A_M_Swallow - 8/8/2007 6:11 PMExperiment - is it safe for people to be accelerated sideways at 3g for six hours or would we have to restrict them to 1g?This experiment is applicable to transport on the moon.
meiza - 8/8/2007 11:46 PM3 G for six hours?? That's like 300 km/s.
A_M_Swallow - 8/8/2007 10:08 PMQuotemeiza - 8/8/2007 11:46 PM3 G for six hours?? That's like 300 km/s.That is the centripetal acceleration. The forward one being power limited is much lower, which is why it takes 6 hours.
Jim - 9/8/2007 4:01 AMQuoteA_M_Swallow - 8/8/2007 10:08 PMQuotemeiza - 8/8/2007 11:46 PM3 G for six hours?? That's like 300 km/s.That is the centripetal acceleration. The forward one being power limited is much lower, which is why it takes 6 hours.Still doesn't make any sense
A_M_Swallow - 8/8/2007 11:44 PMQuoteJim - 9/8/2007 4:01 AMQuoteA_M_Swallow - 8/8/2007 10:08 PMQuotemeiza - 8/8/2007 11:46 PM3 G for six hours?? That's like 300 km/s.That is the centripetal acceleration. The forward one being power limited is much lower, which is why it takes 6 hours.Still doesn't make any sense50 mT Lunar Magnetic Levitation vehicle driving around a ring approximately 400 km in circumference (radius 63.66 km). 8 MW of solar power will hopefully get it to 2.38 km/s after about 5.8 hours.
Jim - 9/8/2007 4:48 AMThe thread is about near term experiments. Not fanasty
For the longer mission to Mars, the question of 6 - 8 months' exposure to microgravity versus the additional risk and complexity of providing an artificial gravity option seems to be high on the "to be resolved" list. So I want to propose an experiment which can be fit in to one of the later lunar missions.
Place an astronaut aboard ISS for 6 - 8 months to simulate the outbound trip to Mars under minimum energy trajectory conditions. (Yes, I know NASA is considering a higher energy transfer, but Hohmann is still the baseline). Pick this astronaut up in LEO, and take him/her to the moon. See how they react to 1/6 gee compared to the other astronauts who have just come up from Earth. Compare that with the results of how astronauts who have spent 6 - 8 months aboard ISS in microgravity (Polyakov) function upon their return to Earth. This will give us a baseline which will make it easier to interpolate to how astronauts will function in Mars' 1/3 gee after 6 - 8 months in space.
Ron
Danny Dot - 10/8/2007 3:49 PMHow about telescopes on the moon? As an engineer, my first guess is the HUGE amount of extra mass to land on the moon makes a lunar based telescope a bad idea. Is there something about moon basing that is good for a telescope -- vs. keeping it in orbit or sending it to an L point?Danny Deger
CuddlyRocket - 10/8/2007 4:30 AMI can understand the laser-ranging proposals, but the others seem like it would be simpler and cheaper to perform them using satellites.