Israel Launches Spacecraft To the Moon (npr.org) 182
The first privately funded mission to land on the moon took one giant step forward this evening as an Israeli spacecraft blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. "[I]f the mission is successful, it would make Israel the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the lunar surface -- after the U.S., the former Soviet Union and China," reports NPR. From the report: The spacecraft launched with a Space X Falcon 9 rocket, according to SpaceIL's partner Israel Aerospace Industries. It detached from the reusable rocket, which returned to an off-shore platform. The spacecraft was to make several orbits around Earth, slowly getting closer to the moon. In a difficult maneuver, it was to pivot from orbiting Earth to orbiting the moon, and then eventually attempt a treacherous landing on the moon. The total journey will take several months, with a landing anticipated in mid-April. According to IAI, it would be the "longest journey until landing on the moon, 6.5 million kilometers."
[The spacecraft, which is called Beresheet (Hebrew for "in the beginning"] is covered in gold-colored reflective coating. And as WMFE's Brendan Byrne reported, it's about the size of a kitchen table. It's carrying a digital time capsule which, according to The Jerusalem Post, contains "drawings by Israeli children, the Bible, the national anthem, prayers, Israeli songs and a map of the State of Israel, among other cultural items." The spacecraft is set to run experiments on the moon's surface -- in particular, SpaceIL says it will collaborate with the Weizmann Institute of Science and UCLA to "take measurements of the Moon's mysterious magnetic field."
[The spacecraft, which is called Beresheet (Hebrew for "in the beginning"] is covered in gold-colored reflective coating. And as WMFE's Brendan Byrne reported, it's about the size of a kitchen table. It's carrying a digital time capsule which, according to The Jerusalem Post, contains "drawings by Israeli children, the Bible, the national anthem, prayers, Israeli songs and a map of the State of Israel, among other cultural items." The spacecraft is set to run experiments on the moon's surface -- in particular, SpaceIL says it will collaborate with the Weizmann Institute of Science and UCLA to "take measurements of the Moon's mysterious magnetic field."
SpaceX (Score:5, Insightful)
"SpaceX launches spacecraft to the Moon for Israel". FTFY
Re:SpaceX (Score:5, Funny)
Needs "Elon Musk" in the title for extra clicks.
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I have no idea how to make that into a
SCO would also be another big scorer.
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Haven't we sold them weapons they could easily convert to a space launch platform?
Re:SpaceX (Score:5, Interesting)
Israel has to launch to the west instead of the east which makes everything a lot harder. They'd probably need a Saturn V size rocket to just _land_ something on the moon.
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Israel has to launch to the west instead of the east which makes everything a lot harder. They'd probably need a Saturn V size rocket to just _land_ something on the moon.
Nobody would launch west into orbit, they'd just delay the tilt maneuver to clear the 100 km line to space within the launch area and the penalty wouldn't be that big. You can check out the launch profile here [i.redd.it] of the ORBCOMM-2 launch where the first stage went to about 75 km altitude roughly 37 km east of the launch site. The first stage returned to the landing site (RTLS), the second stage probably cleared the Karman line somewhere around 50 km east. At its widest Israel is 114 km wide, so while they'd hav
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Israel has to launch to the west instead of the east which makes everything a lot harder. They'd probably need a Saturn V size rocket to just _land_ something on the moon.
"Interesting"???
I think this is humour riffing on the right-to-left writing convention for Hebrew...
Re:SpaceX (Score:5, Informative)
The Earth is rotating at about 1000 miles per hour toward the east. Launching against that rotation naturally requires more thrust to reach orbital velocity than launching with it.
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Note that Israel is at a latitude of 31 degrees (North)
They didn't launch from Israel. So East-West and 31 degrees North don't really apply here.
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South Florida is the homeland for all retirees.
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Well, better them spending money on a space industrial complex that delivers us the stars than on a war industrial complex that delivers us extinction. Now the big rush to see who will be the first to lay the foundations for a permanent moon base.
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I swear, if the first moon base is not called "Moonbase Alpha" [wikipedia.org] I'm going to be really pissed off.
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I swear, if the first moon base is not called "Moonbase Alpha" I'm going to be really pissed off.
How about we don't. I'm not too excited about the prospect of the earth losing the moon. We kinda need it.
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I swear, if the first moon base is not called "Moonbase Alpha" I'm going to be really pissed off.
How about we don't. I'm not too excited about the prospect of the earth losing the moon. We kinda need it.
In the series, the last transmissions Moonbase Alpha got from Earth described the horrible ongoing catastrophes that happened on Earth due to the shock of having the moon blasted out of orbit. Things would be... yeah, they would be pretty bad.
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The first moonbase was called Tranquility Base. Moonbase Alpha was some Canadian fiction.
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Surely you mean British fiction, right?
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Sort of. It had an Italian TV producer. I loved some Gerry Anderson stuff but then it felt flat when he did Space: 1999. Not sure why. U.F.O. was fun with a quirky futuristic feel. Space:1999 just felt like the 70's in space with lousy scripts and awful actors (Barbara Bain seemed to just be collecting a paycheck, And Martin Landau who is otherwise great really didn't seem to pull off the vibe of being a leader).
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My understanding is that UFO got cancelled but they had already built this big moonbase set, so they made up space 1999 to use it. Unclear why that could get that made by people who had just cancelled a similar show however. Does explain the combination of SciFi fantasy with somewhat realistic sets.
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The sets weren't the same though. The UFO moonbase sets were kind of small. I was surprised that the Space:1999 moon base had large sets with more open space. It feels odd given that a moon base would have limited resources. Google the images for "moon base alpha interiors".
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Re:SpaceX (Score:5, Informative)
Private company SpaceIL which happens to be Israeli launches spacecraft to the moon from SpaceX Falcon 9. The country of Israel didn't do it, and SpaceX only launched them to Earth orbit with the private vehicle performing the lunar orbit and landing in the coming months.
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My question is, when are we going to launch a mission looking for Alice?
Alice! Alice! Who the fuck is Alice!??
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Yeah no offence but (Score:1)
that "Israeli spacecraft" has better things to do than carry a bunch of kitsch to the fucking moon. There is actual science to be done on the moon. This is a vanity shot.
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What science can you do on the moon, that cannot be done cheaper and easier on earth?
Science about, you know, the moon. Characterize its resources, look for lava caves and other features that may be of interest to colonists, and examine what the immediate surface deposits have to tell us about the history of the Sun.
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I find it funny when we look at the moon, need to justify science. We need to include, the final goal of us living there. I don't see any benefit on living on the moon, unless they find a way to make it self sustaining. Otherwise, for over population, we just need to send people to live in Antarctica, The Middle of Australia, and to all the other spots that we call rather inhospitable environments, because those areas how bad they are to survive, is still much more easier to live in then on the moon.
Bas
Re: Yeah no offence but (Score:1)
3 years without sex, you write code
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3 years without sex, you write code
3 decades without sex, you become a wizard.
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Doing science there with some initial and relevant technological development that involves humans is what will determine if there is any point in colonizing beyond LEO. Why wait until we reach the asteroids or Mars to find out if we can build habitats out of regolith or mine and smelt metals. The Moon is so close that it takes the long spaceflight problem out of the equation.
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"What science can you do on the moon, that cannot be done cheaper and easier on earth?"
Well, the technology that reduces the earth gravity to 1/6th is not quite ready.
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Assuming we could get a way to manufacture large mirrors & lenses, the far side of the moon would probably be a great place to put Hubble's ultimate replacement. In fact, I'm pretty sure the construction of such a telescope will be fairly high on the "things to do ASAP" list once there ARE settlements of some kind on the moon, once the immediate infrastructure needs of the settlement itself have been taken care of.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that building and operating lunar observatories would be one of t
Re:Yeah no offence but (Score:4, Insightful)
Take any scientific project title, then add (On the Moon) to the end of it.
However monitoring solar radiation, astronomy with large telescopes, effects on some processes with reduced gravity, and science actually learning about the moon.
Right now the current man missions, and probe missions is like someone saying they know all about New York City, because they drove threw it on i87, flew over it and stopped at JFK airport. Then went to the top of the Empire States Building, and saw the Statue of Liberty.
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I respectfully disagree. The spacecraft includes a science payload too, but it didn't have to. The people who donated money to build and launch it get to pick what goes on it. If they wanted to have it land for an eggplant selfie that is their prerogative. Those who write the checks make the choice. If you don't like it write your own checks.
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I respectfully disagree. The spacecraft includes a science payload too, but it didn't have to. The people who donated money to build and launch it get to pick what goes on it. If they wanted to have it land for an eggplant selfie that is their prerogative. Those who write the checks make the choice. If you don't like it write your own checks.
Yeah. My concerns are that now that Israel has interjected their desert god religion into the mix, are we going to extend the religion based wars onto the moon as well? I mean - what if their enemies here on earth decide to launch their own version of the angry desert god. They can presumably donate and decide what they want on the rocket they are paying for. Then in a couple hundred years, we can have the first religion war on the moon.
I suppose it is inevitable.
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My concerns are that now that Israel has interjected their desert god religion into the mix, are we going to extend the religion based wars onto the moon as well?
Ask Buzz Aldrin, who took communion on the Moon.
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My concerns are that now that Israel has interjected their desert god religion into the mix, are we going to extend the religion based wars onto the moon as well?
Ask Buzz Aldrin, who took communion on the Moon
They had the famous Apollo 8 Christmas message too. As an Atheist, I still find the words a great choice. And the act of taking bread and wine is hardly warlike.
Before you decide that I'm denigrating Israel - Well, I'm denigrating the Bible. I would not want a superior spacefaring race to find that, and interpret the old Testament as the defining book on how humans act. Some groups might find that the whole human race is either LWA, or a feral population that needs eradicated.
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I agree that it is inevitable. People are going to bring their political, ethical, and religious baggage with them no matter where they go. If that means that there are free range cows in my Mars colony, so be it. What I care about is that we actually get to the Mars colony before we slip up and bump ourselves back to the stone age.
My hope is that working together in the confines and danger of another world to be more unifying than divisive. It seems to have worked on ISS. The earthbound keep trying to
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that "Israeli spacecraft" has better things to do than carry a bunch of kitsch to the fucking moon. There is actual science to be done on the moon. This is a vanity shot.
SpaceIL understands what AC doesn't: it's more about inspiration than science. This mission was explicitly about inspiring people.
Inspiring people to get into STEM fields more valuable than any actual science done on other planets or moons. And it's certainly worth the cost! Heck, this mission only cost $100 M. That's a mid-budget movie these days. For the cost of an underwater Avatar sequel we can send people to Mars.
Re: Yeah no offence but (Score:2)
This is more of an engineering exercise. A lot of new systems had to be developed to put this in place. If they land on the moon, they will have done so for a 10th the price of their cheapest predecessor. That alone is a feat in and if itself. (Granted, they haven't done it yet. Stay tuned.)
Mel Brooks - where are you? (Score:3, Funny)
"Jews in Spaaaaaace!".....
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"Jews in Spaaaaaace!".....
Mel Brooks was a visionary... I'm trying to think what else he predicted... Was Hitler on Ice, Ice skating predicted for the future too- or am I remembering incorrectly?
I want to see Hitler reanimated and turned into a figure skater! Surely someone can do that with today's technology.
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"Jews in Spaaaaaace!".....
First thing that went through my head when I saw the head line.
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How long will this be again? (Score:1)
It's nearing the start of February now. Is that a typo meant to read "several weeks"?
Usually "several months" is not a term used to describe a length of time that's more than a year away.
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Blah. I mean the end of February there. I think I originally began writing "start of March" and changed my wording mid-sentence.
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It arrives mid-April of this year so about 7 weeks.
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The ship will take 40 days and 40 nights to find new land. Funny, that.
Old joke from good old soviet time (Score:5, Funny)
A man crashes into the party assembly of the SED (East-German communist party back when it was in command): "Comrads! The Russians, they're on the moon!"
Hopeful inquiry: "Really? All of them?"
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Nah. I'm just misanthropic. I don't single out races, sexes, genders or other petty bullshit, I hate all people equally.
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I still haven't figured out why The Final Countdown isn't NASA's theme song for every mission.
Genesis! (Score:5, Informative)
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Much as I'd like to think is was a Star Trek nod, the mission is about inspiring people and new projects, so "genesis" or "a beginning" both work fine.
Kitchen table (Score:5, Funny)
it's about the size of a kitchen table.
It that a metric or an imperial kitchen table?
Re:Kitchen table (Score:5, Funny)
Given it's flying I think a better comparison would be: It is the size of an African or European kitchen table?
I fart in your general direction.
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A kitchen table in low-rent apartment housing 6 families, or Jeff Bezos' kitchen table?
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it's about the size of a kitchen table.
It that a metric or an imperial kitchen table?
It's in cubits, you insensitive clod!
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Royal Egyptian or Mesopotamian?
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Royal Egyptian or Mesopotamian?
Well, Pre flood it was the Babylonian, probably the Egyptian version now.
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Total mass: 585 kg (1,290 lb)
Dry mass 150 kg (330 lb)
Dimensions Diameter: 2 m (6.6 ft); height: 1.5 m
The trouble with binging the thing is they changed the name. The Wikipedia article is under "SpaceIL".
"Drawings by Israeli children" (Score:3, Insightful)
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Probably, yes, given that there's a sizable Arab population in Israel.
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Then you're ignorant about the status of Arabs in Israel and are displaying your own biases. Don't think you get to accuse others and remain innocent yourself.
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If they place some value on Palestinean lives, then why is it that every time things seem to be cooling down a bit they go and build some new illegal settlements in occupied land even though they know it will only cause more fighting? Both sides know what to do to have peace, and both sides assiduously avoid it.
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I wonder if any of those drawings are by Israeli Arab kids...
Sure; those are the drawings with the severed heads and stuff.
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According to the website anyone could send, and all of the drawings
would get to the moon.
Here:
http://kids.spaceil.com/drawings/
http://kids.spaceil.com/en/drawings/
A... kitchen table??? (Score:2)
Couldn't decide between using meters or feet and went with a completely useless unit instead? How big is a kitchen table, they are pretty famous for wildly varying in size. And usually a table denotes a surface, even if you said as big as THAT table it shouldn't be about the volume of an object. Libraries of Congress suddenly makes some sense...
That said, I've been waiting for decades to see Jews in Space [dailymotion.com], maybe not much longer now?
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About the size of the Ark of the Covenant
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Couldn't decide between using meters or feet and went with a completely useless unit instead?
Exactly like measuring rocket efficiency in ISP, when you generally want the exhaust velocity. But ISP is in "seconds", so no "meters per second" or "feet per second". Sigh.
Israel Didn't Launch Jack Shit (Score:4, Informative)
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The spacecraft was placed into Earth orbit by a SpaceX rocket. It looks like [wikipedia.org] it was a secondary payload on a telecommunications satellite launch, which probably means that the SpaceX rocket placed it in Geostationary Transfer Orbit [wikipedia.org] (GTO), an elliptical orbit with a peak altitude of 36,000 km.
The Israeli spacecraft then, having separated from the primary payload, presumably performed the trans-lunar injection burn - raising its apogee to ~380,000 km - on its own. I think it's valid to describe that as laun
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The spacecraft was placed into Earth orbit by a SpaceX rocket. It looks like it was a secondary payload on a telecommunications satellite launch, which probably means that the SpaceX rocket placed it in Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO), an elliptical orbit with a peak altitude of 36,000 km.
Yup: there were three payloads on the Falcon 9, all going to GTO. An Arab comm sat, a secret military payload "Sorry, we won't be able to show video of that part of the launch", and this spacecraft.
The comm sat will fire its rockets at apogee to circularize into the desired geostationary orbit. I believe the moonshot will fire its rockets at perigee, over the course of 3 or 4 passed, raising apogee each time until it gets a close encounter with the moon (and then it will take several passes to circularize
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Do you also say "NASA didn't launch jack shit" when they use a launch vehicle from UAL or Northrup or SpaceX?
Much as I love the actual rockets, it's the mission that matters, not the bus it rides to get there.
Would love to take a look at that map of Israel (Score:1)
Wow. So much here. (Score:3)
First privately funded lunar mission.
First SpaceX lunar mission.
First orbital approach lunar mission.
First lunar mission with successful rocket reclamation.
India Landed On The Moon Too! (Score:1)
Budget restrictions (Score:1)
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destroy the walls and barbed wires they enclosed them within.
If the Palestinian terrorists stopped murdering Israeli women and children then there would be no need for the walls and barbed wires. There are many examples of Israelis and Palestinians working together with no problems.
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Just to summarize most of humanity's never-ending conflicts: "If they stopped killing us then we wouldn't be forced to kill them." This excuse always ignores that the other side is using the same excuse as well.
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Once they colonize the moon - maybe they could share a bit of land that they took away from the Palestines
That land has been disputed literally longer than recorded history. Jewish tribes seem to have owned it more often than not, though it's hard to say beyond 3000 years ago. The current people called "Palestinians" wandered in fairly recently in history, and can't be said to have any more claim to the land than the very long list of historical owners.
But we all know that "Palestine" is just a euphemism. Perhaps we can dispense with euphemism now that we have a couple of openly anti-Semitic congresscritters
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That land has been disputed literally longer than recorded history
Sure. But nothing at all matters other than "who is still alive that had land stolen from them." I don't give a shit if someone's great-great-great-great grandfather once owned the land. That's always going to be a losing proposition, and descendants are entitled to nothing from their ancestors.
Was land stolen to create the nation of Israel? Yes, yes it was. But also, enough time has passed that no one other than them really has any claim to the land anymore, and returning Israel to "Palestinians" or whatev
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