Posted on 01/08/2024 6:32:19 AM PST by Red Badger
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—The first U.S. lunar lander in more than 50 years rocketed toward the moon Monday, launching private companies on a space race to make deliveries for NASA and other customers.
Astrobotic Technology’s lander caught a ride on a brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. The Vulcan streaked through the Florida predawn sky, putting the spacecraft on a roundabout route to the moon that should culminate with an attempted landing on Feb. 23.
“So, so, so excited. We are on our way to the moon!” Astrobotic chief executive John Thornton said.
The Pittsburgh company aims to be the first private business to successfully land on the moon, something only four countries have accomplished. But a Houston company also has a lander ready to fly, and could beat it to the lunar surface, taking a more direct path.
“First to launch. First to land is TBD,” to be determined, Mr. Thornton noted.
NASA gave the two companies millions to build and fly their own lunar landers. The space agency wants the privately owned landers to scope out the place before astronauts arrive while delivering NASA tech and science experiments as well as odds and ends for other customers. Astrobotic’s contract for the Peregrine lander: $108 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
All of which has nothing to do with Apollo going AROUND the van Allen radiation BELTS ... which you know and continue to lie about.
Yes…better answer
A month and a half to get there??
They are taking the scenic route................
NASA didn’t want to pay for United Launch Alliance Vulcan Prime ...
Maybe airport taxi drivers consulted on the route.
In 1970 it took 4 days to get to moon.
2024 it takes 40 days !!
“Minimum energy trajectory: “
Everything is ‘green’ these days. What a joke.
“They must be using Google maps.”
Someone checked ‘no toll route’
“Minimum energy” means “maximum payload”.
“Hopefully there will be live video from the lander.”
Didn’t some other country, India, or such, send a vehicle to the moon in the past six months ?
There was alot of control room partying, but NO ONE ever saw any video from their work.
Just saying.
They had to navigate around all that space junk...............
No launching payloads into space is extraordinarily expensive. Virtually all missions are on nearly minimum energy trajectories. New Horizons was an exception because it would have taken so long that the crew that launched it would have been retired by the time it arrived, and the power for its instruments mostly gone.
Voyager took advantage of an exceptional (like once in 175 years) alignment of the outer planets to execute a series of gravity assists. New Horizons also got a big gravity assist from Jupiter.
That’ll be an expensive Starbucks delivery.
Earth is protected from various damaging energized particles/radiation - solar and galactic - by the magnetosphere. The moon offers no such protection, and neither does the 238K miles of empty space between the Earth and Moon.
Positing that the the "heat-shielded" hull of the space module, the "aluminized mylar" outer coating of the lunar module, as well as the "21 layer" space suits - were sufficient protection from extremely harmful radiation - is dubious.
Exactly!
Paging Delos D. Harriman.
Please pickup the lunar courtesy phone.
The Apollo mythos is going to die hard—with Freepers yelling and screaming and pounding the table and calling people names and accusing them of guilt by association of various kinds.
It is like living in ancient Greece or Rome and trying to convince them that their Gods did not exist.
The Empire is going to have to fall before the lies fall with it.
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