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Moon Space

Lunar Mission One Proposes To Take Core Sample, Plant Time Capsule On the Moon 69

Posted by Soulskill from the since-mars-one-did-so-well dept.
MarkWhittington writes: The U.S. may have foresworn the moon, the venue of its greatest space triumph during the Apollo program, by presidential directive, but that does not mean that other countries and even private organizations are uninterested. The latest proposal for a private moon landing is a British effort called Lunar Mission One, according to a Wednesday story in the New Scientist. Its goal is twofold. The undertaking proposes to drill a 20 meter core sample below the lunar surface for analysis. Lunar Mission One will also deploy the first moon based time capsule. A Kickstarter effort has begun for initial funding.
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Lunar Mission One Proposes To Take Core Sample, Plant Time Capsule On the Moon More

Lunar Mission One Proposes To Take Core Sample, Plant Time Capsule On the Moon

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  • Lunar Mission One will also deploy the first moon based time capsule

    So, moon-based alpha?

    Awesome!!

    Of course, all of the Luddites will just spend the next 50 years saying it's a hoax.

    'Cuz, Luddites gonna Ludd.

    • Of course, all of the Luddites will just spend the next 50 years saying it's a hoax.

      And all the high-school text books updated to match, once all the crops start to fail... (Sigh. That movie was better than I thought it would be, but not as good as I hoped it would be.)

      • Hmmm ... what movie are you talking about? 'Cuz I wasn't referencing one.

        • Hmmm ... what movie are you talking about? 'Cuz I wasn't referencing one.

          I know; I threw in a reference to a line/scene in Interstellar - as it annoyed me. I understand Nolan's (possible) motivation, but having anyone deny the Moon landings is simply dumb. The Moon landings can be demonstrated by (a) the reflectors astronauts placed for Laser ranging the Earth-Moon distance and (b) telescopes can see (barely) the lower lander sections left behind.

    • It's just another bit of garbage left on the moon until somebody else says "hey, didn't someone send a robot to the moon to leave a time capsule there. why don't we make send another robot there to get it and bring it back!"

  • Why is it called "One"? It's far from the first mission to the moon.
    Are they referring to the Mars One project?
    There is a lot of resemblance between those projects. Both depend on crowd-funding to work on a rather unrealistic goal. I guess both projects will pay a very nice salary to the people in charge. The project doesn't have to reach its goal to be financially succesfull for the owners.

    • I'm beginning to see the merit of this rube-based business model. Do you think we're in a rube bubble or is there a much larger untapped rube resource waiting to be mined?

      We must underfund our schools even more to ensure more rubes!

  • Robots can't drill (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Russ1642 ( 1087959 ) on Wednesday November 19, 2014 @01:28PM (#48419457)

    If you're going to drill any decent depth you'll have to put together a manned mission with a bunch of roughneck drilling rig workers. They're the only ones that can operate drilling equipment. It can't possibly be taught to other astronauts, and most certainly not some dumb robot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Adriax ( 746043 )

      Such a mission would be doomed to fail. There's no meth in space and from how much the riggers around here buy that shit up I'm fair sure methamphetamine is a required part of the drilling process.

    • If you're going to drill any decent depth you'll have to put together a manned mission with a bunch of roughneck drilling rig workers. They're the only ones that can operate drilling equipment. It can't possibly be taught to other astronauts, and most certainly not some dumb robot.

      Never mind the facts... where Apollo astronauts operated drills during the lunar landing. Or where, on a daily basis, pretty much ordinary joe sixpacks drill (water) wells to much deeper depths. Or that we have drills in rock q

      • If you're going to drill any decent depth you'll have to put together a manned mission with a bunch of roughneck drilling rig workers. They're the only ones that can operate drilling equipment. It can't possibly be taught to other astronauts, and most certainly not some dumb robot.

        Never mind the facts... where Apollo astronauts operated drills during the lunar landing. Or where, on a daily basis, pretty much ordinary joe sixpacks drill (water) wells to much deeper depths. Or that we have drills in rock quarries and mines that drill holes to considerable depths with minimal human intervention. Etc... etc... Thus there is no a priori reason to assume that it can't be taught to a "dumb robot", especially one that can so easily be backed up by teleoperation from Earth.

        WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH

  • Cynical of promises.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wired_parrot ( 768394 ) on Wednesday November 19, 2014 @01:28PM (#48419461)

    I'm skeptical of anyone who thinks they can fund a complex lunar exploration mission as a kickstarter project.

    All that I foresee coming out of this is a multi-year "consulting study", using the dreams and hopes of space enthusiasts to pay for it. In another words, one space consultant gets a paid multi-year sabatical, with a short assignment report on the Moon at the end as the only result.

    But maybe I'm just a cynic when it comes to kickstarter projects and their promises....

  • I mean, sure bury a time capsule on earth, it's cool for the kids and stuff and we can all reminisce about the good old days when you open it up but it just seems like such a waste to send one all the way to the moon as a PR stunt.

    It gets worse when they explain it, it sounds like a scam: "His idea is to charge people £50 or so to place a sample of their DNA, in the form of a strand of hair, in an archive to be buried on the moon,..."

    And then: "The catch? He needs at least 10 million earthlings

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khallow ( 566160 )

      B: Rely on people to chop them and do their best to make the smallest possible cut. Then don't even get me started on the really careful manipulation involved to not lose one of those super small cut of hair.

      This. It's a half a billion British Pounds budget. They can afford this modest effort. If you spend an hour per strand of hair, that's only 25 man-years to handle 50,000 hair strands. Even at 100k pounds per man-year cost, that would be 2.5 million pounds in labor costs. I don't see the problem.

  • 20M drilling project on very fist lunar mission (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Wednesday November 19, 2014 @01:45PM (#48419609) Homepage Journal

    Did these guys just say "hey let's do a lunar sample return mission! high five!" and throw together a kick starter? They don't even have a target launch vehicle chosen yet. Not only do they want to do a return sample mission (something China has been working on for 15 years) but they want to drill a 60 ft hole in the moon while they're at it. This is, to use a pun, lunacy. The logistics involved of entering lunar orbit, let alone landing are incredible. And they want to throw a 60' drilling apparatus on there that will work flawlessly? Not even the ESA can get their 8" drill to work on the comet correctly and that's just ice.
     
    Good luck with that.

    • I mean...it seems like so much of the KS ideas are some bastardization of a senior marketing design project and several geeks spitballing crazy ideas after several bottles of cheap tequila. And KS is perfect for it - little oversight, no requirement to actually complete or deliver under any kind of deadline - what's not to like.

      They're not going anywhere, and they may not even know it yet. I say they may not know it because the entire team of 5 has a single scientist, and her specialty has nothing to do wi

  • The time capsule should contain a magnetic anomaly that once unmooned reveals a black parallelepiped whose sides extend in the precise ratio of 1 : 4 : 9 (1 : 2 : 3).
  • The more entities propose space programs, the further anyone gets from getting anywhere ... including the moon.

  • The U.S. may have foresworn the moon,

    Aguable. Presuming that more samples of moon material was required, then a probe could be sent to get it, no? So what is missing is rather the reason to make the moon a target, rather than somewhere notionally more interesting as a starting point.

    the venue of its greatest space triumph during the Apollo program,

    Arguable. What about Cassini? Voyager? The Mars Rovers?

  • There is a US satellite orbiting the Moon right now, another whose mission [nasa.gov]just ended [nasa.gov], and yet another one 2 years ago [mit.edu].

    No, we have not foresworn the Moon.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Scryer ( 60692 )

      President Obama has indeed forsworn the moon, and he's the one who tells NASA how to pick targets. In http://www.nasa.gov/news/media... [nasa.gov] he says "Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do. So I believe it’s more important to ramp up our capabilit

  • IMO this is a total waste of time and resources. The earth along with the moon are going to be destroyed along with anyone who is left living here at the time. Put a time capsule on pluto or further out hell it might even be livable though not too much space. That's my 2 cents too many poor too many kids not having enough food to eat for a real waste like this.

  • I just don't understand why they have to bury the Time Capsule so deep.

  • a time capsule is a stupid idea (Score:3)

    by jsepeta ( 412566 ) on Wednesday November 19, 2014 @03:11PM (#48420541) Homepage

    if you're going to spend money bringing something to the moon, it should be nanobots that self-assemble a moon base.

    • The moon-base-assembling nanobots go up later on the flight with the leprechaun colonists launched on the perpetual motion rocket.

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