There are 3 basic strategies to get to the moon. Direct is the is the first, the ship/capsule takes off from Earth goes to the moon, lands and then some part of that capsule/ship takes off from the moon and returns to earth. Because you’re carrying LOTS of weight you don’t need at various points (e.g. the reentry shield on the capsule is dead weight as you land on the moon) the whole thing is VERY heavy. The rockets to do this are immense (e.g. the early NOVA concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(NASA_rocket) later repurposed but never used for mars exploration). The other two alternatives are Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) or Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). In EOR, you go up to a waiting lunar specific lander board it and use it for the earth to moon trip land and return to your Earth/space vehicle. This is the Von Braun/2001 model. It’s one weakness is it usually requires in space refueling of your lunar transit/lander vehicle. This is kind of what I suspect the initial SpaceX model SEEMS to be headed for with a combination of Dragon Crew, Starship cargo/fuel ferry, and Lunar Starship for transit and landing. The Apollo (and current Artemis) use LOR, with Apollo sort of used a mixed model to keep the LEM as light as possible (for a great dramatiztion of this find episode 9 of From the Earth to the Moon, also good discussion of LOR vs EOR). I think SpaceX/Musk have realized lunar Starship is overkill for the task presented, thus making EOR more feasible. They also know Starship overall depends on refueling; if they can’t do that it is kind of game over for Starship for any purpose other than LEO delivery of cargo/ satellites.
Tag: Moon
Elon Musk Bows to the Scientific and Economic Wisdom of photog and Pivots to Luna City Goal
Last June I wrote a post called Moon Mining in which I made a lot of hyperbolic statements about my future as a miner of precious metals on the Moon. But in a more serious vein (no pun intended?) I said, “But seriously, I think there is a lot more likelihood of the Moon becoming economically useful to humans than Mars. The difference in distance alone makes Mars almost impossibly difficult for manned flights.
The Moon on the other hand was reached more than fifty-five years ago by men whose technological capabilities were rudimentary compared to what we have at our disposal today. Imagine what improvements modern computing power and automation could do to make reaching and working on the Moon safer and easier.”
And then there’s this post from last week, “It’s Shiny and New” where I talk about Luna City.
And here we are a few days later and this headline appears:
“In a reversal, SpaceX prioritizes ‘city’ on the moon over Mars project, Musk says”
In the article it says, “Elon Musk said on Sunday that SpaceX has shifted its focus to building a “self‑growing city” on the moon, which could be achieved in less than 10 years.
SpaceX still intends to start on Musk’s long-held ambition of a city on Mars within five to seven years, he wrote on his X social media platform, “but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.”
What else do I need to say. Elon, there’s no shame in admitting you’re wrong when someone gently reminds you that wisdom is still a higher authority than Midas-like wealth. Well, he’s still relatively young and there’s time for him to learn what’s really important, namely building Luna City and naming the main street Neil Armstrong Blvd.
Seriously, I was starting to doubt whether he wasn’t just blowing smoke with all the Mars mission talk. That stuff is a generation away. Building and maintaining a permanent Moon base is an achievable goal that will show us whether human habitation beyond the Earth is feasible and profitable. If it isn’t it’s better to learn that from a place where retreat takes a couple of days rather than a year. Trillions of dollars and, more importantly, lives would be saved.
So, get going Mr. Musk. Sell the boys in Washington a plan to build something like a town on the Moon. You’ll make a whole lot of money and you’ll spark the imagination of a generation of boys whose grandfathers thrilled to the Apollo landings. Just make sure you do a good job on the accounting so it won’t come back to haunt you when the Democrats come back into power. They’re a vindictive bunch and they love to punish people whom they hate and from everything I’ve read they hate you now even more than they hate people like me. And that’s a whole lot of hate anyway you stack it.
I have to confess I’m actually kind of excited to hear this goal. I think he can get this done. I’m guessing Trump would like to have his name involved in it too. That quite a combination.
It’s Shiny and New
So, it hasn’t snowed in a week and I’ve got a good four or five days to relax. I guess, life is good. The news kind of bores me at the moment. The courts are going back and forth on the ICE arrests and the protest riots. I guess it’ll take a while for that stuff to get sorted out. I’ll let Trump get on with his work. He doesn’t need my applause to do his job (I hope!).
So what else is going on? Well, we’re sending a rocket around the Moon I hear. They’re sending four astronauts and one of them is a girl. Well, what can you do? She can make sandwiches for the return trip, I guess. I’m glad they’re planning missions to land on the Moon again. I think the Moon is a better location for space missions than either the space station or Mars. Mars is currently too far for our current capabilities to be attempted safely and effectively. The space station doesn’t seem to be very interesting or useful. A moonbase on the other hand has definite possibilities. I think they can start by using robot equipment to transport lots of equipment to the lunar surface and then have a few manned missions to set up a permanent base. Using unmanned flights to accumulate fuel before humans begin inhabiting a base would provide more of a safety factor.
As for what purpose the base would fulfill, I’d say it would be almost completely scientific experimentation. Personally, I have a theory that somewhere below the surface of the Moon we’ll find bacterial life. Specifically, it will be terrestrial life that reached the Moon as spores. There is supposed to be frozen water on the Moon and below the surface there may be more moderate temperatures. Of course, there is no atmosphere but I’ve got this feeling that somehow all the life on Earth must leak out into space over time. Of course, Mars is a better place to look for wandering terrestrial micro-organisms. But I want to put in my claim for Moon bugs early. Maybe they’ll even name them after me; E. coli photogiensis. But I think the Moon would also make a great location for astronomical observatories. And in terms of the astronauts, having one sixth gravity on the Moon would be many times better for them than the micro-gravity of the space stations.
Finally, they could call the base Luna City. Robert Heinlein based a number of his short stories and one of his best novels on the Moon (“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”) I think Luna City is an excellent name. Of course, when it gets big enough for a main street, that should be Neil Armstrong Boulevard. Of course, it may turn out that living on the Moon isn’t healthy for humans. If that’s the case we’ll know soon enough. Then the Moon will be the domain of robots. And since it’s so close that will someday happen. It’s a very large rock that’s very close to Earth and eventually we’ll think of lots of things to do with it. But right now, it’s shiny and new and waiting for us to walk on its surface again. Maybe even girls.
Moon Mining
This article claims that enough asteroids have struck the moon over time that inevitably there are enough deposits of valuable metals to make mining the Moon worthwhile:
“There might be more than $1 trillion worth of platinum deposits on the moon, according to a paper published in the journal Planetary and Space Science. Of the 1.3 million craters on the moon with a diameter greater than one kilometer, “nearly 6,500 were made by asteroids containing commercial quantities of platinum,” said New Scientist. This “highlights the potential viability and profitability of lunar mining endeavors compared to mining asteroids in orbit,” said the paper.”
This kind of jibes with my recent post where I said a Moon base is a more realistic goal than a manned trip to Mars. And Now I see why.
My future will be as a uranium miner on the Moon. I will start out with uranium and then branch out into gold and platinum. Eventually I may be able to concentrate completely on tantalum, my favorite metal.
But seriously, I think there is a lot more likelihood of the Moon becoming economically useful to humans than Mars. The difference in distance alone makes Mars almost impossibly difficult for manned flights.
The Moon on the other hand was reached more than fifty five years ago by men whose technological capabilities were rudimentary compared to what we have at our disposal today. Imagine what improvements modern computing power and automation could do to make reaching and working on the Moon safer and easier.
But most important we must go to the Moon because Mt Rushmore is too small and crowded for this:
Come On Elon, Baby Steps
So, what to talk about tonight? I’m kinda at a loss. I’m not in the politics mood. I haven’t figured out the next chapters in the stories I’ve been spinning. Not much going on around the Compound today and even the First Selectman has been on his best behavior and hasn’t eaten anyone in a few weeks. I guess things are in a lull right now.
So, I was thinking with all the talk about Elon Musk getting us to Mars was that really the space mission we need? I think not. What would be better and much easier would be to build a Moon base. The space station we have now is a lame piece of junk that is more trouble than its worth. And living in free fall is really bad for humans. But a permanent base on the Moon is much easier than a Mars trip, much cheaper and much less risky for the astronauts.
Of course, the real reason why this base would be so valuable won’t appear until a magnetic survey is performed and a strange “anomaly” discovered. Once this mystery is investigated and the signal is tracked back to a Jovian (or is it a Saturnian) moon the real exploration of the solar system will begin in earnest. All we need to remember is not to drive the ship’s AI psychotic with conflicting mission requirements and also make a point of not teaching it to read lips.
But seriously (or semi-seriously), I think a Moon base is a much more realistic space project and putting stuff on the Moon instead of in Earth orbit is probably a good idea in general. There’s just too much junk floating around up there.
As for the name, Luna City is one obvious choice. I could be convinced that Sheepshead Bay would sound good. After all there are a lot of Mares up there so a seaside name makes some sense.
But the most important thing that a lunar base would provide is a chance to see if space travel is useful at all. Can a base on the close-by Moon come up with anything useful that can’t be done better and cheaper on Earth?
One thing I can think of are particle accelerators. Maintaining a vacuum on the Moon will be a heck of a lot easier than on Earth. And the lower gravity might have some advantages in certain kinds of construction. And there are probably other scientific experiments that can be done better on the Moon. Maybe the long lunar night would be a great time to do telescopic observations. Instead of the Hubble and Webb space telescopes maybe we could build a really big telescope on the Moon and see right out to the edge of the universe. Of course, we might not like what we find on “the edge.” We might find that the galaxies are arranged to spell out the words, “TO READ BEYOND THIS POINT YOU MUST BUY A SUBSCRIPTION!”
Well, anyway, that’s what I was thinking. The Moon’s the perfect compromise between the fantastically risky Mars mission and the useless and boring International Space Station. Come on Elon, baby steps.