Brian Beckius said...
My grandfather always said, no decision is not a decision. The propeller is going to the moon; let’s figure out how it’s going to get there.
I think you have made a wise decision.
The Propeller will inspire more people to join the team, which is what we need right now. More minds.
Heres the plan.
We install 2 smd Propellers. The rover can work with just 2 cogs of any one of the Propeller.
That means we can have up to 8 redundant processors. Other components will also have to be made redundant.
Seems like there is no way to simulate the Van Allen Belt radiation on the electronics unless we can get our hands on a particle accelerator.
But there is hope. Geostationary satellites are installed at 24 thousand miles and they survived by shutting down the electronics completely when passing through the Van Allen belt and they also use shielding.
(I will not ever say we actually landed on the moon, but I do believe we have orbited it in close proximity.)
I'm not a pessimist, nor an optimist, I'm a realist. It has been done (at least on Mars) I think we can do it on the moon.
I hope you are not challenging the Mar's Rovers landings as well. If you are, then I think you really need to reassess your thinking. I know people who actually worked on the program.
Dear James,
I am glad that we can debate this professionally without getting emotional.
If you can believe that part of the Apollo project can be faked by the government, there is no reason to not believe that they are capable of faking the whole thing.
I am not challenging the Mar's Rovers landings. They are real.
Look at the lunar footprint on www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/home/F_Apollo_11.html.
A lunar footprint would not look like this where we can clearly see the sole patterns.
Why? Because the moon has zero moisture.
To understand how a lunar footprint would look like, try stepping on very dry sand on the hot beach.
You will not be able to see any sole patterns like those. Brian, test your rover on very dry fine beach sand.
The Russians got the first orbiting satellite, the first animal in space, the first man in space, the first spacewalk,
the first 3 person launch, the first 2 simultaneous orbiting space ships, the first space station and the first craft to reach the surface of the moon. (It crash landed).
When Kennedy announced the moon project, the USA had only days earlier sent the 1st US Astronaut to space, which did not even complete one full orbit.
In a few short years, everything just fell in to place and just works, every time. What are the chances of that?
I don't know why NASA asks the astronauts to practice sticking the flag into sand but never practiced or simulated the landing sequences using the lander rocket engines. It couldn't be practiced on earth b'cos our gravity was too strong.
The chances of the lander landing correctly each time on a good spot, (not inside a crater), on a nice morning area which is not too hot or too cold, does not fall into it's own blast crater, did not topple over, did not run out of fuel, did not crash and burn,
without practice or simulation is ......... NIL.
William,
I plan on testing the rover on powdered cement; cement is so fine it’s almost a liquid. Also, if there is so much energy in the Van Allen rad belt; shouldn’t we should be thinking of ways to use that to help us?
Are you saying the rover, the lander, low pressure rocket engine, fuel, solar panel, antenna and electronics all summed up
has to weigh less than 10 pounds?
I think the braking fuel may already weigh more than 10 pounds.
In the 10th post of this thread I estimated the amount of propellant needed to accelerate from low earth orbit to landing on the moon.· Using the mass ratio equation I came up with a ratio of 8.6 to 1.· I assumed the exhaust velocity for APCP propellant is 2,500 m/s, which is·a figure I found from several web sites.· Look up "mass ratio" in Wikipedia if your interested in more information on how this is derived.
The payload includes everything that lands on the lunar surface.· It does not include the braking fuel.· I've thought about the landing sequence a little more.· From an orbit of 20 km a rocket motor would fire horizontally to slow the rocket down to zero.· It will then fall vertically from a height of 20 km.· The potential energy at this point corresponds to a velocity of 256 m/s at the surface.· At about 2,000 meters we would fire another rocket motor to bring the speed down to almost zero.· Then at about 150 meters another smaller motor would fire again to bring the descent speed to zero.
At this point the payload will fall to the surface.· It will hit the surface at less than 50 mph.· The payload must have a sufficient amount of cushioning to protect it from a 50 mph impact.· Once on the surface, the radio contact will be established with earth and the rover will leave the base station.
By the way William, I personally know someone who bounced laser beams off of the reflectors set up by the Apollo 11 astrounauts.· I suppose it's possible that NASA could have landed the reflectors on the moon in an unmanned vehicle, but I believe in the manned lunar landings.· If you get a chance, rent the movie "In the Shadow of the Moon".· I think it is coming out on DVD soon, if it's not already out.· This might help you understand the space race mentality of the time.
FYI, I have this draw up in a cad program, I can upsize or downsize to any dimensions that we feel will work. I can then mill it out of a solid piece of billet aluminum or what ever metal we decide on.
A lunar footprint would not look like this where we can clearly see the sole patterns.
Why? Because the moon has zero moisture.
To understand how a lunar footprint would look like, try stepping on very dry sand on the hot beach.
You will not be able to see any sole patterns like those. Brian, test your rover on very dry fine beach sand.
The Russians got the first orbiting satellite, the first animal in space, the first man in space, the first spacewalk,
the first 3 person launch, the first 2 simultaneous orbiting space ships, the first space station and the first craft to reach the surface of the moon. (It crash landed).
When Kennedy announced the moon project, the USA had only days earlier sent the 1st US Astronaut to space, which did not even complete one full orbit.
In a few short years, everything just fell in to place and just works, every time. What are the chances of that?
I don't know why NASA asks the astronauts to practice sticking the flag into sand but never practiced or simulated the landing sequences using the lander rocket engines. It couldn't be practiced on earth b'cos our gravity was too strong.
The chances of the lander landing correctly each time on a good spot, (not inside a crater), on a nice morning area which is not too hot or too cold, does not fall into it's own blast crater, did not topple over, did not run out of fuel, did not crash and burn,
without practice or simulation is ......... NIL.
William......
I like this debate....it is very interesting the different view points people have.
You talk about sand.....have you ever been to Saudi Arabia?· The sand is as fine as talc power. I saw days 126 degrees in the shade. Trust me when I say....it is possible to leave a foot print similar to the lunar foot print picture. I do know we have moisture here, so there is a debatable difference.
I agree with your assessment, to a point. But you have not included the most important statistic of the event. Do you know how many people worked for NASA at the time the lunar landing "happened"?
We are also talking about more than one event here. This happened more than once.
How many people do you think would keep that kind of information quiet.
What are the chances, that not one of those people spoke the "truth" about the landing?
We can't even get a "weather balloon" out of Roswell NM without a UFO story.
Plus.....the times were different then. People were much more prone to tell the truth no matter what were to happen to them (if they were not politicians, anyway). They were not used to just throwing a lie out there when it suited them.
I know the Astronauts wouldn't have spilled the beans...they would loose too much face, but there were many people involved. There were what, 16-17 Apollo launches?
Where were those rockets going? Why blow all that money on lunar landers if they didn't really need to. We are talking 100's of millions in todays money.
Just food for thought.....but we built the atomic bomb faster than we went to the moon (about twice as fast with no computers). It was totally theoretical......and they had spent many millions betting it would work. Thank goodness it did, we could all be speaking Japanese. No offense intended.
But good debate. I do agree.....the landing·on the first trip·is extremely doubtful.
Dave Hein said...
In the 10th post of this thread I estimated the amount of propellant needed to accelerate from low earth orbit to landing on the moon.· Using the mass ratio equation I came up with a ratio of 8.6 to 1.· I assumed the exhaust velocity for APCP propellant is 2,500 m/s, which is·a figure I found from several web sites.· Look up "mass ratio" in Wikipedia if your interested in more information on how this is derived.
The payload includes everything that lands on the lunar surface.· It does not include the braking fuel.· I've thought about the landing sequence a little more.· From an orbit of 20 km a rocket motor would fire horizontally to slow the rocket down to zero.· It will then fall vertically from a height of 20 km.· The potential energy at this point corresponds to a velocity of 256 m/s at the surface.· At about 2,000 meters we would fire another rocket motor to bring the speed down to almost zero.· Then at about 150 meters another smaller motor would fire again to bring the descent speed to zero.
At this point the payload will fall to the surface.· It will hit the surface at less than 50 mph.· The payload must have a sufficient amount of cushioning to protect it from a 50 mph impact.· Once on the surface, the radio contact will be established with earth and the rover will leave the base station.
By the way William, I personally know someone who bounced laser beams off of the reflectors set up by the Apollo 11 astrounauts.· I suppose it's possible that NASA could have landed the reflectors on the moon in an unmanned vehicle, but I believe in the manned lunar landings.· If you get a chance, rent the movie "In the Shadow of the Moon".· I think it is coming out on DVD soon, if it's not already out.· This might help you understand the space race mentality of the time.
Dave,
What formulation are you projecting with? PBAN or HTPB? I don't think there would be much difference, but the formulation would be very important.
Also I'm interested in the burn time, that you have calculated. Not that I have any idea how to calculate braking a payload to land on the moon, but I do know about propellant.
We should also talk about how we are going to know when to fire the engines. A radar altimeter is the only way I know to know height from the lunar surface, and I'm not sure how we will calibrate the unit. I guess.....we could always measure acceleration (gravity pull of the moon) but that will have a lot of error (this is my assumption).
You talk about sand.....have you ever been to Saudi Arabia? The sand is as fine as talc power. I saw days 126 degrees in the shade. Trust me when I say....it is possible to leave a foot print similar to the lunar foot print picture. I do know we have moisture here, so there is a debatable difference.
I agree with your assessment, to a point. But you have not included the most important statistic of the event. Do you know how many people worked for NASA at the time the lunar landing "happened"?
We are also talking about more than one event here. This happened more than once.
How many people do you think would keep that kind of information quiet.
What are the chances, that not one of those people spoke the "truth" about the landing?
We can't even get a "weather balloon" out of Roswell NM without a UFO story.
Plus.....the times were different then. People were much more prone to tell the truth no matter what were to happen to them (if they were not politicians, anyway). They were not used to just throwing a lie out there when it suited them.
I know the Astronauts wouldn't have spilled the beans...they would loose too much face, but there were many people involved. There were what, 16-17 Apollo launches?
Where were those rockets going? Why blow all that money on lunar landers if they didn't really need to. We are talking 100's of millions in todays money.
Just food for thought.....but we built the atomic bomb faster than we went to the moon (about twice as fast with no computers). It was totally theoretical......and they had spent many millions betting it would work. Thank goodness it did, we could all be speaking Japanese. No offense intended.
But good debate. I do agree.....the landing on the first trip is extremely doubtful.
James,
I totally agree with you. This debate is not mean to diminish the American people's pride, but to establish the truth to avoid pitfalls created by Apollo assumptions when we get to the moon.
For example if we assume the sand on the moon is mostly like what we saw on the Apollo footprint photographs, we will get into a lot of trouble. Pls show me a photo of a footprint in a hot dry arabian desert. The silicate particles will not stick to each other like in the lunar footprint without moisture. The traction and wheels required is very different from what we would expect if we believe Apollo.
If you look at the picture of the lunar lander, there is no blast crater under it. This is a joke. There is not even a speck of dust on the 10 ton lunar module's legs.
In our case, if we manage a total soft landing, our rover could be stuck in it's own blast crater, unable to crawl out. Brian, take note.
Yes, there are people who come out and try to tell the truth all the time, but they just get ignored by NASA and helped by an ignorant public.
For example, Neil Amstrong had never given a video recorded interview to anyone without supervision from NASA. On top of that, all questions had to be screened by NASA before the interview.
Professor Steven E. Jones had publicly stated that 911 collapses was due to Controlled Demolition and not due to plane crash or fire. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones. He was suspended but not sued by the government or anybody.
But that's another story.......
The fact that almost 100 billion in today's money was spent on a fake lunar project is the more reason to continue hiding it from tax payers.
Having more people working on the project does not speed it up significantly or create miracles.
See how many people are working on a cancer cure for the last 50 years, and we still haven't found a cure.
The atomic bomb is 100 times easier than the Apollo project.
See how many countries posses the bomb today and how many other countries have landed on the moon today
and you will understand the picture.
Hi guys, I may have missed it but I didn't see any mention of a couple of books which are very helpful in this type of endeavor.
Rocket Propulsion Elements by George Sutton
Space Propulsion Analysis and Design By Humble, Henry and Larson
If you guys are really serious about this I think you need to set up a separate forum. Debating the reality of the Moon Landings is not very productive. But it can be fun
Regarding the Moon landing "hoax",
Footprint;
1. It is not sand, it is pulverized rock. consistency like talc
2. Gravity is 1/6 of earth, easier for material to hold shape - not slump
No dust on landing gear:
No air on moon, duh! No dust cloud, so no particles to settle on landing gear. When blown away by the exhaust, they just keep going till they fall back to the surface. Engine shut off before touchdown.
No crater under lander;
The lander had probes several feet long sticking straight down. The engine was cut when these made contact, then the lander dropped to the surface.
In space a rocket engine's exhaust is not like a torch. It expands as it exits the nozzle. The power from the exhaust was not confined to a small area but spread out over a very large one. Further, the engine was
cut before it got real close to the surface and, the time it spent over one spot was very short.
Debating the Apollo missions is pointless. If anyone wants to continue carrying it on, it should be taken to another thread. Unless someone proposes the obvious, that the rover be landed at one ot the purported Apollo landing sites. Actually, one of my motivations for proposing the rover be autonomous was to visit sites of interest, like these.
I'm not sure setting up a separate forum just yet is such a good idea; we still need A LOT of people. And nobody's going to stumble across us on yahoo groups, they might here though. Also, it's much easier to keep track of posts on this style of forum, but that might just be opinion.
I agree , but we do need a place for info thats for "our eye's only". I need to approve anybody that join's it . When you join it make sure to use you parallax screen name so I know it's you(the guy's that are posting on this subject).
Are you guys ready to get back to the task at hand or are we going to hit on the gunman on the grassy nole .
I need some answers:
How heavy will the transmitter be?
How to get the propeller through the Van Allen?
How big should the rover be?
We need a team name and a name for "rover"
James Long said...
What formulation are you projecting with? PBAN or HTPB? I don't think there would be much difference, but the formulation would be very important.
Also I'm interested in the burn time, that you have calculated. Not that I have any idea how to calculate braking a payload to land on the moon, but I do know about propellant.
We should also talk about how we are going to know when to fire the engines. A radar altimeter is the only way I know to know height from the lunar surface, and I'm not sure how we will calibrate the unit. I guess.....we could always measure acceleration (gravity pull of the moon) but that will have a lot of error (this is my assumption).
James,
I am not familiar with the different formulations of APCP.· I only know that we would want to use the most efficient ones.· From what I understand the "blue-thunder" propellant is one of the most efficient.
I think a radar altimeter would be the best instrument to measure the height over the lunar surface.· This should be fairly easy to build.· I don't think it requires calibration since it's based on the return of a reflected signal at the speed of light.· The biggest challenge will be to point the rocket motors in the right direction.· This will require some form of attitude thruster.· This could be a monopropellant or maybe just compressed air.
We should be able to use the relative locations of the sun and the earth along with moon's horizon to determine the orientation of the spacecraft.· Rate gyros could be used for short-term control during motor burns.
An object takes about 156 seconds to fall 20 km on the moon.· We could do a single burn just before the spacecraft reaches the surface, but I think it's better to do two or more burns as it descends.· This will increase the descent time and decrease the velocities we would have to work with.· It would gives us more time to compute the descent path and to react to it.
Dave
Also,
I need someone to do·some propeller programming, I’m going to try to test rover by Sunday (I won’t have any time to write code). One HB25 controls forward and reverse, one HB25 steers it. I have 2 of each parallax 433 MHz RF transmitters and receivers.
Brian Beckius said...
Are you guys ready to get back to the task at hand or are we going to hit on the gunman on the grassy nole .
I need some answers:
How heavy will the transmitter be?
How to get the propeller through the Van Allen?
How big should the rover be?
We need a team name and a name for "rover"
I think before we know how powerful (and Heavy) the transmitter needs to be we first must know how big the antenna is that is receiving.
The first stage could be spin stabilized. By first stage I am referring to whatever is placed in LEO. Whatever is controlling the Translunar injection burn would not need to be shielded. The part of the vehicle which contains the TLI engine and propellant can coast through the Van Allen Belts with the shielding as part of it. Then for LOI the LOI engine and lander would separate from the vehicle.
The rover should be as small as possible. Multiple micro rovers would be better than one big one. Every added gram of mass will require many, many times its mass in propellant. Then, that extra propellant requires additional propellant. It's a vicious circle.
No ideas for a team name. The rovers name will just "happen".
From what I read ,seti will be receiving the transmission (if you ask real nice) . I like the plan of small , thats why I threw out that question about how big the rocket would have to be to get a golf ball to the moon.
It's good to discuss and have an understanding of the whole mission, however, I don't believe that it is practical to think that one group will have design decisions on every aspect of it. I would propose that we focus on one portion. What seems most in line with what people have experience with here is the rover. Developing a rover and delivery method is a huge project in and of itself.
Possible starting point - You have a package containing the rover which will impact the lunar surface at 30 m/s. The rover that must emerge safely from this package has a mass of 2 kg and of course must be equipped to fulfill the mission goals.
I think that this is achievable and would be a hell of a lot of fun to develop and test. While working on this we can keep an eye out for a way to get it to the Moon.
How heavy will the transmitter be?
How to get the propeller through the Van Allen?
How big should the rover be?
We need a team name and a name for "rover"
I think that maybe instead of the yahoo group perhaps we should try a google group. (Though I think that we are not quite ready to move to a private group yet.) The google groups have some very powerful tools including collaborative spread sheets and word documents all online! I'll talk with kd7lax tomorrow and try and come up with some communications ideas. Here is an interesting link you may want to check out... www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/04/space_fans_save_apollo_di.html
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Max Wooden
Reedley, California
Post Edited (Max Wooden) : 11/23/2007 7:09:05 AM GMT
Thinking ....
Last night on my way to bed I tripped over one of my kids toys , It was a toy mouse in a round Ball . when the mouse moves it roll's the ball..... small mouse , big ball (lighter foot print) Hmmm...
Brian Beckius said...
Thinking ....
Last night on my way to bed I tripped over one of my kids toys , It was a toy mouse in a round Ball . when the mouse moves it roll's the ball..... small mouse , big ball (lighter foot print) Hmmm...
I thought about something like this a few days ago.· It's good for changing direction if you bump into a rock, but I think it would get stuck in the first small hole that it encountered.· I think a better solution would be to have a small rover attached to four large wheels.· The rover must be able to continue to operate if it falls over sideways or backwards.· There are several RC cars that have this attribute.· We could test out the "big wheel" concept by buying one of these RC toys and adding a wireless camera.· Then practice manuevering it through your living room while watching it's video in another room.
Dave Hein said...
James,
I am not familiar with the different formulations of APCP.· I only know that we would want to use the most efficient ones.· From what I understand the "blue-thunder" propellant is one of the most efficient.
I think a radar altimeter would be the best instrument to measure the height over the lunar surface.· This should be fairly easy to build.· I don't think it requires calibration since it's based on the return of a reflected signal at the speed of light.· The biggest challenge will be to point the rocket motors in the right direction.· This will require some form of attitude thruster.· This could be a monopropellant or maybe just compressed air.
We should be able to use the relative locations of the sun and the earth along with moon's horizon to determine the orientation of the spacecraft.· Rate gyros could be used for short-term control during motor burns.
An object takes about 156 seconds to fall 20 km on the moon.· We could do a single burn just before the spacecraft reaches the surface, but I think it's better to do two or more burns as it descends.· This will increase the descent time and decrease the velocities we would have to work with.· It would gives us more time to compute the descent path and to react to it.
Dave
Dave,
You gave me a great idea......the thruster could be pressurized hydrogen Peroxide (high concentrate).....and have multiple thrusters for one fuel source. Just open the respective valve. No ignition no fuss.....just loading the fuel would be dangerous.· This could also be the decent thrust source too.....it's throttleable....and quite easy to build and use.· Could solve a large amount of ignition problems just using the same fuel source.
We could use some solids as backup if something went wrong with the HP engine.
If any of you don't know about Hydrogen Peroxide......it is a very good oxidizer, but you can run the liquid through a metal screen (copper, silver, etc) and it turns in to steam and water....and a pretty good thrust. Not as good as solid propellant.....but very easy to implement. The Bell rocket belt (the one a guy straps on) runs on hydrogen peroxide.
I've researched radar altimeters before...and there are problems associated with building one. The antennae are very critical. Also it must be pointed at the celestial body to tell altitude. So now we have to point the rocket motors and altimeter antennae toward the moon.
I think you have a good idea with reference to the earth, sun and moon. Also I think a standard mechanical gyro is needed·for attitude.
Brian Beckius said...
Thinking ....
Last night on my way to bed I tripped over one of my kids toys , It was a toy mouse in a round Ball . when the mouse moves it roll's the ball..... small mouse , big ball (lighter foot print) Hmmm...
Brian,
I'm with Dave on this to a point. If you were to keep the internal drive source from flopping around (have outriggers to the outer shell) you would have better success. Without to way to create moment arm (leverage) the outer shell would get hung in a hole, and the drive would just climb the inner wall and fall. If we could design a positive drive internally....we would climb the internal wall and provide weight leverage to one side.
Most of this is dependent on the moon surface. If the moon is filled with small craters 1/3 the diameter of our outer shell.....we could be pretty screwed. Also....it doesn't lend itself for solar array area.....you would have to put the solar cells on the inside....and may end up with the outer shell covered with moon dust, and killing your batteries.
Well......I just talked myself out of the idea. I hate that.
Brian, I know you don't like steering with motors, but what about a treaded rover. Treads provide a huge surface area for·weight and would reduce the ground pressure (or whatever you want to call it on the moon).. We could also put two motors per tread for redundency. This would also provide a platform that could be used upside down if we put solar cells on top and bottom (or make them to move ......not that hard to do). The only thing I ask.....never turn with one tread stationary......turn on the move with differential tread speed.
Also....does anyone know if the moon has magnetic poles?·
If it does we could incorporate a compass sensor for navigation......it would simplify the control from earth. Just tell the rover to move 25 feet to the west.
Hmmmm........I like the brain storming......
James L
Post Edited (James Long) : 11/23/2007 2:19:03 PM GMT
James L said...
Also....does anyone know if the moon has magnetic poles?
James,
I'm certainly no expert but I think the answer is no. From what I remember reading the moon was never really geologically active so it never developed a molten-core dynamo like the one that creates the Earth's magnetic field. There are areas of differing magnetic intensity sprinkled through the crust, but it's probably not anything that would help with navigation...
Comments
The Propeller will inspire more people to join the team, which is what we need right now. More minds.
Heres the plan.
We install 2 smd Propellers. The rover can work with just 2 cogs of any one of the Propeller.
That means we can have up to 8 redundant processors. Other components will also have to be made redundant.
Seems like there is no way to simulate the Van Allen Belt radiation on the electronics unless we can get our hands on a particle accelerator.
But there is hope. Geostationary satellites are installed at 24 thousand miles and they survived by shutting down the electronics completely when passing through the Van Allen belt and they also use shielding.
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www.fd.com.my
www.mercedes.com.my
Post Edited (william chan) : 11/22/2007 1:10:12 PM GMT
Dear James,
I am glad that we can debate this professionally without getting emotional.
If you can believe that part of the Apollo project can be faked by the government, there is no reason to not believe that they are capable of faking the whole thing.
I am not challenging the Mar's Rovers landings. They are real.
Look at the lunar footprint on www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/home/F_Apollo_11.html.
A lunar footprint would not look like this where we can clearly see the sole patterns.
Why? Because the moon has zero moisture.
To understand how a lunar footprint would look like, try stepping on very dry sand on the hot beach.
You will not be able to see any sole patterns like those. Brian, test your rover on very dry fine beach sand.
The Russians got the first orbiting satellite, the first animal in space, the first man in space, the first spacewalk,
the first 3 person launch, the first 2 simultaneous orbiting space ships, the first space station and the first craft to reach the surface of the moon. (It crash landed).
When Kennedy announced the moon project, the USA had only days earlier sent the 1st US Astronaut to space, which did not even complete one full orbit.
In a few short years, everything just fell in to place and just works, every time. What are the chances of that?
I don't know why NASA asks the astronauts to practice sticking the flag into sand but never practiced or simulated the landing sequences using the lander rocket engines. It couldn't be practiced on earth b'cos our gravity was too strong.
The chances of the lander landing correctly each time on a good spot, (not inside a crater), on a nice morning area which is not too hot or too cold, does not fall into it's own blast crater, did not topple over, did not run out of fuel, did not crash and burn,
without practice or simulation is ......... NIL.
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www.fd.com.my
www.mercedes.com.my
Post Edited (william chan) : 11/22/2007 2:37:59 PM GMT
I plan on testing the rover on powdered cement; cement is so fine it’s almost a liquid. Also, if there is so much energy in the Van Allen rad belt; shouldn’t we should be thinking of ways to use that to help us?
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
Can you guys see if you can find out how big of transmitter we need to send hi resolution video back from the moon?
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
The payload includes everything that lands on the lunar surface.· It does not include the braking fuel.· I've thought about the landing sequence a little more.· From an orbit of 20 km a rocket motor would fire horizontally to slow the rocket down to zero.· It will then fall vertically from a height of 20 km.· The potential energy at this point corresponds to a velocity of 256 m/s at the surface.· At about 2,000 meters we would fire another rocket motor to bring the speed down to almost zero.· Then at about 150 meters another smaller motor would fire again to bring the descent speed to zero.
At this point the payload will fall to the surface.· It will hit the surface at less than 50 mph.· The payload must have a sufficient amount of cushioning to protect it from a 50 mph impact.· Once on the surface, the radio contact will be established with earth and the rover will leave the base station.
By the way William, I personally know someone who bounced laser beams off of the reflectors set up by the Apollo 11 astrounauts.· I suppose it's possible that NASA could have landed the reflectors on the moon in an unmanned vehicle, but I believe in the manned lunar landings.· If you get a chance, rent the movie "In the Shadow of the Moon".· I think it is coming out on DVD soon, if it's not already out.· This might help you understand the space race mentality of the time.
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
I like this debate....it is very interesting the different view points people have.
You talk about sand.....have you ever been to Saudi Arabia?· The sand is as fine as talc power. I saw days 126 degrees in the shade. Trust me when I say....it is possible to leave a foot print similar to the lunar foot print picture. I do know we have moisture here, so there is a debatable difference.
I agree with your assessment, to a point. But you have not included the most important statistic of the event. Do you know how many people worked for NASA at the time the lunar landing "happened"?
We are also talking about more than one event here. This happened more than once.
How many people do you think would keep that kind of information quiet.
What are the chances, that not one of those people spoke the "truth" about the landing?
We can't even get a "weather balloon" out of Roswell NM without a UFO story.
Plus.....the times were different then. People were much more prone to tell the truth no matter what were to happen to them (if they were not politicians, anyway). They were not used to just throwing a lie out there when it suited them.
I know the Astronauts wouldn't have spilled the beans...they would loose too much face, but there were many people involved. There were what, 16-17 Apollo launches?
Where were those rockets going? Why blow all that money on lunar landers if they didn't really need to. We are talking 100's of millions in todays money.
Just food for thought.....but we built the atomic bomb faster than we went to the moon (about twice as fast with no computers). It was totally theoretical......and they had spent many millions betting it would work. Thank goodness it did, we could all be speaking Japanese. No offense intended.
But good debate. I do agree.....the landing·on the first trip·is extremely doubtful.
James L
What formulation are you projecting with? PBAN or HTPB? I don't think there would be much difference, but the formulation would be very important.
Also I'm interested in the burn time, that you have calculated. Not that I have any idea how to calculate braking a payload to land on the moon, but I do know about propellant.
We should also talk about how we are going to know when to fire the engines. A radar altimeter is the only way I know to know height from the lunar surface, and I'm not sure how we will calibrate the unit. I guess.....we could always measure acceleration (gravity pull of the moon) but that will have a lot of error (this is my assumption).
It's being a very interesting project so far.
James L
James,
I totally agree with you. This debate is not mean to diminish the American people's pride, but to establish the truth to avoid pitfalls created by Apollo assumptions when we get to the moon.
For example if we assume the sand on the moon is mostly like what we saw on the Apollo footprint photographs, we will get into a lot of trouble. Pls show me a photo of a footprint in a hot dry arabian desert. The silicate particles will not stick to each other like in the lunar footprint without moisture. The traction and wheels required is very different from what we would expect if we believe Apollo.
If you look at the picture of the lunar lander, there is no blast crater under it. This is a joke. There is not even a speck of dust on the 10 ton lunar module's legs.
In our case, if we manage a total soft landing, our rover could be stuck in it's own blast crater, unable to crawl out. Brian, take note.
Yes, there are people who come out and try to tell the truth all the time, but they just get ignored by NASA and helped by an ignorant public.
For example, Neil Amstrong had never given a video recorded interview to anyone without supervision from NASA. On top of that, all questions had to be screened by NASA before the interview.
Professor Steven E. Jones had publicly stated that 911 collapses was due to Controlled Demolition and not due to plane crash or fire. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones. He was suspended but not sued by the government or anybody.
But that's another story.......
The fact that almost 100 billion in today's money was spent on a fake lunar project is the more reason to continue hiding it from tax payers.
Having more people working on the project does not speed it up significantly or create miracles.
See how many people are working on a cancer cure for the last 50 years, and we still haven't found a cure.
The atomic bomb is 100 times easier than the Apollo project.
See how many countries posses the bomb today and how many other countries have landed on the moon today
and you will understand the picture.
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www.fd.com.my
www.mercedes.com.my
Post Edited (william chan) : 11/22/2007 10:55:55 PM GMT
Rocket Propulsion Elements by George Sutton
Space Propulsion Analysis and Design By Humble, Henry and Larson
If you guys are really serious about this I think you need to set up a separate forum. Debating the reality of the Moon Landings is not very productive. But it can be fun
Regarding the Moon landing "hoax",
Footprint;
1. It is not sand, it is pulverized rock. consistency like talc
2. Gravity is 1/6 of earth, easier for material to hold shape - not slump
No dust on landing gear:
No air on moon, duh! No dust cloud, so no particles to settle on landing gear. When blown away by the exhaust, they just keep going till they fall back to the surface. Engine shut off before touchdown.
No crater under lander;
The lander had probes several feet long sticking straight down. The engine was cut when these made contact, then the lander dropped to the surface.
In space a rocket engine's exhaust is not like a torch. It expands as it exits the nozzle. The power from the exhaust was not confined to a small area but spread out over a very large one. Further, the engine was
cut before it got real close to the surface and, the time it spent over one spot was very short.
Post Edited (W9GFO) : 8/19/2008 7:14:09 PM GMT
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lunarX/
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
-phar
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lunarX/
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
Post Edited (Brian Beckius) : 11/23/2007 2:29:25 AM GMT
I need some answers:
How heavy will the transmitter be?
How to get the propeller through the Van Allen?
How big should the rover be?
We need a team name and a name for "rover"
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
Post Edited (Brian Beckius) : 11/23/2007 3:10:39 AM GMT
I am not familiar with the different formulations of APCP.· I only know that we would want to use the most efficient ones.· From what I understand the "blue-thunder" propellant is one of the most efficient.
I think a radar altimeter would be the best instrument to measure the height over the lunar surface.· This should be fairly easy to build.· I don't think it requires calibration since it's based on the return of a reflected signal at the speed of light.· The biggest challenge will be to point the rocket motors in the right direction.· This will require some form of attitude thruster.· This could be a monopropellant or maybe just compressed air.
We should be able to use the relative locations of the sun and the earth along with moon's horizon to determine the orientation of the spacecraft.· Rate gyros could be used for short-term control during motor burns.
An object takes about 156 seconds to fall 20 km on the moon.· We could do a single burn just before the spacecraft reaches the surface, but I think it's better to do two or more burns as it descends.· This will increase the descent time and decrease the velocities we would have to work with.· It would gives us more time to compute the descent path and to react to it.
Dave
I need someone to do·some propeller programming, I’m going to try to test rover by Sunday (I won’t have any time to write code). One HB25 controls forward and reverse, one HB25 steers it. I have 2 of each parallax 433 MHz RF transmitters and receivers.
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/build_agc_8.pdf
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
I think before we know how powerful (and Heavy) the transmitter needs to be we first must know how big the antenna is that is receiving.
The first stage could be spin stabilized. By first stage I am referring to whatever is placed in LEO. Whatever is controlling the Translunar injection burn would not need to be shielded. The part of the vehicle which contains the TLI engine and propellant can coast through the Van Allen Belts with the shielding as part of it. Then for LOI the LOI engine and lander would separate from the vehicle.
The rover should be as small as possible. Multiple micro rovers would be better than one big one. Every added gram of mass will require many, many times its mass in propellant. Then, that extra propellant requires additional propellant. It's a vicious circle.
No ideas for a team name. The rovers name will just "happen".
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
It's good to discuss and have an understanding of the whole mission, however, I don't believe that it is practical to think that one group will have design decisions on every aspect of it. I would propose that we focus on one portion. What seems most in line with what people have experience with here is the rover. Developing a rover and delivery method is a huge project in and of itself.
Possible starting point - You have a package containing the rover which will impact the lunar surface at 30 m/s. The rover that must emerge safely from this package has a mass of 2 kg and of course must be equipped to fulfill the mission goals.
I think that this is achievable and would be a hell of a lot of fun to develop and test. While working on this we can keep an eye out for a way to get it to the Moon.
That's my current opinion anyhow...
Rich H
For the rover's name, how about Alice.
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Max Wooden
Reedley, California
Post Edited (Max Wooden) : 11/23/2007 7:09:05 AM GMT
Is that down in your area ? you try to contact them guys.
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
Last night on my way to bed I tripped over one of my kids toys , It was a toy mouse in a round Ball . when the mouse moves it roll's the ball..... small mouse , big ball (lighter foot print) Hmmm...
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Thank's Brian
www.truckwiz.com
·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein
http://www.diycalculator.com/subroutines.shtml· My favorite website ( Bet you can't guess why)
You gave me a great idea......the thruster could be pressurized hydrogen Peroxide (high concentrate).....and have multiple thrusters for one fuel source. Just open the respective valve. No ignition no fuss.....just loading the fuel would be dangerous.· This could also be the decent thrust source too.....it's throttleable....and quite easy to build and use.· Could solve a large amount of ignition problems just using the same fuel source.
We could use some solids as backup if something went wrong with the HP engine.
If any of you don't know about Hydrogen Peroxide......it is a very good oxidizer, but you can run the liquid through a metal screen (copper, silver, etc) and it turns in to steam and water....and a pretty good thrust. Not as good as solid propellant.....but very easy to implement. The Bell rocket belt (the one a guy straps on) runs on hydrogen peroxide.
I've researched radar altimeters before...and there are problems associated with building one. The antennae are very critical. Also it must be pointed at the celestial body to tell altitude. So now we have to point the rocket motors and altimeter antennae toward the moon.
I think you have a good idea with reference to the earth, sun and moon. Also I think a standard mechanical gyro is needed·for attitude.
James L
I'm with Dave on this to a point. If you were to keep the internal drive source from flopping around (have outriggers to the outer shell) you would have better success. Without to way to create moment arm (leverage) the outer shell would get hung in a hole, and the drive would just climb the inner wall and fall. If we could design a positive drive internally....we would climb the internal wall and provide weight leverage to one side.
Most of this is dependent on the moon surface. If the moon is filled with small craters 1/3 the diameter of our outer shell.....we could be pretty screwed. Also....it doesn't lend itself for solar array area.....you would have to put the solar cells on the inside....and may end up with the outer shell covered with moon dust, and killing your batteries.
Well......I just talked myself out of the idea. I hate that.
Brian, I know you don't like steering with motors, but what about a treaded rover. Treads provide a huge surface area for·weight and would reduce the ground pressure (or whatever you want to call it on the moon).. We could also put two motors per tread for redundency. This would also provide a platform that could be used upside down if we put solar cells on top and bottom (or make them to move ......not that hard to do). The only thing I ask.....never turn with one tread stationary......turn on the move with differential tread speed.
Also....does anyone know if the moon has magnetic poles?·
If it does we could incorporate a compass sensor for navigation......it would simplify the control from earth. Just tell the rover to move 25 feet to the west.
Hmmmm........I like the brain storming......
James L
Post Edited (James Long) : 11/23/2007 2:19:03 PM GMT
James,
I'm certainly no expert but I think the answer is no. From what I remember reading the moon was never really geologically active so it never developed a molten-core dynamo like the one that creates the Earth's magnetic field. There are areas of differing magnetic intensity sprinkled through the crust, but it's probably not anything that would help with navigation...
Mike Mc.