The Moon is no longer Rocket Science

I'm surprised that no one thus far has stated an obvious fact about
returning to the Moon: we already know how to do it.

When Kennedy announced the goal of going to the Moon, no one had ever been
past low Earth orbit (and no American had ever even been that far). No one
had done a rendezvous in orbit, no one had built any rocket that was even
close to being able to lift the payload to the Moon that would be necessary,
nor had they built any reliable large thrust rocket motors.

No one knew the effects of weightlessness on man (Gagarin's flight was only
an hour and a half), no one had (so far as I know) tried re-starting a
rocket in 0g, no one had traveled through the Van Allen belts, no one had
ventured into the vacuum of space in a space suit.

Nor did we know anything about the geology of the lunar surface beyond what
could be seen in Earth-based telescopes. (Was there a layer of dust? How
rough was the lunar surface?)

No one had zip in the way of computers to plot trajectories, or design
spacecraft. No one had a proven way of getting back through the Earth's
atmosphere. (Gagarin had done it, as had a few unmanned satellites--from
low Earth orbit, starting at a speed two miles per second less than what a
capsule returning from the moon would travel.)

Then it was Rocket Science. Now it is Rocket Engineering.

Now going to Mars--that's still Rocket Science. Sign me up!
Mike Maxwell
maxwell at ldc dot upenn dot edu

On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 14:42:40 -0500, "Mike Maxwell"
wrote:

I'm surprised that no one thus far has stated an obvious fact about
returning to the Moon: we already know how to do it.

Then why aren't we...? ;-)

Len Lekx wrote:
I'm surprised that no one thus far has stated an obvious fact about
returning to the Moon: we already know how to do it.

Then why aren't we...? ;-)

$ :-(

(and lack of vision)

Mike

"Mike Maxwell" wrote in message ...
I'm surprised that no one thus far has stated an obvious fact about
returning to the Moon: we already know how to do it.

When Kennedy announced the goal of going to the Moon, no one had ever been
past low Earth orbit (and no American had ever even been that far). No one
had done a rendezvous in orbit, no one had built any rocket that was even
close to being able to lift the payload to the Moon that would be necessary,
nor had they built any reliable large thrust rocket motors.

No one knew the effects of weightlessness on man (Gagarin's flight was only
an hour and a half), no one had (so far as I know) tried re-starting a
rocket in 0g, no one had traveled through the Van Allen belts, no one had
ventured into the vacuum of space in a space suit.

Nor did we know anything about the geology of the lunar surface beyond what
could be seen in Earth-based telescopes. (Was there a layer of dust? How
rough was the lunar surface?)

No one had zip in the way of computers to plot trajectories, or design
spacecraft. No one had a proven way of getting back through the Earth's
atmosphere. (Gagarin had done it, as had a few unmanned satellites--from
low Earth orbit, starting at a speed two miles per second less than what a
capsule returning from the moon would travel.)

Then it was Rocket Science. Now it is Rocket Engineering.

Now going to Mars--that's still Rocket Science. Sign me up!
Mike Maxwell
maxwell at ldc dot upenn dot edu

Good points, perhaps true, but still:

- No one has spent three months on the lunar surface
- No space suit has survived 50 lunar walks
- No one has put an ISS sized station on the moon
- No one has tried burying part of a base to reduce radiation and
temperature control problems
- No one has extracted oxygen from lunar soil
- No one has spent a lunar night on the surface, where no solar power
or heating is available
- No one knows the effect of long term 1/6g on humans
- No capsule has reentered Earth's atmosphere from the moon more than
once
- ....

I think the failures of ISS provide more lessons than the successes of
Apollo.

Alex

Alex Terrell wrote:
Good points, perhaps true, but still:
- No one has spent three months on the lunar surface
No, but someone has spent four or five times that long in orbit.

- No space suit has survived 50 lunar walks
Yes, and?

- No one has put an ISS sized station on the moon
Does it need to be that big? I don't know.

- No one has tried burying part of a base to reduce radiation and
temperature control problems
That might be one approach. OTOH, the ISS isn't buried. (Admittedly, it
doesn't spend two weeks in the dark and two weeks in the light.)

- No one has extracted oxygen from lunar soil
No one has extracted it from orbit, either. Obviously it would be better to
extract it from the 'soil'.

- No one has spent a lunar night on the surface, where no solar power
or heating is available
Right, you need a source of power, presumably nuclear. And yes, there are
issues with sending that up from the surface of the Earth. (Maybe some day
we can extract radioactive materials from the Moon, but that's a long ways
off. I have no idea whether there are any such sources on the Moon--its
geology is so different, for all I know it has _no_ mineral ores.)

- No one knows the effect of long term 1/6g on humans
No, but we know the effect of 0g.

- No capsule has reentered Earth's atmosphere from the moon more than
once
And? Who says it has to?

I think the failures of ISS provide more lessons than the successes of
Apollo.
Right, as well as the successes of ISS (and the failures of Apollo). You
make my point: we know much more now.

--Mike

Another of my positive contributions as for doing our moon first,
instead of Mars or even Europa, though I'll certainly favor any honest
thoughts upon the likes of Venus.

"Moon, Mars, Venus, Sirius and Earth (so what's the difference?)"

Our Apollo moon only stinks to high heaven, while Mars sucks away at
critical expertise as well as limited resources, and otherwise
extracting billions away from intellectually as well as physically
starving folks. I wonder which is worse off, being a Cathar or another
NASA hugger that's intent upon skewing morality as well as physics
into the nearest space toilet.

I don't mean to be such a total pest about our unique moon but, even
those moons of Mars rotate as unsynchronized about their home world,
as do all other recorded moons, except for the one orbiting Earth.
Now, I wouldn't be having to do this if folks weren't so absolutely
opposing the notions of there being other life besides what's existing
on this Earth. I mean, give me a break, are these folks actually that
pathetic and anti-life or what?

Phobos mean radius: 21 km (13 mi)
Distance from Mars: 9,380 km (5,830 mi)
Period of Rotation: 0.3188 days

Deimos mean radius: 12 km (8 mi)
Distance from Mars: 23,460 km (14,580 mi)
Period of rotation: 1.2625 days

BTW; the mean density of Mars is: 3.95 grams/cm³
which in itself seems is a whole lot more like the composition of our
moon than Earth.

Jupiter's rotation Period: 9.92 hours
Of the 5 primary and 12 or so other moons of Jupiter, even though
there should have been if not concurrently tidal forces at play, yet
there seems to be none of these moons in synchronization with their
home world. Thus once again our unique moon seems somewhat out of step
with the trend of such things.

Another nagging consideration upon those meteorites and shards strewn
about the surface of Mars, considering the entire lack of any
atmospheric buffer zone associated with our moon, surely the lunar
surface environment must be considerably more intensified with the
same sorts of debris, as clearly similar if not worse to what was
imaged by the Mars pathfinder mission, and only recently being
confirmed by what's being imaged as we speak.

As I've stipulated on other pages, the odds of yourself being impacted
by at least a dust-bunny or a gram worth of micro meteorite of
something that's obviously unimpaired from colliding with the moon is
actually quit good, whereas I've averaged those sorts of impacts at 10
km/s, as you must realize that our moon is traveling through space at
roughly 30 km/s (+/- lunar velocity with respect to Earth) thereby
colliding with numerous debris in addition to that which is simply
targeting the moon and being accelerated at the 1.6 m/s/s as captured
by lunar gravity.

So, according to those Apollo images, that are of potentially far
better resolution than even the most recent Mars images, especially if
those quality negatives and/or transparencies were to be scanned at
9600 dpi or even 19,200 dpi, even though somehow these terrific frames
recorded such damn few meteorites and shards, but mostly that of a
desert like surface reflecting average illumination quite nicely at
roughly 55%, without any perceptible mineral colors at that. So, the
question is, which of these two sources of images (Mars/moon) is true
to life, as surely one of them is skewed.

Mars images: http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12/mars/graphics/
http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/...s/80894_fu.jpg

Moon images:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/pla...tt_boulder.jpg
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/ht...h_40_5886.html
http://home.arcor.de/yoiks/mondbilde...-107-17446.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/as16-107-17446.jpg

There are certainly far better and worse Apollo lunar photo examples
(depending upon what you're looking for), though you'll still need to
consistantly disregard the total lack of any blast crater, as well as
for those illumination hot spot issues, never minding that for some
unexplained reasons not even the star Sirius could have been imaged,
though apparently careful attention was always given to exclude upon
such horrifically bright stars, not to mention avoiding Venus like the
plague (Venus must have always been on the other side of the sun), and
especially avoiding any of those frames from including Earth along
with a lunar landscape with an astronaut were taboo.

Notice how the final redo issued by NASA on the as16-107-17446.jpg is
rather significantly lesser image quality than of their original, of
which the original includes that infamous "C" rock among a few other
tidbits, but also notice how the background terrain is suddenly so
entirely devoid of meteorite debris, and so nicely illuminating at
that, without ever a single dark basalt rock anywhere within the image
to be seen, much less of any hint of even a vibrant star that still
should have been recorded as a relatively dim point of illumination
(most stars being highly UV worthy and there being no atmosphere to
block/filter such intense UV photons).

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/
Notice how much reflective brightness the lunar surface continually
offers in respect to those 80% reflective moon suits, then notice how
the majority of rocks are actually brighter than their suroundings. I
could certainly go on and on but, what's the point, or perhaps this is
also where we should apply our "high standards and accountability" and
"so what's the difference" factor.

Apparently the fact that there were so few, and otherwise relatively
minimal meteorites and shards strewn about isn't supposed to suggest
anything either. Although, if you'd care to go through any number of
other Apollo images, of which we've all see more than our fair share,
please do offer your notions as to why there's so damn few of those
meteorites and shards, especially when the overall lunar surface had
been so much more so mega impact pulverised and has remained entirely
vulnerable than even Mars. The fact that the lunar surface as
portrayed by those Apollo images seemed to be so darn reflective is
yet another skewed avenue of something that's never been resolved
because, if there were the expected average of 11% reflective index
involved (darkish basalt and meteorite strewn and all), as then the
imaging of those absolutely vibrant stars would have been a rather
simple task, and even somewhat difficult to have avoided and/or pass
up, unless you were an absolute village idiot moron on drugs.

Of course, there's always been a few dozen other pesky issues, as well
as far better qualified folks having their say, where all of which
must be disregarded about their opposing those infamous Apollo
missions on more grounds than I ever imagined. So, all you'll need to
do is skew those laws of physics and to apply whatever conditional
parameters whenever necessary, and lo and behold, as in right out of
that space toilet, in spite of the total lack of whatever rational
sciences, much less independent or even technical expertise support
for those missions, somehow they all happened exactly like our NASA
stipulated, and the last time I'd checked under my pillow, the tooth
fairy left me a million bucks, plus another million of those Halburton
stock options.

Besides all of this pathetically stupid Apollo "yes we did", "no they
didn't" crap, why don't we just cut to the chase by utilizing our
resident warlord's "so what's the difference" WMD policy, and call it
good.

Latest Sirius entry, along with graphics (Feb. 03, 2004):
****** http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-sirius-trek.htm
* http://guthvenus.tripod.com/synchronized-moon.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-earth-venus.htm

Calling Venus;
If you're perchance the least bit interested in the truly hot prospect
of achieving interplanetary communications, as for that quest I've
added lots into this following page;
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-interplanetary.htm

BTW; There's still way more than a darn good chance of there being
other life of some sort existing on Venus:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm

Some good but difficult warlord readings: SADDAM HUSSEIN and The SAND
PIRATES
http://mittymax.com/Archive/0085-Sad...andPirates.htm

David Sereda (loads of his honest ideas and notions upon UV energy),
for best impact on this one, you'll really need to barrow his video:
http://www.ufonasa.com

The latest round of insults to this Mars/Moon/Venus class action
injury:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-what-if.htm

Some other recent file updates:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/moon-04.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-gwb-moon.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-illumination.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-moon-02.htm

Regards. Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA

I lied, this part is serious "Rocket Science".

Though instead of our flushing hundreds of billions and decades into
the frozen and thoroughly irradiated to death Mars space toilet, then
having to continually dodge them meteorites, I do believe this lunar
goal is worth supporting, even if it's via our resident "so what's the
difference" WMD warlord. Though as for starters, we may need some
actual lunar science data that's of "real time".

If we're not there first, it'll either be China or perhaps Russia, or
even the ESA group that certainly has nothing to lose.

"Deploying dozens of small javelin lunar probes on the cheap"

As just an example;
I'm thinking that of a modern day probe with a suitable battery and
compact PV cell array that's either tightly integral and/or
subsequently deploy able upon impact, that perhaps this form of micro
instrument and of it's data/transponder could be comprised of as
little as 1 kg. Of course, of your vastly superior "all-knowing" probe
can become whatever, 10 kg 1 t.

As for my initial delivery scheme, I'm thinking of involving hydrogen
or whatever gas filled balloons, actually quite a good number of
balloons within one another, and obviously not the least bit for their
buoyancy, but as for spreading out the impact to a rather sizable zone
of perhaps as much as 10 m2, as opposed to the instrument probe impact
zone representing as little as a mere 0.001 m2 (25 mm upper body with
a tapered 25 mm 5 mm spike end), and of what this relatively small
instrument/probe may be looking somewhat like a miniture spear or half
javelin.

1/2*M*V2 = impact energy or equivlent mass, whereas the V = 1.6 m/s/s

In other words, I'm suggesting that the initial impact of this small
probe can be spread conservatively by at least 1000:1, therefore if
the raw velocity at impact were to become 5 km/s, thus a 1 kg/probe
that was surrounded by another kg worth of balloons and sub/micro
balloons that would impact at an overall worth of 25,000 tonnes,
though this energy is subsequently being spread over the 10 m2, thus
the actual javelin probe body of 0.001 m2 should become merely 2.5
tonnes, though applying another 10X fudge factor makes for 25 t.

Any way you'd care to slice it, 25 tonnes worth of probe impact is
still one hell of an impact, though I tend to believe this could be
survivable, especially since the notion of delivering any decent probe
will ideally need to be firmly implanted into lunar soil and rock, the
deeper the better, as long as the upper protion remains exposed for
receiving and transmitting data.

Obviously, if this turned out being the 25 tonnes worth of impact
survival, as representing too much to ask for, then enlarging the
balloon and of increasing the numbers of the smaller balloons within
should further spread this impact, thus decelerating and taking the
brunt of the probe delivery impact. Another avenue is to lengthen upon
the spike end, at the risk of increasing the mass, as the compression
of this semi-hallow javelin will also absorb energy. Obviously the
deployment and desired free-fall vertical positioning will need to be
gyroscopic, though the probe itself could be initially set spinning at
100,000 rpm, adding somewhat a friction drilling attribute to the
probe impact.

The lunar soil (supposedly 11% reflective index and of clumping moon
dirt) should account for another degree of impact deceleration, then
of the penetrated rock and I'll assume some degree of compression of
the javelin probe tip itself should absorb whatever remains. At least
if all fails, the value per micro-probe isn't going to bust the world
bank, nor stress the technology expertise to any breaking point, as if
need be a dozen of every required instrument function can be deployed,
so that if only one survives the delivery, we've accomplished the
task.

Unlike those Apollo landers, every facet of these probe deployments
can be fully tested and confirmed on Earth prior to accomplishing the
real thing.

Of course, having a fully fly-by-wire robotic lander certainly would
be nice, though a wee bit spendy, and I'll suppose that of some day
our crack NASA teams will actually obtain that degree of purely rocket
powered controlled flight capability, as otherwise the next best
technology is obviously what the recent Mars probes utilized in order
to decelerate their impact. Since there's so little difference between
the thin Mars atmosphere and that of the moon, where actually the
lesser gravity of the moon should almost offset this disadvantage, so
that such a well proven method of essentially dropping objects safely
onto such a foreign surface seems almost like way-overkill for the
task of delivering such small (1 kg) probes onto and preferably as
partially impaled into the moon, though dozens of such probes might be
safely deployed by one such velocity breaking maneuver, such as
bringing everything to a vertical velocity of zero at the elevation of
1 km would certainly do wonders for alleviating the horrific impact
that's otherwise faced with the 1.6 m/s/s influence of lunar gravity.

A raw javelin probe of 1 kg, as dropped from 1 km, should impact at
roughly 0.8 t (800 kg), well within survival specifications of even
toys-R-us, which might not even represent sufficient impact for
implanting these lightweight probes.

Keeping in mind that shape and/or size is not a velocity factor, other
than spreading the impact energy over a greater or lesser zone,
whereas the Hindenburg of 242 metric tons and of representing more
than 210,000 m3 will obtain the exact same impact velocity as a
bowling ball or that of a dust-bunny, identical velocity as long as
each were introduced from the same altitude.

Of course, this is all purely "one-way", and never given a second
thought of our retrieving anything but measured data, nor of having to
sustain human or other life by shielding them from the truly horrific
elements of various lunar exposures.

I believe such small/compact probes can be engineered to survive these
sorts of deployment impacts, as well as sufficiently immune to such
horrific radiation, and of their avoiding meteorite impact, as their
odds are greatly improved upon by the sheer fact that these compact
probes represent such a small target, though eventually they'll each
be pulverised by something.

Regards. Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA

Guth/IEIS~GASA wrote:

Our Apollo moon only stinks to high heaven, while Mars sucks away at
critical expertise as well as limited resources, and otherwise
extracting billions away from intellectually as well as physically
starving folks. I wonder which is worse off, being a Cathar or another
NASA hugger that's intent upon skewing morality as well as physics
into the nearest space toilet.

Umm.. what would be wrong if one was[1] a Cathar?


I don't mean to be such a total pest about our unique moon but, even
those moons of Mars rotate as unsynchronized about their home world,
as do all other recorded moons, except for the one orbiting Earth.

The moon orbiting earth is not the only tidaly locked moon.

[snip]


Jupiter's rotation Period: 9.92 hours

You do understand that Jupiter is a gas giant and hence different
lattitudes of Jupiter rotate at a different rate?

Of the 5 primary and 12 or so other moons of Jupiter, even though
there should have been if not concurrently tidal forces at play, yet
there seems to be none of these moons in synchronization with their
home world. Thus once again our unique moon seems somewhat out of step
with the trend of such things.

?????


As I've stipulated on other pages, the odds of yourself being impacted

But in addition to stipulating so, you should also give evidence
on which that stipulation would be based on and not forget to calculate
how much the mass of Moon would have increased over the past century
if it was true.

by at least a dust-bunny or a gram worth of micro meteorite of
something that's obviously unimpaired from colliding with the moon is
actually quit good, whereas I've averaged those sorts of impacts at 10
km/s, as you must realize that our moon is traveling through space at
roughly 30 km/s (+/- lunar velocity with respect to Earth) thereby
colliding with numerous debris in addition to that which is simply
targeting the moon and being accelerated at the 1.6 m/s/s as captured
by lunar gravity.

But you stipulation is simply wrong.


So, according to those Apollo images, that are of potentially far
better resolution than even the most recent Mars images, especially if
those quality negatives and/or transparencies were to be scanned at
9600 dpi or even 19,200 dpi, even though somehow these terrific frames

Are you sure you would not be limited by the size of grain in teh negatives?

recorded such damn few meteorites and shards, but mostly that of a
desert like surface reflecting average illumination quite nicely at
roughly 55%, without any perceptible mineral colors at that. So, the
question is, which of these two sources of images (Mars/moon) is true
to life, as surely one of them is skewed.

There is no reason why they would be skewed.

[snip]

[1] was, as there are no cathars around these days.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++