October 2007

Google got the attention of the aerospace fraternity this past month by announcing an X-Prize of its own, the Google Lunar X-Prize: essentially US$30 million for the first private robotic vehicle to soft land on the moon and wander around it.

The Ansari X-Prize for US$10 million saw the first private manned spaceflight, which kick-started space tourism and spaceports. It'll be interesting to see what new industries Google will be starting with this competition.

You see, America is in a bit of a predicament – no, not the usual one in the Middle East – it has a problem with the next people on the moon being Chinese. I'm not entirely sure what this problem is; the US government reached the moon in 1969, and after a cursory inspection of the easy bits went away. They only got round to flying a scientist to it once – on the last flight. Clearly, they can't really be that interested in it? Really? You mean 68% of Americans actually support a return to the moon? Oh.

So, Race to The Moon 2.0 is brewing. NASA's Administrator Michael Griffin has stood up and publicly said the Chinese are going to beat them there at this rate. Current US plans call for a return to the moon by 2015-to-2020-ish - but discussions on what to do to accelerate the program have a tendency to get hung up on either Mars or Tibet.

Why go back to the moon anyway? Well, in short because the Earth is a lousy place to try and rule the universe from. It's at the bottom of a deep, deep well that you have to climb out of to be able to reach an orbit. Not to mention the rigours of an atmosphere. On the moon, your rockets don't have to climb so fast or far to make orbit and so putting stuff in space becomes much easier. Also much cheaper – which makes it possible to supply a market near Earth with relatively cheap construction materials already in space.

So Google's X-Prize rover will be looking for useful minerals, including water. Going back to the moon this time is a different proposition, as the Chinese will probably aim for a permanent settlement. Initially it would do research on living and industry in lunar conditions, which Apollo did very poorly at – possibly just because they weren't looking to stay for more than a few days at the time.

With a manufacturing base off-planet, the Chinese will have ample raw material in space from which to build an orbital industry. Launching solar power satellites from Earth, for example, is ludicrously expensive. Make them in space from lunar materials, and the cost plummets. Lunar soil is largely metal oxides – take out the oxygen for fuel and breathing, metals for construction. Large craft for interplanetary exploration suddenly become easier to build and fuel. For a country with a culture that traditionally takes a very long term view, it's not that hard to see them making it work. Then there's all the boring stuff like spinoff technologies, scientific discovery, boosting economies and suchlike. Interesting times, as they say.

So would it surprise you to hear that the Japanese just launched their first lunar remote sensing satellite last month? It's called SELENE, and is carrying two small satellites for use in radio research. The timing is a coincidence as it was meant to be launched back in 2003, but the H-IIA carrier rocket was misbehaving at the time. Just as well, because they discovered some components that had been put in the wrong way round in August!

On 3^rd October, it will reach the moon and enter an initial 100km by 13,000 km orbit, looping over both lunar poles. The two baby satellites will be released over the next couple of weeks, and SELENE itself will settle in 100km above the moon's surface. The mission should last a whole year.

SELENE Is also snooping out the prospects for a Japanese lunar telescope. No cloudy nights, no city skyglow...

Finally, two new propulsion systems are being looked at by NASA that could drastically shorten mission times. They have finally found a way of making a kind of laser that generates a push. This has a huge advantage in that you don't have to carry any gaseous fuel – so you won't ever run out. If you're close enough to the sun, you can run the thing off solar power, otherwise you need a little nuclear reactor to power it. These reactors are fairly simple things, which fortunately means there is little to go wrong.

The second one they're looking at is called Mini-Mag Orion (image left, credit: Roger Lenard/Dana Andrews; Andrews Space) and it is nuclear powered. A small nuclear reactor is used to charge up a magnetic pulse generator. When a pulse goes off, it compresses a very small nuclear bomb (a few grams) and the blast is diverted out of a magnetic nozzle with great efficiency – they reckon they can get up to 15% of the speed of light with one. To slow the thing down at the other end, the magnetic field generator interacts with the destination planet's magnetic field, saving on fuel. It could get to Jupiter in a year.

This edition is also on the web, just point your web browser to http://olliver.family.gen.nz. vik@olliver.family.gen.nz

"Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things." -- George Carlin