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New Radar Maps of Moon
SpaceAdmiral writes to mention that NASA has some new high-resolution radar maps of the Moon obtained by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The new images have also been used to create a simulation of the Moon's day and a movie of a Moon landing from the point of view of the astronaut. "NASA is eying the Moon's south polar region as a possible site for future outposts. The location has many advantages; for one thing, there is evidence of water frozen in deep dark south polar craters. Water can be split into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to burn as rocket fuel--or astronauts could simply drink it. Planners are also looking for 'peaks of eternal light.' Tall polar mountains where the sun never sets might be a good place for a solar power station."
That's no moon, it's an overused joke!
Water can be split into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to burn as rocket fuel...
And if the astronauts are breathing all of the O2, what oxidizing agent do they plan to burn the H2 with?
Journalists should really have some knowledge of the topic they're writing about before spouting their blather...
Boston! I hope you can see this, because I'm doing it as hard as I can!
which we call 'the moon'
davejenkins.com |
Because there's no way in Hell you're getting OFF the moon with ion drives. 1/6th gravity is still way, way more attractive force than an ion drive is capable of generating. But yeah, once you're back in (relatively) zero-gravity space, toodle around in your ion drives all you want.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Of course solar energy isn't going to work if you're sending probes out of the solar system, you sort of start to run out of sunlight after a while.
However, when it comes to a lunar base, solar power (if available all the time) would probably be better than hauling uranium up from the earth or having to search for and mine some on the moon (I'm not sure how much uranium there would be on the moon either, since it's less dense than the earth and probably contains fewer heavy elements).
what's that now?
There was nothing to do on the moon for the past 30 years. But we're running into the limits of earth-based telescopes, and of course there's the possibility of fusion any time now... Both those are things that weren't true in the 70's.
Also, at least as importantly, there are now other people who want to go there again and might be able to. When we stopped going to the moon, russia couldn't afford it any more and they were being torn apart anyway. Now china, india, russia, japan, and more might want to go to the moon... and might be able to before long... so we have to as well. Otherwise they good the good locations if we ever *do* need to go back. It's also being given as a stepping stone to mars. That might not be a great reason, but enough people think it is a good reason that it will be one of the reasons we finally go to the moon if we do go any time soon.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
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. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Not to mention that the sparse ice regolith deposits would have to be extensively strip mined, presumably by nuclear powered equipment, and then chemically dissociated, another energy intensive process, to produce a minute amount of fuel and oxidizer. All this on a topography with 37,000 feet of elevation change. It is surprising how silly ideas like this persist.
an ill wind that blows no good
I was seven years old when Apollo XI landed on the moon. I grew up with the space race, and that was big part of what got me hooked on science and engineering. I watched every mission with absolute fascination, and dreamed endlessly about how space travel would continue to develop during my lifetime.
Now, nearly 40 years later, we've barely made progress on manned space travel. I am amazed and thrilled by the scientific successes achieved through unmanned satellites and probes. But humans haven't been further from Earth than San Diego is from Los Angeles in decades.
It's gotten to the point that I don't even want to read articles about NASA's manned space program anymore. What they're actually doing is pathetic; the aging, dangerous shuttles exist only to service ISS, and ISS exists only as a place for the shuttles to go. And NASA's plans for future moon and Mars missions are so long-term as to be meaningless; why talk about building solar power stations on eternally sunlit peaks when development of a new heavy-lift launch system is getting nowhere?
It's astonishing to me that I have gone from being thrilled with manned space travel to wincing when I read about it, but that's what has happened.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Yeah, the moon has no atmosphere and a very low escape velocity (only ~1.5 km/s!, less than 5% of the kinetic energy required to escape earth).
So you run a mag-lev track around an arc and use your ion drive on it, or use a linear motor for the initial acceleration. Probably you'll stay away from things like rail guns though, unless your goal is to shell the earth with nearly useless slugs o' matter.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
All the ingredients to make solar cells and power conduits are right there in the Lunar regolith: silicon and aluminum. Build a couple of factory crawlers, start them out someplace on the equator and have them just crawl around the whole moon, building and deploying solar cells connected to the aluminum conductor grid at the same time.
When they're done, you have a moon-circling power distribution grid, half of which is in sunlight at any given time. Okay, the initial setup may be a little beyond what we can do now, but...
(In effect, the polar 'power towers' are the same idea but with a much smaller radius.)
-- Alastair