More success in private space ventures

With NASA's current problems, our leadership in space technology is in the hands of industry - private & public firms. Fortunately, quite a bit of activity is occurring in this area . . .

Xoie Claims $1 Million Lunar Lander Prize | Autopia | Wired.com:
"Leaving it to the last minute, the team from Masten Space Systems has made a come-from-behind effort to win the $1 million prize after successfully flying its lunar lander last week. The team flew a new ship, called Xoie, to qualify for level 2 of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

After looking at the qualifying teams, Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace, the competition came down to inches.

In order to qualify for the level 2 of challenge, each participating team’s rocket had to autonomously make a round trip between two separate launch pads, flying to an altitude of at least 164 feet and remain aloft for at least 180 seconds. Armadillo Aerospace successfully met the requirements back in September. Their lander, Scorpius, had an average landing accuracy of about 35 inches.

When the team from Masten flew Friday, one day before the end of the competition, they managed to make the round trip with an average landing accuracy of about 7.5 inches. John Carmack’s Armadillo Aerospace team lost the million dollar prize by a little more than two feet."

Little drama, but lots of data from NASA's LCROSS mission

Listening to mission control, it was evident that the NASA folks were engaged & excited by this mission. We're developing the information required to support a permanent station on the Moon. There's no law that says the language spoken in space will be American English - this data will be in the public domain for whichever nation has the nerve to become explorers again. The benefits of living & working in space may be unimaginable, but based on past performance, they'll far exceed the invest made to get there.

No plume, but a firehose of data from NASA moon bombing - Ars Technica:
"Regardless of the public expectations, LCROSS clearly performed as planned. It recently separated from the Centaur stage that helped bring it to lunar orbit, and both of the spacecraft were directed towards the Cabeus crater at the Moon's south pole. The Centaur vehicle went first, creating an impact that could be observed from instruments on LCROSS, which followed it in. Less than four minutes later, LCROSS itself struck the lunar surface. The impacts were observed with a variety of telescopes on Earth and in Earth orbit, although the actual site of the impact was obscured by the Cabeus crater walls.

Clearly, a lot of people were hoping that dropping hardware onto the lunar surface would create a spray of debris that would rise above the crater walls, and be visible to the Earth-based observatories. Unfortunately, from the perspective of the Earth, LCROSS struck not with a bang, but a whimper, as if it had landed on a comfy pillow."

Water on the Moon

Water is essential to life. So far, we've had to carry adequate water with us during space travel. This discovery means we can probably provide enough water for workers on the Moon without having to lift it our of Earth's huge gravity well. This makes settlements on the Moon more likely in our foreseeable future.

SPACE.com -- It's Official: Water Found on the Moon:
"Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called 'unambiguous evidence' of water across the surface of the moon.

The new findings, detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science, come in the wake of further evidence of lunar polar water ice by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and just weeks before the planned lunar impact of NASA's LCROSS satellite, which will hit one of the permanently shadowed craters at the moon's south pole in hope of churning up evidence of water ice deposits in the debris field.

. . .

Finding water on the moon would be a boon to possible future lunar bases, acting as a potential source of drinking water and fuel.

. . .

The moon rocks were analyzed for signs of water bound to minerals present in the rocks; while trace amounts of water were detected, these were assumed to be contamination from Earth, because the containers the rocks came back in had leaked.

"The isotopes of oxygen that exist on the moon are the same as those that exist on Earth, so it was difficult if not impossible to tell the difference between water from the moon and water from Earth, . . . "

. . .

The rocks and regolith that make up the lunar surface are about 45 percent oxygen (combined with other elements as mostly silicate minerals). The solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles emitted by the sun — are mostly protons, or positively charged hydrogen atoms.

If the charged hydrogens, which are traveling at one-third the speed of light, hit the lunar surface with enough force, they break apart oxygen bonds in soil materials, Taylor, the M3 team member suspects. Where free oxygen and hydrogen exist, there is a high chance that trace amounts of water will form.

The various study researchers also suggest that the daily dehydration and rehydration of the trace water across the surface could lead to the migration of hydroxyl and hydrogen towards the poles where it can accumulate in the cold traps of the permanently shadowed regions."

Armadillo wins $1M Lunar Lander Challenge

A prize this size isn't enough to pay for their engineering effort, but obviously it is enough to keep engineers enthused and their financiers involved. There won't be a profit this quarter or this year, but fortunatley some people are looking further into the future. People like these are a big reason that life in general keeps getting better, generation after generation.

Armadillo Aerospace's Scorpius Craft Finally Bags $1 Million Lunar Lander Challenge | Popular Science:
"A future trip to the moon could use a commercial vehicle, if Armadillo Aerospace has anything to say about it. The company's rocket-powered craft pulled off a mock lunar landing on Saturday to qualify for a $1 million purse from NASA's Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

The vehicle rose 164 feet into the air and flew 164 feet away to land on a rocky surface, before returning to the starting spot for a round trip flight time of 180 seconds. That accomplishment made Armadillo the first team to complete Level 2 requirements of the Lunar Lander Challenge, where the minimum flight time simulates a trip from lunar orbit down to the moon."

NASA Finally Tests a New Rocket

Wow - talk about Jimmie Carter's "malaise" - a quarter of a century has slipped by since NASA last tested a new rocket design!

NASA Builds First New Test Rocket in 25 Years - Gearlog:
"The new Ares I rockets will eventually take humans back to the moon; this first one will launch on October 31st in a maiden test flight designed to show that the rocket is capable of carrying astronauts inside an Orion spacecraft into orbit. Ares I is a two-stage rocket that consists of a solid-fueled first stage and a larger, liquid-fueled upper stage,"

We had developed the technology to establish a small colony on the Moon by the late 1970's. How much wealth could we have created for Earth by mining our solar system since then? Working & living in space isn't just about scientific research - it has real benefits to everyone living here.

Real time recreation - trip to the Moon

Celebrating this month - the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's trip to the Moon.

On my monitor, some of this site's text is a bit hard to read - gray on black, but lots of interesting Apollo things here & there. As I type this, it is mostly spacecraft based white noise - still pretty different than what I would be playing on a normal day :-)

I imagine this site is best enjoyed on a separate monitor - as my home system only has 1 monitor attached right now, I put it up on full screen when I'm not using the system for other things.

Things to Do on the Way to the Moon | GeekDad | Wired.com:
"If you’re following the 40th anniversary recreation of the Apollo 11 mission on We Choose the Moon (a you-are-there, moment-by-moment immersion in the first lunar mission) you know that the mighty Saturn V rocket lifted off its pad at the Kennedy Space Center on July 16th. Twelve minutes later, the astronauts were in orbit around the earth, docked the command module with the lunar lander, and are now on their way to the moon.

You can follow the progress of the mission at the website, or on Twitter:
Capcom transmissions
Spacecraft transmissions
(and eventually the landing craft -) Eagle transmissions"

The Smithsonian is also following the mission on Twitter.

Spaceport America construction starts in New Mexico

We start slowly - currently only the wealthy can consider vacationing in space. This will change over time - start saving now.

Eventually life on Earth will be improved as we tap the wealth of our solar system. Privatization of space travel is an essential component of this transition. We're seeing privatization happen now.

Construction Begins on Spaceport America | Popular Science:
". . .
For everyone looking to hop the next commercial flight to space, your departure gate has finally been announced. Almost two years after the first plans were announced, construction has finally begun on Spaceport America. The spaceport, which will serve as the launch and landing pad for Virgin Galactic flights, is the first of its kind anywhere in the world, and represents the first serious commitment of infrastructure to manned commercial spaceflight.
. . .

Currently, Virgin Galactic only has two space ships, so it will probably be sometime before the facility experiences O'Hare and LaGuardia level traffic."

We need new pioneers

NASA - Why Explore Space?:
" ... for the foreseeable future, space travel is going to be expensive, difficult and dangerous. But, for the United States, it is strategic. It is part of what makes us a great nation. And the report declared that if we are going to send humans into space, the goals ought to be worthy of the cost, the risk and the difficulty. A human spaceflight program with no plan to send people anywhere beyond the orbiting space station certainly did not meet that standard.

President Bush responded to the Columbia report. The administration looked at where we had been in space and concluded that we needed to do more, to go further. The result was the Vision for Space Exploration, announced nearly three years ago, which commits the United States to using the shuttle to complete the space station, then retiring the shuttle and building a new generation of spacecraft to venture out into the solar system. Congress has ratified that position with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, making the Vision for Space Exploration the law of the land. "

Permanent populations on the Moon, Mars, & in the asteroid belt will one day improve life on Earth. This can come in part by moving some industrial processes off planet, but it will come mostly from the application of new knowledge - lessons we'll never learn if we aren't out there trying things - being pioneers.