Europe's 1st lunar mission reaches moon

Yahoo & AP ^ | September 2, 2006

[George W. Bush]

Just a little jingoistic nationalism here on my part ;-)

I think the internal Islamic threat and the disaster of socialism with their aging population will overtake their space efforts.

I look to the Japanese and the Chinese to accomplish far more in space. Even the Russians might make a space comeback. Europe? I don't expect much.

[bill1952]

Well, why not say the same thing about it really being Chinese Technology, since they invented gunpowder and did try to launch a guy to the moon by strapping him into a chair loaded with fireworks type rockets a thousand or two years ago?

Considering that my uncle Nicklaus Gabriel worked on Rockets and in NASA as an aeronautical engineer through every phase of development from 1946 until the mid 70s, he would very surprised to be considered eurpoean.

Just because they were working well in that direction does not mean that the technology needed to get to the moon was european, especially when you consider the 30+ years of intensive R&D, all right here in America.

While we used the German research to bump up our own programs, we would have still achieved the same results.

[RightWhale]

Goddard had an experimental ion motor set up in his lab 75 years ago. The vacuum chamber was black pipe.

[Candor7]

Europes first LUNAR mission crashes on the moon.

[drtom]

You mean that it was a rather useless demonstration by a third-rate space agency?

No, I mean that it was a well-conceived experiment on the way to a potential future propulsion system.

I guess you design airplanes on a drawing board, then pack 300 people into the prototype and put it into service the very day.

[Gondring]

Goddard had an experimental ion motor set up in his lab 75 years ago. The vacuum chamber was black pipe.

I have admired Goddard since learning about him at a young age, when I never would have thought liquid-fueled would have been as efficient as a well-constructed solid-fueled motor. I also could see why he'd think that the more stable configuration was with the exhaust forward, so I can't fault him for that, even though I was well versed in comparing center-of-pressure/center-of-mass for my model rockets (solid-fueled :-)

[RightWhale]

Rocketry has advanced through not exploding as soon as it did last time.

[weegee]

Let's see them safely bring back their unmanned vehicle.

[weegee]

They plan to plant a white flag soon.

[weegee]

Eventually it will lead to a lunar colony.

Run by socialists.

[RightWhale]

I would tend to think it would be a Christian Communist Utopia.

[Mark Felton]

Thats ok, I was being a smartass when I wrote the post. ;^)

[George W. Bush]

No, I mean that it was a well-conceived experiment on the way to a potential future propulsion system.

Any article on the actual economics involved in comparing costs of boosting to earth orbit and then on to the moon? (How much to boost a ton to orbit, how much to conventionally boost it to the moon, how much to send by ion drive?)

Maybe I underestimated the cost differences on the moon leg. If you're sending thousands of tons to the moon, the savings would be probably be significant. No reason why building materials and many other objects couldn't be sent by ion-propelled transport, at least as far as lunar orbit.

Still, the trillions it would take to establish a real permanent moonbase make it a very iffy proposition in a world where we see rather little cooperation on doing a proper job with establishing a simple space station forty years after America alone reached the moon.

[monday]

"There are some negative comments on this thread.
They planned the crash and figured out a way to get some good data. What's the beef?"

lol.... No one plans a crash. def. crash: a serious accident (usually involving one or more vehicles); Just as no one PLANS an accident, no one PLANS a crash. If it was planned, they would have called it something else.

[George W. Bush]

Actually, it was a way to wring some last data from their mission. It probably wasn't equipped to do lunar orbit data collection. So the alternative would be to let it fly past into nowhere.

Crashing it was as good as anything else. Sounds like they got a little more data. Probably the Euro schoolkids, squirming in their back-to-school burkhas, enjoyed the whole thing, much as schoolkids in America were captivated by NASA in the Sixties.

[samtheman]

There's always somebody who wants to take a casual remark and turn it into a big whopping argument with a lot of name-calling.

drtom,

Your insights into this program would be more valuable if they didn't come shrink-wrapped in personal vitriol.

I'm sorry if there are Americans whose first reaction to anything from Europe (land of the anti-American) is negative.

I'm very sorry that such sentiments ruffle your feathers so badly.

[RadioAstronomer]

It is like that on many (if not most) science threads these days.

No kidding. Sigh.

[RadioAstronomer]

It's very unlikely that this kind of ion-propelled spacecraft will see much use.

Not true. Electric engines are an excellent way to get probes across the solar system.

One of my grad classes focused on electric propulsion. Personally, I thought the mission was a great success.

[George W. Bush]

So, how long to reach Mars/Venus/Saturn/Jupiter with engines we can build and deploy in the next ten years?

Or how about the questions I asked above. How much cheaper to boost a payload from Earth orbit to the moon with an ion drive than with conventional rockets?

Do you think there's a realistic chance that we'll see significant manned space exploration and colonization in our lifetimes? I'm not fifty yet but I'm starting to think not.

[RadioAstronomer]

Depends on the mission and the mission profile. Chemical still has the best weight to thrust gain (ignoring nuclear for the moment), however, for a long slow increase in speed (which can reach speeds far greater than conventional liquid props) the electric engine is the way to go.

For a simple planetary exploration craft, a dual burn Hohmann transfer orbit is the way to go.

Robotics are still our best bang for the buck for solar system exploration.