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The Next US Moonshot Will Launch From Virginia
As reported by the Washington Post, a U.S. spacecraft headed for the moon (to circle it, though, not to land) is to be launched for the first time from the facility at Virginia's Wallops Island. If you'll be in the D.C. area on the night of September 6 and the weather cooperates enough for a launch, it should be worth staying up for. "The robotic mission is to collect detailed information about the moon's thin atmosphere. Sometimes thought to be nonexistent, the lunar atmosphere has been described as extremely tenuous and fragile, but present. According to the space agency, the launch will record many firsts. One will be the first launch beyond Earth orbit from the Virginia facility. It also will be the first flight for the Minotaur V rocket, NASA said. NASA said the five-stage Air Force rocket is an excess ballistic missile that was transformed into a space-launch vehicle. It will boost the space probe into position for it to reach lunar orbit."
Though the satellite is NASA's, the launch will be controlled by Orbital Sciences.
I thought the physics of this kind of stuff favored being closer to the equator? Why would you move north of Canaveral?
Says who? According to Mirriam-Webster, a moon shot (TWO WORDS) is "a spacecraft mission to the moon". Dictionary.com says the same.
Yeah, Wikipedia says a moon shot is specifically a manned mission, but it says that on a short disambiguation page without any citations. Wikipedia is pretty reliable -- most of the time. Not when the article is without citations and has a short edit history.
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Even though there's a thin atmosphere on the Moon it is constantly hammered by Solar Heating and the Solar Winds. It's really an exosphere rather than an atmosphere. I doubt any dust raised by impacts would last there very long at all but also remember that it's constantly pelted by all kinds of cosmic detritus hence all the craters so it would be difficult to discern if any debris co-mingling with the gases was man-made or a natural occurrence.
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I wondered the same thing. further there's a whole cadre of instrumentation that needs to be built up to create a valid launch range, and we already have that, so why spend all that money on something closer to D.C.?
Wallops Flight Facility is already heavily instrumented and has been in operation for over 50 years. There have been 16,000 launches from that facility including orbital launches.
Now as for why they are doing this particular mission at WFF instead of Canaveral, I have no idea. Could be an effort by NASA to cater to a wider swath of congress. Could be military related in some way. Might be that the resources for that particular mission were more conveniently located there. I'm sure there is a reason but it isn't obvious what that reason might be.
Forgive him, he is a product of modern education. He got 66.7% of the correct letters in the right order and that is clearly a pass these days.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The word is still in use. And it took me only a few minutes to find this 1958 citation where "moon shot" refers to a potential Russian mission to set a small payload to the moon, and this 1959 one where it's used to refer to Lunik II. And this. And this.
I'm sorry, but you're incorrect. Since the 1950s, "moon shot" means shooting a rocket at the moon. Nothing is implied in the term about what's on or inside the rocket.
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Minotaur V is a very Kerbal design. Jury-rigging multiple solid stages together. Normally this kind of flight would use a high performance liquid upper stage capable of multiple restarts and the design makes very little sense, except when you have some never-needed and phased-out ICBMs hanging around waiting for disposal AND you have a long-running relationship with the company that makes solid rockets (ATK) for ICBMs and for small upper stages.... Then the total cost of doing it like this becomes quite economical and, well, better use the ICBMs like this than to just scrap 'em.
First three stages = LGM-118A Peacekeeper ICBM. And since those three stages won't get you there just yet (Peacekeeper being designed for lobbing nukes to other side of the world rather than orbiting stuff), you need an upper stage on top of the three stages... and because ATK's biggest one can't do the trick, you stack two of them in slightly different sizes... So, bam, 5 stages.
Na, your all wrong. A moonshot is what me and my frat buddies did on the front lawn of the Pi-Phi's after a nights drinking........
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Why use a multibillion dollar tried and tested launch facility, like the ones in Florida and Califorinia, when you can build a new one in a poor location?
Wallops Flight Facility has been in operation for over 50 years and has launched over 16,000 rockets including orbital missions. But don't let those actual facts get in the way of your prejudiced rant.
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