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Space Tug to the Moon and Beyond

An anonymous reader writes "Andrews Space and SpaceDev, a contributor to SpaceShipOne, are building a cargo transport called SmallTug to travel to the Lunar L1 point using a Hall Thruster and running off of solar power. The final craft will be capable of attaching to and transporting satellites 85 percent of the way to the Moon for use in interplanetary missions. The launch date is scheduled for 2008 and it is being designed to be quite inexpensive. The Inquirer has more details."

4 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. SmallTug? by matt21811 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ha, could they come up with a more porno sounding name?

    Of course it comes as no suprise that "Andrews Space is a privately held company"

  2. Re:The moon is a liberal myth. by mederjo · · Score: 3, Funny
    Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950.

    Replying is troll feeding, and frankly I'm surprised you spent the energy to type all that out ( unless you're trying to be funny ), but I was reading this just the other day :

    Romeo

    But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
    It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
    Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon

    by William Shakespeare, 1597

    ...if such a person even existed, that is...

  3. Re:The moon is a liberal myth. by mederjo · · Score: 2, Funny
    Ah, but the great joint-Iluminati/World Zionist Consipracy/Knights Templar/other causers of tinfoil hat wearing group responsible rewrote all the books, obviously.

    Ah, of course, how foolish of me.

    Also, tides are caused by special machinery installed for the purpose. ;)

    Let me get this straight though - could the giant balloon not also be responsible for the tides ? No need for what would have to be some impressive machinery ( and associated maintenance, salt water can be rough on things ) if it were just a side effect of the giant balloon flying about. Those nuclear reactors would probably have a quite a bit of mass after all.

    We also have the moon here in New Zealand. We're pretty liberal already, and we don't have the same issues with guns as the US does, so what could the liberal moon pilots be looking for ?

    Food for thought...

  4. Re:The moon is a liberal myth. by arbitraryaardvark · · Score: 2, Funny

    Short version of parent: "That's no moon!"