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Dreams of the Moon
Iron Sun writes "The Mars Institute has an interesting overview of past studies into sending people to the Moon, ranging from pre-Apollo plans by Werner von Braun to NASA studies just a few years old. Timely, given the continuing speculation as to whether the US is going to go back."
My personal favourite is the One Way Manned Space Mission scheme from 1962 that would involve putting a man on the Moon and then launch supplies to him for the several years needed to develop a two-way retrieval system. All in the name of planting a flag first.
So, hands up. Who would accept this mission if it was offered?
This isn't technically a plan, but pretty entertaining and fascinating considering when it was written
I find it interesting that these old plans are being dusted off and re-evaluated. I remember seeing an article on Space about how NASA was going to scrap their "Space Plane" research in lieu of another Apollo style vehicle. I wonder how this makes today's spacecraft designers feel with the potential of being overridden with plans older than themselves...
crazy dynamite monkey
My late uncle, who I cannot name,
left me an inheritance of $50Bn
(yes, fifty billion USD) worth of
diamonds which are unfortunately
trapped in a space capsule on the
surface of the moon. I am seeking
investors who will help me recover
this capsule, and in return for
their investment I will be able to
reward them richly. A trusted
friend gave me your address and I
hope you will be discrete with my
message. The budget for a small
one-man expedition to the Lunar
Surface is approximately $30m, or
$18m if a Chinese rocket is used.
I am therefore inviting you to
join in this unique opportunity
with a guaranteed return of %1000
on your investment, which can be
as little as $1m. Yes, if you
will provide me with just one
million USD, I will on recovery
of the lunar diamonds, repay you
with TEN MILLION USD. We are
also selling one excursion trip
to the Moon, a round trip with
unlimited stopovers, for the low
low price of $12m.
Yours sincerely,
Abubakar_Ibrahim@yahoo.ng
Ceci n'est pas une signature
All of which presently reside inside a Hollywood soundstage.
They were able to accomplish the entire trip over a single weekend, including building the rocket.
Of course, the best reason for going is the replentish our supply of Cheese!
In case you didn't see before, a previous Slashdot article on returning to the moon.
Can't go back to the moon. Nobody can make a "business case" for it. The skeptics and cynics will whine "what do we need THAT for?" and since nobody can demonstrate a 20% cash ROI in the latest version of Excel, complete with pie charts and a "whoosh" sound in PowerPoint, it won't happen.
In other words, nobody has written an elevator pitch.
Hope and progress are quaint notions which have no place amongst the cubicles. Now get back to work. Rent is due.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
So you mean we're really going to send people to sneak into the Beijing soundstage that the Chinese are gonna use and plant this stuff there?
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
If you haven't, read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (by Robert Heinlein) for a war between a lunar colony and Earth story...
Reading through the rest of the article, it seems the aerobrake would be used at the end of the return journey, to get the LOS into a similar orbit to the ISS - i.e. in Earth's atmosphere.
I suppose they could try using aerobraking to adjust the orbit around the Moon, but given the extremely low density of its atmosphere (someone more knowledgable can provide numbers ...), it's unlikely that it would have a noticeable effect.
The movie Destination Moon was released in 1950, before anything on the Mars Institute's list, and tried to accurately show what a trip to the moon would be like. It is based on a novel by Heinlein, and he was also the technical director of the movie. Not a great movie, but very interesting since it was made 20 years before we actually went to the moon.
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
Curious that none of these previous plans to reach the Moon mention utilizing a space elevator for most of the journey to orbit.
I suppose that this demonstrates one of the more fundamental problems with most proposals to go to the Moon: they clearly aren't sustainable, at least with today's prices for rocket propulsion. One of the earliest draws for moneymaking on the Moon will clearly be tourism, which cannot flourish at current launch costs.
On the other hand, a space elevator would make it not only very possible to go back to the Moon cheaply, but also just about anywhere else in the Solar System!
As many other comments have pointed out, there is little immediate financial impetus to go back to the Moon. If NASA were to permanently ground the Shuttle fleet, and suspend their manned spaceflight program, would the money they would save be enough to accelerate the development of space elevators to the point of useability?
...and this is a very bad thing. Yes. For YOU. For me also. And for our children, those of us who have, or intend to have them.
Unless one of the worlds space programs starts to show some genuine progress and stop fsck-ing around, the governments of the world are going to pull the plug. Why should they not? Expensive, largeley fruitless and frought with schoolboy errors in calculation and execution. The fate of space programs around the world currently hangs in the balance, in the aftermath of the latest in a long series of these unforgivable multi-billion dollar errors.
I have been a geek, a nerd, a propellerhead, call me what you will, for most of my life. My views on many things have developed in accordance with this. As a child, and as an adult I have read the novels of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and many others, as I am sure that most of you will have. As the vast majority of us also have, I have been exposed to successive variants of Star Trek, and Babylon 5. These fictitious sagas, and many others have shaped my mind through the years, and they have instilled a belief that to go out and visit the stars, and to interact, whether peacefully or otherwise, with those who may live on distant planets is nothing less than the manifest destiny of humankind. These stories could be described as cheesy, corny, cliched melodramas, and it would not be untrue, but they are also an expression of their writers beliefs in the nobility of such endeavour.
It fills me with genuine, heartbreaking pain to think that our efforts to make these dreams a reality are subject to the political agendas of men who have no concept of magnificence in their soul. It makes me weep to see the ruins of NASAs once glorious space program. Oh, to have lived in those days, when the men who went to the Moon genuinely had 'The Right Stuff'. It's time that the politicians of the world forget their differences, and finally deliver on the promises of yesteryear. I may be misquoting, but I believe that the phrase was, "We come in peace, for all mankind."
Imagine what we could acchieve if all mankind were to work together! I believe that furthering our progress into space is the only way that we can progress as a species. If we don't progress, then what else is there to do, but retrogress. Oh, I forgot, most of the population of this planet have already chosen the latter option!
I am fully aware that not only is this little rant of mine somewhat off-topic, but is unlikely to provoke agreement. On the other hand, I for one, am sick of being though of as a crank for endorsing the value of space exploration.
Thank you all for listening while I have unloaded a lot of pent-up feelings.
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