Spring Time

It is Spring time now, you can tell, activists have started climbing up stuff and gluing themselves to things, "Yawn". It would be nice if they opened their minds a bit and  considered the other side of the story. Narrow minded people that only embrace one view. It will officially be spring after the 20th of march but I saw Daisy flowers sprouting out of the ground and the temperature rose above 10 degrees Celsius during the day. 

It looks like NASA has been preparing to go back to the moon; back in the '70s it was all about the Apollo missions, I wasn't born then. Now it is about the Artemis missions. They're building space launch vehicles with similar power to the Saturn 5 but more modular. There are separate booster rockets and the main rocket parts are reusable. They don't need to rebuild a whole space ship every time they launch. The cost is everything these days. Everything needs a cheap solution. Those astronauts are very brave, travelling to space is very dangerous.  

Back to Deep Space

NASA has created the most power vehicle ever made to bring astronauts back to the moon. 

Recently NASA has been sending the most powerful vehicle ever made into space without a crew to test the reliability and safety of the space ship. 

To me, the Artemis Space rocket resembles the Space shuttle system, it even uses RS-25 thrusters. It also has two solid rocket boosters on either side to bring the total thrust pressure up to 4,000 metric tonnes, the most powerful vehicle ever made by mankind. 

The Artemis Space launch system looks like the space shuttle launcher but without the space shuttle attached to it and a large nose cone instead. It has one extra RS-25 thruster, 4 in total.

The space shuttle had 3 RS-25 thrusters, the Artemis launcher has 4 and they're modified to produce more thrust I believe. They work by burning liquid hydrogen with liquid oxygen. A computer system can change the flow of the fuel and angle that the thrusters point at to control the stability of the space ship. 

It is a shame they barely mention this in the news. The news keeps going on about heat waves and political scandal and repeating things we already know; "yawn". 

I think they mentioned on the NASA site that the Artemis rocket system will be used indirectly to take astronauts to the planet Mars. I'm not sure what they mean by that. Perhaps it will carry space ship parts to deep space or something like that. 

Back to the Moon

Very soon astronauts will be trying to revisit the moon. There is more than one reason why they didn't  go there for 50 years. It is very costly and there is a radiation problem. During the Apollo missions they didn't know that a solar flare from the sun would kill all the astronauts. I'm not sure how they will manage the dangers of deep space radiation. Perhaps the Artamis spaceships will have a giant water tank to shield the astronauts. NASA is now inviting private companies to bid for a contract to make the vehicles they will use to drive around on the moon surface. They will be different to the lunar rovers because they will continue to work on their own as a rover probes after the astronauts have returned to earth. I thought to myself, why don't they use bikes? Has anyone ever tried to ride a bike on the moon before? I don't know. 

The moon rotates very slowly, the day and the night both last for 2 weeks each, perhaps they will land on the night side of the moon. The moon has no tilt to its axis so the day and night on the moon are exactly 2 weeks throughout the year. The moon orbits the earth in 4 weeks so it always has one side of itself facing away from the earth. They call that the far side of the moon. We never see that side of the moon because the rotation of the moon is in sync with its orbit, I think they call that Tidal Locking. 

Perhaps they could get machines to build moon base and bury it in gravel from the moon. Perhaps that would shield them from deep space radiation and solar flares. 

Artemis Era

The Apollo moon missions ended about 10 years before I was born. Soon there is going to be a new family of moon missions called Artemis. 

According to the NASA.gov website they're auctioning bids for private companies to build their LTVs (Luner Terrain Vehicles). They think a private technology company will produce their moon vehicles more cheaply and efficiently than they ever could. The vehicles will allow the astronauts to cover a lot of ground. 

According to the article I read this morning, they intend for their moon vehicles to continue working as automatic moon probes after the astronauts have left; they would be like the Mars rovers. The LTVs would be hybrid machines, vehicles and probes. 

This is the article I read ⬇️

NASA : Luna Terrain Vehicle

I was wondering how they're going to fix the radiation problem. Solar flares from the sun hit the moon surface as often as it rains here in England. It would kill all the astronauts within a few hours. Perhaps they will land on a part of the moon facing away from the sun; one day on the moon lasts for 4 weeks. They would get about 10 to 14 days to finish their mission if that was the case. I think they didn't know about the problem in the '70s and they were lucky. 

Over the Moon

According to the news I heard on my smart speaker, NASA has prepared the most powerful rocket in the world to take astronauts back to the moon. I think the rocket is called Artemis 1. I'm guessing there will be a family of Artemis rockets. 

I wonder what they will do about the Radiation problem. The Appollo astronauts in the 70's narrowly avoided death because they went to the moon when it wasn't being hit by solar flares, they didn't know at the time that the radiation from a solar flare would kill the crew if they were on the moon. I think the moon and the Earth are hit by Solar Flares quite often but the Earth's magnetic field is very powerful and deflects the flares away; the moon doesn't have a magnetic field so the surface of the moon gets bombarded by radiation. 

I was also wondering why train drivers are paid more than bus drivers in England, I think it is more difficult to drive a bus than a train. Is it because they have a better trade union or something like that? I don't know. I always see RMT on the news organising strike action. 

Sometimes the world doesn't make sense.