Astronomy Picture of the Day 3-16-02

Explanation: Do you recognize the Earth's Moon when you see it? The crazy, patchwork appearance of the false-color image makes this almost full view of the Moon's familiar near side look very strange. The Sea of Tranquillity (Mare Tranquillitatis) is the bright blue area at right, the Ocean of Storms (Oceanus Procellarum) is the extensive blue and orange area on the left, and white lines radiate from the crater Tycho at bottom center. Recorded in 1992 by the Galileo spacecraft enroute to Jupiter, the picture is a mosaic of 15 images taken through three color filters. The image data was combined in an exaggerated color scheme to emphasize composition differences - blue hues reveal titanium rich areas while orange and purple colors show regions relatively poor in titanium and iron. Multicolor images exploring the Moon's global surface composition were made in 1994 by the Clementine spacecraft.

Why haven't we established any permanent presence on the moon? It's got most of the building materials needed. There may be water ice in certain craters. It's a great place to locate (far side) radio telescopes. And don't forget that it would serve well as a jumping-off point for manned explorations of the Solar System.

But no. Here we are, fighting human vermin who want to drag us down into their private he11, and the moon hasn't felt our footsteps in 30 years...

Can't we do both?

"Why haven't we established any permanent presence on the moon?"

Because it presently costs $10,000 per pound to claw our way out of the gravity well.

I participated in a major study on utilizing ice which is believed to be at the lunar South Pole.

We began with an 8-man crew. Why were they there? To mine ice. Why were they mining ice?...to be there (in other words, the water was used for washing, food, and fuel manufacture--the fuel being used to bring them home and jaunt around the moon). A circular situation indeed. So we looked at making hydrogen and oxygen for going to Mars. There is an advantage because the Moon's lesser gravity makes it easier to lift propellants; we assumed a Mars "stack" would be assembled in space and fuelled from the moon.

What kills you is the need to bring everything. You're mining ice. You need the equivalent of caterpillar tractors, trucks, [all of which must operate in a vacuum, deal with the lunar dust and temperature extremes...and none of which has been designed, built, or tested] specialized mining equipment, [ditto] a nuclear reactor, spare parts, habitats, mechanics, tools, a hospital, doctor, food, a major plant to cook the ice out of the regolith, etc. Plus several specialized space vehicles for bringing crew back home, transferring cargo, etc. We are talking about thousands--or millions--of tons of equipment...all at $10K per pound.

We found that--if and only if--the Almighty were kind enough to pre-position the equipment, the project would pay. The cost of hauling the infrastructure was crippling.

The "fuel for Mars" scheme is killed by the economics; you'd have to make something like 20 manned Mars missions before you could possibly break even.

Nobody is planning (seriously) even one manned trip to Mars.

As I told my boss, if we really want to become a space-faring race, we should abandon research on improving rockets (keep the ones we have) and put all our efforts into a space elevator. It is one of the very few technologies that might allow cheap enough access to allow us to spread from Earth. I figure $1 per pound would do it. No way any rocket system will give you the magic buck-per-pound in orbit.

--Boris

"Well you haven't thought of the most efficient means of transporting supplies and equipment. "Cable" You drop a cable from the moon to the earth and then haul the stuff back up. We did this from our treehouse as kids. Before we thought of this idea it was costing us an extreme amount of effort to haul up each thing we wanted 1 or 2 at a time. After the rope "Elevator" was installed we could move more stuff faster. We even got mom to ride in it until the rope broke. She was a nice lady."

You didn't read the last part of my post.

You cannot "drop a cable from the moon to the earth" due to elementary physics. Hint: examine the motions of both bodies--ALL of their motions.

The space elevator concept goes to GEO (geo synchronous orbit) for a reason. Please try not to comment on issues you know less than nothing about.

--Boris

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