Well We Ever Return to the Moon?

Here we have an excellent and very personal short from Andrew Chaikin. Mr. Chaikin witnessed the last Apollo launch and on the anniversary of Apollo 17's mission he makes a good case for returning. His reasoning is that here is another world for all respects and only 3 days away! What better place to train to work and survive on other planets (if we are to go there)than our own back door! Plus it goes without saying that Apollo only scratched the surface in it's exploration of the Moon, there is so much left to be studied in a place that is for all intents from the beginning of our solar system. It's a good vid, check it out!

The Luna Rover Manual?!

What's 221 pages of geekie reading nirvana? The Apollo Luna Rover Manual that's what! And now, what's even better....you can down load it as a pdf! The pdf not only shows an exploded view of the remarkable battery driven vehicle, but also how to unload it from the LEM and unfold it and plug the sub assemblies together in order to a working ride.

The PDF can be downloaded as a single file or an eight part booklet, all from the NASA site here

The Rover was included as part of the last three Moon 15, 16 and 17. The vehicle was stowed in the decent module of the L.E.M. and each one was abandoned in place at the end of each mission.

Four rovers were built for the last 4 missions. Since the program was canceled before Apollo 18 flew, the final rover was used for spare parts.

Apollo 17's rover traveled a total of 22.30 miles, its' longest single trip was 12.50 miles. Total operating time was 4 hours and 26 minutes and traveled a maximum distance from the LM of 4.7 miles.

Lost Lunar Orbiter 2 Crash Site Found

The Daily Galaxy has posted an article, that details a Luna orbiter NASA lost in 1967. Well lost is a bit strong. In 1967 Lunar Orbiter 2 was launched with a mission to help with selection of landing sites for the Apollo moon missions. Once the mission was finished (a matter of a few months) NASA ordered the orbiter to crash on the far side of the Moon.

Its landing site was never know however. From the article:

• but now the operators of the LROC have found what they believe is a tell-tale impact site just at the coordinates where the Orbiter should have come down. The Luna Reconnaissance Orbiter scientists are working on confirmation.

Your Piece of Immortality - Your Name on the Moon!

SFScope blog posted an article describing how the common man can grab his own little piece of immortality. How you might ask? Why, by placing your name on the moon itself! It seems, NASA is inviting the public to 'join the lunar exploration journey with an opportunity to send their names to the Moon aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, spacecraft. ' By logging to the "Send Your Name to the Moon" web site - you will see simple instructions that enables everyone to participate in the lunar adventure and place their names in orbit around the Moon for years to come. Participants can submit their information at this link, print a certificate, and have their name entered into a database. The database will be placed on a microchip that will be integrated onto the spacecraft. The deadline for submitting names is 27 June 2008. So maybe not quite ON the moon, its damn close and still really cool. Your's truly has already signed up.

Future Luna Bases Might Walk to Their Next Location

Shaun Saunders came across a very neat article in space.com. A robotic Luna base with legs no less. called the ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) the robot or robotic mobile platform could play an essential role in new lunar bases. The platform would have new habitats mounted to it and it would quite literally walk (or roll, should the terrain -is that the right word for the moon? lol - be flat enough) to where the habitat is to be set up. Athlete can be controlled by the astronauts themselves, mission control and it is likely that autonomous functions would be incorporated.

Of course to implement Athlete one major obstical needs to be addressed. That of the mindset of NASA which has always in the past favored fixed position habitats. So even though the prototypes are being tested, the major break-though is going to have to be in the minds of people who set the missions up. Also as Shaun points out, the downside of solar radiation has to be addressed as well.

BMU 77 podcast is up- we look at a galactic slugfest, the moonrush, gravity-free evolution,, talk with Shaun Saunders, listen to Doctorow and more!

BMU's latest podcast lets you: take sides on the wager on who won the great galactic barroom brawl three billion years ago, and who got the dark matter kicked out of them; find out why moon mining is suddenly where the smart money is rushing, how the Chinese may have effectively preempted other nations in gaining exclusive economic use of the moon and beyond--all the way to the limits of 'the heavens'!; why NASA must open its secret UFO files to a journalist; what organism is proven to evolve in nongravity environments; Australian novelist/psychologist Shaun Anthony Saunders on the making of Mallcity 14 (the book), and his and BMU's thoughts on the social challenges likely to crop up on longterm space voyages, when the stress of competing for expensive, continually updating material status symbols -- something endemic to Terran human socio-economics today -- is suddenly removed. And Cory Doctorow on wikipedia and other e-resources for today's internetia.

Moonrush is on, as wannabe exploiters and luna-huggers square off.

'Harvest Moon' takes on another meaning, as Terran "Moonrushers" point to fortunes to be made exploiting the vast deposits of madly valuable lunar ores containing helium-3 (He-3) that are now asserted to exist in easily mineable and transportable commercial quantities of the material.

Others, noting an increased propensity by the planet's nation-states to extraterritorially lay claim to the hitherto sacrosanct polar regions of Antarctica and Arctica, warn that Chinese planning for lunar colonization is well underway,

But do they have a claim? The host of mining interests and rocketeers that hope to stripmine Helium-3 rich moondust from the lunar "seas" have no more claim than any other earthlings. The Chinese nation however, could invoke their historic claim to already possessing the entire moon as their exclusive economic zone under the Shang Dynasty Son of Heaven declaration asserting China's extraplanetary hegemony as the ruler of "All under heaven".

With even a conservative definition of the outer rim of "heaven" encompassing the entire suite of planets and suns perceptible from Terra, Chinese claims to the moon could be seen as a small expression of the ancient claim.

In recent centuries competing groups of Terrans have used such ancient ownership claims as the aforenoted Chinese one to justify struggle for control over regions of their planet from which they may have departed millenia earlier.

(It is of course doubtful in the extreme that the People's Republic would ever advance the Shang Dynasty's space claims. But China has sent historic exploratory voyages before; Zheng He's explorations of the Indian Ocean are renowned.)

Moon-struck fight back.
Luna-huggers have also appeared, demanding protection of their planet's sole moon from the visible-from-earth scarring that would be the outcome of the application of industrial mining operations on a profitable scale to the nearly entirely pristine lunar surface environment.

Concerned about presently unforeseeable consequences, such opponents of lunar commercial exploitation may call for development and of a precautionary Lunar Impact Study Protocol requiring consideration of likely extralunar impacts of such mining, including degradation of the Moon's aesthetic resources.

Is is widely believed that large quantities of He-3 brought to Terra could power suffient fusion energy to allow for significant reduction in the use of carboniferous fossil fuels useful in s0lve the planet's global warming/energy source challenges

For the record, the Harvest Moon is the full moon nearest to Terra's autumnal equinox.