Next week will be a busy week. On Monday a crew of two men and a woman will ride a Soyuz launcher to the ISS. On Tuesday SpaceX will launch a Falcon9 rocket with a cargo including a GEDI laser to monitor the Earth's atmosphere and the surface with its forests. Have a good trip to all!
Tullio

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Expedition 58 with one Russian cosmonaut, an American woman astronaut and a Canadian astronaut has been put in orbit by a Soyuz vehicle.
Tullio

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Expedition 57 commander is Alexander Gerst of ESA. When he leaves his role will be taken by a new astronaut, probably the Russian one.
Tullio
I watched the hatch opening ceremony. The flight took only six hours and two minutes.

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According to "Nature" China is ready to launch Change-4, a lander-rover, on the far side of the Moon. It should happen on December 8. Since Change-4 could not transmit to Earth, it will use Queqiao, a Moon orbiter already circling the Moon.
Tullio

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Opa:) Onboard the rover (not named yet) that Chang’e-4 will deploy, is an instrument, Advanced Small Analyzer for Neutrals (ASAN), which was developed by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna.
https://gbtimes.com/sweden-joins-chinas-historic-mission-land-far-side-moon

Chang'e-4 and we have a liftoff.
祝成功
https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1071111011380412416

:)

Unintended bonus. NASA InSight Lander 'Hears' Martian Winds

InSight has placed a seismometer on the surface of Mars. After leveling it it should start transmitting marsquake data in a few days.
Tullio

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Expedition 57 has returned to Earth from ISS . Expedition 58 is in control of ISS, Expedition 59 will start on February 19.
Tullio

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If China actually builds a base on the moon NASA will most likely drop everything and build a base for the western powers.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

If China actually builds a base on the moon NASA will most likely drop everything and build a base for the western powers.

Jumping to Mars instead of the moon IMHO would be a much better way to go for many reasons than worrying about the moon (better and many more valuable resources are available there to continue on outwards there than the moon can provide).

Cheers.

If China actually builds a base on the moon NASA will most likely drop everything and build a base for the western powers.

Jumping to Mars instead of the moon IMHO would be a much better way to go for many reasons than worrying about the moon (better and many more valuable resources are available there to continue on outwards there than the moon can provide).

Cheers.

it isnt more easy to go to Mars if you lift up from Moon than Earth ?

Moon is the place to start

The moon has its own gravity well to escape, and remember the moon is still in Earth's gravity well.

Until humans have a fairly advanced base on the moon, say advanced enough to build rockets from raw materials, there likely isn't any significant difference between the starting points, because most everything going to Mars will have to have been hefted off the earth to the moon. Your only possible savings would be making the fuel on the moon and that ignores having to lift the fuel extraction equipment from earth.

There might be the ability to heft a few kilos more to Mars, but there isn't going to be enough savings to cut the travel time significantly. It is still going to take six months to get out from Earth's orbit to Mars' orbit and not be speeding so fast, Mars can't gravitationally capture your spacecraft when you get there. Remember every bit of extra speed you have has to be removed when you get to Mars and that means carrying more fuel. If you are able to burn another kilo of fuel to speed up you will need to burn most of a kilo to slow down again, and the same for the return trip. There is actually a pretty big penalty for trying to go faster.

A earth orbit space station might be a better starting point. No Lunar gravity well to climb out of and you have dispensed with the majority of the Earth's.

I'm sure the numbers have been run many times and the best answer likely depends on the exact mission profile to Mars or the assumptions on what each starting point is able to provide and the nature of the propulsion system.

While using the moon as a launch base for Mars may sound a good idea there are a lot of down sides to it. Among them are is it's a double lift, the base would need to be quite substantially crewed, until such time as there is a suitable extraction and manufacturing system in place everything would have to be hauled from earth.
I think it would a better prospect to use a much enlrged version of the ISS to act as an assembly and launch base.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I would welcome an international effort including China. There is no reason to build a space station for each state. The Apollo 8 image of the Earth shows no borders.

Tullio

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I would welcome an international effort including China. There is no reason to build a space station for each state. The Apollo 8 image of the Earth shows no borders.

Tullio

Very much so. If humans are to live for another dozen generations, we are going to have to erase the concept of borders from our languages. I doubt it is possible and by that we will answer the question of how long a technologically advanced civilization that can transmit a SETI signal lasts, and it will be a very short time.

I would welcome an international effort including China. There is no reason to build a space station for each state. The Apollo 8 image of the Earth shows no borders.
Tullio

I have a great series on DVD - From the Earth to the Moon. At the time of the Apollo 1 disaster in 1967, there was much debate regarding the cost of the space program.

In the following 51 years much has been spent on...

We should all lobby for a proper space station to be built.



It would have artificial gravity and a facility for constructing a Mars manned shuttle or explorer and also to ferry equipment to the moon for a permanent base. All nations can participate but there should be NASA in charge of the specifications for each module that goes up to be added to the structure.

Cosmic rays have to be over come for a Mars trip. The station would rotate to produce --maybe--.5 G's

While I love the idea of a rotating artificial gravity space station like that, and a moon base would be cool and probably make sense, I think research and development money would be better spent on coming up with and perfecting a better method of propulsion than our current firecrackers.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

We have determined that "shuttles" a/k/a external payloads are simply far too risky.

It has to fit at the top and be in a nose cone / faring or be the nose cone with an escape tower. Otherwise crap is going to hit the "shuttle" and you are going to kill crews.

The external load shuttle concept was a mistake.