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Should We Land on the Moon's Poles or Equator?
Cujo writes "There is at present a lively controversy about sites for a crewed lunar landing. Advocates for landing near the poles, possibly on a mountain, point out the advantages of much higher sunlight availability and possible water resources in nearby cold traps. However, there may be more interesting geology and better mineral resources near the better-explored equator. NASA's Exploration Systems Architecture report lays out some of the tradeoffs."
Please forgive if my sarcasm detector is on the fritz, but you do know that the moon's rotation coincides with its orbit around the Earth, not the Sun, right? There is no side of the moon that's permanently dark...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
You have a funny definition of the word 'finally'.
"Congress voted Saturday to give NASA all of the $16.2 billion it sought for 2005"
"Congress on Wednesday approved a $16.5 billion budget for NASA, fully funding the administration's moon-Mars exploration initiative for a second consecutive year."
If R&D or production tooling were the primary cost then, yeah that's a good idea. Blasting expensive stuff like landers to the moon or Mars costs just as much as blasting a chunk of rock though and it is not a negligible cost.
Why???
how far away is the moon? very VERY far away.
How big are the landers? very VERY small.
How do I put that in terms you canunderstand?
Ok. You 2 miles away from a wall. on the wall is an gnat I squished. now using the best telescope you can find on this planet I DARE you to resolve the ant let alone even find it's location.
Optical resolution of our telescopes is far too low to resolve such detail. it's past the limits of our technology for magnification.
Spy sattelites are really stinking close to the planet. that is why they can supposedly read your license plate.
BUT, if you shine a powerful laser at the right spot you will see your reflected beam coming from one of the prisim reflectors they left during one of the missions. Nasa does this all the time and measured how many inches each year the moon is moving away from the earth.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
use a nuke to carve out a crater
Somehow, on the Moon, that seems a bit redundant.
-- Alastair
it has been suggested that the best way to counter the myth that the moon landing was faked is to go back to the moon and bring back something
Pete Conrad and Alan Bean did that on Apollo 12. They landed within sight and easy walking distance of Surveyor III, which had landed a few years earlier, and cut off and brought back part of the scoop arm and the TV camera. They're in the Smithsonian.
Didn't convince anyone who wanted not to be convinced.
Oh, and the Hubble's software won't let it be pointed anywhere near the Moon (or Sun, or Earth) without closing the "lens cap" (sun shield), so as to avoid burning out extremely sensitive instruments.
However, with the right equipment you can bounce a laser off the laser retroreflector panels the Apollo missions left, and see that.
-- Alastair
Oh, and the Hubble's software won't let it be pointed anywhere near the Moon (or Sun, or Earth) without closing the "lens cap" (sun shield), so as to avoid burning out extremely sensitive instruments.
Splitting hairs here on an informative post, but it can be pointed at the moon. They recently started doing a few lunar observations with Hubble, as reported here.
The resolution isn't great enough to see Apollo artifacts, however.
Worst...sig...ever!
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
Educate yourselves.
For those of you that are too freakin lazy to go to the site here is a sample of what we get from the space program:
- Computer Technology - NASA Spinoffs
- Advanced keyboards, Customer Service Software, Database Management System, Laser Surveying, Aircraft controls, Lightweight Compact Disc, Expert System Software, Microcomputers, and Design Graphics.
- Consumer/Home/Recreation - NASA Spinoffs
- Dustbuster, shock-absorbing helmets, home security systems, smoke detectors, flat panel televisions, high-density batteries, trash compactors, food packaging and freeze-dried technology, cool sportswear, sports bras, hair styling appliances, fogless ski goggles, self-adjusting sunglasses, composite golf clubs, hang gliders, art preservation, and quartz crystal timing equipment.
Now quit whining and go back to your boring job like the rest of us. Quit wasting your employers money here whining.Becasue technologies developed for space flight can help with the problems here.
Think about it. What do you have to do to travel through space? Clean air, recycle waste, use energy efficent designs, and improve communications.
To go farther then the moon, or stay on the moon longer, better batteries and improved techniques for creating electricity will be needed.
What we have is an agency that can have the opportunity to create technologies to help 'clean our house'.
Plus, tyhe governemt got back more then it spent for the moon trips. The amount of taxes spent by the companies and workers of companies who make there money selling products whose RnD effort go directly back to NASA is staggering.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I found these two wikipedia articles really informative...
... the far side has a different texture compared to the near side - it is battered and densely-cratered, and doesn't have the dark spots (maria) that the near side has. The crust of the Moon is 40 km thicker on the far side.
... because of the way the moon rotates, we can actually see 59% its surface -- not the 50% you'd expect. See this excellent graphic for an explanation.
Far side of the moon
Libration
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Nuclear reactors don't have to use water as a coolant. They can use metals with reasonably low melting points like lead and sodium, and as another poster noted some reactor designs use inert gasses that don't change phase.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.