to chemical rockets, in terms of missions flown and experience gained, I'd accept ion drives as pretty 'new', so, while maybe a little clumsy, the BBC's text

The main objective is to test a new type of engine technology - solar electric propulsion - which could power future missions very long distances into deep space

seems OK, and ESA certainly don't claim to be the first with an Ion Drive themselves. They don't even claim to be the first to use the SNECMA PPS 1350 Hall-Effect thruster in question (shame the SNECMA site doesn't seem to give an off-the-shelf price for one of these cuties!).

Still determined to live in the Space Age

TomV

Lack of communication in the space biz

[apsmith]

It always amazes me how limited the picture most people seem to have, even in the media, of the huge variety of space-related efforts that are going on. If it isn't on NASA's list (even if NASA people are involved in it) or occasionally on a European or Japanese list, it's as if it doesn't exist. Here's a short list of lunar missions and projects currently in development, private and public:

• SMART-1 from ESA (the only one this BBC article mentions)
• LUNAR-A from ISAS/NASDA (Japan).
• SELENE also from ISAS.
• TrailBlazer and Electra from TransOrbital Inc.
• Lunar Retriever from AppliedSpace Resources
• IceBreaker from Lunacorp
• Lunar Service from Celestis (you have to be dead...)
• Lunar Architecture is a subject of study for HJ Rombaut, including a recent Lunar Base design workshop
• Bill Mook's lunar tours
• The Artemis Project

Many of these have received approval - some of the commercial missions seem to have had a bit of trouble finding funding or overcoming regulations and have announced delays of a year or so, but then the government missions have been delayed too.

What's missing on this list? Where's NASA you say? Interestingly NASA has spent over 50 times as much on Mars missions as on missions to the Moon since Apollo 17 left in Dec 1972. But that may change now that the NRC has put a lunar return among the highest priority missions.

Want to be involved? Check out the National Space Society and the Moon Society and you may help make some of these things happen!

Re:return to the moon?

[HypersonicAtheist]

The Clementine probe did confirm the Apollo 15 site.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/ap ol lo15_touchdown_photos_010427.html

You can watch a film of the landing at:
www.apolloarchive.com
Click Multimedia on the left side and go to the realvideo file "Lunar landing filmed from LM window".

If you play it a few times next to the Clementine image in the article you'll see that they're right on.

Re:you're right, for the wrong reasons

[Dan Crash]

1) Everything I've read on the subject regards construction in space as the most difficult and expensive environs possible. Maybe you can point me at something that says otherwise.

2) Your point about solar power satellites is incorrect. An article in more depth about this appeared in The Industrial Physicist in May. A relevant quote from the article follows:

Several types of solar-power satellites have been proposed. They are projected, over 30 years, to deliver approximately 10,000 kWh of electric energy to Earth for each kilogram of mass in orbit around the planet. To sell electric energy at $0.01/ kWh, less than $60 could be expended per kilogram to buy the components of the power satellites, ship them into space, assemble and maintain them, decommission the satellites, and finance all aspects of the space operations. To achieve this margin,launch and fabrication costs would have to be lowered by a factor of 10,000.

There's more in the article.

The Moon is the only practical place to build extraplanetary solar power, considering, as you note in point 3, that the Moon is made up of the very same materials in solar cells to begin with.

At any rate, we both agree that the human race needs a moon base. I just happen to think that it will be considerably more useful than you do.