"TO THE MOON... We will go to the Moon"

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"TO THE MOON... We will go to the Moon"

 

JFK speech:

John F. Kennedy Moon Speech (1962)

 

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Moon Express announces plans to build lunar outpost by 2020 The Moon could soon be open for business.

Eric Berger (US) -

12/7/2017, 06:53

After several years of secrecy, a company called Moon Express revealed the scope of its ambitions on Wednesday. And they are considerable. The privately held company released plans for a single, modular spacecraft that can be combined to form successfully larger and more capable vehicles. Ultimately the company plans to establish a lunar outpost in 2020 and set up commercial operations on the Moon.

Further Reading Moon Express chairman says his team is “ready to go for the end of this year”

Perhaps most intriguingly, Moon Express says it is self-funded to begin bringing kilograms of lunar rocks back to Earth within about three years. “We absolutely intend to make these samples available globally for scientific research, and make them available to collectors as well,” said Bob Richards, one of the company’s founders, in an interview with Ars.

The vehicles

Moon Express was founded in 2010 to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE, which offered $20 million to the first privately funded team that lands a vehicle on the Moon, has it travel at least 500 meters, and transmits back high-definition images and video. The deadline for that prize is the end of 2017. While Moon Express says it has an outside chance to still claim the prize, its commercial ambitions now far exceed a simple, one-off lander.

At the center of the company’s architecture is the the single stage MX-1 spacecraft that can deliver up to 30kg to the lunar surface. This vehicle is similar in size and shape to the R2-D2 droid from Star Wars, but a little bigger, Richards said. Launched inside a conventional rocket payload fairing, the MX-1 is powered by a single PECO rocket engine.

Lunar Scout Expedition 1 animation.

This 3D-printed, regeneratively cooled engine operates on highly refined kerosene (RP-1) and hydrogen peroxide. Richards said two of these engines have already been manufactured, and the company will conduct flight qualifying tests at its Cape Canaveral-based range this year. The PECO engine will serve as the common core for all of its MX vehicles.

Other configurations will combine two, five, and nine MX-1 spacecraft to perform increasingly capable missions to the Moon, and possibly deeper into the Solar System, such as the moons of Mars. The MX-9 spacecraft would be able to deliver up to 500kg to the lunar surface, including an ascent vehicle that could return to Earth.

Further Reading Why we’re going back to the Moon—with or without NASA

The various configurations of the MX spacecraft are sized to fit within different launchers. For example, a single MX-1 spacecraft will fit within Rocket Lab’s slim Electron vehicle, and an MX-2 could fit within Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne rocket. Additionally, as many as three MX-9 vehicles could fit within SpaceX’s much larger Falcon 9 rocket fairing, Richards said.

The missions

The proposed hardware opens up a suite of missions on the lunar surface, three of which Moon Express said it has funding to support. The company’s initial mission is “Lunar Scout,” which seeks to become the first commercial voyage to the Moon. This will carry several payloads, including the International Lunar Observatory, “MoonLight” by the INFN National Laboratories of Frascati and the University of Maryland, and a Celestis memorial flight. This mission will also attempt to win the lunar XPRIZE.

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more: https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2017/07/moon-express-lunar-outpost/

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American History: The Greatest Speeches (1933-2008)

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Jeff Bezos Has Plans to Extract the Moon’s Water

The Amazon CEO unveiled a sleek-looking lunar lander—and he hopes the White House takes notice.

Between the shipping and handling, the web servers, the groceries, and the newspapers, Jeff Bezos never stopped thinking about the moon. He was 5 years old when Americans first walked on the lunar surface, and he remembers the grainy black-and-white footage from that historic moment.

“It had a huge impact on me,” Bezos said. “And it hasn’t changed.”

Bezos, in addition to leading Amazon and owning The Washington Post, runs a spaceflight company called Blue Origin. Blue Origin has been working on something for the past three years, and on Thursday, Bezos unveiled it: a giant spacecraft designed to touch down gently on the lunar surface, plus a small rover with droopy camera eyes, like WALL-E.

“This is an incredible vehicle,” Bezos said, beaming. “And it’s going to the moon.”

The lander revealed on Thursday, a mock-up, is called Blue Moon. It’s sleek, hulking, and insect-like, with spindly legs to cushion the landing. Here’s the plan, or at least part of it: Before touching down on the lunar surface, Blue Moon will dispatch a bunch of tiny satellites, depositing them into an orbit around the moon, where they can collect scientific data. Then it will fire its engines and begin its approach. Less than a mile from the surface, it will rotate itself to land upright. The underbelly is equipped with lasers to guide the spacecraft to its target landing zone. Once it’s on the ground, robotic arms will lower a rover, perhaps as many as four, onto the dusty, slate-colored ground.

Patrick Semansky / AP

Bezos said engineers are ready to begin engine tests as early as this summer. But there are some notable gaps in this plan. The lander must be launched into space on a rocket, and Bezos didn’t say which one. He didn’t say when it might fly either. But he said enough—especially to the people he made sure were listening.

The big reveal was held at a conference center about a five-minute drive from the White House. In March, Vice President Mike Pence announced that NASA would undertake a mission to the moon and return American astronauts to the surface in 2024. It’s an ambitious plan, and currently unfunded; NASA has yet to tell Congress, which determines the funding for the agency, how much this effort will cost. NASA has solicited proposals from U.S. commercial spaceflight companies to help, and many, mostly small start-ups, have jumped at the chance.

That now includes Blue Origin, which leads the pack in spaceflight experience. Bezos spoke effusively about the new policy and Pence’s vision. He invited Mark Sirangelo, a space professional whom NASA hired to guide the new effort—to be, essentially, Trump’s moon czar—to the event. Bezos declared, “It’s time to go back to the moon, this time to stay.” Here I am, Bezos seemed to plead; use me.

Read: The moon is open for business

In the vision he laid out, Bezos went beyond the moon. Earth’s resources, he warned, are finite. Someday they will be depleted, and humankind will be forced to look for other homes. “Space is the only way to go,” he said. But he eschewed popular destinations such as Mars, which his colleague in the space biz, Elon Musk, dreams of tearing up like an old carpet to construct a new, Earth-like environment.

Bezos is a natural fit for this kind of endeavor. Today, rich guys are doing the work historically done by governments and their vaunted space agencies. They’re launching satellites, space-station supplies, even a Tesla. Soon, if everything goes well, they’ll even be launching NASA astronauts. And Bezos is the richest of them all. With a net worth of $156 billion, he’s the wealthiest person on the planet, and—considering we haven’t found anyone else out there—possibly the universe.

Read: Los Angeles, America’s future spaceport

His immense wealth often prompts questions about how he chooses to spend it, and Bezos hinted at the criticism on Thursday. “There are immediate problems, things that we have to work on … I’m talking about poverty, hunger, homelessness, pollution, overfishing in the oceans,” he said. “But there are also long-range problems, and we need to work on those too.”

Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX, and before Virgin Galactic, another company run by a rich guy, Richard Branson, who wants to send paying customers to the space right above Earth. And yet Thursday’s event felt like something of a debut. The company went all out. The entire ballroom was awash in blue light. The walls were draped in black fabric dotted with LED lights that mimicked the cosmos as they twinkled. Tall blue fixtures that could best be described as oversize glow sticks surrounded the seating area. The playlist featured only space-themed songs, such as Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky” and Styx’s “The Outpost.”

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Mysterious flashes of light observed on moon...

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Curry may be served on the Moon before hotdogs

India's Chandrayaan-2 mission ready for historic landing on the Moon

 

Later this week, India will attempt to become the fourth nation to successfully land on the Moon.

Key points

• Chandrayaan-2 is India's second mission to the Moon, but its first to attempt a soft landing
• The plan is to drop a golf cart-sized lander and a small rover near the south pole
• The mission will explore the Moon's geology and look for water in craters

Now in its final stage, the Chandrayaan-2 mission is preparing for what has been dubbed "15 minutes of terror".

That's how long the final descent and landing will take on September 7, when the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) attempts to drop a lander the size of a golf cart near the Moon's south pole.

Late this afternoon, ISRO confirmed the lander had successfully detached from the orbiting spacecraft.

"All the systems of Chandrayaan-2 orbiter and lander are healthy," ISRO reported. 

. . . If the high-stakes mission succeeds, India will join the Moon landing ranks of Russia, the US and China.

 

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China's lunar rover does what India's Chandrayaan 2 is hoping to do ...

Business Insider India-20 hours ago

India's lunar lander and rover, Pragyan and Vikram, are also hoping to chance upon new elements as it heads towards craters, where the ...

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RUSSIA AND CHINA ARE RACING TO BEAT NASA BACK TO THE MOON

IN THE COMING YEARS, MULTIPLE SPACE AGENCIES will be sending astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the closing days of the Apollo Program.

For NASA, this will represent the long-awaited “return to the Moon,” while every other space agency will see it as a tremendous step for their space programs.

One thing they all have in common is that this time around, the goal is to build the necessary infrastructure that will allow for a long-term human presence.

However, amid all the excitement of this approaching moment in history are concerns about the lack of an international framework that will ensure our efforts are for the sake of “for all humankind.”