Why China Plans To Land On Far Side of Moon

coasttocoastam ^ | Chris Orcutt

[BenLurkin]

China plans to send an unmanned lunar lander similar to previous probes but with a much heavier payload to the far side of the moon. Due to communications issues with the Moon itself blocking transmissions, China will undoubtedly launch a relay satellite in geo-synchronous lunar orbit to transmit data back, scientists say.

The Chinese mission is set to determine how much of the rare element Helium -3, which exists in very small quantities on Earth, can be extracted from the purported rich deposits located on the moon's far side.

H-3 is a light non-radioactive gas that has the potential to be used as a fuel in future nuclear fusion power plants. If the Chinese moon mission is successful in finding the H-3, plans are underway to mine and extract this fuel-efficient element. The cost of the Chinese moon missions would be offset by the return in H-3 extraction and production back on Earth.

[Does so]

That’s ok. The Chinese flag can’t be seen from Earth—ever!

[OldNewYork]

They’d better be careful about the Nazi base there.

[dila813]

There are bright spots of extreme long term planning intelligence with the Chinese.

Their Centrally planned country fails in the short to mid term but in the extreme long term it can dominate.

I think the short and mid term will eventually crush their country. But it seems our private industry in our country is the only thing that can maintain their focus, our government is at war with itself and everyone else.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Pink Floyd copyrighted that term, we had to find something else.

[jpsb]

"rare element Helium -3"

What ever happened to editors? Or fact checking? H-3 is not Helium - 3. H3 is three hydrogen atoms; tritium. If fusion is ever possible tritium would be the "fuel" of choice since it is bigger and heaver then H or H2.

[jpsb]

Burning tritium as a rocket fuel is not a very good idea.

Wiki

Commercial demand for tritium is 400 grams per year and the cost is approximately US $30,000 per gram.

[Vermont Lt]

Shows what I know!

I would use Jack Daniels as rocket fuel.

[Magnum44]

I take back my earlier comment. You “could” have a lunar synchronous orbit that held over the far side from about 88,500 km radius from the moon. That’s about twice the orbit radius of an Earth Geosynchronous satellite.

It would take some propellant to maintain but that’s probably not some unreasonable amount.

I used to some orbit analysis. Intuition isn’t always right so I should have run the numbers first. If you’re interested, the formula for determining the synchronous orbit radius for a single body system is:

(mu/(omega^2.0))^(1.0/3.0)

“mu” is the gravitational constant of the planet. “omega” is the planets rotational rate. The symbol “^” is raising to the power of.

For Earth, mu = 3.9860e+05 km^3/sec^2 and omega = 7.2921151467e-5 radians/sec, resulting in synchronous radius of approximately 42,164 km

For the moon, mu = 4.9028e+03 km^3/sec^2 and omega = 2.6617e-06 radians/sec, resulting in synchronous radius of approximately 88,452 km

I am not sure if this is the same as the L2 Lagrange libration point or not. I believe the L2 Lagrange point is always in relation to the any two body system, so there may be separate Earth/sun and Earth/moon Lagrange points. I studied briefly but never really used Lagrange points in my work. So off the top of my head, I am not sure if the Lagrange point is farther still from the Earth/moon system.

This is probably enough heavy thought for now...For the Chinese and the article, this is still a very challenging problem.

[smokingfrog]

I’ll take your word for it. I barely squeaked by in advanced math.

[T-Bone Texan]

There’s a website called Stuff Black People Don’t Like.

It’s a good site with lots of facts.

One of the memes is “You can have a welfare state, or you can have a moon base, but you can’t have both”.

Seems our elites made the decision for us.

[T-Bone Texan]

Amazing, AMAZING pics when I clicked on your photo.

Thanks for that. Most folks will miss it.

It caused an upwelling of patriotism!

[T-Bone Texan]

Can you expand on “lunar orbit may not exist”?

That is the feeling I got also. The earth would exert a lot of influence on a lunar orbit, I would posit.

[Magnum44]

I tried to give it more thought in post 48

[T-Bone Texan]

Saw that, thank you.

All this science is beyond my ken!

[MRadtke]

Thank you for your response, and for the formula. I was thinking something similar to your initial thoughts. Would you think an orbit like this is more practical than a few satellites in a much lower orbit?

It seems to me that a lunar synchronous orbit would actually be not only around the moon, but around the Earth-moon system and be a real headache to maintain, but maybe not.

[Magnum44]

Putting space observatories out in very distant Lagrange points is something NASA is pretty good at (Solar observatories, etc). I don’t know of anyone using the L2 point behind the moon, and besides the great distance, you may need a relay to see it since its at least partially masked by the moon. I don’t think the Chicoms have gotten to where they support the required infrastructure yet, but I haven’t kept up. Maybe they have.

Both a high single platform, or a low constellation, are challenging but doable, if you have enough resources.

[Eurotwit]

I actually did study “rocket science”when I lived in America and we did a project for the far side of the moon.

I was the engineer on the team, so whilst the others designed their far-side spectrometers and whatnot, I calculcated how to put a satellite at one of the earth-moon lagrange points in a halo orbit to provide continous communication with earth. Btw, 24-7 communication would probably not be needed anyhow, but it is very possible.