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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."
we might as well do it the right way.
023AD01("Child", "Evil");
Isn't it interesting that "space exploration is great" believers are as vocal and nasty as OS bigots.
I am merely doing what we should all be doing and provoking debate. It is my opinion that a program that eats so much of a country's research budget for so little immediate benefit should be examined. I am merely questioning why the US is willing to spend so much getting to the moon yet is unwilling to devote money and effort to reducing their contribution to the greenhouse effect.
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
If you are going to make such blanket statements, you should do you homework, and know the stuff. While it's true, most upper stage engines used for space maneuvers are LH/O2 engines, the heavy work of lifting off the ground is rarely done by those types of engines. Reality is, lets take a look at some common launch vehicles. Space Shuttle uses the Main engines to produce roughly 25% of it's launch lift, and a couple of SRB units to produce the rest. SRB stands for 'Solid Rocket Booster'. Go do a chemical anlysis of the exhaust from one of those things, it's a rather toxic mix of substances. Take a good deep breath of SRB exhaust, and even without the heat, it'll be your last. The real disgusting part, the vast majority of that exhaust gets dumped into the atmosphere well above tropopause, so it doesn't just settle down to earth, it mixes with the thin air up there, and plays a part of it's chemical makeup for a LONG time after the launch. Dumping a couple million pounds of that stuff into the upper atmosphere is NOT a trivial thing, it actually has a measureable impact on the chemical composition of the upper atmosphere.
Now lets take a peek at a soviet manned launcher. Oh, stag1, liquid oxygen and a kerosene derivative. Interesting, exhaust gasses dont look much like steam here either. Oh well, lets try a few more.
Areanne and delta, oh, lets see, they both share a common trait, kinda like the space shuttle actually, stage 1 initial lift comes mainly from solid rocket strap ons.
I'm a great proponent of launch technology and space exploration in general, but, there's political and economic hurdles to overcome. Part of the political hurdle, is the environmental hurdle. Outright lying about what comes out of the tail of launch vehicles does NOTHING to further the cause, and, making blanket statements about rocket exhaust being nothing more than steam is an outright lie. It's a fiction that many in the industry would love to propogate, because, a pure LH2/O2 engine produces only steam. Problem is, nothing uses that for initial launch today, everything uses stinky/smelly/toxic substances for the initial high lift phase of boosting out of the atmosphere, then proceeds to use clean LH2/O2 once it's out of the atmosphere, and in the vaccuum of space.
Why is this you ask, the answer is simple, cost and efficiency. The LH2/O2 engine gives the best bang for the buck in terms of the amount of deltaV you can get out of it, for pounds lifted into orbit. When it's sitting on the ground, the dirty, stinky, toxic variants of engines actually have the ability to lift more pounds for less dollars, and get it up above the atmosphere. When you factor in minor details like aerodynamic drag, etc etc, that clean LH2/O2 engine isn't even going to have the impulse needed to lift itself, and its fuel, and a payload, up into the realms of space, for that job, we resort to stuff that may not get as much bang for the pound in vaccuum, but packs a hell of a kick when stacked up properly at ground level.
Development of the space program has a LOT of economic spin off benefits, but for the most part, those benefits take 10 to 15 years to actually filter into the economy. In the interim, we have to justify cause/effect relationships all over the place, including environmental. The industry as a whole likes to shuffle environmental issues under the rug, and pretend they dont exist, often spewing forth the lie about rockets producing steam for exhaust. The problem is, the industry looses credibility when that spew is proven to be outright wrong, and in reality, the boosters in use today spew forth tons of toxic substances out of thier tailpipes.
If you really want to gather up support for a space program, gotta start at the grass roots. Get the facts correct, dont spew forth lies. Joe average voter is NOT stupid, and will vote for a program that has 15 year benefit cycle, it's politicians
They better keep off my property! I bought me one of them there tracks of land on the moon, and am planning on retireing there. I don't wanna have them mess it up fore I can get there, or I'll hafta go with my second choice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_earth
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.