40 years...
Dec. 14th, 2012 12:13 am2:54 pm PST Man leaves the moon for the last time.
Just a reminder folks. At the current time it'd likely take us until the 50th anniversary of the departure to get back.
Just a reminder folks. At the current time it'd likely take us until the 50th anniversary of the departure to get back.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-14 11:49 am (UTC)So far, no one's come up with a good reason.
Much as I want to see a big and healthy manned space program, I just don't see it happening unless and until someone comes up with a GOOD reason to send people up there, and thus far, none of the purported reasons hold up under any scrutiny.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-14 04:54 pm (UTC)We have a lot of things that can get all sorts of (fairly small, light) stuff to LEO. And a few things that can get heavier or larger stuff there (different vehicles or large and for heavy).
And a fair assortment of things that can get satellites to GEO.
But doing Lunar orbit rendezvous (like Apollo did) would require reinventing a fair bit of stuff. Or at least designing practically from scratch.
Doing the more sensible Earth orbit rendezvous (like all the pre-Apollo designs assumed) would require a *lot* of infrastructure work in earth orbit. Both LEO and possibly GEO.
The ISS ain't suited for the sort of stuff that'd be needed. So we'd need a new station, likely in a higher orbit (so it won't need re-boosts as often). And suited to act as an orbital shipyard.
Oddly, we could use such a station *now* as well as the "orbital tug" that is a likely component of such a lunar program. If nothing else, they'd allow *fixing* satellites and likely doing so cheaper than launching new ones (assuming satellites started getting designed to *be* fixed).