Americans on moon?

[Scuderia_Russ]

I'll s. t. f. u. then.

[Ciro Pabón]

A spaceshuttle with men on board , mast pass through Van Allen zone ( a zone full of radiaton around earth ) to get to the moon . To block radiation penetrating into , the shuttle mast have a thick protective lead layer . This layer would make the shuttle to heavy to launch . On the other hand without the lead layer every man on board would die because of radiation . Now you can make your own conclusions........
Have ever a man escaped to space or only crewless shuttles did ??

You raise a good point. Maybe some of you want to know what I learned about it when I heard about it for the first time, more or less at the same time that the movie “The Fantastic Four” appeared.

As you probably know, the shuttle flies what is known a Low Earth Orbit. It moves at the edge between space and atmosphere. It does not reach the Van Allen belt.

This belt starts more or less at 600 miles from earth, where the magnetic field “traps” atomic particles with high energy, saving our sorry *sses down here, which means no planet with an evolution similar to our own can “survive” without a magnetic core, btw. An explosion of a supernova at less than 200 light – years would “fry” life on earth if we were not protected by it.

To tell the truth the shuttle flies over something called “the South Atlantic Anomaly”, where the Van Allen belt reaches only 200 miles of height. They have to remain inside the shuttle while this happens, no EVAs are authorized, so it's a serious problem and not very well studied.

I’ve seen the International Space Station with my own eyes (and with a small telescope) when it flies over my house, so I can assure you the shuttle flies there: I’ve seen the two tiny specks of light coming together and it’s beautiful, if I am allowed to become a little emotional.

I've also witnessed a shuttle launch, and in my expertise as topographer, the plume from the rocket dissapeared at 100 km of height, give or take. Besides, I saw with my own eyes the guys entering the rocket before departure.

Please, take a few minutes to go to the ISS site, where you can see when they will fly over your house at night. Then, go out and watch. Maybe that’ll convince you, more than anything, that they really are there. If you have binoculars or a telescope, no matter how simple, it's an opportunity to take it to your backyard or street.

Now, if you’re still with me, the Apollo astronauts traversed the Van Allen belt in 1 hour. Of course, when you balance the risks, you can think that they traveled to the moon without any backups, in an unproven ship, on top of a mountain of flamable fuel: cancer or glaucoma were not a top priority in their minds.

Besides, as the old astronaut joke goes: "How would you feel if you were stuck here, on top of 20,000 parts each one supplied by the lowest bidder?" That risk was worst than any Van Allen belts.

I would have laughed if someone would have told me that, going to the moon, I should have taken Vitamin D to avoid skin cancer. The risks these brave men confronted were as simple as death. So, I stretch myself a little and raise my voice to say that suggesting they did not fly there is an insult to their spirit, to say the less, the work of lesser souls with too much time and the Internet in their hands . Please, do not believe them, believe your own eyes.

Finally, you can check online the total amount of radiation received by lunar astronauts: fewer than 100 rems. It’s not something I’d recommend as a health bath but, certainly, not mortal:

"The Apollo experience report protection against radiation" - March 1973
http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/tnD7080RadProtect.pdf


About Dave comment on the "probe", Dave, I find it unplausible. I have a couple of acquaintances that would take the time and effort to travel to another star, if they had to, just to have a talk like that with a couple of americans, particularly with Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney...

[joseff]

As you probably know, the shuttle flies what is known a Low Earth Orbit. It moves at the edge between space and atmosphere. It does not reach the Van Allen belt.

Sad, isn't it? almost 40 years from the moon landing, and humans are still stuck in LEO. It's like the F1 engine freeze, on a larger scale.

An explosion of a supernova at less than 200 light – years would “fry” life on earth if we were not protected by it.

Check this out. Even at 7500 light-years, eta carinae packs enough punch to fry us all . It's a good thing it's pointed rather away from us then.

Now, if you’re still with me, the Apollo astronauts traversed the Van Allen belt in 1 hour. Of course, when you balance the risks, you can think that they traveled to the moon without any backups, in an unproven ship, on top of a mountain of flamable fuel: cancer or glaucoma were not a top priority in their minds.

One hour is actually a worst-case estimate. Normally they're through in 30 minutes or so. Most of them developed cataracts.

Finally, you can check online the total amount of radiation received by lunar astronauts: fewer than 100 rems. It’s not something I’d recommend as a health bath but, certainly, not mortal:

Here's another calculation. Just 'cause, you know... the NASA report is just part of the conspiracy.

...to say that suggesting they did not fly there is an insult to their spirit...

Amen.

[Ciro Pabón]

Thanks, joseff, for your support. I had no idea Eta Carina explosion will be so violent. You've probably have heard also about gamma bursts. It's the same idea.

So there is no possible way of producing enough energy to move an object at the speed of light? Is this a fact or a probability?

Well, "Scotty", maybe you'll like to read this, if your workload allows you. I wrote an article on "The engineering of interstellar travel" in spanish. Here is the sum up:

As everybody knows, the closest star is Proxima Centauri. It's close to Alpha Centauri, also known as Rigel Kent. I can see it from my backyard in clear nights, tempting me (I live almost at the Equator, so I can see the entire sky).


Rigel is at 3.6 light-years. That's something like 34 millions of millions of kilometers, or 34.100.000'000.000 km.

So, what kind of engine do we need to travel there?

First, this is a miserable distance compared with the size of our Universe. Scotty and Kirk traveled, in the famous Enterprise, only in our galaxy, which is roughly 20.000 times the size of a travel to Rigel. In "Star Trek" they never traveled to other galaxies (that I know), but the visible Universe is roughly 250.000 times larger than our galaxy. I said that only to post this photo, that I love: a picture of the Universe.

Hubble Deep Field photo. Every speck of light in it is a whole galaxy (except for the lonely blue-withish star, left from center, which is in our own galaxy)

Compared with those distances, the moon and the Earth are one. This is another photo I love: the Earth and Moon together, taken by Voyager.

Earth and Moon in the same frame: Voyager, 1974. They are really close.

So, let's put some numbers behind the travel to Rigel. First, some of you may know that:

Kinetic energy: mass x velocity squared / 2

Potency : Energy / time

Let's assume we want to travel at half the speed of light: 150.000 km/second. It's not 150.000 km per hour, but per second. That's like five hundred thousand times faster than Juan Pablo Montoya. The puny 750 hundred HP of an F1 are not good even for a start.

At that speed, the kinetic energy formula is affected by relativistic effects. The corrected formula is simple:

Kinetic energy = change in mass x light speed squared

Some can ask how the mass can change. It's not like our ship gets bigger, simply it's harder to accelerate. If a piece of our ship weighs 1 kilo, at half the speed of light its mass is:

M = 1 kg /(1-(150.000 km/seg/300.000 km/seg)^2)^1/2

M = 1,154 kg

Every kilo of the ship weighs 154 grams more. So the energy of that kilo is:

Kinetic energy = 1,154 kg * 9.8 m/s2 * (300.000 km/seg)^2
Ke = 136.000.000.000.000.000 jules

That's a large number. Let's convert it to something that makes sense (somebody might not know what a jule is, btw). If we reach that speed in one year, the potency we need is:

Potency = 136.000.000.000.000.000 jules/ (86.400 sec / day x 365 days / year x 1 year)

Potency = 4.300 million watts

That's 4.300 Megawatts. Not much: that's like 4 times the potency of Colombia's larger hydroelectric dam, San Carlos. Of course, the dam weighs more than a kilo...

If we convert that potency to horsepower, we reach finally, something understandable: 6 million horsepower.

Remember, that's to accelerate one kilo in one year to half the speed of light.

Saturn V had 500.000 hp, so we "only" need 12 engines like that, of an ultralight alloy that makes them weigh only a kilo, and presto!

Now, Saturn V also weighed more than a kilo and it could not work for an entire year: more like a few minutes. Saturn V reached 11 km/sec and we need 150.000 km/sec.

I conclude chemical rockets are unusable for our proposed trip.

If we used antimatter, that's a different proposition: when matter and antimatter come together, they annihilate and transform themselves into pure energy. How much antimatter do we need to push our ship to Rigel?

Following Einsten's know formula (E = mc2), if we put together one kilo of matter and antimatter together we get:

Energy from matter-antimatter anhilation: 1 kg * (300.000 km/sec)^2
Energy = 89.870.000.000.000.000 jules.

So, how much antimatter-matter do we need to use? Rounding...

Amount of antimatter – matter we need =
= 136.000.000.000.000.000 jules / 90.000.000.000.000.000 jules / kg - force
= 1.51 kg – force
= 0.154 kg

Not much. If our ship weighs, I don't know, 1.000 tons, we need "only" 250 kilos per day. That could fit in a truck gasoline tank. Of course, antimatter has been produced on Earth, but much less than a gram.

At the end of a year we've converted only about 15% of the mass of our ship. We need another 15% to brake it when reaching Rigel (I would love to see Brembo taking THAT task!).

The problem here is that our vehicle is extremely expensive to operate. I pay 1.3 dollars per kilowatt at my home. Let's see:

Potency = 4.300 Megawatts = 4.300.000 kilowatts
Energy = 4.300.000 kilowatts x 365 days x 24 hours = 37.700 million kwatts-hour
Cost = 37.700 million kilowatts – hour x 1.3 dollars/kilowatt – hour
Cost = 49.000 million dollars

That's only for a kilo. We would spend the whole US army yearly budget to push 6 kilos to half the speed of light in one year.

My advice: if you see an alien, ask for money. (is the least they can do after the "probe" and those guys are rich!). Besides, now you understand why there are no fat aliens: every kilo cost a fortune to move among stars...

Second conclusion: we need cheaper energy to travel to Rigel. A travel with our 1.000 tons ship would cost 49.000 billion (european billion, that is, a million of millions) dollars, that is 3.000.000 times what costed the entire Apolo project.

Now, we have the thermodinamic laws problem: 100% energy efficiency is not in the engineer budget. If we only have 30% efficiency in impulsion, we couldn't even brake when we finish our journey!

So, the ony rational solution is to "catch" matter on the way. There are some proposals for ships that can take gas from the very tenous clouds in the way.

I won't bore the few readers (thank, guys) that have reached this point with more calculations, but if everything goes as planned, our trip would take 8 years.

Those who have followed the longest post in the history of the forum, could have realized that the increase in mass per kilo is 154 grams, and that the amount of matter-antimatter we need to accelerate it is the same: 154 grams.

Third and last conclusion: to reach the speed of light we need to convert the whole ship into energy! That's a beautiful (for me) simmetry between the speed of light and light itself. To reach the speed of light we need to transform our whole ship into... light.

So, to reach the speed of light, we can't use rockets: we must convert ourselves into energy.

Remember the transportation chamber in the Enterprise? That's the most fantastic thing in that ship, not its dilithium engines, because that's what the teletransporter did. That's (for me) the Holy Grial of transportation engineering...

The small defect of this system is that it requires almost infinite energy, but, hey, are we going to dismay by that? So, now you can understand why the damn teletransporter failed so many times: it was the fuses...

[joseff]

While we're on topic, check out the latest Japanese moon video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHAMHQbvi0E&NR=1

Magnificent desolation.

[Belatti]

Ciro, Ciro, why spending all that money and energy?
You can avoid all that by using a wormhole! That would be teletransportation...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole

[Belatti]

Reading Ciro´s great post, I almost forgot what I wanted to post!!!

Regarding man travelling or not to the moon, I won´t enter the half drunk bar discusion, as said before.

All I have got to say is:

- North Americans travelled to the moon, great publicity, space race won and not much gained (maybe some lunar rocks and 2.000 Hollywood films).

- Russians put a house in space 20 years ago, send a guy to live there for 10 years and made space living condition research -and more- for about 15 years. Low publicity, space race lost, but a lot gained.

I prefer the second example (set an useful objective and reach it, rather than making publicity to convince tax payers)

[Ray]

Reading Ciro´s great post, I almost forgot what I wanted to post!!!

Regarding man travelling or not to the moon, I won´t enter the half drunk bar discusion, as said before.

All I have got to say is:

- North Americans travelled to the moon, great publicity, space race won and not much gained (maybe some lunar rocks and 2.000 Hollywood films).

- Russians put a house in space 20 years ago, send a guy to live there for 10 years and made space living condition research -and more- for about 15 years. Low publicity, space race lost, but a lot gained.

I prefer the second example (set an useful objective and reach it, rather than making publicity to convince tax payers)

Where do you think parts and upgrades for that thing come from? Maybe you've seen a Russian version of the space shuttle that I haven't. We are both using the space station for research together. They have a space station, we help out with the upkeep, maintenance, and supplies. But we both benefit from the research that is conducted. I don't see how one or the other lost out in that deal. Seems like a win/win for both of us to me.

[Saribro]

Maybe you've seen a Russian version of the space shuttle that I haven't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

[Ray]

Maybe you've seen a Russian version of the space shuttle that I haven't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

Let me clarify. One working and in service Russian space shuttle. Not to mention one that actually had people on it. Alot of good an unmanned space shuttle does for your man space station.

[dumrick]

Reading Ciro´s great post, I almost forgot what I wanted to post!!!

Regarding man travelling or not to the moon, I won´t enter the half drunk bar discusion, as said before.

All I have got to say is:

- North Americans travelled to the moon, great publicity, space race won and not much gained (maybe some lunar rocks and 2.000 Hollywood films).

- Russians put a house in space 20 years ago, send a guy to live there for 10 years and made space living condition research -and more- for about 15 years. Low publicity, space race lost, but a lot gained.

I prefer the second example (set an useful objective and reach it, rather than making publicity to convince tax payers)

That's one of the downsides of democracy - investments must go in:
1) things most people are interested, otherwise you won't get reelected. And most people are... average people and have average interests. When the "space race" begun losing mass interest, investment has decreased.
2) things that earn your country money. In the US case, the space race was changed in the 80's to an attempt of getting military superiority, by having space weaponry. The US have increased their economic influence by imposing their military superiority as a trade currency.

Back on topic, great post by Ciro. I read it with extreme interest and cost my company some time of my work today.

[Belatti]

Where do you think parts and upgrades for that thing come from? Maybe you've seen a Russian version of the space shuttle that I haven't. We are both using the space station for research together. They have a space station, we help out with the upkeep, maintenance, and supplies. But we both benefit from the research that is conducted. I don't see how one or the other lost out in that deal. Seems like a win/win for both of us to me.

That was a consequence of USSR / socialism fall in the late 80´s.
USA saw Soviets achievements in space and came with money to "help" them, took advantage of the situation, as they always do.

What I meant to say is: Russians had a goo idea and objectives that began in the 70´s (I don´t think that in that "COLD WAR" time US had something to do with MIR project)
USA just runs the rat race (for space, for nuclear weapon, for petrol, etc etc etc). The best example is the one of the 0-Gravity pen.

There is a member in the forum that has a phrase: "the problem of winning the rat race is that you are still a rat"

USA is the Michael Schumacher of rat races.

[Ray]

So I guess that America is the new evil empire, and all that has been achieved in space was because we wanted to be first, the best, or whatever? So what we took advantage of the Soviet downfall. ANY other nation in a race with them would have done exactly the same. You know that. The Russians have more information than they ever could gather by themselves. Not everything that America does is evil Belatti. We have done great things for all of humanity. I guess the king of the hill is the one everyone hates.

[modbaraban]

The Russians have more information than they ever could gather by themselves.

You're right! Ukrainians did a good bit of it

[Ray]

The Russians have more information than they ever could gather by themselves.

You're right! Ukrainians did a good bit of it

Good point. Sorry about that