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Japan Launches Lunar Orbiter Mission
Sooner Boomer writes "In a historic event, Japan today launched its first lunar probe. The mission is nicknamed Kaguya after a fairy-tale princess from Japanese myth. The news media is calling it the 'latest move in a new race with China, India and the United States' to explore the moon (don't forget Google). From the article: 'The rocket carrying the three-metric ton orbiter took off into blue skies, leaving a huge trail of vapor over the tiny island of Tanegashima, about 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo, at 10:31 a.m. (9:31 p.m. EDT) as it headed out over the Pacific Ocean. The mission consists of a main orbiter and two baby satellites equipped with 14 observation instruments designed to examine surface terrain, gravity and other features for clues on the origin and evolution of the moon. China has plans to launch an orbiter later this year, with unmanned rover lander mission scheduled for 2010. India and the US also have orbiter missions scheduled for next year.'"
Interesting choice of name. Selene was a lunar deity and is the Greek word for the moon.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Dude, there were no Maan in it, the thing's correct. Stop nitpicking!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Perhaps 'unmaanned' refers to the fact that the probe does not actually land on the Maan, but just orbits it. ;)
I can't wait for these lunar satellites to be in position. I have a $50 bet with a "nut case" friend of mine that NASA's moon landing was real (he is a real conspiracy theorist - I blame drugs). Once these babies are in position, they'll be able to take nice pictures of the Apollo mission sites.
I am Slad.
The rocket carrying the three-metric ton orbiter...
Are you sure about that?
Developers: We can use your help.
...is that the spacecraft is in the shape of a giant robot, and that, upon achieving lunar orbit, it will disassemble itself into three smaller robots, a moon buggy, a six-wheeler truck, and a mouse-class pokemon carrying a katana.
It was a great feat back then and it is a great feat today.
Kudos to japanese space team!
They will awaken Gogirra!!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Kaguya was also the name of a character in Okami who goes off into space in a giant bamboo stalk.
Coincidence?
I think not.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Is the information from all these various probes being shared or is each nation building up its own little pool of data?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Guys after the apollo program all they'll have left to do is research future tech and start building space colony ship modules, once they got all the modules assembled and reach Alpha Centauri it's Game over man.
About six years ago Japan tried to send a probe to Mars. It MISSED the plant so, they sent around the solar system to try to hit Mars again. When it finally got there, it had run out of fuel and died.
The had a little better luck with a comet probe. It made it there. I was supposed to retrieve samples. They think it might have gotten some. But the probe died on the way back to Earth.
Good luck next time!
Hate to get a weepy and jingoist, but isn't this just kinda pathetic? We sent people there almost 40 years ago, fer Christ's sake, and now we're in a "race" to send orbiters around it?
We should already have moon-based lasers to shoot down them godless foreign spy satellites before they enter orbit. We should own that goddamned moon, complete with a Disneyland! And blackjack! And hookers!
In fact, forget the moon!
Me. It's always too crowded at weekends.
This mission is just a warmup. Japan's future plans include a lunar mission in 2022 in which gigantic teflon and mylar sheets will be installed at strategic locations extending upward perpendicular to the surface. Upon completion of the complex in 2024, observers on Earth will see that the moon has been transformed into a giant Hello Kitty.
Tanegashima is "tiny" now? The island's 50 km long. It's got a city on it!
You do, of course, have some sort of data that backs up your statement that "Solar panels on or orbiting the moon could send enough energy back to the Earth to power everything we do"? Because I don't believe that for a second.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Don't worry, there's only the Toast King.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Why not just add your info to Wikipedia?
Actually, I just looked randomly at docforge's article on hash tables, and I can tell you the Wikipedia one is far more accurate and complete already.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
The difference between the two tons (or tonnes if you must) is so small that to qualify whether you're using one or the other is nit-picking[1]. As it is, unless the weight of the spacecraft is an exact number of tons, the journalistic rounding-off of the weight far exceeds this small difference in definitions.
[1]unless of course you're using the weight in orbital mechanics calculations, in which case you'll need better accruacy than the 1 significant digit reported here.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Nah, it just means northerly Germans need to stay away from the keyboard when they're drunk. Er, I mean, Dutchmen.
Ironically, the German (and Dutch, phonetically) word for the moon is the same as the French word for "world"...sans -e
Why don't you believe it?
The Sun lands over 1.3KW:m^2 on the Moon's surface. The Moon's surface is 3.8E7Km^2, or 3.8E13m^2. The world consumes about 15TW. 15TW is 3 hundredths of a percent of the Lunar insolation. Even at 10% efficiency, only 0.3% of the Lunar surface would power the Earth. Since the US consumes only about 3.3TW, we'd need only about 0.075% of the Lunar surface.
Facty enough for you?
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No. You neglected storage and conversion costs, as well as ALL the costs associated with travelling back and forth to the moon repeatedly.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Interesting choice of name. Selene was a lunar deity and is the Greek word for the moon.
No, it's not an interesting choice of name! It's like Anime going to the moon or sommat. What we need here is name like Susano and he's going to go all samurai on the Moon! Good grief, what is the world coming to? ;-)
china, not to be outdone by fierce rivals Japan have announced plans to lauch their own lunar surveyor named Ripple of Leaf Falling on Water of Still Pond at Sunrise
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No, I didn't discuss costs at all. I just said there is enough power. You denied that. Now you're moving the goalposts to talk about costs.
Besides, it's not even necessary to travel back and forth repeatedly. We could send a robot that manufactures the solar panels and other infrastructure on site, as has already been demonstrated. Your idea about storage and "conversion" costs is similarly hairsplitting. They're more than matched by the longterm political (eg. war) and materials costs of our current energy system, especially as the cheap oil runs out.
So I posted the correct outlook. And then I documented it with facts. You just want to say "no", regardless of the facts. Which is trivially easy, and doesn't earn any more work from me to clue you.
Goodbye.
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Now they will witness the moon bases that NASA has known about for many years. HINT Disclosure project.
The moon is made of rock. There is no life on it. There is no liquid water on it. We have sporadic indications that there may be frozen water in some deep, dark places.
There, that about sums it up. For my next post, I'll share what the nations of earth have learned from Mars after spending billions trying to reach it. That post will be a dupe of this one.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
In my day, we didn't even have paper and pencils. We had to solve long division by carving our work into our own arms with broken shards of glass. Now get off my lawn!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"Send enough energy back". Um....how, exactly?
Lasers to platforms floating at sea, then cables to land. The laser need send only 10x sunlight or so, not enough to cause real damage in any mishap, even though they should be in a looped interlock "dead man's switch" (ie. transistor). Just as long as they steadily transmit, unlike sunlight subject to weather, night and seasons.
This part of the technology was demo'ed to me and the Planetary Society by Grumman as long as 17 years ago. And they were pitching the Society (at Columbia U) on backing their going to Russia to get tech they knew was superior, for exactly this app: space-based solar platforms to return energy in lasers to the Earth's surface.
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"Send enough energy back". Um....how, exactly?
Really, really long extension cords.
Of course, extension cords that long would probably be pretty heavy, and impractical, so we'll make them out of something with negligible or zero mass -- like photons. Like microwaves, or lasers.
See Doc Ruby's post above for details.
-- Alastair
OK, call me no fun at all, but why the hell is anyone committing major resources to getting to the moon? As far as I understand, we're pretty confident it's a big lump of sand. No real advantage of being there vs being in orbit. Nice place for telescopes maybe, but so is high Earth orbit or a Legrange point. Other than a playpen for new technology, what's the draw? Mars at least has some interesting geology and the whole maybe-there's-microbes thing. But the moon? Lunacy! Why doesn't Google give an X-prize for orbiting a next-generation Hubble? Same industry-boosting tech trickle down, more or less, and then we get some science from it. A 10-pound rover with a Nikon on it doesn't really light my fire.
Funny thing is, that at least some ppl here are busy trying to calculate the copper that will be required for an extension cord that runs from the moon to the earth. And they will still not get it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
W. is not pushing the moon because of legacy. He is pushing for it to be able to place nukes and/or weapons on it. But, it is doubtful that it will happen. The truth is that we are shooting for the moon at least a decade ahead of any other nation. And with private enterprise pushing it, we will be on the moon by 2015. And how will they make their money back? Via solar energy. There is a LOT of evidence that indicates that we really have hit peak oil and that future issues will come about. Assuming that W. does not have enough brains to restart his fathers program of IFR (integral fast reactor), then it should be obvious that energy is going to be very expensive in the next decade. Private enterprise will make their money back in the exact way that you have suggested, in addition, to vacations, manufacturing, minerals, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
SELETE, a Japanese consortium of semiconductor manufacturing companies, collaborating on research.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Exploiting NEA resources is a much, MUCH better choice.
I don't have the time nor room to explain why here; read "Mining the Sky" by Lewis. He presents a great case, with math to back it up.
Cheers,
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
No, I replied to a specific poster who asked for some facts to back up what I said, saying they don't believe it for a minute. I supplied detailed facts, and they rejected it again, this time on the irrelevant (to our discussion) basis of costs.
I'm happy to discuss costs with someone else. Because, as I posted, their moving the goalposts to try to "win" an argument they'd just lost, instead of acknowledging they were wrong (and maybe that they were baselessly obnoxious), made me reject the idea of discussing anything with them, since they' were being such a jerk.
Now I get you, an Anonymous Coward, just repeating their same obnoxious charge. Why would I want to waste my time discussing it with you, when you've indicated only that you'll be as unpleasant to educate as they were?
These clues are free only so long as it amuses me. Bickering like a child is a turnoff.
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Damn straight.
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make install -not war
NASA will partner with Privater Enterprise by 2013 for getting to the moon. But so will the military. The reason is that the next x prize will no doubt be for putting man on the moon. Again. It will almost certainly be more for than 50 million (I would guess 100 million), and will be offered by several companies (like what I mentioned earlier) or possibly the USA. I would guess that it will be for time frame of 201[45]. This will lead to spacex, bigelow, and (armadillo|new shepard) going to the moon by then (If by the USA, then it will be open to others including l-mart). Once these companies are on the moon (with a bigelow space station), then the next president will stop NASA's effort WRT orien, esp if the merlin 2 engine is in active development (that is if the plan is to go with the Ares V rather than the direct derivitate).
What will be interesting to see is how other nations respond. EU, Canada, australia, Japan, and probably India will pull tight with us. China will denounce us. The real question is, what will Russia do? Will W. have pissed them off so much that they decide to go it with China? If so, then real estate will suddenly matter (we will build out both poles quickly). If they do not, then real estate will not be an issue. As it is, China is making steady progress, partially on their own, and partially by Russia. But China is several decades from being able to put a base on the moon. With Russia's help, they can be on their by 2020-2025 timeframe.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ah, yes, the reason I tagged the article "touhouproject".