The Reality of Human Function on the Moon April 30, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Youtube , add a commentToday we’ve got links to three videos, from Youtube, of one of the deepest realities about the Moon and moon colonization, and certainly in setting up a base there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jvcmjr0GE&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ciStUEZK-Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcn4scQmcc8&feature=related
It’s the little things that complete an experience… ;)
Lunarpedia April 29, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Lava Tubes, Moon Society, Signal Wires , add a commentI’ve just come across, in poking around with some intial research on the Moon Society (a non-profit dedicated to the topic of moon colonization and Luna in general), a neat Lunarpedia that they have started up, a Wiki for Moon Colonization and related topics.
Differing from Wikipedia in its policies (including the allowance of original work), the Lunarpedia seems mildly all-over-the-place, in a beautiful kind of way. In a few minutes of exploration, I discovered lava tubes, signal wires, and the fact that I’m not the only one that thinks ‘Urban Planning’ on the Moon is a legitimate concept. Awesome.
The Moon Society is a group that should be popping up here a lot, as they function as a node for a whole heck of a lot of different fronts in the world of lunar colonization, and are therefore darn near omnipresent online.
But, for now, check that Lunarpedia out, and lose yourself for a while :)
The Resource of the 21st Century April 27, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Fusion Power, Helium-3, Mare Tranquillitatis , 1 comment so far“We will provide the most reliable report on helium-3 to mankind,” Ouyang Ziyuan, the chief scientist of China’s lunar program, told a Chinese newspaper. “Whoever first conquers the moon will benefit first.”
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Russian space geologist Erik Galimov told the Russian Izvestia newspaper that NASA’s plan to colonize the moon will “enable the U.S. to establish its control of the global energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out.”
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Those quotes, from an article in Wired magazine by John Lasker, give you an idea of the seriousness of the race to mine helium-3 on the moon. As a matter of fact, helium-3 is a primary motivation for colonization of the moon in the first place.
Helium-3 is used in fusion power, seen as many (including Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator Jack Schmitt, the chairman of NASA’s Advisory Council) as the ultimate fuel of the future. As the Artemis Project notes, once a fusion plant is up and running (France is hosting a test facility, and the technology is expected to be in use by 2050), one shuttle’s worth of helium-3 would power the United States for an entire year. Mind you that this is without any greenhouse gases, or the risk of fission power. The perfect nuclear power (or energy resource of any kind), in other words.
Helium-3 is rare on earth, but plentiful on the Moon. Above is a map of Helium-3 on the Moon’s surface, with a lot of it concentrated in Mare Tranquillitatis to the middle-right.
Both Russia and China have stated in various places that helium-3 is a motivation, and the quotes at the beginning here attest to their awareness of its importance.
Helium-3 is a critical element (excuse the pun) of mankind’s efforts to colonize the moon this century, and could help solve a lot of problems. It’s going to be a headline-maker and a focus of our energies for a long time, and you’ll be hearing a lot more about it both here in the near future, and elsewhere over the long-term.
The 2008 Presidential Candidates+NASA's future April 25, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Base Race, Constellation, McCain, Obama , add a commentJust came across a brand-new and interesting article from Popular Mechanics about the stance of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain on NASA and America’s space future.
Providing a roundup of each, Rand Simberg’s analysis ends up with it looking like a McCain presidency in particular could spell delays for NASA (as his plan for reducing the federal deficit includes a potential freeze on all domestic discretionary spending), while Clinton is fairly positive and Obama sounds the most seriously interested in the topic (which is not surprising, considering his style of soaring rhetoric and big dreams), despite his education plan including a bit about cutting back or delaying the Constellation program to pay for education.
With the baby boomer generation retiring and the economy generally in a crunch in the first place, the future of the momentum of the Constellation program looks potentially grim. Of course, the Constellation program is far from the only one out there; both foreign efforts and commercial projects are international enough by their nature to be removed from the woes of America. The Moon can move on without us Americans, in other words, and humanity might not skip much of a beat.
Still, things look pretty good for the American effort. We should at least be a part of the Base Race, though this time, we probably won’t finish first.
You never know, though; there’s still room for the Emperor of the Moon as a dark horse…
Picture of the Week: A Crescent Of Ourselves April 23, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Picture of the Week , add a comment
Found this image last week, and I found it to be very powerful. That is, of course, not a crescent Moon, but a crescent Earth. When viewed from the Moon and elsewhere, the Earth (from the Moon, an object 60% brighter than the Moon appears to us here) waxes and wanes through phases as the moon does, if in a less dramatic and much quicker manner.
Full Moon, I April 22, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Uncategorized , add a commentAlways with us
Mare Tranquillitatis
with the naked eye
when the tide is high
MoonPop: Futurama, "The Series Has Landed" April 20, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : MoonPop , add a commentThis week’s exhibit of moon colonization in pop culture comes courtesy of “Futurama“, the highly entertaining animated program that is the second series from the creators of “The Simpsons“. The general plot and setting of the series revolves around a delivery boy (Fry) who gets accidentally cryogenically frozen in 2000, and wakes up in 3000, only to find himself as a delivery boy again in this far future.
The second episode of the series (after the pilot, and of 72 episodes in the original run) is called “The Series Has Landed” and features comedic musings on the meaning of moon colonization. The events of the episode involve Fry and the crew he ends up with (Planet Express) doing a, to them, routine delivery to the Moon (which of course, blows him away, as he has just barely arrived in this new era and is still getting adjusted).
The crew are bored with the propect of the moon, despite Fry’s enthusiasm for it, as by this point it is basically only inhabited by a corny and artificial theme park. Essentially, the Moon (of such mystery to someone like Fry of our era) has been reduced for the year-3000 era folks to little more than a “big, dull rock” only a hop and a skip (all of two seconds, in the episode) away. Historical signifigance is always a fragile thing, especially when tourists show up.
The idea behind the humor here being that the Moon, which Fry describes as a “romantic, mysterious thing…hanging up in the sky where you could never reach it, no matter how much you wanted to”, could very easily (and probably will) be reduced to commonplace, or something otherwise less than the mystique it carries now. This could actually potentially happen for society within the next 100 years, or sooner, at the rate at which we are progressing; the generation of kids growing up now (and this era in general) has a similar shift in perspective already going.
The episode has Fry getting frustrated with the theme park on the moon (“Great and all, but it’s all just so artifical…you might as well have just stayed on Earth”), and convincing his colleagues to escape with him to the surface, where they promptly get lost, eventually rediscovering the ‘long lost’ original lunar landing site by accident and then getting back home.
Hopelessly lost on the surface, Fry’s captain (Leela) is less than amused by it, though in the end, her seeing an Earthrise with Fry warms her to the idea of the Moon’s value and beauty outside of what her era built on it.
In the end, Leela asks Fry: “So Fry…is the real moon anything like the moon you used to dream about?”
Fry’s response, after their brief adventure on the surface?
“Eh, close enough.” :)
You could say ‘only time will tell’ what the grandchildren of the teens and 20-somethings of today will have as their image of the moon and its experiences, but in reality, we do have some power over this, and it’s largely up to the developers of today to decide what the moon will be like for the folks of tomorrow. :)
Atlas' Back: Mare Tranquillitatis April 19, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Apollo, Atlas' Back, Google Moon, Helium-3, Mare Tranquillitatis , add a comment
For the first edition of Atlas’ Back, a semi-regular series of features touring selenographic features of the moon, we have ourselves a look at Mare Tranquillitatis: The Sea of Tranquility.
The name being the latin form of “Sea of Tranquility”, Mare Tranquillitatis is the most famous of the Maria, the basaltic plains originally mistaken for actual seas by early astronomers (hence the name, which is latin for “seas”). The above map has the landing sites for Ranger 5, Apollo 11 (the first manned landing), Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 (the last manned landing up to this point) marked, illustrating the massive historical signifigance of this sea in the sky.
With the amount of attention and activity directed towards Mare Tranquillitatis, there’s plenty of images to go around. A few visual highlights to give you a feel for the mare:
Buzz Aldrin on Mare Tranquillitatis.
A view of the mare from the window of the Apollo 11 lander, right after landing.
An Earthrise photo, taken from Apollo 11 prior to landing (different from the famous “Earthrise” photo, featured recently and significantly in the film “An Inconvenient Truth” and widely regarded as having helped found the environmentalism movement; that was taken from orbit during the earlier Apollo 8 mission).
From a distance; Mare Tranquillitatis is the expansive dark patch in the upper left there, with the Apollo 11 landing site being in the lower left corner, as can be seen clearly via the handy Google Moon (a Google Earth counterpart currently geared around the Apollo landings).
The mare is about 300,000 sq km (roughly the same size as the Phillipines), and as that bit of size research turned up, is apparently also a very good site for Helium-3, with (as that abstract notes) about 50% of the mare being minable. Though, my initial reaction here would be to think of Mare Tranquillitatis as a site for the moon’s first protected historical park, and not, say, strip mining.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief tour of Mare Tranquillitatis; there’s many more tours of this sort to come, both from me here, and from many others elsewhere, as this last photo below (of the mare) illustrates pretty well. Stay tuned for the next edition of Atlas’ Back…
The Roster Grows: Europe and India April 18, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Base Race, European Space Agency, Fusion Power, Helium-3, Indian Space Research Organization , add a commentIn the midst of a little research, I discovered two more countries/efforts to add to the Base Race roster:
-Europe (European Space Agency)
-India (Indian Space Research Organization; check out that stylin’ website!)
While both have projects underway for manned/unmanned missions, it is noted that I don’t see a specific reference to lunar base plans. With all the other governments/governmental organizations making similar preliminary efforts (lunar orbiters, men on the moon around 2015-2016, etc.) also having an eventual base as part of their plans, though, it seems like bases for both the above organizations could be inevitable. Might as well build one while you’re there, right? You’ve already made the effort to get there in the first place, so you can go ahead and mine yourself some nice souvenirs (for the folks back home) that can also happen to potentially power your country for an entire year.
So now we’re up to the U.S. , China, Russia, India, Japan, Sweden, and Europe all joining in on the great big Lunar picnic that is the Base Race…and the party’s just getting started.
Picture of the Week: Lets Go Camping April 17, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Picture of the Week , add a comment
