New Radar Maps of Moon 70
SpaceAdmiral writes to mention that NASA has some new high-resolution radar maps of the Moon obtained by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The new images have also been used to create a simulation of the Moon's day and a movie of a Moon landing from the point of view of the astronaut. "NASA is eying the Moon's south polar region as a possible site for future outposts. The location has many advantages; for one thing, there is evidence of water frozen in deep dark south polar craters. Water can be split into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to burn as rocket fuel--or astronauts could simply drink it. Planners are also looking for 'peaks of eternal light.' Tall polar mountains where the sun never sets might be a good place for a solar power station."
Oh, no... (Score:5, Funny)
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People must be stupid or something, to keep these shitty formats in use like this.
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"New" maps of the moon (Score:4, Funny)
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Yep. Before they were pretending to do a moon landing when they actually faked it... now they're pretending to fake a moon landing while they actually do it!
The conspiracy deepens...
-:sigma.SB
Use of solar energy (Score:2)
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However, when it comes to a lunar base, solar power (if available all the time) would probably be better than hauling uranium up from the earth or having to search for and mine some on the moon (I'm not sure how much uranium there would be on the moon either, since it's less dense than the earth and probably contains fewer heavy elements).
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H2O - H2 + O2 (Score:5, Insightful)
And if the astronauts are breathing all of the O2, what oxidizing agent do they plan to burn the H2 with?
Journalists should really have some knowledge of the topic they're writing about before spouting their blather...
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Nitrogen and carbon?
Any number of things, really, though I shouldn't care to get near the results...
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Re:H2O - H2 + O2 (Score:5, Informative)
LOX/LH2 rockets are normally run fuel-rich (most rockets are, actually, it's just more pronounced with LH2). 2H2 + O2 corresponds to a mass ratio of 8 parts O2 to 1 part H2; in actual practice the mass ratio used is somewhere between 4:1 and 6:1, depending on the engine.
There are several reasons for this. One is that the chemistry going on is more equilibrium chemistry than normal combustion chemistry -- the H2, O2, H2O, OH, etc are all in equilibrium. Adding excess H2 burns more of the O2, and that gets more energy out of the reactants per unit mass (having similar numbers of moles of unburned reactants uses less weight if they're moles of H2 instead of O2). Secondly, H2 is better behaved than almost anything else when it comes to using the nozzle to turn heat into kinetic energy -- you'll get a larger fraction of the chemical energy out as exhaust velocity. If the H2 were inert, that wouldn't be enough to make it worth adding, but it's not inert as explained above. And thirdly, adding excess H2 drops the combustion temperature while simultaneously increasing the cooling ability (LH2 is a marvelous coolant; LOX isn't), making it easier to run the regeneratively cooled engine.
Re:H2O - H2 + O2 (Score:5, Informative)
Strip mining followed by dissociation, yah right (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention that the sparse ice regolith deposits would have to be extensively strip mined, presumably by nuclear powered equipment, and then chemically dissociated, another energy intensive process, to produce a minute amount of fuel and oxidizer. All this on a topography with 37,000 feet of elevation change. It is surprising how silly ideas like this persist.
We got your Peaks of Eternal Light, right here! (Score:4, Funny)
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Not exactly applicable for Slashdot and lunar threads, but there's a move to use Bostowned [urbandictionary.com] for whenever the cops freak out over something mundane and then trump up bogus charges against the victim in order to save face.
Doesn't have to happen in Boston; it can happen anywhere. (Like these hashers [msn.com] who used flour to mark a temporary trail through the woods for an a
Radar men (Score:2)
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No, but thank you for playing. He played a Martian in Zombies of the Stratosphere, [imdb.com] in 1952. Having seen it, I can assure you Commando Cody had nothing to do with it. The Sky Marshall of the Universe was busy at that time fighting The Leader, who wanted (what else?) to conquer the Earth.
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Just great.... now we can look forward to all... (Score:2)
maybe the earth is their moon (Score:3, Funny)
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Does anyone think that this will... (Score:2)
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Err.. Why do we need H20 for fuel again when, (Score:1)
Re:Err.. Why do we need H20 for fuel again when, (Score:5, Informative)
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If you don't land on the moon, then you don't need to take off from it or did I miss something.
btw: If you don't use a human, then you don't need a to drink the H2o or split it into H2 + O to use it as fuel since the ION drives kind of make chemical thrust irrelative. Wasn't the point to stopping at the moon in order go somewhere else. I personally prefer direct flight to my destination when I travel, Ha
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So you run a mag-lev track around an arc and use your ion drive on it, or use a linear motor for the initial acceleration. Probably you'll stay away from things like rail guns though, unless your goal is to shell the earth with nearly useless slugs o' matter.
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Also, at least as importantly, there are now other people who want to go there again and might be able to. When we stopped going to the moon, russia couldn't afford it any more and they were being torn apart anyway. Now china, india, russia, japan, and more might want to g
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Since the moon is a lot harder to get to than Antarctica, and those countries permanent presence on the resource and research-rich continent being as limited as it is, I find the possibility of troublesome land claims a bit preposterous.
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I can remember them saying the same thing back in the '60s.
Well, it's a great location... (Score:2)
Unimpressed with VR "astronaut perspective" movie (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Unimpressed with VR "astronaut perspective" mov (Score:1)
At least it's obvious that NASA hasn't been wasting money on video/graphics processing, editing and skills.
Re:Unimpressed with VR "astronaut perspective" mov (Score:2)
Sunlight 24/7 (Score:1)
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I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to just build near the equator and not have light half the time. There comes a point where ever taller structures become more costly than half-dormant panels. Plus, the towers and nearby panels will cast sha
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When they're done, you have a moon-circling power distribution grid, half of which is in sunlight at any given time. Okay, the initial setup may be a little beyond what we
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The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth (Score:3, Funny)
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
I wish they'd just stop (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, nearly 40 years later, we've barely made progress on manned space travel. I am amazed and thrilled by the scientific successes achieved through unmanned satellites and probes. But humans haven't been further from Earth than San Diego is from Los Angeles in decades.
It's gotten to the point that I don't even want to read articles about NASA's manned space program anymore. What they're actually doing is pathetic; the aging, dangerous shuttles exist only to service ISS, and ISS exists only as a place for the shuttles to go. And NASA's plans for future moon and Mars missions are so long-term as to be meaningless; why talk about building solar power stations on eternally sunlit peaks when development of a new heavy-lift launch system is getting nowhere?
It's astonishing to me that I have gone from being thrilled with manned space travel to wincing when I read about it, but that's what has happened.
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Besides, most of us are so cynical we see a Mars shot as only as another ploy to enrich Cheney's cronies in the industrial-military complex at the expense of taxpayers, rather than accomplish any noble scientific
New Road Maps of Moon (Score:1)
Available as DEM or grayscale height map? (Score:2)
"Tall polar mountains where the sun never sets" (Score:2)
Unless the moon suddenly experienced a swapping of diameters, due to its being smaller than the Earth's shadow, it's NEVER going to have a period where there is constant sunlight.
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Direct link (Score:2)