Chinese lander heading for far side of Moon

[Usenko]

China is landing Chang'e 4 on the far side of the moon.

Stay tuned!

[muppetts]

I figure one day someone lands a remote surface to air missle system and just claims the moon!

[pjknibbs]

I figure one day someone lands a remote surface to air missle system and just claims the moon!

They'd first have to pull out of the Outer Space Treaty, which explicitly forbids any such thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

[Morkonan]

I figure one day someone lands a remote surface to air missle system and just claims the moon!

They'd first have to pull out of the Outer Space Treaty, which explicitly forbids any such thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

^--- This.

One thing that has been relatively undisturbed through all the political and diplomatic turmoil going on in the world - The US and Russia and ESA et al still cooperate on space missions.

I often wonder what the future would look like if the scenario in "2010: The Year We Make Contact" actually happened. How would geopolitical events on Earth play out "in space?" I don't think anyone would attempt to "claim" anything in space in terms of "Sovereign Territory" in the near future. But, this might be put to the test if someone manages to successfully mine an asteroid. What then? And, what if they attempt to move it closer to Earth, as some have suggested? "Interesting times" then, to be sure.

[muppetts]

I figure one day someone lands a remote surface to air missle system and just claims the moon!

They'd first have to pull out of the Outer Space Treaty, which explicitly forbids any such thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

Yeah cos no one ever pulls out of or violates treaties, good point!

[Bishop149]

They'd first have to pull out of the Outer Space Treaty, which explicitly forbids any such thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

I'm interested to see this one tested in the near future.
At the time it was written it made little actual sense to exploit planetary bodies either economically or militarily.
The former at least might soon change, as soon as exploiting extra terrestrial resources becomes economically viable I suspect that treaty will become toilet paper.

[pjknibbs]

Yeah cos no one ever pulls out of or violates treaties, good point!

No-one pulls out of treaties for the lulz, they have to have a darned good reason for doing so. What's the benefit to any nation in saying "The Moon is mine now"? It's a largely featureless rock with no important resources, even if you ignore the difficulty of transporting any such resources back to Earth.

[greypanther]

What's the benefit to any nation in saying "The Moon is mine now"?

Same reason the USA was so eager to be first there? Just saying like. ( Though there are still those who think it was all an elaborate hoax! )

[Observe]

It's a largely featureless rock with no important resources...

I'm guessing they have their eyes set on mining helium-3 for future nuclear fusion power generation. Earth doesn't have much of it, because of our magnetic field, but the Moon has a relative abundance of helium-3.

It may be that no country can claim the Moon, but I guess there's nothing much stopping someone from mining its resources and having armed guards protecting their investments. It won't be long before we see the first "No Trespassing" sign waving in the moon breeze.

[Usenko]

Even if there is a lot of Helium-3 (which seems likely) there, there are a few issues:

1) Whilst we have a theoretical framework for using it in fusion reactors to produce vast amounts of electricity, nobody has actually done this on a commercial scale. Partly because we don't have large quantities of Helium-3 (catch-22 right there). So we may be able to do this, but we're yet to do it.

2) When it's all said and done, there is little advantage to getting materials from the moon and taking them to Earth. It will probably be cheaper to learn to do fusion without Helium-3 than to mine it on the moon and take it home[1].

3) Nobody has actually mounted a test case yet exploring the limits of companys' legal rights on the moon.


[1] The MASSIVE potential of the moon is to use materials mined there for space industries- the smaller gravity well makes it an ideal staging post for space infrastructure.

[Mightysword]

2) When it's all said and done, there is little advantage to getting materials from the moon and taking them to Earth. It will probably be cheaper to learn to do fusion without Helium-3 than to mine it on the moon and take it home[1].

Which mainly come down to one bottleneck: getting from earth to space. Because going from space to the moon, moon to space and back to earth cost peanuts in comparison. I think whatever we plan to do in space, that bottle neck have to be resolved first, once it does though, I bet it'll open the floodgate to many possibilities that we might not even consider at the moment. SpaceX's approach to reusable rocket already cut cost down a lot, but IMO not ambitious enough to "industrialize" space. Plus it doesn't address the other issue of the risk of hazardous material exploding in the atmosphere if a rocket fails. The theory behind a space elevator had already been conceived over 2 decades ago. I don't know if there is any other countries actively research or pursuing it, but Japan does. It has been launching a series of experimental satellites since 2016 (the STARS-Me project), the 2 latest satellites were launched just a few months ago back in September. Together they formed a mini-proof-of concept device somewhere in low orbit right now.

Forget setting foot on the moon again or bringing weapon to space, I think whoever get a the first functional space elevator built is the one that gonna own space

[Morkonan]

...Forget setting foot on the moon again or bringing weapon to space, I think whoever get a the first functional space elevator built is the one that gonna own space

The reason we don't already have a Space Elevator in place is because it's not possible to build a Space Elevator... We don't have the materials necessary to create it. You'd need "unobtainium" in order to make a Space Elevator. There's a host of other problems, but that one major one has to be solved before others could even be worthy of considering.

What we need is something besides a "rocket." Some other propulsion system that doesn't rely on the energy capacity of an expendable fuel or, possibly, terribly destructive reaction systems we could use. (ie: NPP = Nuclear Pulse Propulsion like "Project Orion) For that sort of stuff, we need to go back to the drawing board with NASA's old "Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program." (NASA BPPP)

The lackluster amount of funding this program got and the apathy with which it was cancelled was appalling, IMO. We need "Dream Programs" too... In contrast, some of the research the military has put into various systems is nauseating, just so they can keep teams employed, trained, and ready to discover "the next best thing in blowing stuffs up." :/

...3) Nobody has actually mounted a test case yet exploring the limits of companys' legal rights on the moon.
..

There are precedents in similar areas that we could turn to for guidance. For instance, in the US, private companies can secure "Rights" to exploit resources on publicly held lands. (ie: Bid on the Right to mine, etc...) We would have to determine exactly who "owns" the right to collect funds from such private exploitation, though. The UN? Equally distributed among all nations? Some new international fund? etc. It wouldn't exactly be easy to figure out, but it's not impossible and we have enough suitable examples in smaller theatres.

[Mightysword]

...Forget setting foot on the moon again or bringing weapon to space, I think whoever get a the first functional space elevator built is the one that gonna own space

The reason we don't already have a Space Elevator in place is because it's not possible to build a Space Elevator... We don't have the materials necessary to create it.

We kinda do though ... it's called Carbon Nanotube. The material already exist for sometime.

The material needed for a space elevator is required to have a tensile strength of around 50 GPa (if we use the cable model), Carbon Nanotube has a tensile strength of around 100 GPa for a perfect strain. Only problem is ... we can only produce a perfect strain that is a few meter long ATM, anything longer that and we risk defective product, and even just one defected strain can cut the strength of the whole things by half. By NASA estimation we'll need 144000 mile of the thing ... which is a pretty tall order currently. Regardless NASA did actually gave it the seal of approval that the plan is sound from an engineering perspective.

So it's more accurate to say our problem is not inventing, but scaling. That's why Obayashi Corp currently set a target of 20 years to figure how to produce perfect strains of Carbon Nanotube on industrial scale. In the state this company is best know for the their involvement in building the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge that is part of the Hoover Damp. This is also the company that's working and funding other universities in Japan to launch the STARS-Me satellites project I mentioned earlier.

So while it's still pretty far away, it's also closer than most people think. At least it's no longer a research exist only on papers and as talking point at science conferences, it's actively being engineered and prototyping on. Don't know about you, but I hope I'll live long enough to see a functioning space elevator in my life time.

[pjknibbs]

Which mainly come down to one bottleneck: getting from earth to space. Because going from space to the moon, moon to space and back to earth cost peanuts in comparison.

Peanuts? The delta-V required to achieve LEO (at around the level of the ISS) is 9.4km/s. To get from there to the Moon's surface requires 5.93km/s, and to then get from the Moon's surface back to LEO is another 2.74km/s*, for a total of 8.67km/s--near enough exactly the same as it took to get into space in the first place. There's a reason NASA had to build the biggest rocket ever made in order to deliver a comparatively tiny payload to the Moon and get it back again!

* source: the table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_b ... igh_thrust

[Morkonan]

We kinda do though ... it's called Carbon Nanotube. The material already exist for sometime....So it's more accurate to say our problem is not inventing, but scaling. That's why Obayashi Corp currently set a target of 20 years to figure how to produce perfect strains of Carbon Nanotube on industrial scale. In the state this company is best know for the their involvement in building the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge that is part of the Hoover Damp. This is also the company that's working and funding other universities in Japan to launch the STARS-Me satellites project I mentioned earlier.

So while it's still pretty far away, it's also closer than most people think. At least it's no longer a research exist only on papers and as talking point at science conferences, it's actively being engineered and prototyping on. Don't know about you, but I hope I'll live long enough to see a functioning space elevator in my life time.

It's not going to happen with carbon nanotubes as we know them, right now. They're just not suitable. They'd sheer themselves to pieces. You'd need carbon nanotubes wrapped in graphene stabilized by an electrostatically reinforcing and rebonding fusion power system and all of it coated with magic goose-juice elastomagic polymer... Or, you'd need a "Brand New Thing" that we don't have right now. That B.N.T. might incorporate some materials we have right now, surely. But, not as they are right now or not as they're manufactured and employed right now. That's why I said we'd need "unobtainium." Though, admittedly, it's not exactly "unobtainium," but it's close enough.

I'd LOVE a space elevator! I used to be a big fan of the idea and I'd love to ride one and see us ship oodles of stuff up to "the Stars." But, I wouldn't buy a house near it...

...That's why Obayashi Corp currently set a target of 20 years to...

I love targets of "20 years." They're awesome! They're "We Don't Know" targets. They're what you tell aging investors, who usually have more money than young people, who also won't be alive when they announce the project as being cancelled... But, announcing stuff like that makes them look all future-sciencey and stuff and it gets good press coverage.

How much money have they put into this project so far? I couldn't find any entries in their 2018 prospectus (They could have been consolidated, but if so then it wasn't a bunch of money.) nor was there any mention of it on their main website. This is a project in active development? They're pursuing it right now? And, because we all know it would revolutionize the entire world and would give anyone who first developed such a project a practical monopoly on The Entire Universe, from a human perspective, it'd be the most profitable thing since sex. And... they don't even bother to mention it anymore?

I'd love a Space Elevator! It'd be awesome. But, we have to get from "thinking" to "doing" and as far as a Space Elevator is concerned, there's an extra step involved that we just don't know how to overcome yet. Will we? IMO - Probably not. We'll come across something much more efficient or easier to deal with and even if we had Space Elevators, they'd end up being mothballed overnight. What do you do with a "slightly used" Space Elevator you don't want anymore?

[Mightysword]

Which mainly come down to one bottleneck: getting from earth to space. Because going from space to the moon, moon to space and back to earth cost peanuts in comparison.

Peanuts? The delta-V required to achieve LEO (at around the level of the ISS) is 9.4km/s. To get from there to the Moon's surface requires 5.93km/s, and to then get from the Moon's surface back to LEO is another 2.74km/s*, for a total of 8.67km/s--near enough exactly the same as it took to get into space in the first place. There's a reason NASA had to build the biggest rocket ever made in order to deliver a comparatively tiny payload to the Moon and get it back again!

The delta-V number itself doesn't tell the whole story though. Rocket is much more effective in vacuum than in atmosphere. That 9.4km/s delta V cost a whole lot more to achieve than that 8.67km/s in vacuum. You're right about NASA built their biggest rocket ever to go to the moon, here I assume you you mean the Saturn V rocket. To put it in perespective:

- The first two stages are used sorely for the purpose of escaping Earth Gravity.
- About a third of the third stage is used to put the craft in a low orbit with the remaining fuel use for the moon orbit transfer. And this is a bit of a cheating because it's not a stable orbit, hang around here long enough and it''ll be dragged back to earth. To get to a stable LEO like the ISS probably gonna use at least half of the third stage.
- And those 3 stages took up most of the space and weight of the rocket. If we say that complete half of the journey, then you can see the other half is completed by just the small sections on the top of the rocket with the command module and the lunar module that handling orbiting the moon, land, go back from the surface, and tail back to Earth.

The fuel break down is like this:

First stage: 21212800L.
Second stage: 1331000L.
Third stage: 344550L.
CMS+LM: 18600L.

Factoring the fact it cost a lot more to build the engines for the first 3 stages (due to structure integrity demand, and the need of much bigger size) comparing to the much smaller size rockets that's used exclusive in space on the CMS and you get the idea why I said it's peanuts. Even when you're not talking about fuel, that's why SpaceX is already saving pretty penny by simply able to reuse the in-atmosphere rockets of the launch vehicle, after all 75% of the cost of their rocket lies in the first stage alone.

[Mightysword]

It's not going to happen with carbon nanotubes as we know them, right now. They're just not suitable. They'd sheer themselves to pieces. You'd need carbon nanotubes wrapped in graphene stabilized by an electrostatically reinforcing and rebonding fusion power system and all of it coated with magic goose-juice elastomagic polymer... Or, you'd need a "Brand New Thing" that we don't have right now. That B.N.T. might incorporate some materials we have right now, surely. But, not as they are right now or not as they're manufactured and employed right now. That's why I said we'd need "unobtainium." Though, admittedly, it's not exactly "unobtainium," but it's close enough.

It maybe Carbon nanotutes, it maybe something else we don't know. Even if we manage to produce enough qualified carbon nanotube, we still have to do something to strengthen against cosmic radiation for example. The point being is we already discover a formula that can work, like I said at ideal strength nanotube is already twice as strong as what theoretically needed for the application. Whether to improve it or derive something new from it, we already have a starting point to work from. Unlike say ... on the topic of traveling faster than light or go through wormhole where we need this "magic" material that can withstand the gravitational pull of a black-hole and all that hoopla .

We actually currently have an another alternative material that is already exist, forgot the name but it's diamond something, but it has the same problem as nanotube currently in term of industrial scale production.

I love targets of "20 years." They're awesome! They're "We Don't Know" targets. They're what you tell aging investors, who usually have more money than young people, who also won't be alive when they announce the project as being cancelled... But, announcing stuff like that makes them look all future-sciencey and stuff and it gets good press coverage.

Common, leave your cynicism in the political thread, in talking about space you need a bit of a dream

How much money have they put into this project so far? I couldn't find any entries in their 2018 prospectus (They could have been consolidated, but if so then it wasn't a bunch of money.) nor was there any mention of it on their main website. This is a project in active development? They're pursuing it right now? And, because we all know it would revolutionize the entire world and would give anyone who first developed such a project a practical monopoly on The Entire Universe, from a human perspective, it'd be the most profitable thing since sex. And... they don't even bother to mention it anymore?

My dude I just gave you the latest update

It has been launching a series of experimental satellites since 2016 (the STARS-Me project), the 2 latest satellites were launched just a few months ago back in September. Together they formed a mini-proof-of concept device somewhere in low orbit right now.

The last update they had in October is these satellites now form 2 anchor points in low orbit for a 10m long cable that has a small robot traveling between them, basically a concept proof for movement in space. And unlike Trump news space research project don't give out very frequent report ... especially if the target date is set for some 50 years later.

[Morkonan]

... Even when you're not talking about fuel, that's why SpaceX is already saving pretty penny by simply able to reuse the in-atmosphere rockets of the launch vehicle, after all 75% of the cost of their rocket lies in the first stage alone.

That's certainly a big deal and it's the primary development cost of the project - Paying for the hardware. At the time, the Saturn V was the "most complex machine ever built." That title was then claimed by the Space Shuttle. Upon until then, we had taken all of that up-front cost and just dumped it into the ocean after using it once... THAT kept us from going back to the Moon. Who's going to be enthusiastic about turning the most complex machines one can build into insta-scrap as soon as the thing is launched? Doing it multiple times to support even a temporary "Moon Base?" And, for what? Some rocks? Maybe a nice telescope installation that you'll have to close in a few years?

Reusable rockets are great, but wow we're still in the Stone Age. Space Development stuffs is haaard. The "Age of Sail" lasted roughly 300 years. How long will the "Age of Rocketry" exist before it is superseded by "The Next Age?" And, what will that be?

...strengthen against cosmic radiation for example...

^--- This. IMO, this is our truly daunting problem for space travel, even in our own solar system. The popsci "Water Shield" is not practical if you have to haul all that water up. So, you'd have to use automated systems to mine/process water for "Water Shields." While not all cosmic radiation/ray particles are charged, most of them are. In that respect, a "magnetic bubble" might be possible, or some sort of charged plasma thingie if you have the gas, literally. But, it's likely there won't be a "One Solution" for this deadly problem that represents the biggest challenge to manned solar-system exploration.

Common, leave your cynicism in the political thread, in talking about space you need a bit of a dream

LOL, fair enough. Though, I love to dream! I've been a science-fiction and then a science/tech fan since I read "Robby the Robot" as a kid. (And a bunch of children's books dealing with science/tech wizardry that got me hooked.)

You do have to note that I stated the same thing when referring to NASA's BPPP program - We need Dream Programs.

...The last update they had in October is these satellites now form 2 anchor points in low orbit for a 10m long cable that has a small robot traveling between them, basically a concept proof for movement in space. And unlike Trump news space research project don't give out very frequent report ... especially if the target date is set for some 50 years later.

I guess it's progressive towards some goal, but I don't know what it would be. There was an idea of using a system remotely resembling that to "launch" craft from a high Lunar orbit into the solar system using revolving satellites - A Slingshot sort of system. A little bit of work was done with that idea I think, but using L4/L5 Lagrange points as the location. But, you still need to get fuel there, so the "savings" is kind of minimal if it's not doing something like launching from the Moon, where supplying it is easier and there are resources on the Moon you could use elsewhere, so there would be a reason for it being there other than launching "exploration" stuff.

To be OT: SDC: China Launches Moon Far Side Lander

Of note, what's on it:

..Chang'e 4 features a total of eight scientific instruments. The landers' are called the Landing Camera (LCAM), the Terrain Camera (TCAM), the Low Frequency Spectrometer (LFS), and the Lunar Lander Neutrons and Dosimetry (LND), which was provided by Germany. [China's Moon Missions Explained (Infographic)]

The rover sports the Panoramic Camera (PCAM), the Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR), the Visible and Near-Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS), and the Advanced Small Analyzer for Neutrals (ASAN), a contribution from Sweden...

Some of the questions they hope to answer involve the properties of the Moon's "Far Side" and why it appears to be so different. Interestingly enough, they'll be "listening" too, doing some radio astronomy in an environment that has a huge natural shield from Earth's chatter.

[pjknibbs]

First stage: 21212800L.
Second stage: 1331000L.
Third stage: 344550L.
CMS+LM: 18600L.

Pretty much all of those numbers come about because of the tyranny of the rocket equation, not because of differences in efficiency in the rocket engines used. It's worth noting here that the F-1 engines used in the Saturn V's first stage were always going to be used in atmosphere, so they were designed to be as efficient as possible with external pressure acting on them--their comparatively poor specific impulse of 260 seconds was largely because they used kerosene and LOX as fuel, rather than the more efficient hydrogen-LOX combo used in the upper stages, and the decision to use that fuel was primarily because the sheer size of a hydrogen fuel tank would have been prohibitive given the amount of fuel required in that stage.

(The only rocket engine I can find for which both sea level and vacuum specific impulse is listed is the Merlin 1B used in early versions of the Falcon rocket, which has a specific impulse of 261 seconds at sea level and 303 in vacuum--so there's definitely an improvement there, but it's certainly not the vast gulf you're implying).

[Mightysword]

Pretty much all of those numbers come about because of the tyranny of the rocket equation,

Which still translate to cost though, even if the majority of it is simply to lift those very same fuel off the ground. Cost is still cost regardless of what, be it fuel consumption, mass ratio, rocket efficiency, rocket cost ...etc... the cost to achieve that first half of total Delta-V is much more expensive than the second half (which is something the Delta-V number alone can mislead). That is the reason why I said it's a bottleneck, whether it's the Saturn V 50 years ago or the Falcon X today, the atmospheric stage still the one consume the most resource. Before we plan to go far and go often, we need to figure out away so that we don't have to spent the majority of the cost planned for the trip is simply to get out of our garage!

Imagine if we have an elevator connect to a platform in stable LEO, and that platform is used to launch things either into orbit or other celestial body, we essentially cutting off that first expensive half of the equation, and like said, the word "half" itself in this case would be misleading because we would be saving far more than half per launch. We may eleminate half of the Delta-V needed, but the dollar save is more than that, even before you factoring in complexity and safety issues.