NASA's New Mission to the Moon

mattnyc99 writes "Popular Mechanics has a new, in-depth preview of NASA's Orion spacecraft, tracking the complex challenges facing the engineers of the CEV (which NASA chief Michael Griffin called 'Apollo on steroids') as America shifts its focus away from the Space Shuttle and back toward returning to the moon by 2020. After yesterday's long op-ed in the New York Times concerning NASA's about-face, Popular Mechanic's interview with Buzz Aldrin and podcast with Transterrestrial.com's Rand Simberg raise perhaps the most pressing questions here: Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? And will we actually stay there?"

Comments

Re:Good question

[AJWM]

True enough, but there's plenty of research to do on the lunar surface.

Some directly related to habitation of the Moon and exploration of Mars -- long duration life support, techniques for harvesting lunar resources, etc, -- and some of the more "pure research" category. Lunar farside is probably one of the most radio-quiet places in the solar system, with 2000 miles of rock shielding it from Earth, so it'd be great for radiotelescopes, for example.

Also a good place for doing large scale experiments that might have, uh, adverse environmental impact if something goes wrong.

Re:Old technology but not forgotten

[AJWM]

I wonder if a roll of duct tape might be prudent as well.

Absolutely. Duct tape was essential to saving Apollo 13, when they had to rig an adapter for the square CM lithium hydroxide canisters to the circular LM canister ports. (CM and LM were built by different contractors, each with their own design for lithium hydroxide (part of the CO2 scrubbing system) canisters.)

Also comes in handy for keeping stuff from drifting around if there's no Velcro handy. Standard equipment on every Shuttle mission.

Before someone calls this a waste

[Lord Ender]

I agree completely with Prof. Hawking--We need to establish life outside of Earth.

Deep space scientific observation is nice, but until we have a self-sustaining colony off of earth, manned space technology should be our #1 priority.

Re-Entry 'skipping'

[DerekLyons]

From TFA:

"A skip re-entry is riskier," Lockheed's Johns concedes. "The Apollo traditionalists worry about it." The Russians performed a couple of successful skip re-entries with their unmanned Zond moon probes in the late 1960s, however.

 
They also had a couple of failures - and the failures/sucesses were dotted pretty evenly across the attempts. Zond was a percursor to a Soviet attempt to perform an Apollo 8 flyby to steal NASA's thunder - in fact, it was the Zond tests that lead to Apollo 8 being a lunar mission rather than a high earth orbit mission so as to steal the Russians thunder!
 
Before the budget cuts of 65/66 and the Fire, NASA planned on as many as *6* manned flights in LEO and an indeterminate number of lunar flights before committing to a landing attempt. Those budget cuts, the time lost after the fire, and the growing realization that the Soviets might be able to trump them forced their hand.
 
So much for the myth of Apollo-era NASA being the brave and bold agency they are so often portrayed as of late. Until forced, they were just as conservative as they are today.

Re:Sextant?

[0123456]

"Can somebody better acquainted with the mechanics of sending a vehicle to the Moon and back please explain why Buzz Aldrin recommends taking a sextant?"

Because Aldrin previously demonstrated that you could maneuver in orbit using a sextant if your computer failed? On one Gemini flight he used the sextant to perform the rendevouz rather than the computer and radar, if I remember correctly.