Back To The Moon In 2020?

>> That's a guy who means what he says and understands the importance of space. >>

LOL, what a dishonest hoot.

 

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061207/sc_afp/russiausspace_061207160859

This could become a joint mission

 

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Check out:

http://www.slate.com/id/2155164/?GT1=8900

 

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You know, that article hit a note with me, jumpercable. I wonder what kind of research we could be doing regarding closed ecosystems right now on earth, and if we can't test this sort of thing at an antarctic base designed to be a mock-up of a lunar base? A closed ecosytem would mean that if there was a crew, very little in the way of food and water would need to be sent to such a base, just enough to account for inefficiencies (you're not going to have a perfect ecosystem for an environment in a pressurized container, you'll have air leaks, water leaks, etc. etc.). A base on antarctica or hell, even a desert somewhere could be a nice practice grounds for experimenting with and deploying various base options. Hell, NASA could just do this out in the mojave and probably learn alot about how to have astronauts with X ammount of life support time and Y kilograms of gear build a permanent settlement with a near-self-sustaining ecosystem inside. Hell, this almost sounds like a challenge, a new X-prize maybe. How to make a cheap, reliable, quick, permanent, closed ecosystem on lunar soil.

I'd imagine inflatable structures covered in lunar regolith at first, which would be reinforced internally with metal plating made by some kind of small-scale lunar regolith smelter until eventually a metal shell rather than an inflatable one is holding up a couple feet of lunar regolith that acts as radiation shielding. The regolith would be glassified (i read about it somewhere...) so as to not slide off the habitat, and the area around the site would be glassified too, with purposeful roughness in the glassed regolith to give it some grip. The reason for this is to keep lunar dust from getting all over everything. Wonder if someone could do this in the desert for a trial run... can metal be made from desert sand? I know regolith has iron oxide, but does sand have anything useful?

 

About isolated ecosystem: it has been done in Antarctica, McMurdo base for 50 years and more.

About desert sand: sand can be used to make glass from silicon.
About sand elsewere: sand on Mars contain large amounts of Mg, can be used to burn in CO2 to produce energy.

Other isolated systems, have been done in Canada...mars society...

 

The Mars landing was fake: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077294/

 

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Antarctica stations are actually starting to look like space stations

 

I think we could have been there twenty years ago, and to a point, those who say that we could just orbit the modules, assemble them, and fly them there are right. I think that a permanent presence on the moon is a good thing and might help, and the basic research that can only be done on site is a good thing too. At some point you can only continue to prepare to do the job on site. I think we've been past that point for some time. We're thinking it to death without getting our hands dirty.

 

All of Antarctica is 'isolated', but it's not 'enclosed' which is the true goal.

Yeah, a bunch of people playing astronaut, of questionable value.

The only 'enclosed ecosystem' experiment was "Biosphere 2", which proved very difficult to manage, and illustrated the real difficulties in sustaining life for long periods without resupply. I don't think they managed more than a couple of years continuous 'sealed' operation, because oxygen levels started to fall. At least they could easily remedy this, being on Earth (Arizona?).

More work needs to be done to get enclosed ecosystems working in hospitable locations, before we start thinking about Antartica, or Mars!

 

Its called "Money laundering scheme".

 

Excellent idea, this mean with 100s of very small payload rockets we can reach Mars. Cool ; GREATE.

Even smaller countries can participate then.

 

Landing on moon and then taking off will be much more expensive than using the moons gravity to SlingShot towards Mars.

 

BTW NASA cant even send a simple remote controlled Rover to Moon and they talk about Mars.

Oops if we send a rover on moon , we might find out there are no moon mission spacecraft remnants there.

 

Using the Moon as a gravitational slingshot, while possible is not really practical. You wouldn't get enough of a boost to make up for the fact that you would have to wait for both the Moon and Mars to be in the right positions wrt the Earth. This would extremely limit your launch windows.

 

Doesn't the moon need to be spinning for a good boost from a "slingshot" to work? I'm not up on my astrophysics but I thought that we slingshout around jupiter and saturn with various probes because they have high spin rates (saturn's day is only 9 hours, and for a planet that size, that alot of angular momentum to tap). Correct me if i'm wrong of course.

The closed ecosystem is really the problem. It'll be complicated no matter what you do. This russian scientist decided it'd be a good idea (i guess that's what he was thinking) to have himself sealed into a room with nothing but this algee that absorbs CO2 and gives off oxygen. Of course, 22 hours later (or something like that), his assistants were dragging him out of a disgusting room because he was breathing too much of his own methane and other gasses the body gives off that the algee doesn't process. I'll see if I can't find a link to this story later... but long story short, a closed ecosystem is very complicated and something that at least NASA should be dumping some cash into so that we can actually have a closed ecosystem scheme to use on the moon.

Wether it's used on the moon or on remote inhospitable places on earth, a life support system like this is a great achievement in itself.

 

No, a gravitational slingshot doesn't tap the rotational angular momentum of the body, it taps the body's orbital velocity.

 

Ironically, hemp is one of the best plants for use for reprocessing air.

 

ahhh... that makes sense.... thanks janus

hemp you say? now what better way to kill 8 months of mars-earth-transfer time!

 

With xenon ion propulsion time to mars can be cut in half.

 

I think that they will find that hydrogen will work just as well.