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Europe Heads for the Moon in July
Orlando writes "The BBC are reporting that Arianespace are all set for sending Smart1 to the Moon in July. The mission's primary objectives are testing planetary exploration technologies. This is particularly good news after the recent Arianne rocket explosion." China's also planning a moon mission. The U.S. is planning to sit around and watch.
Well theres the supposed ice in the perpetual shadows of some craters.
And they could only mine to see whats down there to start with, to see how the moon is made up and to determine if it was part of the earth once.
Though space.com has good articles, I think http://www.spacer.com (also going by the name spacedaily.com) has some very nice write-ups. Check out the following three articles on the Chinese space ventures -6 fq.html 9 c7.html
i. China to shoot for the moon after sending man into orbit - http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030302075956.spawz
ii. China may launch unmanned moon mission in 2005 - http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030303030843.54odg
iii. Shenzhou's Changing Face - http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-03j.html
Suhit
It's great that Europe and China are making their first attempts to send robotic probes to the moon. The United States has some experience in this area. Yes, Americans can sit around and watch to see how well the Europeans and Chinese do something that NASA achieved over four decades ago - and repeated dozens of times since.
A bulleted history of US missions to the Moon:
1998 - Lunar Prospector
1994 - Clementine
1972 - Apollo 16,17
1971 - Apollo 14,15
1970 - Apollo 13
1969 - Apollo 10,11,12
1968 - Apollo 8, Surveyor 7
1967 - Lunar Orbiter 3,4,5, Surveyor 3,4,5,6
1966 - Lunar Orbiter 1,2, Surveyor 1,2
1965 - Ranger 8, 9
1964 - Ranger 7
Deep Space 1 used an ion thruster.
Ion Thruster Used to Propel the Deep Space 1 Spacecraft to Comet Encounters
I should point out that some powers in the world are on the way to militarizing outer space...
. ht ml
The US is seriously planning to deploy orbital weapons. One part of the current missile defense program is a space based laser system. First tests are due in 2012, so it is still a fair way off.
Take a look here for details:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/html/boost
Although you will not find any mention of this at the MDA webstite, it is a fair bet that one function of such a system will be to defend US intelligence asets in space. Now that the US military is so heavily dependent on these asets, countries like China are starting to look at such asets as a potential weak link in US military power. Satelites are relatively easy to kill, and hard to replace at short notice.
Of course all talk of "peaceful exploration" in space has to be taken with a grain of salt. The technology that you need to launch to orbit and return to Earth is exactly the same technology that you need to build ICBM's. "Peaceful exploration" is a convenient way to test new missile systems without attracting bad press.
It actually is easy to pin bush.
The research was being done before over in Califonia. It got increased and moved to Texas. The problem is that the next admin will most likely shoot it down as "pie in the sky". Sadly, it is a very good use of nukes.
The real problem, though, is that Bush killed the X-33 nearly as soon as he got into office. It was already doing the testing on engines, which proved successful. The shuttle must be replaced and as Columbia has shown, sooner rather than later. The X-33 was supposedly parted out, which never made sense. Personally, I suspect that it was moved to DOD. Better there then being dismantled.
The last US president with a vision was probably Kennedy. This is sad.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you want to know what parts of the ISS the US has assigned to other nations, you can find it on Google (e.g., this and this). Ariane rocket launches also are used for a lot of components, although US media don't seem to have much interest in reporting this (e.g., here).
The main reason for NASA to favor international involvement in something like the ISS is because it makes it harder for Congress to cancel the project; otherwise, it looks like they'd just as soon go it alone.
Sigh.
No they didn't. First the Soviets managed to kill just four cosmonauts during their manned missions. After each failure their was a long stand down whilst the ships and procedures were checked thoroughly.
The first disaster was Soyuz 1 in April 1967. Soyuz had been under development for several years, but the programme had been thrown into confusion by the death of the Chief Designer Sergei Korolev. He was replaced by Vasily Michin - a fine engineer, but not up to the job of controlling the Soviet space programme, which was in itself in crisis. There were too many competing programmes vying for attention and too little money. It was during this time that the Soviet Moon programme completely lost its way - for which Michin would eventually take the blame.
Soyuz was a highly advanced craft and needed a lot of testing. That testing was nowhere near complete. However, the manned Soyuz 1 was launched under political pressure to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The engineers complied despite the failure of three unmanned versions of the craft.
Had Yuri Gagarin lived, it was almost certain he would have flown the mission. Instead, Soyuz 1 was piloted by Vladimir Komarov it had a succession of failures whilst in orbit, including the failure of one solar panel to deploy correctly. The craft re-entered the atmosphere as planned, but with a slight rotation. The parachute lines became entangled and the craft crashed to Earth at a high speed killing Komarov.
It had been planned that Soyuz 2 would be launched one day after Soyuz 1 and they would rendezvous in orbit. The launch was cancelled. The Soyuz 2 spacecraft was dismantled and found to have identical problems to the ship that flew. Had it been launched, it would have killed its crew.
(By horrible coincidence the flight of Soyuz 1 occured just six months after the Apollo 1 fire that killed three American astronauts.)
Soyuz was grounded whilst the entire manufacturing and quality control process was reorganised. Only when that was complete did the Soviets launch five unmanned Soyuz craft as part of their Kosmos series. When these were considered successful they then launched a second Soyuz 2 completely unmanned.
Soyuz 3 was the first successful manned mission in a Soyuz which flew in October 1968 - 16 months after the disaster.
The second cosmonaut disaster was Soyuz 11, which suffered decompression during re-entry after a mission to the Salyut 1 space station. The disaster killed three men in June 1971. The craft landed automatically and the technicians were able to see that a valve had been opened during undocking.
The Soyuz 12 mission which would have used the same design of Soyuz module was cancelled. No further flights were made with this model of ship.
It was already due to be replaced by a new Soyuz design which flew eight unmanned missions before Soyuz 12 became the next Soviet manned flight in September 1973; more than two years after the loss of Soyuz 11.
Best wishes,
Mike.