Back to the Moon - by Hickman - thoughts? (spoilers if you haven't read it)

With all the talk about going back to the moon, I found this as an audiobook
and have been listening to it for several days now.

I know it is a novel and I have already noted several things that there is
just no way they could happen (a Soyuz coming out from the earth, going past
the shuttle on its return, and then turning around and coming underneath it?
C'mon, a returning shuttle would be going 20,000+ mph and you're going to
fly out to it, then turn around and sneak under it?)

Anyone know of a review site or link where some of these were collected?

Or, did anyone here read it and care to comment?

Gene
(Wishing we really WERE going back to the moon)
--
* These statements and opinions are mine alone and do not reflect my
employer's views. *

"Gene Wright" writes:

With all the talk about going back to the moon, I found this as an audiobook
and have been listening to it for several days now.

I know it is a novel and I have already noted several things that there is
just no way they could happen (a Soyuz coming out from the earth, going past
the shuttle on its return, and then turning around and coming underneath it?
C'mon, a returning shuttle would be going 20,000+ mph

Nearer to 25,000, FWIW. How is said shuttle going to acquire this
speed, and what thermal protection system does it have?

"Gene Wright" wrote in message ...
With all the talk about going back to the moon, I found this as an audiobook
and have been listening to it for several days now.

I know it is a novel and I have already noted several things that there is
just no way they could happen (a Soyuz coming out from the earth, going past
the shuttle on its return, and then turning around and coming underneath it?
C'mon, a returning shuttle would be going 20,000+ mph and you're going to
fly out to it, then turn around and sneak under it?)

Anyone know of a review site or link where some of these were collected?

Or, did anyone here read it and care to comment?

Gene
(Wishing we really WERE going back to the moon)

Going back to the moon may have to be for robots, not for mankind. At
least not until we have a working lander of sufficient shielding for
radiation as well as for fending off all those pesky meteorites.

LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator plus Counter Mass and new ISS) or
GMDE (Guth Moon Dirt Express), plus lots of other related stuff, with
more on the way;
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-cm-ccm-01.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-hybrid-irc.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-h2o2-irrce.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-lm-1.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-basalt.htm

Regards, Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA

"The moon, the Apollo ruse/sting, the snookered fools we are"

The lunar environment is obviously not moderated by any significant
atmosphere nor Van Allen belt, thus of the solar/cosmic, cosmic and
gamma ray exposures are unimpeded, and as such the radiation
environment is hardly being stabilized nor averaged over time. It's
either too damn hot or too damn cold or too freaking lethal unless
you're enjoying all of it by earthshine, though not to mention having
to avoid the somewhat pesky issue of it raining micro meteorites.

The space/solar weather of such nasty stuff includes a great deal of
the relatively passive warmth of IR, on into the somewhat lethal UV
spectrums, either of which can be fended off by relatively low
technology, although UV/c can start to be a bit penetrating unless
there's an artificial barrier of sufficient solids, such as any good
moon suit will suffice.

Higher frequency and thus high energy is not so easily stopped by any
moon suit, and of what is being slowed down and/or partially absorbed
by the suit, or by way of most any substance, is what creates those
hard x-ray class radiation issues. Actually the greater the material
density the greater the secondary impact becomes, especially at the
thickness and/or density per square centimeter of what our Apollo
mission had to work with.

Of too little shielding and you're affected by the direct radiation
impact, of thicker shield and/or of greater density obviously blocks
more of the primary influx while creating greater and even somewhat
more lethal hard x-ray class dosage. Depending upon what sort of
influx or solar flak is hitting your exterior environment, such as
cosmic and/or gamma can obviously make a rather tremendous difference
of mostly negative issues as far as protecting life as we know it.
Just like our sun can deliver relatively passive and low energy
dosages, while at times the solar output offers the capability and/or
intensity of exceeding several thousand rads per hour, which is not a
serious exposure problem if you've got a healthy Van Allen zone plus
tonnes of atmosphere per m2 as your shield, and not that thousands of
folks don't go about expiring each and every year specifically due to
their receiving too much solar and cosmic radiation.

When those several thousand rads per hour impact a substance such as
clumping moon dirt, a matrix of many things that should represent
3.4+g/cc, this is where the somewhat lethal solar flux that's just
plain old nasty becomes downright lethal within an hour's worth of
exposure. Thus the lunar surface exposed to a passive solar
environment might lull itself into creating a mere 100 rads (1 Sv) per
day (24 hours or a respectable 4.17 rads/hr), although the sun wasn't
in any passive mode nor was the solar activity sufficient as to fend
off the cosmic and gamma ray aspects, thus the combined surface impact
for whatever and/or whomever was certainly capable of creating 360
rads per day (15 rads/hr), that is if you're honestly accounting for
the secondary contributions of what the lunar surface itself was
capable of creating.

Your standard issue moon suit can cut the likes of direct solar
radiation, mostly because at least for some of the passive/thermal
solar event timeline isn't itself of lethal hard x-ray class, although
of whatever does impact the suit and mostly of what impacts the lunar
surface will be creating a fairly large TBI worthy dosage. More recent
solar events such as those of October/November 2003 were off the
scale, so strong that of our best instruments were essentially blown
away. Fortunately there were only much smaller ongoing solar events
during the Apollo mission era, which was a good thing as for fending
off some of the cosmic class radiation, though representing a truly
bad sort of thing as for any space expedition that's as close as we
were to our sun.

As for being further away from the sun, such as Mars, offers a solar
environment safety improvement, though somewhat worse off as for
allowing more cosmic radiation to impact and subsequently interact
with whatever and/or whomever is anywhere near and/or situated behind
a substance that's not sufficiently thick enough as to block and
otherwise absorb all of the influx, plus having to subdue secondary
hard x-ray class radiation before it gets to your butt. It seems we
currently have a wee bit of a problem in placing sufficient mass into
orbit, much less headed off to places like the moon or Mars, thus our
manned missions off to whatever is residing outside our Van Allen zone
of death are essentially unresolved issues as of today, though not
insurmountable.

The absolute proof that it's truly nasty beyond our Van Allen zone of
death is in the pudding, in the fact that there's been an effort to
skew and/or cloak the truthful data, as for example in providing
absolutely no access to any of the original negatives or film
transparencies of these Apollo missions. At this point I'm not even
suggesting upon obtaining an actual image frame, but merely of the
leader and/or trail which couldn't possibly have betrayed and/or
impacted upon one of those infamous images, of which there are 10's of
thousands of said frames to select from, of which the public has
viewed copies and/or prints from less than 1%, leaving 99% of those
available frames (stills and movie film) nonutilized, perhaps because
those weren't all that great to look at, though of what the image
contains is rather insignificant as for otherwise determining
radiation, of which just about any portion of film, from an actual
frame or of what's between or of the leader/trailer portions would
have done just fine and dandy.

Though sadly, at this late time, there'd be no way of identifying the
film as for being actual Apollo related, unless those were of viable
lunar landscape images included. As for obtaining a trailer/leader
portion of processed film would simply be unreliable and entirely
meaningless since there'd be no certainty of it actually being what it
is.

Using an electron microscope, or even a sufficiently good digital scan
of a section of even a film leader and/or trailer could have revealed
the exact dosages of radiation exposure, down to the individual
millirad or millirem level, as even a single millirad worth of
recorded dosage could have been detected, though this would have taken
100+ millirad in order to have become observed to the human eye, of
which all such Apollo mission film should have received at least
several rads/rems if not hundreds. Human cells will for the most part
recover from such TBI dosages, though film offers a one-way recording
of the radiation accumulation, with or without ever being exposed to
taking pictures.

Of course at this point there's no simple and/or definitive method of
identifying a primary radiation impact from that of a secondary,
although the electron microscope could help to determined the various
wavelength differences affecting those film emulsion crystals. Film
crystals being mostly analog, but also somewhat digital in that every
individual crystal or photon bucket can be affected to a differing
degree, as there are far more of those emulsion crystals (photon
buckets) per square mm than our finest CCD technology of even today,
thus a great deal of information has always been available, far
exceeding the optical lens resolution, including the detection of
mostly near UV starlight upon those crystals. But oddly all access has
been avoided for the rather obvious reasons, of reasons that must
include the fact of such imaging wasn't necessarily accomplished on
the lunar surface.

This doesn't represent that our Apollo missions didn't for a time exit
the Van Allen zone of death, possibly even to orbit the moon and of
robotically deploying any number of experiments, as even a lunar orbit
would have been quite risky business and of itself somewhat TBI
worthy, although nowhere as bad off as for the actual solar and cosmic
irradiated surface.

Since there's supposedly been absolutely nothing for NASA or as for
those worshiping of Apollo folks to fear nor lose, absolutely no
possible damage to an original frame of their precious film, the only
remaining fact of the matter becomes rather too obvious. Not that
there's plenty of image contents worth arguing about, like the 50+%
reflective index that's clearly observed within so may of the images,
and for the rather odd lack of sufficient meteorites and various
impact shards strewn about the lunar morgue, of a fully exposed
surface which should have been at least as covered by such debris as
Mars is, if not a whole lot more so.

Actually, the ongoing numbers of micro meteorites impacting the lunar
surface at 5+km/s should have been at least one per m2/day, although
one per m2/hour shouldn't have been unexpected, and of any suitable
lander constructed as for fending off such an influx. We now realize
that the lander was anything but sufficiently constructed as to fend
off much more than clumping moon dirt, among many other deficiencies
which included radiation abatement that obviously wasn't worth squat,
except for avoiding a UV class sun burn.

Jay Windley wrote:
"It is simply not necessary to follow all lines of investigation to
some absolute standard of completeness in order to draw reliable
conclusions."

and

"The search for truth is not a game in which evidence is doled out
according to some strategy. It is based on full and accurate
disclosure of the facts for examination."

Jay Windley's first quote is quite true to life, although his second
quote is surely from another planet besides Earth, perhaps from
another dimension to boot.

I guess I'm still the village idiot that's thinking way outside the
box, as for our going back to the moon (if ever) may have to be for
robots, not for mankind. At least not until we have obtained a
sufficiently astronaut pilot documented and thus working lander of
sufficient shielding as for radiation as well as for fending off all
those pesky micro meteorites.

LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator plus Counter Mass and new ISS) or
GMDE (Guth Moon Dirt Express), plus there's lots of other related
stuff, with more on the way (incorrect math, poor grammar and my
dyslexic syntax to boot);
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-cm-ccm-01.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-hybrid-irc.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-h2o2-irrce.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-lm-1.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-basalt.htm

Regards, Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA