NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture

in article , Herb
Schaltegger at LID wrote on 10/1/05
7:16 PM:

On Sat, 1 Oct 2005 20:02:03 -0500, George Evans wrote
(in article ):

snip

George Evans


Don't feed the loon.

OK I'll stop now. Sorry.

George Evans

in article , Alan Anderson
at wrote on 10/1/05 7:58 PM:

Yes, there is. Lagrange points only exist in theory in a two-body system.
When there are more bodies acting, it is no longer a point, it's just a
region.

George Evans wrote:

Alan Anderson suggested I google halo orbits, which I did. This is from the
first hit:

"An orbit in which a spacecraft will remain in the vicinity of a Lagrangian
*point*, following a circular or elliptical loop around that *point*..."

If you read more of it, You'll probably find the place where they talk about
Lagrangian points being solutions to something called the circular restricted
3-body problem. There are at present no analytical solutions to the
generalized n-body problem; all we have are approximations, which identify
regions, not points.

One of the nifty things about the "stable" L4 and L5 points is that they are
not exactly stable either. The gravitational and centrifugal forces are such
that if something occupies the theoretical point, nudging it away will make it
get pulled *farther* from the point. The Coriolis force acts to push the
now-moving object into a stable "orbit" of the point, so even in the special
solvable case the stable location is literally a region rather than a point.

OK, I can see it's time to throw in the towel. I have a couple of questions.
How big a region are we talking about with an n-body solution for L1 between
the earth and moon? How about if only the sun, earth, and moon are taken
into account?

George Evans

For that amount of mass, those pads were not very large, yet it looks as
though little more than an inch of soil compression transpired (must have
landed smack-dab upon bedrock 6 out of 6 times).

Not bedrock. Regolith. Eons of micrometeorite bombardment have not
only eroded the surface rock, but compacted it quite nicely.

in article , Alan Anderson
at wrote on 10/1/05 7:58 PM:

I think that there will continue to be a market for
people and things that want to get to LEO in a hurry. The elevator
would be used for bulk cargo, as slow ships are today.

George Evans wrote:

But you could go part way up the elevator and release. From there it should
require only two burns to settle into any LEO. What am I missing?

From partway up the elevator, what you're missing is velocity.

It takes nearly the same amount of energy to enter orbit from a LEO-height
elevator than it does to reach LEO from the ground.

As the object rises it will increase in potential energy and kinetic energy.
At some point total energy will be equal to an orbit with apogee equal to
its present height and a perigee equal to the desired LEO. At that point
shouldn't a gentle separation be possible with a deceleration burn at
perigee to circularize?

George Evans

On Sun, 02 Oct 2005 02:15:54 GMT, in a place far, far away, George
Evans made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

in article , Rand Simberg at
wrote on 10/1/05 8:59 PM:

On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 23:48:29 GMT, in a place far, far away, George
Evans made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

snip

Alan Anderson suggested I google halo orbits, which I did. This is from the
first hit:

"An orbit in which a spacecraft will remain in the vicinity of a Lagrangian
*point*, following a circular or elliptical loop around that *point*..."

Notice that there is a *point* around which the spacecraft orbits.

That point is purely theoretical.

It is not purely theoretical unless you're not sure if it really exists. But
it does exist because there is a real spacecraft orbiting it.

There are no spacecraft doing that, but even if there were, the
spacecraft would be maneuvering in a region, not orbiting around a
known point. And none of this supports your notion of some kind of
first-comer advantage to being there. Give it up.

George Evans;
So you were assimilated six years ago. My condolences.
How the heck did you get that part wrong? Are you also a dyslexic? I
mean that I was unassimilated as of six years ago, as that's when my
brain (all three dyslexic cells worth) came back into the light of day.

Shadow fill on the moon should be about half of what it is on earth. Just
step into a shadow on a bright sunny day and observe that light is coming
from terrestrial surfaces and the sky. If you were on the moon you would
only be missing the sky. And as far as the brightness of the lunar surface,
I notice that it is visible against the day time sky clear out to the limb.
So there is a lot of light available to fill a shadow created by the lander.
With a 12% downright dark and nasty average albedo, a nearly
point-source of raw solar illumination (meaning highly
mono-directional) and supposedly no atmosphere, the shadow-fill
shouldn't have been worth 10% of what you'd get on Earth having nearly
three fold greater average albedo to work with. Obviously you've never
accomplishing any single-source strobe illuminated nighttime exposures
because, if you had you'd realize that even with an atmosphere that's
somewhat polluted and having that nearly three fold greater worth of
surrounding albedo, it seems the results from my personal experience
and of any others attempting the same task, really sucks at shadow-fill
something terrible. The rest of what you have to say is even less
worthy of an argument.

Tell us what the near-UV (400~425 nm) and UV (200~400 nm) of the raw
solar energy/m2 was upon the moon, and perhaps reference your
argument(s) along with a spectrum specific graphic of what the raw
solar illumination represented, and while you're at it, toss in a
little something on behalf of the bluish earthshine factor and, please
don't forget to include the natural colors of the moon that should have
been anything except the cornmeal/portland-cement lack of color.

Pinko commie *******. NASA kicked the Soviet Union's ass, and it was sweet
to watch.
Oops! apparently you're not only pro-perpetrated cold-war(s) but, lo
and behold if you're not pro-LLPOF on behalf of our resident warlord(GW
Bush), which represents that you're anti-ET and thus about as anti-God
as you can get to boot. I guess if that's what makes your Skull and
Bones self into one of the good-guys and myself into one of the
bad-guys, then so be it. At least I sleep without being haunted by the
collateral damage and carnage of the innocent. How about yourself (got
remorse)?

BTW; how do you know that I'm "pinko" and not just another son of God
that's in need of a good cross?
I'll have to bet you saw nothing all that wrong with Popes going postal
upon Cathars, or even that little Christ on a stick fiasco (I
understand that Christ was quite a little trouble maker, thus deserved
what he got, much like JFK).
~

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
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.

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:12:08 -0500, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

I was thoroughly warped by those damned school movies about science and
the World Of Tomorrow.

I wouldn't put *all* the blame on them, Pat. You seem to have been
warped by many things.

I'm not so sure he's blaming them than thanking them. :-)

Alan Anderson;
Not bedrock. Regolith. Eons of micrometeorite bombardment have not
only eroded the surface rock, but compacted it quite nicely.
Thanks for that correction of "Regolith" instead of basalt. Still a
pretty damn nifty 6 out of 6 times trick being the case, and I
certainly wonder all the time as to why they never bothered to obtain
any Kodak moments while they were there.

How does such a near vacuum environment with no apparent binders and
obviously not having such a terrific amount of gravity that still
manages as to compact such regolith/basalt + meteorite dirt, especially
when other dry moons seem to be meters deep in their fluffy moon-dust?

I can fully appreciate the icy proto-moon as having somewhat recently
lost its 270 km worth of an icy coating, whereas as such having quite
nicely compacted a great deal of whatever lunar dust and soil.
Although, what happens to such sequestered dust, sand or soil that has
been released from being iced down and thus having been 100% covered as
per right here upon mother Earth, whereas there's still a million fold
more water vapor to work with under the absolute hottest and driest of
conditions?

I believe it's been called dry-quicksand, that's more than a bit
difficult to walk upon.
~

Life on Venus includes your basic Township, Bridge & Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
Russian/Chinese LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
A few other sub-topics of interest by; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm

in article , Brad Guth
at wrote on 10/2/05 12:39 AM:

George Evans;

Shadow fill on the moon should be about half of what it is on earth. Just
step into a shadow on a bright sunny day and observe that light is coming
from terrestrial surfaces and the sky. If you were on the moon you would only
be missing the sky. And as far as the brightness of the lunar surface, I
notice that it is visible against the day time sky clear out to the limb. So
there is a lot of light available to fill a shadow created by the lander.

With a 12% downright dark and nasty average albedo, a nearly point-source of
raw solar illumination (meaning highly mono-directional) and supposedly no
atmosphere, the shadow-fill shouldn't have been worth 10% of what you'd get on
Earth having nearly three fold greater average albedo to work with...

I believe the albedo figure for earth includes light reflected from clouds.
And if the moon is so dark why can you see it against the day time sky?

Pinko commie *******. NASA kicked the Soviet Union's ass, and it was sweet
to watch.

BTW; how do you know that I'm "pinko" and not just another son of God that's
in need of a good cross? I'll have to bet you saw nothing all that wrong with
Popes going postal upon Cathars, or even that little Christ on a stick fiasco
(I understand that Christ was quite a little trouble maker, thus deserved what
he got, much like JFK).

I question your knowledge of Cathars.

George Evans

On Sun, 02 Oct 2005 18:42:51 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Greg D.
Moore \(Strider\)" made the phosphor
on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:


"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:12:08 -0500, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

I was thoroughly warped by those damned school movies about science and
the World Of Tomorrow.

I wouldn't put *all* the blame on them, Pat. You seem to have been
warped by many things.

I'm not so sure he's blaming them than thanking them. :-)

Well, perhaps "responsibility" would have been a more neutral word.