Why go back to the moon?
dbo...@mindspring.com
to go on to Mars without a lunar program. However, it is probably
easier to make a case for going to the moon than for keeping the ISS.
Remember, the moon is not a small place, it is a WORLD. We have not
seen much of it and it isnt just a pile of uninteresting rocks but an
entire world of strange things and places to be explored. It probably
has vast lava tubes that can be used for habitats much easier than
making large habitable spaces in orbit. We still do not know if the
moon is geologically a "dead" world but observations of lunar transient
events hints that it isnt.
The moon has resources; granted we dont know about most of them but
at least we know about the composition of most outer regolith and of
the probable existence of water ice near the poles. With the water
that was delivered by comets, is there also abundant hydrocarbons from
the comets? The gravity of the moon along with its lack of atmosphere
is a real resource by itself for various manufacturing processes.
Imagine being able to make huge electron beam evaporated coatings
unlimited in size byt he size of a vacuum chamber while being able to
count on gravity to hold things in place.
Having a world like this so close to earth is really fortuitous and
I can see far more reasons for going there than going to Mars. Arguing
that "we've been there and done that" would be like someone arguing
that once Columbus did his first voyage and found nothing of importance
that Europeans had "been there and done that" so there was no reason
for further voyages.
Rand Simberg
dbo...@mindspring.com made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:
> Many people say they see no reason to go back to the moon and want
>to go on to Mars without a lunar program. However, it is probably
>easier to make a case for going to the moon than for keeping the ISS.
>Remember, the moon is not a small place, it is a WORLD.
A WORLD, that to first order remains unexplorable because it costs
several billion dollars each time for four people to visit it.
dbo...@mindspring.com
from ISS is really nice, but after about a week of it you get to
thinking "Is this all we get for a billion dollar shuttle flight to
ISS"? I happen to think ISS is a good thing and we oughta keep it but
for my money the moon is a heck of a lot more interesting than ISS and
potentially more useful than Mars.
So, it seems our disagreement is about money then. However, if you
want to be certain that you make it to the moon AND have a serious
manned capability to show for it AND a serious cargo lifter to show for
it, I'd bet on NASA before underfunded pvt people. I like pvt space
efforts but NASA happens to be closer than any pvt company to achieving
this.
I'd like to see NASA stop doing stupid things that undercut pvt efforts
while achieving nothing. NASA should not ever compete with pvt
enterprise and should also use pvt if they truly have the capability.
Space vaporware does not impress me.
Going to the moon generates enthusiasm among young people while just
going into orbit gets a sort of "is that all" look from them. My kids
all ask why people dont go to the moon anymore but never ask about
orbiting the earth. People see the moon as a real goal while they see
orbit as just a part of the trip.
John Savard
Simberg) wrote, in part:
The main use for the Moon is clear. Cheap aluminum, delivered to space.
Is this going to make exploring the solar system really cheap?
Look at a rocket on the launch pad. The rocket engine is made from
exotic metals. But the tanks and the fairings (the latter not needed in
the vacuum of space as much) can be made from aluminum. How much of the
rocket's weight is the thin aluminum of its outside cylinder and tanks,
as against the fuel itself?
One can make oxygen from moon rocks - and one can burn aluminum for
thrust, it is said.
I can see Zubrin's reasons for preferring Mars. Almost everything is
there, although nitrogen is kind of rare.
John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
_________________________________________
Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server
More than 140,000 groups
Unlimited download
http://www.usenetzone.com to open account
Brad Guth
>there, although nitrogen is kind of rare.
become a fully robotic trillion dollar nuclear power plant and all of
the machinery as for extracting and processing whatever Zubrin needs,
then another trillion as for their first class to/from travel package
that'll get a half dozen souls to Mars in a state of prematurely dying
off from excessive TBI dosage and, having those 6 body-bags for their
return flight.
I suppose that's worth a couple of trillion just to get rid of such
intellectual morons.
BTW; I totally agree with your;
>One can make oxygen from moon rocks - and one can burn aluminum for
>thrust, it is said.
I believe there's so much more that our moon has to contribute without
our ever setting foot upon it.
~
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
John Savard
wrote, in part:
>I believe there's so much more that our moon has to contribute without
>our ever setting foot upon it.
Yes, it's a source of light at night without using electricity; it
inspires lovers... and retroreflectors on its surface can be used for
sensitive measurements. Perhaps it can even be used for gravitational
propulsion.
Still, setting foot on it gives it a chance to do more, such as serve as
an astronomical platform.
Ed
>
> Still, setting foot on it gives it a chance to do more, such as serve as
> an astronomical platform.
>
make a nice spot for a an extention of a long base array radio
telescope, or a great veiw of the galaxy,
>Brad Guth wrote:
>
>I'm afraid that's only as long as we've managed to deploy what has to
>become a fully robotic trillion dollar nuclear power plant and all of
>the machinery as. for extracting and processing whatever Zubrin needs,
a solar furnace would be less expensive, mirrors don't have to deal
with weather, cheep rc servo's could easy handle the task of moving
the very light reflectors,
E.L.
ro...@telus.net
(John Savard) wrote:
>The main use for the Moon is clear. Cheap aluminum, delivered to space.
That remark shows a remarkable lack of imagination.
The moon offers so much more. Its rocks can be refined into not just
aluminum but oxygen and light alkali metals for rocket fuel, titanium
and magnesium for machine components, silica glass for structural
forms, etc., etc.
It is an ideal place from which to do full-spectrum astronomy, as well
as other scientific work. Think of this: if, beginning in 1960, all
the money that was spent on building earth-based observatories and
large government-operated astronomical telescopes had instead been
invested, how much would it total today? I'm guessing enough to start
putting an observatory on the moon that would outstrip all the
earth-based astronomy of the last four decades in its first year of
operation. People just don't think long-term, is all.
-- Roy L
Christopher
Just as well your not in charge of NASA then, we'd still be sat on the
launch pad nearly 50 years later. And the same goes for most others
in this newsgroup.
--
Christopher
Brad Guth
Why go back to the moon when it'll be so much easier to safely
accomplish Venus?
Again with those phony baloney "retroreflectors" that plain old math
proves they couldn't possibly be detected as for their scant few
contributions of whatever returning photons that are in any way
different than the multi-millions other photons derived off the
relatively good (25+%) IR albedo of the raw moon itself.
Actually, our moon is all about the rather nifty amount of earthshine
that's 50 fold better off while moonsuit walking upon the reactive and
nearly coal dark by way of carbon soot, titanium and iron dusted moon,
that which represents what's safely though still short-term capable
once someone gets around to inventing a well documented and most
certainly easily proof-tested fly-by-rocket lander. Otherwise the
LSE-CM/ISS has also been sufficiently doable, as such would keep our
astronauts at 64,000 km away from that nasty radioactive and highly
reactive sucker as well appropriately shielded within a fairly massive
1e6 m3 CM/ISS abode that'll provide the 50t/m2 worth of physical and
radiation shielding (roughly 16 basalt meters worth) that's good enough
for the long haul.
>Still, setting foot on it gives it a chance to do more, such as serve as
>an astronomical platform.
I agree that perhaps at least at first our moderately risky earthshine
illuminated surface expeditions of the future may require a few humans
in moonsuits in order to fully deploy a few of the larger and more
complex science/astronomy instruments. However, if and when we actually
manage such a fly-by-rocket deployments of humans, whereas by the very
same token we could robotically deploy more than a thousand fold/kg/$
by way of merely excluding the human factor, especially since the
purely robotic deployments need be one-way tickets to ride, and those
tickets shouldn't cost 0.1% per deployed kg if you take into account
that such deployed robotics should function for many years at a time
unless they sink out of sight or get summarily pulverised by whatever's
incoming.
-
According to the likes of anti-ET and thus anti-God Art Deco, Bookman
and most other incest cloned brown-nosed minions of their mainstream
status quo borgology that clearly sucks and blows at the same time,
whereas the truth and nothing but the truth is nothing but a "perverted
fantasy";
If our moon, Mars and beyond are canceled; what's next for NASA?
In spite of those intellectual as well as biological bigots that would
just as soon repeat history exactly as scripted (nailing the likes of
Christ upon the cross and exterminating those Cathars to boot), there's
always the not so geologically old Venus that gets as nearby as 100
fold that of our even newer arrival and clearly once upon a time icy
proto-moon, whereas at least Venus certainly has by far the most viable
aerobreaking worthy atmosphere plus just about everything else you can
possibly think of to start off with.
Even without the observationology of my interpreting upon what 36
reaffirming 8-bit looks per pixel has suggested as being most likely
artificial and thus indicating the workmanship of locals or perhaps ETs
as having been camping out on Venus, plus indicating upon many other
extremely interesting items of natural formations and active fluid/mud
like flows that would have made their site selection more desirable
than not, whereas it seems the growing amounts of so much other
hard-science and of applying the regular laws of physics are what's
giving Venus it's greatest potential of having supported other life
that's natural as well as otherwise the possibility of ET/imported
forms of intelligent life.
Of whatever's pressure, even if that's 100 bar isn't in of itself
insurmountable to well known forms of life as coexisting here upon
Earth. Even humans can eventually adapt to our surviving within such
extreme pressure without applied physiological technology, other than
for our having to artificially create the pressurized atmospheric cell
environment in the first place, that which should only required an O2
basis of not more than 1% and the remainder as 99% H2.
Of whatever's temperature isn't all that insurmountable for three
reasons. 1) temperature is directly related to pressure, in that the
greater the pressure the greater the amount of heat that life can
survive within. 2) even though there's a limit as to what human
tissue/cells can take as heat, exoskeletals are not nearly as limited
and, if need be a insulation barrier of local basalt and/or silica
micro-balloons would become more than accommodating as for creating the
necessary R-Factor of providing a thermal isolation formula of a viable
conductive and even as a radiated heat barrier. 3) thermal energy
heat-exchanging isn't the least bit technologically limited, especially
within such a nicely conductive mode of mostly dry CO2 and, all other
factors seem perfectly surmountable via evolution and/or applied
technology. This isn't to say that where-is as-is Venus is directly
suitable for us humans, especially the dumb and dumber portions of
humanity that still can't seem to tie their own shoe laces without
going absolutely postal over something.
Of course, if any of this is being suggested to the all-knowing usenet
gangs of mostly social/religious and political correctness, as then
nothing of science, physics and especially of observationology matters
because, apparently it just might otherwise rock a few too many of
their precious mainstream status quo boats, and we simply can't have
that much good ship LOLLIPOP rocking no matters what the consequences.
Thus only a flat Earth that's populated by extremely bigoted and
otherwise brown-nosed folks as having been surrounded by nothing but
their God's eye candy is permitted.
To put this into yet another perspective;
It seems that we humans have become the Earthly sort of ETs that have
been out and about as taking our technological first-hand and mostly
robotic look-sees at whatever other planets, moons and a few
meteor/asteroids have to offer, thus if we can manage to accomplish
such within the extremely limited scope of our physics and science,
then it's entirely possible that other life as having been much older
and thus most likely of some intellectual level of expertise better off
than our's, as having been capable of their going to/from the sorts of
places that seem inaccessible as well as unlivable for our kind seems
perfectly doable, that is unless you're another Godless anti-ET bigot
that can't accept change. What's unfortunate about the sorts of mutated
life via incest cloning upon this Earth is that our limited
understanding of what's even situated upon Earth is staggering to say
the least, in that we don't seem to even know our own physiology well
enough to save our own souls, much less appreciate and support other
more complex forms of mature life that has up until our arrival
outlived humanity by millions of years in spite of their having only
their DNA/RNA smarts of applied physics and thus their internal
biological programmed intellegence as to account for their survival.
Perhaps at some future time we humans well evolve into becoming born
with all of our physical skills and intelligence, simply emerge as
intellectually whole and thereby ready to work efficiently and
diligently at a given task without a stitch of learned arrogance,
bigotry and/or greed outside of whatever it takes for managing our
basic survival as a collective whole. Though as it is, we're rather
easily molded by the framework that's established by others, programmed
into becoming everything from serial killers to the likes of LLPOF
warlords as having been running humanity amuck, whereas few have
managed to escape being formally assimilated into the human borg like
collective of what's continually taking advantage of so many others in
order to benefit so few.
It seems we've created our own worse enemies and subsequently we've
turned ourselves into various forms of intellectual as well as
biological bounty hunters and somewhat arrogant opportunest as a
result, including the sport of hunting down whatever intellect that's
the least bit outside the box, and otherwise having pointed out the
likes of Cathars and Jesus Christ so that their elimination could be
accommodated via some self proclaimed and thus remorseless authority
that's supposedly upon our bigoted and greedy behalf, and then some of
us wonder why ETs are keeping a safe distance.
If you could imagine having been cosmetically altered so as to look,
dress and act the part of a visiting ET that had arrived upon Earth,
chances are you'd last all of a day before getting hunted down,
terminated or otherwise sequestered and dissected nearly on the spot.
And by the way, ETs that should be at least as smart if not a whole lot
smarter than us humans certainly do NOT have to remotely look like us
humans, as whatever shape and form are somewhat irrelevant factors with
regard to ET or even local intelligence. If we humans are as smart as
it gets, now you're taking serious trouble in River City, whereas
there's nothing other than more of the same wars upon wars based almost
entirely upon anything but the truth. We hardly have the resources for
sustaining the sorts of phony baloney wars we've created thus far, and
the Earth simply isn't getting any bigger, in fact Earth for humanity
has been shrinking by measurable factors and at the same time requiring
a greater amount of artificial energy and other resources per soul at
that.
Without the viable to/from capability of what the lunar space elevator
and thus access to the energy resources of our moon has to behold,
chances are we're not going to have whatever it'll take for defending
our Earth from ourselves, much less from invading ET's that have long
since pillaged and raped their home worlds to the point of no return if
not total demise (Mars gives us a reasonably close look-see at what the
worse outcome might involve if we manage to extract the last joule of
energy from Earth).
If our moon and that of Venus offers viable alternatives as to
improving our quality of life while otherwise moderating our global
suffering and, if those two external globes open other doors so that
our Earthly ET capability can grow and expand, then so be it. However,
if the likes of this usenet that has a license to kill can't even
manage to cope with the honest prospects of what's entirely possible,
then we're entirely up against a firery wall that offers no possible
redemption or the slightest amount of remorse for humanity, and as such
we more than deserve the consequences of our actions as well as from
our inactions that have long since contributed to the ongoing
collateral damage and demise of humanity.
Without accepting change and without accepting the truth there's no
hope of our long term survival, at least not for the lower 99.9% of
humanity that's having to perform as brown-nosed minions to the upper
most 0.1%. Clearly the rich have been getting richer and the poor
becoming less than worthy of being allowed to live much less prosper.
For those of you looking for whatever can be taken out-of-context just
so you can avoid the truth by pointing and smirking like our resident
warlord(GW Bush), be my guest.
For those the least bit interested in whatever else others and myself
have had to say all along, stay tuned in and/or aligned with the
program of sending us your moral and whatever other support so that our
lose-cannons and butt-kickings can become even more effective.
Donations of technology or gifts of cold hard cash are certainly
welcome and entirely legal as long as I've acknowledged my having
received such, or perhaps taking the "high standards and
accountability" road of our "so what's the difference" warlord policy
and entirely like the oil/energy ENRON sorts of dealings having
involved GW Bush, whereas I wont tell if you don't tell can also be
arranged. If I had a minion staff as perhaps a cloak of a certified
ministry and offshore bank of my ET God, then I could even apply for
some of the matching funds and/or grants being forked out by our
resident warlord(GW Bush) himself, and as such I'd just have to bet
that would push a few more of those *do NOT push* bigotry-R-us buttons.
Send your support directly to my attention: 4410 SE Nelson Rd. Olalla
WA 98359-8517 or just call: (253) 8576061 and I'll put your name along
with others as listed on my lose-cannon notch/kill plate.
~
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.
Jordan
> A WORLD, that to first order remains unexplorable because it costs several billion dollars each time for four people to visit it. <
... which is why we should work towards bringing the cost of Lunar
travel down. Part of working toward this is to establish outposts and
bases, to serve as a foundation upon which an eventual infrastructure
including accel/decel orbital catapults can be erected.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Rand Simberg
<JSBass...@yahoo.com> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:
>Rand Simberg said:
I agree, but that has nothing to do with NASA's current plans, so I'm
not sure what your point is.
Brad Guth
>a nice spot for a an extention of a long base array radio
>telescope, or a great veiw of the galaxy,
>a solar furnace would be less expensive, mirrors don't have to deal
>with weather, cheep rc servo's could easy handle the task of moving
>the very light reflectors,
There is a somewhat pesky little problem with physical debris that's
continually incoming at good velocity, with some of the gram sized
stuff getting mixed in with some of whatever's a bit larger as arriving
at 30+km/s, and there's always the picogram/m3 sorts of stuff that can
arrive via solar wind at 300+km/s (a maximum solar wind of 2400 km/s
might manage to deliver 10 picograms/m3 worth of solar flak that could
be arriving at the surface with a velocity of 1200 km/s unless there a
bit more of a lunar atmosphere than having been reported by you know
who. However, either of which is going to get a bit nasty for the likes
of aluminum coated mirrors, although solid diamond coated mirrors might
last for a time, or a highly robotic replacable mylar stretched mirror
could be sufficient considering the distance involved, whereas
reflectivity efficiency isn't all that important, especially if we're
talking about a really big area mirror that's approprately curved.
I'll still have to say it once again; those are not half bad notions on
both counts but, what would astronomy folks do with having a 16-bit
radar image resolution of 10~100 m/pixel of Saturn, at times less than
1 m/pixel of Mars and as good as 0.1 m/pixel of Venus?
What the heck would astronomers do with all the spare money and time
they'd save, not to mention the vast improvements in detection and
tracking of NEOs?
It seems that astronomy types are becoming rather biologically blind
and otherwise mindset sequestered upon their seeing only the sorts of
eye candy that far far away, and then only focused upon investing our
hard earned bucks into whatever's unobtainable by humanity. Why is
that?
A robotic deployment of a few SAR image/aperture receiving modules upon
our moon would likely be rather robust and compact little items and, as
per having established the VLA extension of 384,400 km is where you'd
have to think this sort of new and improved scientific/astronomy
imaging capability should more or less give us those impressive results
for something that's at least half robotic and far less than penneys on
the dollar per resolution and, best of all is that there's not a stitch
of spendy and easily damaged optics getting involved. I do believe we
already have sufficient radar transmitting sites upon Earth, otherwise
there's nothing of any human deployment involved with the moon since
such lighter weight scientific/astronomy sorts of one-way fly-by-rocket
landers should provide several minutes worth of extended down-range
capability as for remotely selecting upon a final landing sight, as
having been at least partially flown into the best position from the RC
Earth based flight command station. Seems perfectly doable since we're
only talking about a 2.5 second overall relay or handshake sort of
mission flight control delay as for the robotic cameras to share
whatever's happening prior to the final AI/robotic landing, and that's
an easy sort of remote piloting training capability that even I could
manage, although I'd have to wager that a 12 year old on a modified
flight-simulator could put most of us old farts to shame, and the best
part is that the 12 year old only needs to get paid with a few happy
meals, thus we've just cut that portion of the mission overhed by
99.9%.
~
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.
Joe Strout
"Jordan" <JSBass...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Right. Too bad NASA doesn't have a plan for doing that.
- Joe
,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| j...@strout.net http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jordan
>JSBassior2001 said:
>
>>... which is why we should work towards bringing the cost of Lunar
>>travel down. Part of working toward this is to establish outposts and
>>bases, to serve as a foundation upon which an eventual infrastructure
>>including accel/decel orbital catapults can be erected.
>
>I agree, but that has nothing to do with NASA's current plans, so I'm
>not sure what your point is.
"NASA's current plans," which are pathetically unambitious in
penny-wise, pound-foolish ways, are hardly the be-all and end-all of
Man's colonization of the Moon. However, NASA _is_ planning to mount
extended Lunar expeditions (the Lunar variant of the CEV is designed to
support week-long operations on the surface) and eventually construct
outposts. In the process of doing this we will undoubtedly learn
things which will be of great value in the construction of permanent
bases and settlements.
Beyond that, both the Chinese and private industry are planning
eventual Lunar operations, and thus NASA's lack of energy will not
necessarily hamstring our expansion, _as a species_.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Brad Guth
spermology is about all that retards like yourself need to ever
realize.
The Russian and Chinese focus is upon establishing their one and only
LSE-CM/ISS, then obviously the moon comes next.
BTW; our moon is for robots that do not have DNA/RNA to die for.
Short-term earthshine lunar EVAs are possible for us humans, but that's
about it. Besides, at 5 g/cm2 worth of surface-tension; how exactly are
you planning upon walking about many portions of our radioactive as
well as reactive moon?
Cardman
wrote:
>"NASA's current plans," which are pathetically unambitious in
>penny-wise, pound-foolish ways, are hardly the be-all and end-all of
>Man's colonization of the Moon.
Well, lets give them time to see what they can do. Still, from what I
have heard of it, then it does seem like they are not much making use
of this opportunity.
>However, NASA _is_ planning to mount
>extended Lunar expeditions (the Lunar variant of the CEV is designed to
>support week-long operations on the surface) and eventually construct
>outposts. In the process of doing this we will undoubtedly learn
>things which will be of great value in the construction of permanent
>bases and settlements.
Not that Bigelow won't eventually take over. He is currently 5 years
ahead of schedule and plans to have people in orbit by 2010, even if
this full sized hardware should be launched in 2008.
>Beyond that, both the Chinese and private industry are planning
>eventual Lunar operations, and thus NASA's lack of energy will not
>necessarily hamstring our expansion, _as a species_.
I can just imagine the future. NASA with their ISS derived base. The
Chinese patching something together from rocket parts. Then the
commercial people busy on building the first Luna City with bright
lighting, advertising everywhere, and a fun park.
The Europeans and Russians are likely to team up and to do
"something", but what exactly this will be is currently unclear.
Cardman.
Josh Hill
wrote:
But the moon doesn't have much of a gravity well. The earth is the
expensive item here . . .
--
Josh
"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina
James Nicoll
Josh Hill <joshu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>But the moon doesn't have much of a gravity well. The earth is the
>expensive item here . . .
Although from the POV of the moon, Earth's gravity is an
exploitable resource. Actually, from the point of view of anywhere
that isn't Earth, the Earth's gravity is an exploitable resource.
Seems unfair, really.
James "playing with Lunar L1 cables, LOX/Al rockets & the Oberth Effect" Nicoll
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
Brad Guth
Unfortunately, the GW Bush 2018 moon is just another big-ass LLPOF
dog-wagging fiasco, nothing more than the usual cloak and dagger worth
of the usual perpetrated cold-war smoke and mirrors and whole lot of
brown-nosed sucking going on.
Russia, China and perhaps why the hell not France should be focused
upon establishing this one and only Lunar Space Elevator because, you
don't have to land a soul upon the surface of the radioactive and
otherwise reactive lunar surface to accomplish the LSE-CM/ISS.
Sorry that my personal web pages have gotten so damn hard to decode, as
they haven't been updated for quite some time. However, If any of you'd
like a revised statement and a somewhat less dyslexic wall-of-words as
related to such, I'll see what I can do. Otherwise just ask a few
specific questions and I'll share as much info as I can manage.
Understand that the initial LSE doesn't even have to involve all that
much size nor mass, as it could be 100% robotic and thus taking up the
one and only high star-wars ground as the sole property of whomever is
in on the mission. Once that ME-L1/EM-L2 sweet-spot is taken, that's
all that matters. Defending that sweet-spot of a mutual gravity-well
nullification zone with all out nuclear WMD is also perfectly fair play
by our "high standards and accountability" of our resident warlord's
"so what's the difference" policy.
Unfortunately, I personally do not have a sufficient cash of those
stealth WMD to spare, nor the resources to contrive such items but lo
and behold, I'd bet there are a few others among the living that could
and should (not necessarily Americans nor all that friendly towards
America).
Josh Hill
Nicoll) wrote:
>In article <perdj1ppmb7ggkaia...@4ax.com>,
>Josh Hill <joshu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>But the moon doesn't have much of a gravity well. The earth is the
>>expensive item here . . .
>
> Although from the POV of the moon, Earth's gravity is an
>exploitable resource. Actually, from the point of view of anywhere
>that isn't Earth, the Earth's gravity is an exploitable resource.
>Seems unfair, really.
>
>James "playing with Lunar L1 cables, LOX/Al rockets & the Oberth Effect" Nicoll
But then, the inhabitants of the other planets are probably making the
same complaint about us . . .
James Nicoll
Josh Hill <joshu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 25 Sep 2005 19:48:52 +0000 (UTC), jdni...@panix.com (James
>Nicoll) wrote:
>
>>In article <perdj1ppmb7ggkaia...@4ax.com>,
>>Josh Hill <joshu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>But the moon doesn't have much of a gravity well. The earth is the
>>>expensive item here . . .
>>
>> Although from the POV of the moon, Earth's gravity is an
>>exploitable resource. Actually, from the point of view of anywhere
>>that isn't Earth, the Earth's gravity is an exploitable resource.
>>Seems unfair, really.
>>
>>James "playing with Lunar L1 cables, LOX/Al rockets & the Oberth Effect" Nicoll
>
>But then, the inhabitants of the other planets are probably making the
>same complaint about us . . .
>
is a valuable resource to every other place of origin.
Jupiter's the big kahuna. Shame about the radiation.
Jordan
> Why not goto the moon for the first time?
Because we've already been there before, so by definition we would be
"going back" or "returning" rather than making the first manned
landingss
> Unfortunately, the GW Bush 2018 moon is just another big-ass LLPOF
> dog-wagging fiasco, nothing more than the usual cloak and dagger worth
> of the usual perpetrated cold-war smoke and mirrors and whole lot of
> brown-nosed sucking going on.
This is interesting ranting. Not sure what "LLPOF" is an abbreviation
for. What do you imagine Bush is trying to cover up (that's what
"dog-wagging" refers to, in common parlance) by a return to Luna, and
how? FYI the "cold-war" has been over since 1989 ...
> Russia, China and perhaps why the hell not France should be focused
> upon establishing this one and only Lunar Space Elevator because, you
> don't have to land a soul upon the surface of the radioactive and
> otherwise reactive lunar surface to accomplish the LSE-CM/ISS.
The Lunar surface isn't particularly radioactive. I'm not sure what
you mean by a "Lunar Space Elevator", unless you're talking about a
space elevator based on the surface of the Moon itself. That
particular project won't make sense until we develop far stronger
construction materials (probably a more advanced carbon nanofibre
technology), and you _do_ realize that (because the Moon rotates very
slowly) there is no practical "lunosynchronous" centerpoint?
<some snippage>
> Understand that the initial LSE doesn't even have to involve all that
> much size nor mass, as it could be 100% robotic
The initial Lunar surveys _are_ being done with robot probes. The
objective is to locate a good base placement site (preferably one with
nearby ice to mine).
> and thus taking up the
> one and only high star-wars ground as the sole property of whomever is
> in on the mission. Once that ME-L1/EM-L2 sweet-spot is taken, that's
> all that matters. Defending that sweet-spot of a mutual gravity-well
> nullification zone with all out nuclear WMD is also perfectly fair play
> by our "high standards and accountability" of our resident warlord's
> "so what's the difference" policy.
Um, what's your point? For Earthly BMD (ballistic missile defense)
purposes (which is what "star-wars" refers to in slang), Luna (and its
associated Lagrange points) is very _poor_ "high ground" -- it's too
far away from the arcs of sub-orbital missiles to make interception
easy, even with well-focused lasers. Luna is more important for
military purposes as a site for weapons difficult for an enemy to take
out with a surprise first strike (which is why the USAF was interested
in the concept in Project Horizon around 1960).
> Unfortunately, I personally do not have a sufficient cash of those
> stealth WMD to spare
Sorry, _what_ "stealth WMD"? You're totally losing me here, as the
only "stealth WMD" I know about would be nuclear bombs or missiles
carried on an F-117 or B-2, which are _aircraft_ (not spacecraft).
> nor the resources to contrive such items but lo
> and behold, I'd bet there are a few others among the living that could
> and should (not necessarily Americans nor all that friendly towards
> America).
> ~
Um, are you talking about the Chinese?
Sincerely Yours,
JOrdan
Jordan
> Why not goto the moon for the first time?
Because we've already been there before, so by definition we would be
"going back" or "returning" rather than making the first manned
landingss
> Unfortunately, the GW Bush 2018 moon is just another big-ass LLPOF
> dog-wagging fiasco, nothing more than the usual cloak and dagger worth
> of the usual perpetrated cold-war smoke and mirrors and whole lot of
> brown-nosed sucking going on.
This is interesting ranting. Not sure what "LLPOF" is an abbreviation
for. What do you imagine Bush is trying to cover up (that's what
"dog-wagging" refers to, in common parlance) by a return to Luna, and
how? FYI the "cold-war" has been over since 1989 ...
> Russia, China and perhaps why the hell not France should be focused
> upon establishing this one and only Lunar Space Elevator because, you
> don't have to land a soul upon the surface of the radioactive and
> otherwise reactive lunar surface to accomplish the LSE-CM/ISS.
The Lunar surface isn't particularly radioactive. I'm not sure what
you mean by a "Lunar Space Elevator", unless you're talking about a
space elevator based on the surface of the Moon itself. That
particular project won't make sense until we develop far stronger
construction materials (probably a more advanced carbon nanofibre
technology), and you _do_ realize that (because the Moon rotates very
slowly) there is no practical "lunosynchronous" centerpoint?
<some snippage>
> Understand that the initial LSE doesn't even have to involve all that
> much size nor mass, as it could be 100% robotic
The initial Lunar surveys _are_ being done with robot probes. The
objective is to locate a good base placement site (preferably one with
nearby ice to mine).
> and thus taking up the
> one and only high star-wars ground as the sole property of whomever is
> in on the mission. Once that ME-L1/EM-L2 sweet-spot is taken, that's
> all that matters. Defending that sweet-spot of a mutual gravity-well
> nullification zone with all out nuclear WMD is also perfectly fair play
> by our "high standards and accountability" of our resident warlord's
> "so what's the difference" policy.
Um, what's your point? For Earthly BMD (ballistic missile defense)
purposes (which is what "star-wars" refers to in slang), Luna (and its
associated Lagrange points) is very _poor_ "high ground" -- it's too
far away from the arcs of sub-orbital missiles to make interception
easy, even with well-focused lasers. Luna is more important for
military purposes as a site for weapons difficult for an enemy to take
out with a surprise first strike (which is why the USAF was interested
in the concept in Project Horizon around 1960).
> Unfortunately, I personally do not have a sufficient cash of those
> stealth WMD to spare
Sorry, _what_ "stealth WMD"? You're totally losing me here, as the
only "stealth WMD" I know about would be nuclear bombs or missiles
carried on an F-117 or B-2, which are _aircraft_ (not spacecraft).
> nor the resources to contrive such items but lo
> and behold, I'd bet there are a few others among the living that could
> and should (not necessarily Americans nor all that friendly towards
> America).
> ~
Um, are you talking about the Chinese?
Sincerely Yours,
JOrdan
Brad Guth
Why not go back to the moon for the first time was meant as being a
pun, or rather a kind suggestion that perhaps this time around we
should perhaps manage to deploy a few small robotic instruments upon
the actual surface that'll remain as interactively open channels to the
scientific community, instead of having been moderated and/or
sequestered by the MI6/NSA~NASA cloak and dagger format of the past.
>What do you imagine Bush is trying to cover up
By dog-wagging is still a good method of keeping the brown-nosed troops
and especially the brown-nosed media as happy campers, by way of their
being fed whatever infomercials as having been focused as far away as
possible from the truth. At least that's what created allusions of fear
in the past and has kept our perpetrated cold-war(s) alive and kicking,
not to mention multi-trillion dollar spendy. Except that now there's a
global energy fear that's actually not all that far off the mark, along
with a global-warming fear that is for real and causing massive
collateral damage while kaking innocent lives as we speak.
>The Lunar surface isn't particularly radioactive
Might I ask; as based upon what verifiable hard-science?
Unlike yourself, I'm not just focused upon the dusty surface as much as
I'm quite interested in whatever's sequestered a few meters or greater
under that surface. Thus what's most likely within the surface is in
fact offering several times greater amounts of radioactive elements
than upon Earth. Of course that's another timely indication as to what
our icy proto-moon has had to work with since it is so much younger
than Earth, and especially as our having been younger than Mars that
has been nearly radioactively dead as a door nail for the past few
million years. Or, is it that you simply don't believe in the likes of
carbon dating as based upon the decay of whatever radioactivity?
I believe even Radium(Ra-226) is worth 1600 years per half-life. Thus a
good amount of whatever was Radium is likely on it's last legs by now,
that is unless the raw solar and cosmic influx is somehow giving birth
to the likes of Radium. As otherwise, unless there's a complex thermal
nuclear core to work with, where's the atmospheric element of short
lived Radon coming from?
For a usenet poster, you seem to be rather unusually unsure of quite a
good number of items that could rock your boat. Why is that?
LSE-CM/ISS (aka; Lunar Space Elevator with Counter Mass and the
International Space Station within) seems rather crystal clear to most
of us village idiots, in providing the functionality of getting
whatever away from the lunar surface to roughly 62,000 ~ 64,000 km off
the deck is what any such LUNAR SPACE ELEVATOR might tend to
accomplish. Although, I do agree that the ESE fiasco of being in need
of their 108+ GPa tether fibers of spendy CNTs is going to remain
somewhat testy if not insurmountable for many reasons above and beyond
any CNT GPa factors.
>The initial Lunar surveys _are_ being done with robot probes. The
>objective is to locate a good base placement site (preferably one with
>nearby ice to mine).
All of which could and should have been easily and affordably
accomplished as of more than a couple of decades ago, at less than 0.1
cent on the dollar less costly than any moronic el-stupido notions of
humany walking upon even the much safer earthshine illuminated portions
because, by now we should have been talking about utilizing all of the
terrific data as having been obtained from previously having deployed
such fairly small yet extremely effective probes of a few kg at most,
and that's not to mention the LUNAR-A mission that's been on hold for
more than a decade.
>Um, what's your point? For Earthly BMD (ballistic missile defense)
>purposes (which is what "star-wars" refers to in slang), Luna (and its
>associated Lagrange points) is very _poor_ "high ground" -- it's too
>far away from the arcs of sub-orbital missiles to make interception
>easy, even with well-focused lasers.
That's true of having merely a cluster or array of perhaps 12 units of
being easily tether dipole powered and thus continuous duty rated 100
GW laser cannons of 0.5 milliradian cruising along at 50,000 km above
Earth (as close as 25,000 km if you'd dare) isn't as star-wars good as
existing ABLs or LEO satellite based methods that would require
hundreds if not a thousand such SBLs, of which would obviously have to
include their individual energy reserves and/or somehow self generate
their own energy that couldn't possibly sustain a 100 MW class of laser
beam for more than a few seconds at a time, thus you'd have to hit a
given IR reflective and most likely rotating target that's also moving
as much off track as possible so as to avoid the typical ballistic
tracking, thus perhaps 6 or more of the SBLs at a same time should
accomplish the task for merely another few trillions or so hard earned
bucks and a few megatonnes worth of nasty pollution that's only
necessary because we've become such all around perverted bastards that
seem to need a good butt kicking from time to time.
When I'm using/over-using the WMD phrase, as such it's being utilized
as an indication of what certain perverted folks like our residenr
warlord(GW Bush) having misused in order to justify getting tens of
thousands of innocent folks prematurely quite dead, at an ongoing
global cost of trillions (not merely billions) to boot. In case you
haven't noticed, I really have an underlying problem with a certain
Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire(LLPOF) warlord running us amuck, especially
if it's at the expense and demise of humanity. Thus I often feel as
though I have a personal WMD gap, as well as having a brown nosed
minion gap. How about yourself?
>Um, are you talking about the Chinese?
I'm always including the Chinese, them Russians, or perhaps those of
India or even if Japan takes any independent interest in their
accomplishing our moon, whereas that task of extracting whatever away
from our moon should first involve their having established the one and
only LSE-CM/ISS, or damn well wish that they had established such as
their "high ground" and best ever to/from lunar elevator in town
(whatever's star-wars worthy of supporting those 100 GW SBLs is just
providing a little icing on the LSE cake).
With statements like "preferably one with nearby ice to mine", you seem
unable to think outside the box. Why is that?
I'll agree that once upon a time our icy proto-moon may have had 262 km
worth of salty surface ice, part of which became our salty oceans, the
rest of which has long since vanished from such a proto-moon that still
has a viable geothermal core along with the near vacuum of space that
has also got a nearby fireball sharing 1.4 kw/m2, all of which isn't
exactly ice friendly if you get my drift. That doesn't mean that a few
geode pockets or perhaps even a few hollow rilles are not sequestering
a little ice reserve, just that we're going to have to dig deep for it,
and perhaps even terraform the moon into sharing it's wealth of
whatever ice and other substances such as He3 that we're being told ott
to be good for something.
Jordan
>BTW; our moon is for robots that do not have DNA/RNA to die for.
Short-term earthshine lunar EVAs are possible for us humans, but that's
about it<
First of all, you're assuming that in order to colonize the Moon,
humans have to spend lots and lots of time on the _surface_. Secondly,
you're assuming that the radiation is so intense that humans can't
carry enough shielding in suits and or vehicles.
Humans living on the Moon will spend most of their time in their habs,
which will be mostly underground and will as a matter of course have
shielding on the top against the Solar radiation. And the Solar
radiation is not so intense, nor is it for the most part of a high
enough frequency, to make portable shielding against it difficult.
If you are naked on the Lunar surface, you have far more urgent
concerns than the sunburn!
>Besides, at 5 g/cm2 worth of surface-tension; how exactly are you planning upon walking about many portions of our radioactive as well as reactive moon?<
I'm not sure what you mean by "surface-tension." Did you mean to say
"gravity?" FYI, it is quite possible to walk in Lunar gravity, and it
has been done so several times before, during the Apollo explorations.
If you're talking about _pressure_ differences, the answer is "with
spacesuits."
The Moon is _not_ particularly "radioactive." In fact it is _less_
radioactive than is the Earth. Are you talking about _Solar_
radiation?
I don't have a _clue_ as to what you mean by "reactive" in this
context.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Jordan
>>The Lunar surface isn't particularly radioactive
>
>Might I ask; as based upon what verifiable hard-science?
The complete lack, in any of the reports from manned or robotic
missions that I have read or read about, of any mention of dangerous
levels of radioactivity? (There are, of course, _some_ radioactive
elements -- as there are on the Earth's surface). The main radiation
problem on the Moon comes from Solar UV and electromagnetic flares.
>Unlike yourself, I'm not just focused upon the dusty surface as much as I'm quite interested in whatever's sequestered a few meters or greater under that surface. Thus what's most likely within the surface is in fact offering several times greater amounts of radioactive elements than upon Earth.<
???
Sorry, where did you get the notion that there are _more_ radioactive
elements in Luna than in Terra?
There may be more _accessible_ radiactive elements in Luna than on
Terra, but that is because most of Earth's radioactives are at depths
where the temperatures and pressures render them difficult to reach.
Lunar mining could go deeper than Terrestrial mining, for the same
level of technology, because the pressures and temperatures build more
slowly (many geologists think that the Moon is "dead", i.e. having
little remaining heat fuelled by internal radioactivity).
This does _not_ mean that the radioactive elements are more
_concentrated_ than in the Earth -- quite the opposite. Luna is _less_
geologically differentiated than is Terra, which means that it is very
improbable that the concentration of radioactive elements would be
dangerous in most cubic meters of material.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Brad Guth
Very good info because, it's just as well as I can tell the lunar
soil/rock is merely several fold greater in average radioactivity, thus
as to why you've coughed up the phrase "dangerous levels of
radioactivity" isn't such a surprise, but rather an expected
damage-control sort of response of your's because, otherwise I totally
agree that the near-UV, UV-a-b-c, extreme-UV, soft-X-rays and loads of
worse solar and cosmic stuff that's pretty much unfiltered or otherwise
unmoderated before impacting with the lunar surface is what's making
the already dark albedo moon a bit dustier and darker and certainly an
absolutely freaking sort of nasty place to be. That is unless you're
working the earthshine environment, and/or that of a robust little
robot having somewhat enormous feet, traction pads or surface
track-area upon which to maneuver about on top of the less than 5 g/cm2
worth of surface-tension.
>Sorry, where did you get the notion that there are _more_ radioactive
>elements in Luna than in Terra?
I believe that was from of all unlikely places; NASA, or by that of an
interpretation as having been based primarily upon the all-knowing
NASA/moon bible that's so deeply multi-encrypted that it can actually
be easily interpreted to mean whatever you'd like.
>(many geologists think that the Moon is "dead", i.e. having
>little remaining heat fuelled by internal radioactivity).
Many geologist have been dead wrong about the sorts places we've never
set foot upon, and even having been wrong about a few too many places
we have walked upon. Thus it wouldn't surprise myself if we soon
discover just how gosh darn radioactive and reactive our moon actually
is, such as established a bit further by the available He3 and
otherwise by way of what amounts of surface radon gas there's to
behold.
>Luna is _less_ geologically differentiated than is Terra
Does this mean that once upon a time Terra had 270 some odd km worth of
a salty ice covering?
Silly me, as here I'd thought that only icy proto-moons like Sedna
could have become ice covered.
Brad Guth
Our moon by day is in fact hotter than holy hell.
I'd been referring to various substances as per those items having been
situated or sequestered within a sufficient vacuum. However, if that
vacuum so happens to include a crystal clear surround as that of an
insulative layer of radon gas isn't all that likely going to exactly
make such items as the dark and nasty terrain and those moonsuits
walking about any cooler, that plus of what has been said about the
extremely hot and nasty particles that coexist throughout the Van Allen
zone/expanse are of what's further suggesting that it can get and
sustain such small particles(various atoms and most certainly a good
dusting cloud worth of carbon and iron) as per being extremely hot
while you're situated within such a near vacuum as that of a fully
solar/cosmic exposure mode of being essentially naked, and especially
humanly hot and nasty while having to trek yourself across a less than
5 g/cm2 worth of an extremely dark moon-dust fluffy surface-tension,
that's of all things being its hot and nasty self is also a bit photon
reactive to boot (especially as derived off the items of higher
density, like starting off with basalt at 3.1 g/cm3) which supposedly
accomplishes a terrific job of generating them hard-X-rays.
Perhaps the lunar atmospheric element of the mostly sodium element in
of itself is even a wee bit hotter than we'd previously understood, and
certainly of a greater population/m3 than we'd previously thought
possible, and perhaps especially of those sodium atoms as having ranged
more than 900,000 km away from the lunar deck as having been excavated
by such solar winds had to have been individually "hotter than holy
hell".
Since we still have absolutely nothing that's interactively sharing
scientific squat from the surface of our moon, perhaps certain folks
like yourself can best inform us village idiots as to what the
temperature actually is of the solar winds (100 ~ 2400 km/s), thus
putting into perspective as to what a supposedly sparsely populated
atmosphere of our moon might have to offer?
Seems we're being told to assume that such hot and nasty particles as
being closely associated with the nearly naked surface of the moon will
not in any measurable way degrade nor much less penetrate a given
moonsuit that's being wide-field (360 x 180) exposed to whatever's
physical that's coming along at good velocity, plus wide-spectrum
radiated upon from every which way but lose, and that's having to
include from the bottom up. Thus it's not just speaking about thermal
conduction and radiated thermal energy as it's involving what DNA/RNA
hot and nasty about being anywhere near the solar illuminated portions
of or moon.
I'm certainly no expert wizard of Oz but, seems the environment of our
moon (especially by day) offers a perfectly good reason for using
robust robots, and/or the sorts of LUNAR-A impact probes that are
DNA/RNA deficient to start off with.
~
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
Brad Guth
space represents MOS hocus-pocus taboo/nondisclosure. In other words,
we've been thoroughly screwed, blued and tattooed to a need-to-know and
media snookered fairlywell.
Perhaps this facet of our being summarily screwed, blued and tattooed
represents as good of reason as for us to at least go robotically back
to the moon, and the sooner the better because, there are some fools
that keep thinking this has been humanly achieved and, as a result are
betting our entire farm and last barrel of oil that it can be
accomplished again and again, as for accommodating more extensive EVAs
and with all of this somehow being accomplished in broad daylight and
without ever a hitch nor any need of banked bone marrow (yea right!
that's the MOS LLPOF ticket, as to screw them laws of physics and
exclude whatever evidence rocks your boat).
Apparently, of whatever's blowing in the solar wind and/or having been
gravity attracted or just run into at 30+km/s isn't the least bit of a
moonsuit safety factor, at least not any more so than somehow walking
upon less than a 5 g/cm2 worth of surface-tension because, it seems
that my TV set gets roughly a 0.1 mm/year of carbon/soot and other
micro debris worth of a coating per year, thus within 10,000 years I'd
have collected a meter of that extremely fluffy dust enclosing my TV
set as situated right here in River City, and I'm not all that certain
there'd be any surface-tension of 1 gram/m2 to work with.
Is the moon and of it's extremely dry environment representing that of
a zero voltage polarity?
Of course, now it seems that I'm being the bad guy or perhaps just the
messenger from hell by way of asking those silly questions that seem to
only have answers as based upon the social/political conditional laws
of physics that can't break any of those religious creation basis
rules, and thereby upon as much evidence exclusions as deemed
necessary.
This perfectly nice tidbit as to the continued damage-control on behalf
of those supposed fly-by-rocket soft landings as offered by Alan
Anderson;
>Not bedrock. Regolith. Eons of micrometeorite bombardment have not
>only eroded the surface rock, but compacted it quite nicely.
I offered my thanks and thus appreciation for that correction of
supposedly "Regolith" instead of being of whatever basalt/bedrock being
the case. However, it still seems a pretty damn nifty 6 out of 6 times
as representing sort of an extreme landing trick as having been the
case of those hocus-pocus sorts of scientifically
need-to-know/nondisclosure and otherwise of undocumented fly-by-rocket
technology landers, as per their tonnage upon arrival having managed to
never compress into much greater than an inch worth if hardly any
amount into the unusually thin deposits of lunar regolith/top-soil. I
certainly wonder all the time as to why such a nasty deposit of
moon-dust was so gosh darn reflective, wasn't even the least bit
electrostatic nor otherwise photon reactive, and as always as to why
they never bothered as to obtain those natural dark colors and deep
albedo as recorded upon those unfiltered Kodak moments while they were
there.
In physics-101 and hard-science proof-positive terminology and/or as
referenced to whatever;
How does such a near vacuum environment as having no apparent binders
and as obviously not having any terrific amount of gravity to work
with, still somehow manages as to supposedly compact such
regolith/basalt + meteorites contributed as compacted dirt even
possible, especially when other dry moons seem to have been radar
probed and thermally analyzed as having been meters deep in their
fluffy moon-dust?
Being that we still have no such hard-science upon snow or raw ice
surviving in nearby space;
It needs to be asked; why have we only conjecturs and not hard-science
about such raw ice in space?
Does this represent that space snowballs are highly compacted along
with having solid ice cores?
I can certainly fully appreciate as to what an icy proto-moon as having
somewhat recently lost its 270 km worth of such an icy coating, whereas
as thereby such ice having quite nicely compacted upon a great deal of
whatever was lunar dust and soil that was previously upon it's near
solid rock of a core. Although, what happens to such sequestered dust,
sand or soil that has been released from having been 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 than upon the moon?
I believe this type of exposed top-soil has been called dry-quicksand,
that's unfortunately become more than a wee bit difficult to walk upon
unless it's merely an extremely thin layer. So, unless our moon is
somewhat newish, why is there such a slight dusting, or did the solar
wind blow it all away?
Mars has certainly become nearly moon like, though even the mostly
sub-frozen environment and thus offering a relatively hardened soil via
dry-ice as binder of what Mars represents seems to impose
surface-tension limitations upon an extremely light-weight robotic
probe that's hardly sufficient for any task of digging and/or mining,
much less processing and exporting. Cut the gravity in half and exclude
the CO2 factor by a good thousand fold and lo and behold, there's not
going to be hardly any viable surface-tension unless there's hardness
of regolith/basalt bedrock as offering an underlayment of sub-top-soil
that's been somehow glued together by the horrific influx of micro and
not so micro meteorites, or perhaps massive amounts of whatever's local
and unfiltered influx of solar/cosmic radiation is the answer.
It further seems that solar/cosmic flak as well as micro meteorites,
sand and perhaps a good variety of extremely slight dust as attempting
to get into the environment of Earth hasn't hardly a chance in hell of
all that much arriving upon the surface. Of what does manage to get
through the atmospheric gauntlet has been most certainly contributing
towards displacing oceans, lakes, rivers or having become sequestered
within layers of snow and ice, and of what's eventually getting
situated where us humans walk is rather easily eroded, blown about and
otherwise frequently washed clean into our oceans, rivers and lakes
that basically makes it all go away, and then some (especially if you
included the solids contributed by way of humanity and of our mostly
bad sorts of excavating and erosive interactions with the very nature
of geology), thus in spite of ourselves we're losing our high and dry
ground at a much faster rate than any influx is contributing to the
cause. Of course upon the moon is where it WYSIWYG that stays put
unless it's having been vaporised into lunar atmosphere.
Of course the moon hasn't any of that terrestrial sorts of stuff going
for atmospherically deflecting, vaporising before reaching the surface
or subsequently having the sorts of erosions and/or surface weather
related factors that's transferring whatever arrives into nicely
flowing off into becoming moon-rivers and moon-ponds or lakes and
basins of moon-dust, although from time to time the solar winds should
have been causing a certain amount of surface erosion and thus at least
partially transferring such dirt/dust off the most vertical of regolith
and basalt bedrock, thus causing the mostly horizontal and/or basin
like zones to becoming extremely deep in such light dust that's most
likely anything but going to remain as light in color nor of becoming
all that naturally clumping.
Even upon Earth, dry sand or even coal dust simply doesn't clump, nor
would most any such bone-dry substance. Not even the supposed samples
of moon dust/dirt as supposedly having been returned to Earth, whereas
this environment offers better than a million fold more ambient
moisture to work with, still haven't managed to clump one damn cm3. Why
is that?
Why is the mere thought of an icy proto-moon so freaking
nondisclosure/taboo?
Why do we still NOT have a single interactive scientific instrument as
deployed upon the moon?
Why was there never once an efficient 100 joule +/-1° xenon strobe
transponder deployed as pointed back at Earth?
Even a 10 joule xenon strobe that could have been laser or microwave
triggered would have bccome visible to the naked eye from Earth,
especially if triggered while within earthshine. From that beam or
rather flood of photons all sorts of viable lunar atmospherics and
other near-surface related science could have become most easily and
affordably understood. Yet 4 decades of a perpetrated cold-wars and
trillions upon trillions down the toilet has gotten us less than squat
to work with.
Brad Guth
This is a wee bit long winded but, it's what I'm thinking is worth
updating and posting for the honest sake of my sharing the best that I
can (math mistakes and piss poor syntax to boot).
Unlike yourself, I'm not having to assume anything that's not
physics-101, or perhaps duh-101. Of course seeing the hard-science
about the harsh solar illuminated environment of our moon as being a
whole lot more than just thermally hot and nasty isn't helping your
cause of eventually habitating upon or even within the moon because, no
matters what, you still have to get folks and whatever stuff safely
to/from the lunar surface without involving the somewhat negative PR
aspects of folks impacting and vaporising upon moon base whatever
arrival.
Even the earthshine environment upon the moon is potentially lethal if
almost anything physical comes along, such as per out of nowhere as
represented as a wide-open-field of 360 X 180 degrees worth of
exposure, that which so much as an arriving dust-bunny could nail your
moonsuit butt, or even from a secondary meteorite shard that's still
capable of making better than 2 km/s isn't exactly a reassuring notion.
Thus I totally agree with your "If you are naked on the Lunar surface,
you have far more urgent concerns than the sunburn!", and for being
within a robust moonsuit is essentially still nearly butt naked if
you're having any contest between yourself and that of an arriving
30+km/s speck of dust.
Consider the ratio of crater diameter per size of meteorite and lo and
behold, you're looking at one hell of a nasty hole in your moonsuit, or
perhaps at the very least a hefty dent that should easily knock you
onto your moonsuit butt. Thus a mere spec of sand might easily become
termination of life as you know it, whereas the head-on velocity of
some of those specs of sand can become worth 100 km/s. Therefore the
more natural plus artifically generated atmosphere the better, even it
it's got a good amount of radon(Ra-222) gas. In fact, the more radon
the better.
If anything, my robust LSE-CM/ISS is all about the viable aspects of
colonizing our Moon. For starters having the LSE up and running is a
good thing, whereas from that point on we could easily pulverise the
moon with itself, thus releasing megatonnes of O2/year from the raw
basalt that's getting efficiently vaporised by merely releasing a tonne
at a time of lunar basalt away from being roughly 60,000 km off the
deck, thus without a kg of rocket fuel or any other form of dedicated
propulsion we'd obtain at the very least a 1000:1 ratio of each impact
making O2 available. Therefore, per tonne as having been gently tossed
away from a few km below the CM/ISS that's residing roughly 64,000 km
off the deck would potentially release 1000 tonnes of O2, whereas
eventually this mostly robotic process of perhaps releasing 3t/24 hrs
would create and sustain perhaps as much as 0.17 bar that's quite
possibly breathable, that is if the lower atmospheric layer of radon
gas isn't remaining quite as extensive as some have thought.
However, life is good within the 50e6t CM/ISS abode or that of keeping
yourself sequestered 15+ meters deep and/or within hollow rilles or
hopefully a few ready-made geode pockets that could be easily
reconfigured as underground lakes of salty water, whereas this life
underground notion might be a whole lot more doable than we'd thought.
BTW; earthshine isn't an insignificant amount of illumination, at
roughly 50 fold greater off than what the best moonshine arrives upon
the surface of Earth is actually a fairly good standard by which to
work by, and there's even a touch of secondary IR earthshine to warm
your soul. I seem to recall that moonshine is supposedly worth 0.1°C
upon the surface of Earth, thus perhaps as great as shifting the
average lunar nighttime surface temperature that's supposedly -153°C
by +5°C worth of earthshine could be the case, which is still damn
cold but, we can technically deal with being cold a whole lot easier
than being too warm.
>I'm not sure what you mean by "surface-tension." Did you mean to say
>"gravity?"
Gravity is certainly another factor but not the key point of what dry
quicksand surface-tension is all about. A GOOGLE search for the
surface-tension of water, then try a search for the surface-tension of
dry quicksand, then start running off the math as to a 1/6th gravity
and that of an extremely bone dry environment that by all the regular
laws of physics shouldn't clump all that well and, much less explain as
to such a slight layer of dust as though the moon isn't very old nor so
freaking naked to whatever's coming along. Perhaps then you tell me how
your folks are going to be walking upon and/or snorkeling their way
through such fluffy and perhaps electrostatic sorts of nasty stuff.
I'm thinking that Russia may have rediscovered that they'll have to
deal with a few slight if not nearly insurmountable glitches along the
way.
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.history/browse_frm/thread/608f283f468439de/3e63740c002a9729?lnk=st&q=brad+guth&rnum=1#3e63740c002a9729
Such as;
Can you even moon-walk upon a surface-tension of 5 g/cm2 without
sinking out of sight?
Is such moon-dust actually clumping all that good, or what? (where's
the hard-science?)
At 1/6th G (1.623 m/s/s); what's available for compacting or otherwise
binding said moon-dust?
What happens as a result of mining the moon, as to the artificially
created moon-dust?
I believe that the task of mining our moon is even going to suck the
life out of a good Russian robot, that is unless you've got traction, a
periscope or perhaps a good set of stilts. Because, 5 g/cm2 worth of a
bone-dry quicksand surface-tension in places isn't exactly promising.
As for them Russians mining the moon isn't something that's going to
transpire any time soon without their first getting a good number of
their moonsuit butts safely onto the earthshine illuminated lunar deck
and, that's going to become just a wee bit ticky by way of having to
utilizing those yet unproven fly-by-rocket landers which don't seem to
actually exist, not even for the likes of any of those Russian
AI/robotic landers having since provided us with little more than
pop-up books depicting what supposedly transpired, that is since
apparently all of their R&D as should have been easily recorded upon
movie film hadn't been invented yet.
Even if such fly-by-rocket landers of any reasonable payload capacity
existed, or if having to R&D create such from scratch as for
accommodating the task at hand, whereas per tonnage of getting whatever
robotics and certainly of those moonsuit butts safely deployed upon the
moon, of then having to operate such mining technology of such
machines, processing and thus extracting upon whatever (such as He3)
and of getting the end product packaged and shipped back towards mother
Earth is per tonne going to involve at least a good 1000+ tonnes worth
of nasty pollution for mother Earth, and of that 1000:1 ratio of
pollution contributing factor is not to mention the horrific amounts of
raw energy that such efforts will have taken from Earth in the first
place, thus likely having far out-stripped any recovery potential of
He3. Without their first establishing a good lunar space elevator(LSE),
the lunar surface is technically going to continually suck so much
worse off than we've been informed. Of physics and science as having
been based upon LLPOF worth of smoke and mirrors simply isn't going to
make such happen, at least not any time soon.
Mining and thereby extracting whatever away from our moon sucks big
time energy and dollars even for a good robotic solution unless you've
got one of good traction, and perhaps one hell of a nifty periscope to
boot. Operating within the sub-frozen nighttime environment of our
moon, even with somewhat considerable earthshine and thereby some
indirect benefit of secondary thermal influx might become the only
CO2-->dry-ice-->CO2 (day-night-day) cycle of any method that worth
improving the lunar environment that'll achieve any measurable degree
of moon-dirt binding or clumping. As otherwise there's none other drier
or fluffier quicksand to be found unless you're situated upon Mercury,
as even a Venus class of hot and obviously bone dry quicksand isn't
going to be without benefit of the local elements affording viable
binders for sticking such hot and nasty Venus soil together and, much
unlike that of our electrostatic powder puff of a moon, as upon Venus
there's certainly not any significant forms of cosmic or solar influx
of sand or meteorites that could have significantly contributed to such
terrestrial depth(s) becoming whatever's Venus sand, soil or dust. In
other words, I believe that Venus is mostly Venus unless you're talking
about a time before things got all geologically hot and nasty and
subsequently developed that absolutely terrific atmospheric shield.
Perhaps the mostly Russian Venus Express mission will help to further
define as to whatever's what with regard to the various depths and
composition(s) of the otherwise geologically hot and nasty Venus soils,
plus identifying a few of those likely active lava and/or mud flows
plus S8 sulphur vents that should be atmospherically interactive enough
for the onboard science instruments to sample.
The Next Lunar Rover; may still manage to sink itself out of sight
http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration/EXLibrary/docs/BeyondLEO/leo194/rover.htm
Having a dry mass of under 1000 kg and having six extremely large
traction wheels seems a whole lot more doable, that is as long as their
conditional laws of moon-physics of such nasty dust/soil remains as a
relatively thin coating that's somehow magically clumping within the
first 12.5 mm and apparently comprised of entirely nonreactive
substance like nowhere other.
However, along with accommodating another 1000 kg of payload brings the
tally to nearly 2000 kg, thus 333 kg divided upon 6 wheels is still
counting upon 56 kg/wheel which is at least getting somewhat suggestive
of what darn little mass that supposedly thin layer of such nicely
auto-clumping moon-dirt of lunar cornmeal and portland cement can
manage to support, and that's for using wheels offering better than 6
fold the surface contact area, thus in total accomplishing the task at
roughly 10 times the traction of what those original Apollo rovers had
to work with.
Terrestrial ROLLING RESISTANCE isn't quite the same thing as for the
moon.
http://www.perfnet.com/haul_truck_830e_demo_web/performance_optimization/introduction_and_definitions.htm
The following link provides us with a nifty traction and required
energy calculator, although terrestrial based but otherwise especially
interesting if using their "Sand Dune(.16)" consideration as to what a
150 kg tractor + 150 kg trailer for a combined mass of 300 kg
represents at various grades. I also used 10 mph and 100 seconds as for
the acceleration factor, zero ballast and a grade of 10%. You may want
to utilize an overall efficiency of 0.25 instead of 0.85 just for good
measure.
http://www.talbertmfg.com/index2.html
This is assuming and thus based upon a reasonable set of two
extra/double-wide or that of the usual four large diameter and wide
enough driving tires/axle of good tread design that are not sinking
into whatever substance as being driven upon. It's obviously not
considering the much lighter fluff or far less clumping nature of
whatever actual moon-dust is all about, which may actually represent
another factor of extremely slight moon-dust buoyancy issues as much as
less surface-tension since their no good reason for such dust to have
compacted, nor at least in any known manner of physics as for clumping
that substance under the absolute best of situations wouldn't sustain
more than 50 g/cm2 unless there's only a relatively thin layer of such
moon-dust and/or sufficiently nearby bedrock upon which to drive.
Whereas a wise assumption of unsupported and thus unclumping
surface-tension might be a bit closer to 5 g/cm2.
BTW; the absolute driest of our terrestrial sand dunes would still have
a million fold more moisture content as for their accommodating
whatever binding degree of soil/sand clumping, thus walking and/or
having to drive upon such a terrestrial substance that leaves no
footprints nor of even sustaining any trace of tire tracks for long is
still a surface-tension that's considerably better off than what even a
1/6th gravity and certainly more than bone dry situation upon what our
scorching hot and otherwise terribly solar and cosmic reactive moon has
to offer. Keeping in mind, that if Earth didn't have the magnitosphere
and a sufficiently thick amount of atmosphere, Earth too would be even
more reactive because of the average densitiy being greater than that
of the moon. Thus if the moon is not reactive in your good book it's
because of having a sufficient atmosphere. So make up you mind, does it
or doesn't have an atmosphere?
According to http://www.talbertmfg.com/index2.html
Supposedly sand upon Earth terrain that's bone dry (least clumping)
offers a flat surface rolling amount of extra resistance being worth
15%, whereas without taking into account as for tires sinking into said
sand but just going the least bit vertical adds considerable insult to
injury, meaning that the rolling resistance can easily double due to a
loss of traction and thus wheel spinning. A 10% grade upon a hard and
smooth surface represents another 10% worth of base energy required for
the same task of moving a given tire upon whatever asphalt/concrete
substance, whereas on a truly lose sand or lunar composite dust that
your tires have been sinking into may more than double if not require
four times that ratio.
"The degree of traction between the tire and the ground is called the
coefficient of traction."
"Since there is never 100 percent adhesion, the coefficient is always
less than 1.0. The result of multiplying the weight on the drive axle
times the coefficient of traction represents the maximum force which
can be transmitted before the tire spins out."
"For example, a vehicle with 200,000 kg of weight on the drive axle and
working on ground conditions having a coefficient of traction of 0.6
can deliver up to 120,000 kg (200,000 kg × 0.6) of force before the
tires will spin out."
Given roughly 1000 cm2 per set or pair of over-enlarged moonboots as
having to walk upon such dusty locations offering a surface tension
worth 50 g/cm2 represents that a given moonsuit EVA that's worth 25 kg
should be doable at representing 25 g/cm2, although upon one moonboot
foot at a time or perhaps 500 cm2 applied per step would be having to
support the entire 25 kg is going to become nearly equal to whatever
the best possible surface-tension that's supposedly capable of clumping
moon-dirt eventually supporting at greater than 50 g/cm2, which
represents that whatever moon-walking may require somewhat enlarged
footprints that could represent a pair of clown shoes or those of
compact snowshoes unless the hard stuff is always an inch or so below
the dusty surface.
I'm thinking that, Even though the surface-tension is perhaps worthy in
certain places of supporting as much as 0.05 kg/cm2, in other places
this may be somewhat like having to walk through a dry fluff density of
powder snow, in that each step will have you sinking through the more
than likely a 5 g/cm2 composite of moon-dust before that amount of
magic clumping moon-dirt worth of soil compression becomes worthy of
sustaining even that 5 g/cm2 amount of surface-tension and thus becomes
all that usable, thereby any rolling tire or other flat tread like tire
or belt/tred is going to be transferring a great deal of material up
and around that form of wheel/tire traction, whereas a camel like
traveling machine might prove more acceptable, especially if it had six
legs that were long enough so as to keeping it's payload and passengers
above the thick dust that has got to be worth 10+ meters in places.
Traveling via robotic (six legged) moon-camel isn't all that far
fetched. Say if each of the six legged machines offered a m2 cupped
foot per leg, as that's potentially giving 6 m2 or 60,000 cm2 to work
with. At half-loading is where that amount of area becomes worth 30,000
cm2, upon which 0.05 kg/cm2 = 1500 kg of moon mass or 9t Earth mass,
although I seriously have my doubts we'll actually have nearly as good
as 50 g/cm2 to work with unless you've bottomed out.
A traction tread/belt as having perhaps 10 m2 of a working amount of
surface contact should do as well if not a bit better as long as it's
submerged operating depth capacity isn't limited. Thus 100,000 cm2 X
0.05 kg/cm2 = 5,000 kg or at the same half-load capacity of 15t Earth
mass.
As background info; excluding factors of buoyancy, at 1G the
terrestrial surface-tension of warm water is 72 dynes/cm. That's worthy
of just 7.34e-2 g/cm2. Obviously terrestrial dry-quicksand is offering
a great deal more surface-tension plus a better displacement degree of
buoyancy, although uncompacted moon-dust may not support a
surface-tension much better than 5 g/cm2.
Dry Quicksand
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/d/dr/dry_quicksand.htm
"Lohse found that a weighted ping pong ball (radius 2cm, mass 133g),
when released from just above the surface of the sand, would sink to
about five diameters. Lohse also observed a "straight jet of sand
[shooting] violently into the air after about 100 ms". Objects are
known to make a splash when they hit sand, but this type of jet has
never been described before."
That's roughly a total ball surface area of 50 cm2. Dividing that by 3
offers at most 17 cm2 worth of a supportive surface area that's having
been somewhat offset by a slight buoyancy factor since the above
weighted ball submerged itself to roughly a depth of 20 cm before being
supported. As then we can deduce the notion that a 133 g mass had
eventually obtained a dry-quicksand surface tension worthy of not more
than 7.8 g/cm2, or 46.8 g/cm2 worth of terrestrial mass as having been
situated upon the moon could become the case. However, being that the
same dry-quicksand as otherwise situated within the same 1/6th G
environment should also be taken into account, thus perhaps at the very
optimum best 10 g/cm2 is about all we're ever going to obtain. Thereby
not going by my previous 50 g/cm2 but having to use 10 g/cm2 if not 5
g/cm2 to safe should become the wise alternative as for keeping your
moonsuit butt and head above such obviously extremely dry-quicksand of
the moon, especially wise if that's having to involve the compression
ratio of 5:1 as being worth taking note of.
As for getting those two reasonably hefty moonsuits and especially of
their lander at something that amounted to nearly 16 tonnes resting
nicely upon 4 pads that looked as though each offered roughly a square
meter (10,000 cm2/pad), thereby having to accommodate 675 kg/pad that
barely managed to compress past the first inch is suggestive of their
having 6 out of six times set their fly-by-rocket craft down upon a
relatively firm surface-tension of something that's certainly
indicating as better than 100 g/cm2. This is either quite unexpected or
damn lucky since in places the surface-tension could have been less
than 5 g/cm2 and otherwise at most 10 g/cm2, and of course their next
generation lander that's getting proposed is going to have to become
extremely robust for taking a payload of perhaps 3 astronauts plus a
rather substantially larger and thus more of everything rover that's at
least twice the capacity of what our Apollo teams had to work with,
thus a combined terrestrial mass of certainly not less than 24 tonnes
and most likely with the necessary de-orbit and down-range plus
sufficient (what-if) spare fuel and the third person accommodation
making it worth 27 tonnes, which computes out to 1125 kg/pad. Thus even
with each 4 m2 landing pad is still having to bet the farm upon setting
down upon a dry quicksand surface-tension of better than 28 g/cm2,
which by all logic and certainly of the known laws of physics simply
may not exist unless we're talking about mostly bedrock or at least
situated upon significant piles of impact related shards that are
sufficiently vertical in slope so as to have since been blown nearly
clean by some 1200+km/s solar winds, that which should have easily
reached and reacted with the surface if there's actually as slight of
atmosphere as having been reported.
I believe getting this task of whatever safely to/from the moon surface
down to a bit more realistic measure requires a lunar space elevator:
Of any such new and "improved lunar landing architecture" certainly
needs exactly what the LSE-CM/ISS infrastructure has to offer, that is
unless we're talking about one-way tickets to ride. As per the task of
terraforming our moon into becoming a bit more robotically obtainable
is certainly a doable task without ever risking a single astronaut.
>The Moon is _not_ particularly "radioactive." In fact it is _less_
>radioactive than is the Earth.
Please offer your basis (other than based upon the NASA/Apollo bible
scriptures) for this conclusion because, even NASA's new guard has
science published as to the average lunar bedrock that is considerably
more "radioactive" than upon Earth. Thus instead of our receiving a
local geological based dosage of 0.5 mr/day, as per existing here upon
Earth, you'd be looking at several mr/day, plus whatever's cosmmic and
solar contributed, plus whatever's of secondary/recoil dosage that's
smack dab in the hard-X-ray spectrum and, every time earth is situated
directly between yourself and the sun is when you'll get an extra taste
of what our outter most Van Allen zone of death can contribute, as
somewhat the lunar SAA sort of booster TBI shot. All and all, if things
should get a little bit testy, having banked bone marrow should save
the day.
>I don't have a _clue_ as to what you mean by "reactive" in this context.
Search for secondary/recoil radiation, or perhaps secondary/recoil
photons. You'll find more info than this usenet cold hope to store.
Basically the direct solar radiation for the most part isn't of what's
going to nail your sorry DNA/RNA hide to the wall, although a quick
shot of whatever's being expedited along by a 1200~2400 km/s solar wind
isn't even a fair contest because, your DNA will lose big-time.
~
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
Jordan
>Very good info because, it's just as well as I can tell the lunar soil/rock is merely several fold greater in average radioactivity ...<
If you mean "than the Earth's crust is," then that's not much of an
obstacle to building subsurface habs. Coupled with less geological
differentiation, that means that there would be very few pockets of
dangerously radioactive materials, and hence not much hazard. The main
danger from geological radioactivity would be emissions of radon gas or
leakages of radioactive dust, and these would be most significant where
there were significant _concentrations_ of uranium, thorium etc.
This danger is easily detected and avoided. Instruments as simple as
Geiger counters can pick up dangerous levels of radioactivity, and if a
hab has to intersect a pocket of dangerous materials, one simply lines
the walls thickly enough to prevent the dangerous _materials_ from
getting through. (Radiation shielding, per se would probably not be
necessary in most subsurface locations, because the health hazard is
primarily from the ingestion of radioactive materials).
>thus as to why you've coughed up the phrase "dangerous levels of radioactivity" isn't such a surprise, but rather an expected
damage-control sort of response of your's <
???
It is in fact quite important to distinguish between "dangerous" and
"non-dangerous" levels of radioactivity, because some degree of
radioactivity is present in all environments. This includes the Earth,
parts of which are far more radioactive than anything we're likely to
find anywhere in the Moon. Granite, which underlies the continents, is
radioactive (it contains uranium); almost anything a volcano coughs up
is radioactive (it comes from the mantle, which is more radioactive
than the crust); and for that matter you and I and all humans are
radioactive (our tissues incorporate Carbon-14, among other radioactive
isotopes, greatly to the benefit of archaeologists!).
So this isn't a phrase, nor is it "damage control," it's a statement of
fact. If you want a totally radiation-free environment, you need to go
to another Universe: this one's physical laws are inconvenient to your
purposes.
>otherwise I totally agree that the near-UV, UV-a-b-c, extreme-UV, soft-X-rays and loads of worse solar and cosmic stuff that's pretty much unfiltered or otherwise unmoderated before impacting with the lunar surface is what's making the already dark albedo moon a bit dustier and darker and certainly an absolutely freaking sort of nasty place to be.<
Well, it's "an absolutely freaking sort of nasty place to be" if you're
_unrprotected on the surface_. But then, if you're unprotected on the
surface, the lack of air will kill you in a few minutes, long before
you have a chance to soak up significant doses of solar (or any other
kind of) radiation.
The long-term effects of unfiltered solar radiation make it a bad idea
to live _for long periods of time_ in surface habs, unless they are
well-shielded. However, humans can easily endure _for SHORT periods of
time_ levels of radiation which would endanger their health for longer
durations. Thus, Lunar colonists could live in subsurface habs and
venture out on the surface occasionally, in appropriately protected
spacesuits, to perform tasks requiring their presence.
Note that the hazard (Solar radiation at the orbital distance of the
Terrestrial-Lunar system from the Sun) is exactly the same faced by
astronauts in Earth orbit, and that our current space craft are not in
fact all that well shielded. Yet crew have survived for months on
long-duration orbital flights, with the health problems coming more
from microgravity than from radiation, as far as we can tell.
I think you are VERY much exaggerating the radiation dangers on and in
the Moon.
> That is unless you're working the earthshine environment, <
What is an "earthshine environment?" Do you mean Lunar Nearside?
>and/or that of a robust little robot having somewhat enormous feet, traction pads or surface track-area upon which to maneuver about on top of the less than 5 g/cm2 worth of surface-tension. <
Why do you perceive Lunar gravity as being a significant problem? None
of the Apollo LEM crews reported any particular difficulty maneuvering
under such conditions -- in fact, they found it especially _easy_ to
walk on the Moon, once they adjusted for the effects of relatively
higher inertia-to-weight ratios.
>>Sorry, where did you get the notion that there are _more_ radioactive
>>elements in Luna than in Terra?
>
>I believe that was from of all unlikely places; NASA, or by that of an interpretation as having been based primarily upon the all-knowing NASA/moon bible that's so deeply multi-encrypted that it can actually be easily interpreted to mean whatever you'd like.<
Ok ... I don't understand what you just said. You're saying that, in
particular there's a NASA site which mentions higher levels of
radioactive elements in the Moon than on the Earth?
By the way, you do realize that, if true, this is also an _advantage_
-- it means that a Lunar colony could mine its own fuels.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Brad Guth
I agree that the soil/rock radioactivity of an underground lunar
habitat that's sharing whatever background TBI dosage is going to be
medium to long term survivable, although you'd left out Radiun(Ra226)
as one of the potential elements as having to contend with, that's been
responsible for making the bulk of radon gas, of which the radon
element itself isn't so insurmountably testy as long as you're not
breathing it.
Even at a TBI daily dosage of 100 mr is going to give your crew more
than a year's worth of exposure before there's need to obtain some of
their their banked bone marrow. That is uless they've spent any amount
of time actually on the fully solar illuminated deck, as that sort of
exposure could terminate their stay of spending merely few hours, much
less days, as for getting their career limit of X-ray nailed DNA to a
fairlywell from all directions within hardly any time at all. A truly
bad solar day and we're down to talking of minutes instead of hours
worth.
When I'm thinking of why certain folks like yourself say certain
things, it often comes across as though you're performing some sort of
background damage-control on behalf of matching up to whatever NASA's
sorry Apollo butt has to say.
>Well, it's "an absolutely freaking sort of nasty place to be" if you're
>_unrprotected on the surface_. But then, if you're unprotected on the
>surface, the lack of air will kill you in a few minutes, long before
>you have a chance to soak up significant doses of solar (or any other
>kind of) radiation.
Being within a synthetic moonsuit and even within any flimsy
fly-by-rocket lander isn't hardly worth all that much protection. What
if a dust-bunny arrives at 30 km/s, or God forbid an actual speck of
sand. Then besides all of the secondary/recoil of hard-X-ray dosage
there's also the prospects of micro flak within solar winds of 100 ~
2400 km/s, whereas some of that solar wind is capable of packing heat,
meaning physical bullets of micro-matter in the form of perhaps at
least a picogram/m3 worth of mass as having been transported along with
the medium/average velocity, and perhaps better than 10 picogram/m3 at
the upper most velocity. At the low end of solar wind velocity is where
I'd expect 0.1 picogram/m3 which should be fairly harmless, although
how many days or hours per year are qualified at 100 km/s or less?
>Note that the hazard (Solar radiation at the orbital distance of the
>Terrestrial-Lunar system from the Sun) is exactly the same faced by
>astronauts in Earth orbit, and that our current space craft are not in
>fact all that well shielded.
What planet are you from?
The astronauts from Earth that are in Shuttle/LEO or within ISS are
extensively protected by our powerful though failing magnetosphere,
thus electro-magnetically shielded from the vast bulk of what's cosmic
and solar nasty, and that's by at least a good 100:1 if not a 200:1
radio of defending their DNA as getting less nailed than for being
situated just outside of the Van Allen zone of Death. However, we're
certainly much worse off if orbiting nearby any freaking reactive moon
that's sharing secondary/recoil photons as extensively produced off the
solar illuminated side and, there's still a few via cosmic interactions
of secondary/recoil hard-X-ray photons coming off the lunar nighttime
side (not to mention the cosmic stuff and solar flak that's directly
interacting with their own reactive spacecraft, and since there's such
a slight amount of a lunar atmosphere (though I believe there's
actually more than having been reported), there's damn little
attenuation of that extra dosage other than for using the square of the
distance for giving your crew that's within such a minimal spacecraft a
chance at short-term surviving within that sort of hard-X-ray dosage
environment. In other words, the closer to the moon you get, the more
hard-X-ray TBI dosage you get to share upon, and that's even if it's a
fairly passive solar day because, there's no such thing as any zero rad
or even a zero Sv sort of solar day unless you insist upon sticking
with your conditional laws of physics.
>I think you are VERY much exaggerating the radiation dangers on and in
>the Moon.
Unless you've got yourself one speedy little spacecraft with lots of
rocket fuel reserves, chances are that once committed to reaching the
moon, as such there's no turning back and there's no hiding from a
sudden solar event which can deliver a real sucker punch of solar wind
in as little as 18 hours, but that's long after having been TBI at
perhaps 10s if not 100s of Sv, of which nothing launchable is going to
shield your sorry butt from such dosage that'll make even banked bone
marrow somewhat pointless, other than becoming available as a life
saving donation for some other terrestrial bastard that'll at least
stands a chance at surviving, whereas you're at best a dead moonsuit
walking.
>What is an "earthshine environment?" Do you mean Lunar Nearside?
That's right, nearside that's essentially in lunar nighttime but still
benefiting from what's being quite nicely reflected off mother Earth,
at full-Earth offering <80 fold the illumination of what you and I'd
perceive as moonshine illuminating upon the surface of Earth. Thus
earshine upon the dark albedo of the lnuar nighttime is actually
offering a great deal of managable illumination to work by.
>Why do you perceive Lunar gravity as being a significant problem? None
>of the Apollo LEM crews reported any particular difficulty maneuvering
>under such conditions -- in fact, they found it especially _easy_ to
>walk on the Moon, once they adjusted for the effects of relatively
>higher inertia-to-weight ratios.
Gravity is merely a factor in why the bone-dry dust, soil and/or
quicksand of the moon isn't compacted nor otherwise capable of clumping
upon itself. Even at 1/6th gravity, if there's less than 5 g/cm2 worth
of compressed surface-tension to work with, in which case you're going
to need some seriously large surface area snowshoes, and of any rolling
stock is going to require absolutely massively large surface area tires
and/or extremely wide and long area track/belt like treads in order to
keep from sinking out of sight, whereas in places that moon dust is
going to be meters deep, 10+ meters shouldn't be all that unavoidable.
Your "especially _easy_ to walk on the Moon" is based upon what
hard-science? and/or upon what laws of physics?
Of other than exposed bedrock or whatever solids of lava that would
have to be upon a rather considerable slope, do you have knowledge of
the sorts of places upon the moon with such a slight amount of
moon-dust that has a clumping surface-tension property that's worthy of
100 g/cm2?
At the extremely unlikely 100 g/cm2, that's offering a tonne/m3 worth
of sustained soil compression capability that was depicted as existing
under those landing pads that hardly compressed into all that much of
anything, and of those sites were not even situated upon any
significant slope to start with. Doesn't this make you wonder in the
least bit, as to the authenticity and thus truth of the supposed
hard-science obtained from those supposed NASA/Apollo landings?
Anything of NASA/Apollo that's related to those undocumented
fly-by-rocket landers and of whatever EVA/moonsuit treks remains at
risk, as purely speculation, as in having to accept their word and only
their words of what they think it's going to be like. On some issues
they may even be sufficiently correct, thus perhaps accomplishing a few
small, least spendy and of those utilizing the impact survivable form
of deploying such probes could have easily confirmed all of that and
provided so much more hard-science as of decades ago. I wonder why that
never transpired?
>Ok ... I don't understand what you just said. You're saying that, in
>particular there's a NASA site which mentions higher levels of
>radioactive elements in the Moon than on the Earth?
Yes, I've identified several documents though nearly encrypted as to
read such pages that seem to outline upon the surface background worth
of potentially harmful TBI as typically better than twice what we'd
have to deal with upon Earth, with 10 fold in many zones plus a few
relatively hot spots that as you said could be rather easily avoided.
Regardless of whatever the local terrain has to offer, that's not the
primary source of what's going to exterminate your DNA.
>By the way, you do realize that, if true, this is also an _advantage_
>-- it means that a Lunar colony could mine its own fuels.
That's quite true, although solar energy farms and perhaps even a lunar
based He3/fusion reactor should become just the ticket, that is until
the multi terawatt LSE-CM/ISS gets up and running, as then you'd have
considerably more clean and 100% green/renewable energy via the tether
dipole than either or both of us could shake flaming sticks at.
I've estimated of safely taking/extracting 5 TJ away from the tether
dipole source alone.
I've previously estimated upon a do-everything amount of 10 kj/soul,
although eventually boiling that dependency down to a continuous
average of 5 kj/soul shouldn't be all that insurmountable. Thus between
the tether dipole, solar-stirling, solar-PV and whatever's geothermal
and/or of local energy producing elements such as He3 should represent
a nearly unlimited cash of squeak clean and mostly green/renewable
energy that could thus accommodate millions upon million of souls that
could be calling our moon home sweet home.
How many terawatts or TJ of clean and continuous energy might your
lunar colonies require?
Once we've artificially pulverised the holy crapolla out of the moon,
thus having created an artificially induced atmosphere, as perhaps then
a few extra tonnes of salty seawater can get imported and deposited so
as to recreating those underground lakes within whatever's natural
geode or robotically created pockets, and eventually open surface lakes
of this salty water which should then terraform the surface of our moon
into a doable yet still somewhat testy environment for accommodating
entirely new and improved life that's genetically engineered tolerant
to the much greater radiation dosage that'll remain as the norm, that
is unless the amount of atmosphere can become that of the mostly heavy
elements (such as Ra222) instead of the wossy O2/N2 of Earth.
Of course, any such underground lunar colony without first having a
lunar-space-elevator is going to suck big-time. Even a relatively small
capacity LSE that's 100% robotic would be an essential key investment
element that's worth far more than it's weight in He3.
Basically what I'm saying is, our moon is going to be technically
surmountable, although it'll remain as somewhat testy up until the
LSE-CM/ISS is up and running. Until then it's a darn good place for
robust robotics and otherwise limited fly-by-rocket landings and of
those EVA/moonsuit and moonboot/snowshoe walks under the much safer
earthshine and thus well illuminated nighttime environment.
~
Life on Venus, township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
Jordan
> Jordan,
> I agree that the soil/rock radioactivity of an underground lunar
> habitat that's sharing whatever background TBI dosage is going to be
> medium to long term survivable, although you'd left out Radiun(Ra226)
> as one of the potential elements as having to contend with, that's been
> responsible for making the bulk of radon gas, of which the radon
> element itself isn't so insurmountably testy as long as you're not
> breathing it.
Radon is a problem when living underground in any environment
(including on the Earth!) where there may be deposits of radioactive
materials. However, it's a _solved_ problem -- it takes months to
years to absorb a dangerous dosage of radon, and radon is only really
dangerous through ingestion (in the quantities it occurs naturally you
aren't going to get any significant dose through an atmospherically
sealed wall, even a fairly thin one). Hence, what one does is to
monitor for its presence (easy, because even though it's noble it's
also radioactive), and (when detected) seal off the source of the leak
from the rock.
For many other reasons you would want to seal off a hab from the bare
rock surrounding it anyway, so this is hardly an added burden. The
main threat would be if the hab sprung a leak, allowing radon to be
admitted.
(note that if the leak is open even indirectly to the _surface_, your
problem is not the gain of radon but rather the loss of atmosphere, and
the leak will announce itself audibly!)
> Even at a TBI daily dosage of 100 mr is going to give your crew more
> than a year's worth of exposure before there's need to obtain some of
> their their banked bone marrow. That is uless they've spent any amount
> of time actually on the fully solar illuminated deck, as that sort of
> exposure could terminate their stay of spending merely few hours, much
> less days, as for getting their career limit of X-ray nailed DNA to a
> fairlywell from all directions within hardly any time at all. A truly
> bad solar day and we're down to talking of minutes instead of hours
> worth.
Why are the hab-dwellers going to be suffering any dangerous level of
radiation dosage unless they are outside the hab, anyway? I'm assuming
that a normal hab design would include placement of living quarters,
etc. under enough shielding (regolith, mostly) that Solar radiation,
even under flare conditions, would become a non-issue. Unlike a
spaceship, the hab doesn't have to move around, so it can put as many
meters of regolith between it and the Sun as the engineers feel
necessary, at only a minor cost in terms of construction difficulty per
additional meter of protection.
> When I'm thinking of why certain folks like yourself say certain
> things, it often comes across as though you're performing some sort of
> background damage-control on behalf of matching up to whatever NASA's
> sorry Apollo butt has to say.
I'm not, actually, a big NASA fan. I think that they've been
consistently behind the curve since Nixon gutted them back in the early
1970's, and are just beginning to wake up again.
BTW, there is no guarantee that NASA will build the first Moonbase.
Both the Chinese government and private individuals of several nations
have expressed interest in such a project.
> >Well, it's "an absolutely freaking sort of nasty place to be" if you're
> >_unrprotected on the surface_. But then, if you're unprotected on the
> >surface, the lack of air will kill you in a few minutes, long before
> >you have a chance to soak up significant doses of solar (or any other
> >kind of) radiation.
>
> Being within a synthetic moonsuit and even within any flimsy
> fly-by-rocket lander isn't hardly worth all that much protection. What
> if a dust-bunny arrives at 30 km/s, or God forbid an actual speck of
> sand.
If you're talking about micrometeorites, this would be a very rare
hazard -- at least as rare as being struck by lightning is on the
Earth's surface. Yes, some people (in a population of billions) are
struck by lightning every year. That doesn't force us to abandon
operations on the Earth's surface.
> Then besides all of the secondary/recoil of hard-X-ray dosage
> there's also the prospects of micro flak within solar winds of 100 ~
> 2400 km/s, whereas some of that solar wind is capable of packing heat,
> meaning physical bullets of micro-matter in the form of perhaps at
> least a picogram/m3 worth of mass as having been transported along with
> the medium/average velocity, and perhaps better than 10 picogram/m3 at
> the upper most velocity. At the low end of solar wind velocity is where
> I'd expect 0.1 picogram/m3 which should be fairly harmless, although
> how many days or hours per year are qualified at 100 km/s or less?
I'm not totally sure what you meant by this (you have some synactical
problems in general) but I don't see why most Moondwellers would have
to spend long amount of time on the surface in general (EXPLORATION
teams would, of course, but I thought we were discussing colonization).
You should also realize that, after a while, humans will undoubtedly
design and build vehicles more or less proof against the hazards of
Solar flares on the Lunar surface, which will incorporate shielding or
survival mechanisms (such as burrowing to ride out a solar storm)
against the same.
> >Note that the hazard (Solar radiation at the orbital distance of the
> >Terrestrial-Lunar system from the Sun) is exactly the same faced by
> >astronauts in Earth orbit, and that our current space craft are not in
> >fact all that well shielded.
>
> What planet are you from?
Earth. Which orbits at the same distance from the Sun as the Moon
does. Double planet, remember?
> The astronauts from Earth that are in Shuttle/LEO or within ISS are
> extensively protected by our powerful though failing magnetosphere,
> thus electro-magnetically shielded from the vast bulk of what's cosmic
> and solar nasty, and that's by at least a good 100:1 if not a 200:1
> radio of defending their DNA as getting less nailed than for being
> situated just outside of the Van Allen zone of Death.
Indeed. But not all manned missions have been to LEO, nor will they be
even if we chose not to colonize Luna. We have to leave the
magnetosphere to get _anywhere_ other than Earth and LEO, so we might
as well start learning how to do so safely.
> However, we're
> certainly much worse off if orbiting nearby any freaking reactive moon
> that's sharing secondary/recoil photons as extensively produced off the
> solar illuminated side and, there's still a few via cosmic interactions
> of secondary/recoil hard-X-ray photons coming off the lunar nighttime
> side (not to mention the cosmic stuff and solar flak that's directly
> interacting with their own reactive spacecraft, and since there's such
> a slight amount of a lunar atmosphere (though I believe there's
> actually more than having been reported), there's damn little
> attenuation of that extra dosage other than for using the square of the
> distance for giving your crew that's within such a minimal spacecraft a
> chance at short-term surviving within that sort of hard-X-ray dosage
> environment. In other words, the closer to the moon you get, the more
> hard-X-ray TBI dosage you get to share upon, and that's even if it's a
> fairly passive solar day because, there's no such thing as any zero rad
> or even a zero Sv sort of solar day unless you insist upon sticking
> with your conditional laws of physics.
???
When did I talk about "zero" radiation dosages? I thought I'd made
rather plain to you that none such exist, not even if you sit in the
middle of a lead shielded room on the Earth -- YOUR OWN BODY IS
RADIOACTIVE!
As for your secondary photons, this is only really a problem on the
Lunar _surface_ -- once you put a few meters of rock and a hab wall
between you and the Sun, the extra dose would be trivial (beyond ten
meters, probably not even detectable). That's thick enough so that
secondary radiation generated near the outer surface would be unlikely
to penetrate to the inside.
And the main problem on a spacecraft, actually, is the direct Solar
radiation, or secondaries from the material of your shielding, not
scatter from the Moon itself.
> >I think you are VERY much exaggerating the radiation dangers on and in
> >the Moon.
> Unless you've got yourself one speedy little spacecraft with lots of
> rocket fuel reserves, chances are that once committed to reaching the
> moon, as such there's no turning back and there's no hiding from a
> sudden solar event which can deliver a real sucker punch of solar wind
> in as little as 18 hours, but that's long after having been TBI at
> perhaps 10s if not 100s of Sv, of which nothing launchable is going to
> shield your sorry butt from such dosage that'll make even banked bone
> marrow somewhat pointless, other than becoming available as a life
> saving donation for some other terrestrial bastard that'll at least
> stands a chance at surviving, whereas you're at best a dead moonsuit
> walking.
Gee, and when we colonized places on Earth, there were storms too. And
sometimes they sank ships and ruined crops and killed people. Yes,
obviously a solar flare could kill spaceship crew, or personnel on the
Lunar surface unable to get back into their habs in time.
As for "no hiding," this is true only if you can't get underground.
Since Lunar habs would logically be built underground, in the context
of colonization there would be an obvious place to "hide" -- if you can
call staying home to be "hiding."
The major problem a solar flare would inflict on Lunar colonists is
that they would have to stay in their habs. Unless they had built
their habs foolishly close to the surface and lacked even storm
shelters (parts of the hab better shielded than overall).
Well, as we saw with Katrina, there are sometimes really big storms on
the Earth as well, and sometimes when people who live in the Earthly
habs called "buildings" and "cities" don't plan their defenses against
these storms, bad things happen.
Guess what. The Universe is a dangerous place. Including the tiny
little bit of the Universe that we call "the Earth's habitable
surface."
> >Why do you perceive Lunar gravity as being a significant problem? None
> >of the Apollo LEM crews reported any particular difficulty maneuvering
> >under such conditions -- in fact, they found it especially _easy_ to
> >walk on the Moon, once they adjusted for the effects of relatively
> >higher inertia-to-weight ratios.
>
> Gravity is merely a factor in why the bone-dry dust, soil and/or
> quicksand of the moon isn't compacted nor otherwise capable of clumping
> upon itself. Even at 1/6th gravity, if there's less than 5 g/cm2 worth
> of compressed surface-tension to work with, in which case you're going
> to need some seriously large surface area snowshoes, and of any rolling
> stock is going to require absolutely massively large surface area tires
> and/or extremely wide and long area track/belt like treads in order to
> keep from sinking out of sight, whereas in places that moon dust is
> going to be meters deep, 10+ meters shouldn't be all that unavoidable.
Hmm ... did you know that the Earth is two-thirds covered by a
substance that things also tend to sink into? And, unlike Moondust,
it's _corrosive_.
Do you think we'll ever learn to cross it?
Seriously, the possible hazard of Lunar dust pools has been well-known
to both science and science fiction since the mid 20th century. In
fact, when we actually started landing men and machines on the Moon, we
found that such dust pools were more _rare_ than we had believed,
because Lunar dust is more adhesive than we had assumed. (I forget the
reason why, maybe someone else remembers?)
If Lunar dust pools are rare and small, they'll be minor hazards, which
people walking or driving on the surface will carry the appropriate
equipment to detect and avoid, or failing that extricate themselves
from (just as we do here on Earth with quicksand). If Lunar dust forms
large "lakes" and "seas", then we may wind up using it to our advantage
-- we may design "boats" and "ships" that can traverse it more easily,
and perhaps even more rapidly, than trucks and crawlers can traverse
firm ground.
In either case, this is not only not a total obstacle, it's an obstacle
with obvious Earthly analogs, which makes solving it easier than if it
were something we'd never dealt with before. If you want to talk
_tough_ environments, try the surface of Venus or the hydrosphere of
Jupiter. This, by comparison, is old hat.
> Your "especially _easy_ to walk on the Moon" is based upon what
> hard-science? and/or upon what laws of physics?
The rather well-known fact that Lunar gravity is about a sixth of
Terrestrial. Actually, the best way to "walk" on the Moon is by means
of a sort of hopping or bounding action, so technically it's not
"walking." But I don't think that's what you meant ... ?
> Of other than exposed bedrock or whatever solids of lava that would
> have to be upon a rather considerable slope, do you have knowledge of
> the sorts of places upon the moon with such a slight amount of
> moon-dust that has a clumping surface-tension property that's worthy of
> 100 g/cm2?
>
> At the extremely unlikely 100 g/cm2, that's offering a tonne/m3 worth
> of sustained soil compression capability that was depicted as existing
> under those landing pads that hardly compressed into all that much of
> anything, and of those sites were not even situated upon any
> significant slope to start with. Doesn't this make you wonder in the
> least bit, as to the authenticity and thus truth of the supposed
> hard-science obtained from those supposed NASA/Apollo landings?
Oh, wait a moment. You're not trying to claim that we never landed on
the Moon, are you?
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Jim Davis
> Oh, wait a moment. You're not trying to claim that we never
> landed on the Moon, are you?
<chuckle>
Jordan, that's one of Brad's more *reasonable* claims.
Jim Davis
Brad Guth
This is close to what I'd contributed on behalf of "tomcat" and of his
spendy CNT spaceplane. I've had this same tit-for-tat as ongoing with
others as well, but for some reason it also applies to the notions that
our moon is going to remain humanly taboo until we have accomplished
the task of getting the LSE-CM/ISS up and running.
BTW; I totally agree that a little radiation is a good thing, although
pushing 100+ mr/day is going to get a wee bit tough on the old DNA/RNA,
of which having a good cash of banked bone marrow should save the day
but, not necessarily your private parts and a pair of eyes. Obviously
you've never seen the hard-X-ray images of the solar illuminated
surface of our moon, nor have you noticed the 900,000 km trail of
sodium that pops up from time to time.
>the main problem on a spacecraft, actually, is the direct Solar
>radiation, or secondaries from the material of your shielding, not
>scatter from the Moon itself.
Some day you know better, and from that point on you'll appreciate what
others and myself have been saying all along, that since there's
insufficient atmosphere surrounding the moon, as such the available TBI
dosage hasn't hardly squat worth of attenuation between whatever's
orbiting along at 100+km and the surface. Even being 64,000 km away
from that nasty surface isn't without a measurable degree of risk.
I also agree that life is a risk worth taking, thus walking upon the
earthshine illuminated terrain of our dark albedo and also as having to
walk through a somewhat nasty composite dust that's upon a fairly
reactive environment that's nearly wide open as somewhat gravity
attractive to whatever's coming along, is in fact going to get about as
tough as nails upon your DNA as you'd care to realize before it's too
late. Obviously you haven't quite established a grasp upon what any
degree of badness that's associated with what the secondary/recoil
worth of photons has to contribute, although your 10+ meters
underground is certainly making perfectly good sense because, for more
good reasons than heat or radiation, I'd go for 15+ solid meters.
>Oh, wait a moment. You're not trying to claim that we never landed on
>the Moon, are you?
Certainly you're not that dense, are you?
But then obviously you have absolute proof-positive that the laws of
physics are in fact conditional, that Kodak physics is totally bogus
and whom on Earth needs any stinking fly-by-rocket lander R&D, much
less of any engineering nor film records upon those of scaled
prototypes that didn't crash and explode?
NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.station/browse_frm/thread/93cd1f782dbce1bd/7fe61c9d31790522?lnk=st&q=%22As+far+as+radiation+goes%22&rnum=1&hl=en#7fe61c9d31790522
tomcat;
>As far as radiation goes, new materials can stop radiation without the
>weight of lead. If astronauts get irradiated it will be because
>someone didn't use what is available. There are 'plastics' that can
>stop radiation as well as new light weight metals. Remember:
>Beryllium steel reflects neutrons. That is why it is used in atomic
>bomb casings. Beryllium steel is light compared to iron/steel and thin
>sheets of it can work wonders. Lead foil might be used around crew
>quarters. Gold foil is fairly dense as well.
Why is you mind still in the gutter as to any need of protecting
whatever TBI and DOA astronauts from radiation?
I was asking about those spendy CNTs, about their taking a radiation
overdosage and surviving. What the hell is wrong with the three brain
cells you've got left to work with?
BTW; it's snookered damn fools like yourself that suggest other
materials that are launchable can turn the tide against the TBI factors
of human space travel. It takes roughly 0.7" of lead to cut hard-X-ray
dosage in half. For God's sake, do the math. If volume is not a factor,
then the less density of whatever substance the better because of such
creating fewer secondary/recoil photons, thus indeed the CNTs as piled
high to perhaps 100 meters worth of depth might become better off than
a given layer of lead. I believe that besides the usual barrier of
aluminum, a substantial layer of circulated water is what's doing 90%
of the attenuation job as well as essential cooling for ISS.
>A good spaceplane capable of SSTP (Single Stage To the Planets) should
>pierce the Van Allen belt at about 100,000 mph. So, length of that
>radiation should be minimal. Remember, however, that in most of my
>posts I am referring to a SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit), not a SSTP.
>Whether the advantage of ultralight nanotube hulls will allow for SSTP
>is questionable. Along with the new 'atomic hydrogen' with 5X thrust,
>then an SSTP cargo hauler should be immediately possible.
The Van Allen zone or rather expanse of death is worth 70,000 km, a bit
more if your spaceplane is being near the moon where there's a SAA sort
of significant lunar dip that reaches a bit further, and at times even
a bit past the moon. So, you'd best multiply your 44.7 km/s by at least
2 fold, whereas at an average of 89.4 km/s is going to require 782
seconds, better than 13 minutes worth of going through the Van Allen
badlands if you're not headed anywhere towards the moon, especially if
it's on the backside of mother Earth. Of course going fast is only half
the energy equation, whereas slowing yourself down get a wee bit testy
unless you're taking advantage of near-miss aerobreaking notions, of
which the lunar atmosphere of radon and argon is going to require that
your spaceplane drag one hell of a parachute as it passes multiple
times at less than 10 km off the lunar deck (actually 1 km off the deck
would do some serious aerobreaking as well as kicking up some moon-dust
on each exciting pass).
>Now you know why I am upset with NASA announcing 12 years to the Moon
>in capsules. 3 years and 3 billion dollars and a sub-orbital can be
>built. 5 years and 5 billion dollars and an SSTO can be built. 8
>years and 8 billion dollars and a SSTP can be built. Why is NASA
>taking 12 years to send an old fashioned rocket with an ancient capsule
>on it to the Moon?
Good grief and holy Christ on a stick "tomcat", hopefully you'll soon
realize as to "why I am upset" with the sorts of snookered damn fools
like yourself, as individuals being so easily dumbfounded that they
think for a minute we actually had such viable fly-by-rocket landers
and having those EVA/moonsuit butts that actually walked upon a nearly
dust-free moon that upon average offered a clumping albedo of extremely
thin soil of 0.55 or brighter. Please impress me by way of showing us
village idiots exactly where the hell there's any zone average of 0.55+
albedo upon the moon.
Obviously our perpetrated cold-war NASA rusemasters have to first R&D
from scratch an actual fly-by-rocket lander that'll likely have to end
up at roughly 30 tonnes worth, if not a whole lot more. Adding payloads
of technology, crew and lots of spare fuel that'll safely de-orbit and
down-range with energy to spare is going to take a little time, spendy
R&D prototypes plus lots of real world pilotted flying with
appropriately scaled units as flown right here in River City. Of
course, getting the likes of a 30+ tonne craft and of it's 20+ tonne
CM/return craft on their way to/from merely orbiting the moon will be
rather a nifty accomplishment that should only pollute mother Earth
with yet another 50,000 tonnes worth of nasty pollution that no one
seems to want to talk about that issue or of the 500+ billions it's
take without any respect for the global environment of Earth.
Would you like to help build a spread-sheet as to the true cost and
pollution tally?
Meanwhile, at perhaps 0.1% the cost and not 10% the timeline, all sorts
of robotics could have been accomplishing and thus extracting
absolutely terrific sorts of hard-science about our moon and of
Earth-science related factors, thus not hardly contributing even 1% as
to pollution to boot. So, what part of this is still over your easily
snookered and even easier dumbfounded head?
Manned space flights anywhere external to the Van Allen expanse are not
only going to remain as horrifically spendy but also somewhat DNA and
quite possibly even CNT testy.
BTW wizard "tomcat"; how the heck is your CNT spaceplane going to
manage to detect the sorts of cm3 or smaller sorts of incoming or
passing through debris, some of which will be having a greater than
closing velocity of 100 km/s?
If such small items were somehow detected at a reasonably good radar
range of 1e6 km, and if you're making that 44.7 km/s or better
velocity, thus easily having to deal with a closing velocity of 100
km/s = 10 seconds before impact (- whatever radar signal delay time),
how is it even remotely possible to safely avoid coming in contact with
such lethal debris?
Even at a 1 degree off dead-center encounter, as a glancing blow,
what's the KE worth of even a 4 g/cm3 items going to represent to the
structural integrity of your spendy CNT spacecraft?
Are we talking about a shield depth penetration of a crater or gouge
being 0.1 m or perhaps even worth a full meter?
I believe some of space debris is rather metallic, and thereby worth
8+g/cm3, and not always of less than a cm3 in size. And, what's to say
from which direction is most important?
Don't you ever think for a moment that since viable detections of such
debris is going to remain somewhat unlikely, and that having sufficient
warnings of any sort are not going to give your passengers and crew any
real-world options, other than to sit tight, whereas such it might
become a damn good idea if your CNT spaceplane had perhaps a 10+meter
depth of a basalt composite surround as your physical and radiation
shield?
~
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
Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree; War is war, thus "in war there are