To The Moon

It may interest you to know that more then half the people alive today, were born after America last landed a man on the moon. Do you also know the software, hardware and the know how to send a man to the Moon no longer exists, NASA has to start from scratch, once we beat the Russians to the Moon America lost interest and instead of saving, they shredded. Does this make any sense to you? I would have thought they'd have a whole area just set aside for Apollo parts and blue prints, I mean it was a huge event, probably the greatest technological breakthrough of all time to land a man on the Moon and bring him home safely, with I might add 1969 technology. How much will it cost to start from scratch? well there have been estimates anywhere from 109 billion to 160 billion dollars, the plan is to land a man on the Moon by 2020.

Why should we return to the Moon? NASA posed the question to more than 1,000 people across the world. Scientists, engineers, commercial entrepreneurs and the general public, the answers that came back fit nicely into six areas.

1. Extend human presence to the Moon to enable eventual settlement.

2. Pursue scientific activities that address fundamental questions about the history of Earth, the solar system and the universe- and about our place in them.

3. Test technologies, systems, flight operations and exploration techniques to reduce the risks and increase the productivity of future missions to Mars and beyond.

4. Provide a challenging, shared, peaceful activity to unite the nations in pursuit of common objectives.

5. Expand Earth economic sphere and conduct Lunar activities with benefits to life on Earth.

6. Use a vibrant space exploration program to engage the public, encourage students and help develop the high tech work force that will be required to address the challenges of tomorrow.

Nasa has just awarded Boeing the contract to build the upper stage of the crew rocket. they are totally scraping the Saturn V rocket, something that was extremely reliable and going into a system with 2 rockets. They would first launch the Ares V rocket containing the Lunar Surface Module and the Earth Departure Stage into a low Earth orbit, then launch the Ares I rocket containing the crew exploration vehicle, which once in orbit docks with the Lunar Surface Module and Earth Departure Stage. Once docked the Departure Stage fires its engines to achieve Earth escape velocity and we're off to the Moon. Once at the moon, all 4 Astronauts then transfer into the Lunar Surface Module and descend to the Lunar Surface. After they do their stuff, (the first initial stays will be 7 days, leading up to eventually 180 days on the Lunar surface.) they launch off the Lunar surface to rendezvous with the crew module and return home. The landing site is yet to be determined, they are thinking probably one of the Lunar poles because of the likelihood of water and the temp is more constant at the poles then anywhere else.

This cool YouTube Lunar video basically sums up NASA's Lunar program real well, enjoy. Something cool just happened to me, when I was surfing the NASA site a questionnaire popped up for me to fill out, they don't occur that often, I've never had one, so that was neat.