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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.
Hey, America's already Been There, Done That.
Here's what we discovered.
they won't think its so cool when they go up there and find the terrible secret of space!
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
With all those veiled Internet trolls to whom Art Bell &c. give a voice.
I hope they figure out who owns what before it touches down, too, or we'll end up with frivolous lawsuits aplenty over lunar property rights.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
With everyone going to the moon these days, maybe I should get there first and sell moonland to the new guys. Instant profit! :-)
Wonder if Europe and China will start a "king of the hill" by knocking over the U.S. flag and posting their own when they get there.
That SMART-1 is a solar-plasma-hall-effect propelled... thing? (I don't know what to call it. "technology demo" would be most fitting)
Anyway, with US short a shuttle, I'd think there should be more of europe stepping up to support the ISS; you know, the *international* space station? of which they are also a part of?
Granted, it'd be the day when you see muslim (like, say, from Saudi) or chinese (as in, from Beijing) flying to the ISS on a regular basis, so maybe it's not that international...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
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
This isn't a race. In case you forgot, we visited the moon over 30 years ago. The value of a trip now wouldn't justify the cost. I fully support the space program and realize its importance, but realistically the only reason it's around is for the boost it gives to nationalism.
We'll probably be bombing people at that time. We wouldn't want to divide our brilliant minds between science and bombing, would we?
A little competition to get us back on track. We need to take NASA away from the politicians and give it back to the engineers.
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
I think it'll be good for us. When the Ruskies got sputnik up there, it really riled us up. A lot of people stepped up and said, "I can do better than that!". "I'll see your satelite and raise you the Moon," they said.
So Europe wants to go to the moon? Good for them. They can have second place, and if it motivates us a bit, we'll see Mars, astroid mining, and the Space Hilton long before I'm visiting the Lunar Beni Hana.
I hope they go there; it'll light a fire under our ass to get back into the swing of things.
Quit your bellyaching and get a reality check. The cool tech most people in China are waiting for is running water. All empire fall, but it is going to be a while still before China uniformly leaves the U.S. in the dust....that is assuming they themselves aren't subverted economically by labor and intellectual capital even cheaper than themselvs. So far they are the low cost choice, but once standards start to rise there, they will also hear that "giant sucking sound" from cheaper locales like every other producer in the free trade world.
The same reason Michael thinks it's worth noting that the US is "just" going to sit and watch is the same reason this article will probably be duped in an hour or two like so many others.
Welcome to 40 years ago.
Isn't amnesia fun?
Ben
Work Safe Porn
humankind won't be able to progress if it's destroyed or held hostage by criminally insane dictators with WMDs.
So when is the next US federal election anyway?
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
the editor's comments did the trolling for you.
Nope, the US is planning sabotage. We can't have all those euro-socialist scumbags find out that we didn't really go there in the 60's. Of course not!
I hear they're planning to send Buzz Aldrin by himself to Europe to personally pummel the ESA's people.
And I hope they get it on tape again!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
The thing I am wondering is when a country will decide to build a space station on L4 or L5 so that they can more easily go to Mars, or other places.
;^)
(For those that don't know, L4 and L5 are the stable Lagrange points, where the gravity of the Earth and Moon are equal. Can be said for any other set of orbiting bodies too, but I am talking about the moon)
Whoever controls L4 and L5 would have the capability to control all travel to Mars,Venus, etc. Not like we will have a manned visit to Venus any time soon
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What we really need is some kind of international space agency that any country could contribute to. We'd be able to claim things for humankind rather than bickering about country lines. Plus, we could get alot more done with resources from many countries. Of course, this is unfeasible as all hell for the world to get along.
i like my women like i like my coffee
in a plastic cup
dms0
-= world leaders choose world leaders not us, not a democracy, not a revolution! =-
Are we supposed to go do it again? Considering we did this four decades ago?
Yes. Or admit that the USA has passed its prime as a society and is now on the slow slide into cultural and moral decay. It is not what you did in the past, it is what have you done lately that counts.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Which is important because after a long day of working in the mines, nothing is better than a nice cold beverage, preferably scotch on the rocks. We need that ice!!!
When you can make your own craters in Iraq?
Now if there was oil on the Moon...
it would imply life
or a leaky spaceship
or astronauts frying food...
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
It's funny to see how cold war thinking still infects US minds. The "space race" was only a "race" because the US desparately wanted to prove that US society was superior; in part, this was because right after WWII, the Soviet model actually seemed to be working pretty well in terms of economics and science, and it looked for a while as if the Soviets were going to take over pretty much the rest of the world. In contrast, after WWII, Europeans didn't really care about anybody proving superiority to anyone anymore, they just wanted to live in peace and prosperity. Big guns, big rockets, or big words stopped impressing Europeans. This is perhaps also why Bush finds it so hard to get much support for his current adventures.
The moon isn't going anywhere. Missions to it (as all space exploration) should be driven by available technology, resources, and scientific goals, not by some horse race mentality.
we are planning just to do the staged moon landing thing and save a few bucks.
Our alternative plan is to secretly sew our flag inside another countries flag (with the outer flag being UV sensitive).
Wonder what they are doing in Soviet Russia?
Damn, they never told me continental drift was that bad.
We may have been the first, but we haven't even left LEO for more than 20 years. Our space program has become a joke. On Columbia's last flight, the payload consisted of experiments designed by students, including one that involved ants in zero-g. Fortunately, they weren't sorting tiny screws. Nevertheless, our space program has ceased to do anything innovative. Every attempt that has been made to breath new life into the program has failed, and so nothing happens.
The U.S. is planning to sit around and watch
why is everyone like, "well, we already did it."
sure we already did it. And I already backed the server up last week, so why do it again?
we sure didn't learn everything we could from a mere 7 landings!
apparently, the bang comes from both parts when you put them together.
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
Well if Europe goes to the moon then that will help the US get the full support of the Security Council .... won't it?
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
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.
The first cut? Nope. Science benefits in times like these. The US government is the biggest VC in world history. Of course, it depends what you're researching. You can map technological innovation almost directly to the time leading up to conflicts and the conflict itself. It's only in very recent history that commerical use has been a driving force (and that doesn't pay for big research, high-risk research.)
This is basically what the history books say about the Vikings and North America--technically first, but who cares. Columbus and the English (and French, Spanish Germans, Dutch in descending order) get the recognition.
That, of course, begs the question as to what indeginous Moon people Eurasia will replace when they do colonize the Moon, but let's not go there, shall we?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
While the US gave all their thrust to the Space Shuttle, Arianne has proved to be a LOT cheaper way of putting new satelites in orbit.
With all the security risks in the Shuttle program it's really nice to see ESA take over.
Sci-fi tech has nothing to do with it. Ion drives have been around for over 30yrs. Just check JPL or NASA Glen. While Ion drives are cool, they're not as neat as Hall Thrusters.
Wow. This might be the first new land they've set foot on without surrendering!
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Or maybe it's because Israel is a Western, democratic civilization who occupies the land it acquired through defeating Arab aggression, in order to attempt to control acts of terrorism against its citizenry, that have been carried out for decades.
Israel is located around the same neighbourhood as its Arab neighbours, and yet they are Western? Assuming this is so, is it then absolutely fine for a Western civilization to invade their non-western neighbours?
How many times has Israel attempted to conquer its neighbors?
Last I checked about half of Israel is conquered land.
How many times has it used chemical warfare against foreign or domestic parties?
How the hell would you know? I mean, seriously... While Americans keep a very close watch on Communist and Arab states, they don't give a rat's ass about what Israel are doing. They kill unarmed women, children and old folks just because they happen to live in the same neighbourhood of some wanted terrorists.
Sure the UN is not at war with Israel... the US owns the UN... the US also happens to be good friends with Israel. Israel will be free to do whatever the hell it wants as long as good old Uncle Sam is up there. But as the saying goes, every dog has its day... you just won't know when the day will come.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Well, power is cheap for starters. There's a lot of He3 for fusion, or you can just roll out a bunch of solar panels (made locally, of course!).
Once you've got power, you can do a lot. Shipping stuff into orbit is easy; a laser-based propulsion system will lift stuff of the Moon readily. Heck, even if all you can lift off is moon rocks, you can use that as construction material, you know.
Furthermore, the Moon is thought to be geologically like the Earth's mantle. You know, the top bit where we get all of our metals and minerals from. If that is the case, the Chinese could reasonably expect to mine metals up there, and use those for construction materials.
The point here is that you don't have to ship the stuff back down to Earth to be useful. You can leave it in orbit and use it there; orbital shipyards, anyone?
Of course, if you can ship it back to Earth, then you've got a weapon of enormous potential. A few tons of rock coming in at orbital velocities makes a big splash. And don't think that hasn't been thought of by the Chinese, either. Ever read "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress"?
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
dpete4552 wrote:
> Israel has violated UN declarations as well, you never see
> us huff and puff about them. Probably because there is
> no significant amount of oil, if any, in Isreal.
Israel has great religious significance to the religious right, a strong faction of the republican party, and the part of it currently in the White House. Not only do we not huff and puff, we send them aid and sell them many weapons. But then we helped Iraq obtain the very biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons we now accuse them of still having.
> North Korea readily admits to developing a nuclear
> program and defying the US, and we don't care too much
> about them either (no oil).
North Korea was a major blunder on Bush's part. North and South Korea are in the process of reuniting into one Korea, which Bush didn't approve of. Bush made a bunch of warlike rhetoric, talking about taking on Iraq, "axis of evil", blah, blah, blah. N. Korea got scared, and started making nuclear noises. It isn't clear that they actually have any working nukes, but fear that they exist has thus far deterred the US from attacking. The US had their fuel oil supplies cut off, leaving them only nuclear plants to heat their homes, which they started up. Unfortunately, we did not keep our 1994 promise to build nice peaceful light water reactors, so the only ones they have to heat their homes with also make the material for nuclear weapons. And up and up it escalates. Bush has been told repeatedly by N. Korea's neighbors to sit down and talk to them, but I guess that would ruin his plans for Korean War II.
> China launches takes and uses its army to kill its own
> people, including children, it is broadcast live to our
> livingrooms, and they just get scoled by Bush Sr. "Bad
> china! Don't do that again!" (No oil).
China produces oil, about the same amount as the US itself. China is too big to swallow whole, making diplomacy the route that the US has chosen to deal with this situation. Of course, diplomacy could solve most of the stuff Bush wants to go to war over, even Iraq. In diplomacy, you have give and take. In war, you have conquer and rule. The latter is more fun, but only if you are the president of the conquering nation.
> Now when we are in a very depressing economic
> situation isn't it convenient that the Bush Administration
> is pulling Iraq out of their hat again. Nothing like
> bringing up Iraq changes the subject so well eh?
You think this is depressing, just wait. The new budget has a $300 billion deficit (mostly Homeland Security, as a lot of other stuff got cut), not counting Iraq costs. The war could be $50 to $200 billion (depending on who you talk to) without reconstruction costs. State and local governments are in deep financial trouble, with no help coming from the federal government.
What does this mean to you and me? Well, not only is the US not going to the Moon anytime soon, but between insane gas prices and badly maintained roads, we are going to have a heck of a time getting to work. Assuming we have jobs...
> Well at least Bushinomics are bringing tax cuts for the
> rich.
So the rich get richer, and the rest of us have billions more government debt, no decent government services, and all of our own problems to boot. Great system for a feudal kingdom constantly running off to the Crusades (if you don't mind an occasional Robin Hood), but very bad for a 21st century USA.
> Of course the masses are too busy being destracted by
> Bush and all of his war mongering.
Public opinion worldwide, including the US, is against this war. In every member state of the coalition of the "willing", the leaders are joining in defiance of their people's wishes, and at risk to their careers. The peace movement is huge, organized, and extremely active: whether it's getting 10+ million people to protest on the same day in 60 countries and 600 locations, or organizing a call/fax/email your US senator and president day for 400,000 people (with, oops, over 1 million actually participating)! The unions in the US have come out against the war, so I would expect a lot more people to get undistracted quite quickly.
And, yes, those against the war know what it is doing to our economy. That is one of many, many reasons to oppose the war.
"All our tomorrows, Great Sun, by the Light, are very forgotten.
The Light dies. We pray and it sleeps."
"Oh Peace Oh Light Return" (national song of mourning) from "Gojira" (Godzilla) 1954
[The USA attitude re: Moon exploration] it's more of a "Been there, done that" stance.
At its time, the "Moon Race" was an effective political ploy. Maybe not the best cold war strategy, but an effective one.
But to regard lunar exploration as something the USA has already accomplished is dumb. While there was some good technology fallout, and some good science, they were incidental to the thrust of the USA effort. Which was simply to establish "First Post" bragging rights on the Moon. Which gives the USA all the enduring value of "FP!" claim on slashdot.
I don't disagree with your assessment-- it does seem like most of my fellow Americans do think that way. Which I think is a pity.
You haven't heard of DS1?
anyhow. The key benefit of an ion thruster is that it needs very little fuel. So, it can be left thrusting for very long times, so generating very high end speeds.
Best case so far: the DS1 probe was the first spaceship running on an ion thruster. Even with the force of a running ion thruster being not much more than the pressure that a sheet of paper makes on the ground, DS1 has long overtaken the older probes which were launched with regular chemical engines.
bye,
[L]
So, you think the slashdot crowd is interested in science for the sake of science?
...RIGHT?
The first thing that happens when some other country tries to go to the moon is that there's nooo reason to do it, it's been done... the us has already won...
and we all know that science is about winning right?
not about the pursuit of knowledge.
America won science 40 years ago...
and of course ESA is planning to test equipment on the moon for nationalistic reasons...
becuase Europe is a nation?
If this story tells us anything, it'd have to be that technology is at a point where it's economically feasible to go to the moon for scientific reasons...
of course we can do incredible things if there are political reasons to do it... but what can we do for purely scientific reasons?
In my mind a far more interesting question.
Would have thought the slashdot crowd had the same interest in science.. but I guess I was wrong.
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
nuff said!
Fredrik
Well, what do we really expect to learn from it that we already haven't? We know what's up there, we know how to get there, we know how to get back. We learned all that over 30 years ago. Also it's kind of unfair to discredit some of the residual accomplishments of the race to the moon because they were discovered in the process of getting somewhere else.
Did you take credit away from Christopher Columbus when you learned he was actually trying to go to India? He took a leap and landed somewhere no person from his continent or any continents he had ever known before had landed before (yeah, that's a confusing line, but it's correct.) His accomplishment(s) changed the world. Of course someone else would have done the same thing eventually, but he still get's credit for being the first we know to have made the trip (how other people were already on the continent is still in debate.)
matguy(.com)
doubt they'll let europe and china use the same movieset to plant their flags...
PjotrP
Yes. Or admit that the USA has passed its prime as a society and is now on the slow slide into cultural and moral decay. It is not what you did in the past, it is what have you done lately that counts.
People like you have been declaring the "death of America" for the past hundred or so years. Our slide into "cultural and moral decay" is the reason why Japan thought we wouldn't fight back after Pearl Harbor, the reason why the USSR thought we needed to be forced into Communism, the reason why everybody thought Japan was going to whip our butts in the 70s and 80s and why on September 11th a bunch of terrorists thought that they could blow up the Twin Towers without any retribution.
Heck, you can even go back to the founding of this nation when the wise Europeans didn't think we would last more than a couple years at best.
America has been underestimated for pretty much its entire existence.
NASA's "focus" for the past two decades has been to build a space station and a shuttle to get to it. After the moon landings this is a pretty logical next step.
Unfortunately we have ran into more technical and engineering challenges that we would have liked. But we tried. Now we have to move forward and figure out what to do next. However, you cannot start comparing us to the Chinese and Europeans until after they have landed on the moon and asked themselves "what's next?".
BTW, we have sent up a ton of different mission including the Hubble Telescope and the Mars Pathfinder. These have generally been "side projets" in comparison to the grand vision, but any one of these would be considered a "tremendous accomplishment" to China or Europe.
Brian Ellenberger
But, since the moon is in orbit, thrust is an issue. But the question is, why waste a lot of money getting their fast when you're just sending a robot? It sounds like the ESA is going to get valuable ion engine experience out of this, and at the same time get to the moon cheap. And that's what going to the moon should be; cheap.
If going to the moon isn't cheap, how can we reasonably expect to go to Mars?
We all know the French cheese reserve will be empty in 2017. They've got to find a replacement source before.
Nice page on what else is going on with space missions...
You are not root, go away.
...when I saw this was to wonder why ESA was sending an automobile to the moon.
We know what's up there, we know how to get there, we know how to get back.
Well, to get snide about it, we don't know what's up there (but we do know that a golf club can be used in a space suit, and that funny wheels make an effective lunar go-cart, and we collected enough rocks that I think a strong man would have a problem lifting them all at once-- but I'm not sure). We knew how to get there, but like Goldie Hawn frequently said at the time, "I used to know all that stuff." Now we don't have a clue as to how to get back. We threw all that technology away.
Yes, I mean that. The Apollo program was based on technology that used (get ready for it) sliderules. The total amount of computer power that was used in the entire Apollo program is dwarfed by the desktop machine that you turn off without giving it a second thought, when your done with your evening's slashdot entertainment. You couldn't muster up enough people in the workforce today who know how to use a sliderule to repeat what was then done, or even understand the notes that were written about it. The technology of the Apollo program was never carried across into computers. To remake the heavy lift Saturn rockets or reconstruct the Apollo heat sheilds, we would have to redo everything from scratch. We orphaned the whole thing as we moved on to better technology.
Terribly shortsighted, that was.
In response to another of your comments: I did not discredit what you call the "residual accomplishments". Re-read my post.
As to Christopher Columbus-- he made several repeat voyages to the New World. He stuck to his program, even though it failed in the long run. His program was designed to return spices and gold-- the keys of that age. Our space adventure had no pragmatic purpose, and so was shut down before it accomplished anything of lasting significance. It was truly just a "First Post" effort.
Interestingly enough, after the second last ESA launch "problem", the artemis satellite which was on board was brought from low ellipitical orbit to geo-stationary orbit using the only system available, its ion thrusters. Pretty impressive achievement, especially when 20% of the satellites command and control software had to be rewritten to allow the fine control of the engines required.
This is valuable experience for the ESA. They also did some other pretty nifty stuff, like image transfer using an optical link
Story here
Rational thought is the only true freedom
The lander is actually European, the orbiter is American.
No, the US is planning to create its own lunar surface in the Middle East
To remake the heavy lift Saturn rockets or reconstruct the Apollo heat sheilds, we would have to redo everything from scratch.
that doesnt make any sense. i went to the kennedy space center and they have a saturn V just sitting there.
in fact, who cares? if we were to remake ENIAC right now it'd probably cost millions and require infrastructure to make vacuum tubes that we might not have nowadays, but nobody would say we can't match the feats of ENIAC, or that we're behind where we were in the 40s.
if we really had a reason to go to the moon (and hence a budget to do so), then we'd go. to say otherwise is ridiculous, "Now we don't have a clue as to how to get back." give me a break.
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.
Just another perspective on the above.
In space, energy is cheap (solar panels), and mass is expensive (very expensive).
An ion thruster is essentially a partical accelerator pointing out to space. This accelerates a very small quantity of mass to very high velocities, using electrostatic methods.
It's the best (currently known) method for converting all that cheap solar energy into thrust, for a minimum of mass.
Humanity needs to get off this planet, and a permanent mission on the Moon will be a good first step. If it does nothing more than mine fuel and put it into lunar orbit for use by other missions, it will have paid for itself.
I'm old enough to remember the Apollo missions; how vividly I recall that day in July 1969, when the words "Tranquility Base here: the 'Eagle' has landed." came crackling over my transistor radio. Years later, when I took my own children to see "Apollo 13", I tried to explain to them what it was like back then, when we used to fly to the Moon. They asked me why we were going any more, and I didn't have a good answer. Still don't.
So, three cheers for the Chinese and the Euros, and God speed to them.
[this
Wasn't there a project a few years back to create ENIAC-on-a-chip as part of some sort of anniversary celebration?
> but nobody would say we can't match the feats
> of ENIAC, or that we're behind where we were in
> the 40s.
Exactly! In fact, the US's problem is that it dumps too much money into the fanciest, best equipment. For a human moon mission, the money might be better spent sending lots of low-cost supplies to the moon, using a robot or two to set up a base, then sending people there. Much safer and cheaper.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
Why is it these great stories about the Moon appear in the middle of the night when I'm sleeping! Oh well...
/. articles you'll see that they had a long delay due to regulatory issues, but finally got the approvals they need around the middle of last year, and actually launched a test vehicle last December. The schedule is to do it for real later this year... so it should happen! Along with Smart-1.
TransOrbital's lunar mission has actually been featured here on
slashdot a few times but nobody seems to remember private space ventures when public projects come up. Sigh...
Anyway, if you'll peruse those links to past
Energy: time to change the picture.
...are they coming back, and will they bring us anything cool? ;D
I hate to admit it, but your wrong. It would take the US atleast a year if not 2 to get back to the moon. We DO NOT have the equpment/knowledge to build a saturn V (or even to get the parts outside kennedy spaceworthy). We would need to design a WHOLE new craft. Remember getting to the moon is easy, it's being able to get BACK that's hard. The shuttle, which is the ONLY current re-launchable craft requires MAJOR overhaul between a landing and a take off. You would need a craft that could land and take off with NO maintanence. This is not an easy task.... If one of these other governments launches a team to the moon and they get stranded, the US wouldn't be able to mount a rescue mission even if we wanted to....we would need to design and build a craft from scratch. Remember no shuttle has ever even ORBITED the moon.
Hmm; seems to be a fair sprinkling of ESA projects in there, not to mention national agency projects.
Not wanting to picky, or anything, mind. NASA certainly contributes elements to many of these projects but to imply that they are NASA projects is a little disingenuous.
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
"they won't think its so cool when they go up there and find the terrible secret of space!"
Could be worse: They could find the Prince of Space.
If we wanted to go to the moon again, we wouldn't be able to do it for the simple fact that all the engineers who were in NASA during the Apollo program's time are now retired or dead, and since the US has had no focus on space exploration since then, there's no newer generation of engineers with that expertise who could replace them. In fact, there's no engineers at all since, over the years, everyone has seen what a terrible career field aerospace engineering is (especially in the space program), and no one bothered to study it.
If there's no engineers in the US who are qualified to design spacecraft, how exactly do you propose it could be done?
Answer: contract it out to the Russians. As with most things, America, in its infinite short-sightedness, just gets other people to do all its technical work for it since native-born Americans have been discouraged by society from doing anything technical.