Next unmanned lunar landing -- when?

Jim Oberg wrote:
Wow, great find, Will -- everyone else seems to have missed it!!




Jorge's Spaceref article link also refers to the same proposal.

Will McLean

$1000AUD

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in message
k.net...

"blart" wrote in message
...
I betcha they are in the process of assembling a permanent base in
orbit -
to coincide with the olympics yes...

So, how much are you willing to wager on that?



odds on the chinese are going back to the moon first, using orbital
construction platform to get around massive heavy lift 'throw it all
away'
philosophy of USA. They will build it with absolutely no wasted effort or
redundant missions.

and then on from there - Mars looms because they REALLY want to plant the
flag before the USA, and really rub it in that the USA is losing its
way...

my $0.02 worth


"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
gb wrote:
Okay Jim, I will go out on a bit of a limb. The next landing will not
be
American, China has the best window from 2008 to 2010. A number of
Chinese
events in 2008 to align with the Olympics Games -- would be in
traditional
form.

Not practical unless they are secretly putting a lot of effort into it
right now, and there's no sign of that; their current effort seems to
be
directed at launching a lunar *orbiter* around then. 2008 is a little
more than two years away, which is *not* a long time for spacecraft
engineering. They do seem to be serious about the orbiter, and my
guess
would be that it is their 2008 prestige project.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry
Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Jeez - bit of jingoism here

I like to put a more positive spin on it:
just imagine the relatively modest technological feats (for the moment,
compared to USA) coupled with the true entrepreneureal spirit of the Hong
Kong (and Shanghai) Chinese. Space stations that are actually habitats
perhaps? Bases that are for more than just stunts, but permanent outposts of
humanity?

Imagine what sort of FOOD can be cooked in low gravity - a whole new cuisine
can be had, as well as other sybaritic delights and many many new ways of
getting business done! Imagine what can be done with silk spinning and
production.... and lots of other things my feeble imagination cannot fathom
yet.

I like to think of the Chinese as slowly unfolding (like a long dormant
lotus bossom) from the ancient shackles of totalitarianism into truly free
enterprise - and not making the mistakes of the west in allowing
corporations unfettered growth into becoming their own style of totalitarian
regime...

If we in the west have allowed a 30++ year lead and more importantly, a
moral high ground, to be squandered then shame on us, and good luck to
them - to wish them anything else would be sour grapes.

cheers

ps: I am not a Chinese Sycophant! I just want the good guys to win - on all
sides. I am also mortified at the slow crumbly fall of a nation I admired
and respected (and still do in a way) since childhood


"Space Cadet" wrote in message
oups.com...

I betcha they are in the process of assembling a permanent base in orbit -
to coincide with the olympics yes...


odds on the chinese are going back to the moon first, using orbital
construction platform to get around massive heavy lift 'throw it all away'
philosophy of USA. They will build it with absolutely no wasted effort or
redundant missions.


and then on from there - Mars looms because they REALLY want to plant the
flag before the USA, and really rub it in that the USA is losing its
way...

Not likely, Dwayne A Day has a couple of articles on the subject on
Space Review:

Red Moon. Dark Moon.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/473/1

In the service of the Emperor
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/481/1

Just my $0.02

Space Cadet

derwetzelsDASHspacecadetATyahooDOTcom


Moon Society - St. Louis Chapter

http://www.moonsociety.org/chapters/stlouis/

The Moon Society is a non-profit educational and
scientific foundation formed to further scientific
study and development of the moon.

"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
...


Any crustal ball inputs

yep, get on antibiotics *now*

Quite right. The orbiter is scheduled to lauch within three years,
while landing schedule of China is 2017. After all, it is still too
hard for a developing country.

Jim Oberg;
Next unmanned lunar landing -- when?
As soon as someone accomplishes the necessary R&D and thus has a
working fly-by-rocket prototype, as then we'll have some idea as to
when an extremely spendy and damn risky earthshine illuminated landing
upon the moon can be attempted.

BTW; it's not the least bit risky due to those brave folks not having
more than sufficient illumination.

Brad Guth
~

Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree; WAR is WAR, thus "in war there are
no rules" - In fact, war has been the very reason of having to deal
with the likes of others that haven't been playing by whatever rules,
such as GW Bush.
Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm

Jim Oberg,
The next "unmanned lunar landing" may need to be via extremely small
packages that'll orbit their way down to surviving their
impact/landings. In fact, a lunar rear-ender might prove most
interesting if having to deal with the vast sodium trail gaultlet as a
form of solar wind and micro-debris breaking.

MICROSATELLITES; how small? How cheap?
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...3ea 152345375

Doing it the hard and spendy way; The Cold Equations
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...cc92451db91145
tomcat,
Of that 92% of rocket fuel to orbit is NOT even of what it takes for
going to the moon and back, as that's more like 96~98+% of the total
package, leaving 2~4% for everything else, and it seems as though we
still have nothing as of today that'll come close to that requirement
unless your 20,000 deg. F. capable spaceplane that's 100% composite
becomes real.

http://www.physorg.com/news6341.html
"It's not part of the %92 of GLOW that is fuel burned during ascent to
orbit. It can't even be residual fuel carried by making the take-off
tanks slightly oversized, since these big tanks would be impossible to
keep cold during orbital flight and reentry."

"The second and third stages of the Saturn V actually achieved a dry
mass fraction of about 10%. But these are not complete spacecraft, only
expendable stages without payload or recovery gear."

Face it "tomcat" and to all others that still believe in the tooth
fairy, we never went to the moon (at least not in person), as your very
own math and recent links to other stuff proves there simply wasn't a
sufficient fuel capacity for delivering nearly 50 tonnes to our moon
and of safely getting those folks back, much less alive and without so
much as one new white hair.

For Christ almighty on another stick sake, we didn't even have a viable
fly-by-rocket lander way back then, and guess what else; we still
haven't squat to work with.

Is being continually dumbfounded and is per chance "snookered" your
middle name?

Drastically cutting the inert/dry mass of the SMEs/SRBs is a good
start, and of two staging them SMEs is step No.2. Step three is the
LRn--Rn--ION thrusting that doesn't exist because of all the
dumbfounded and thus backward mindset individuals like yourself.

Brad Guth
~

Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree; WAR is WAR, thus "in war there are
no rules" - In fact, war has been the very reason of having to deal
with the likes of others that haven't been playing by whatever rules,
such as GW Bush.
Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm

Jim Oberg wrote:
Wow, great find, Will -- everyone else seems to have missed it!!


Jacques has posted RELEASE: 05_62AR "NASA Ames Leads Robotic Lunar
Exploration Program" in .news; doesn't seem to mention Marshall at all
;-)

/dps

Next unmanned lunar landing -- when?
Honestly folks; how about when pigs fly.

Since we still haven't a viable fly-by-rocket lander, and we seem to
remain rather focused upon doing everything in terms of our having to
deliver multiple tonnes to the lunar surface instead of those nifty 10
kg probes that could easily involve a robust 1 kg sub-probe. At least
the methods of surviving such an impact style of deployment had been
fully R&D as of more than a decade ago by team LUNAR-A, and there have
been several others since as having their improved methods of
accomplishing the very same with even better results. Even my JAVELIN
probes are entirely doable but for less than 1% the cost of having to
accomplish a single multi-tonne deployment upon the lunar surface.

Brad Guth
-

I see that a few of our warm and fuzzy MI6/NSA~CIA spooks are now into
using popular celebrity names as another measure of their usenet ruse,
such as using "Bill Snyder" as one their usenet cloaks in order to
carry out their brown-nosed sucking and blowing plan of action as to
their new and improved levels of incest cloned borgism, of MOS
wag-the-dog and simply as per delivering MOS LLPOF worth of their
ongoing disinformation infomercials.

BTW; why the heck do you suppose that the Third Reich(Skull and Bones)
MI6/NSA~CIA E-Men in BLACK of this warm and fuzzy GOOGLE/NOVA/NASA
mainstream status quo serviced and moderated to death usenet that
summarily sucks and blows big-time is still (no freaking lie folks)
hard at their brown-nosed agenda of every day after day applied
workmanship of specifically targeting and thus delivering their best
spermware into my PC?
~

Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree far beyond; WAR is WAR, thus "in war
there are no rules" - In fact, war has been the very reason of having
to deal with the likes of others that haven't been playing by whatever
rules, such as GW Bush.
Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm