Private Company First to Take on Lunar X Challenge 65
explosivejared writes "A private company by the name of Odyssey Moon has become the first team to complete registration for Google's Lunar X Challenge. They will likely be competing with several heavyweights in the field, as Carnegie Mellon University, along with many others, has already expressed an interest in the competition."
Re:A drawing is worth a thousand words (Score:3, Interesting)
It gets even better when you consider the issue of thrust. To lift from the Earth you need a lot of thrust simply to raise from the ground. This translates directly into consuming a lot of energy and reaction mass, which rules out things like solar panels and forcing the spacecraft to carry all its energy within. This makes the spacecraft heavier, increasing the needed thrust and thus fuel usage even higher and leading to a vicious circle.
On the other hand, once you're in LEO, you're in freefall. There is no more any minimum thrust treshold to change your velocity. You can use solar sails, ion engine powered by solar panels, or whatever to speed you on your way. It will take weeks, if not months, to get to the Moon this way, but you will get there eventually.
The hard part is getting into an orbit, any orbit as long as it's outside of atmosphere. Once you're there, the rest is (relatively) easy, at least as long as you're not in a hurry.
Re:Productivity... (Score:3, Interesting)
So, how did it happen the way it did the first time? (moon 1.0)
With computing power on par with an 86 Chevy Citation and slide rules, how did we send living breathing men to the moon, and bring them back, without a hitch?
I'm not saying we didn't, just that either it wasn't that hard, or there is more to the story as to how hard it really was, or some reason why it's "so hard" now. It's been almost 40 years, I'm just asking why it hasn't been done since. Is it cost? Red tape? Why?
Is it one of those things where Kennedy's mandate allowed the US to throw everything plus the kitchen sink at it, so we pulled it off, but now the budget has been cut so much that the "big hammer" approach isn't feasible? Tech advances hasn't been in areas that have simplified anything critical enough to make space travel ubiquitous? The risk the first time was so high we'd never be allowed to do it that way now? All the above?