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NASA, Blue Origin Partner to Bring Lunar Gravity Conditions Closer to Earth
At one-sixth that of Earth, the unique gravity of the lunar surface is one of the many variable conditions that technologies bound for the Moon will need to perform well in. NASA will soon have more options for testing those innovations in lunar gravity thanks to a collaboration with Blue Origin to bring new testing capabilities to the company's New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket system.
Currently, NASA can approximate the Moon's gravity on parabolic flights and in centrifuges on suborbital vehicles – both invaluable options for maturing promising innovations. But these methods provide only seconds of lunar gravity exposure at a time or limit the payload size, compelling NASA to explore longer-duration and larger size options. Blue Origin's new lunar gravity testing capability – projected to be available in late 2022 – is answering that need.
New Shepard's upgrades will allow the vehicle to use its reaction control system to impart a rotation on the capsule. As a result, the entire capsule essentially acts as a large centrifuge to create artificial gravity environments for the payloads inside. Blue Origin's first flight of this capability will target 11 rotations per minute to provide more than two minutes of continuous lunar gravity, exposing the technologies to this challenging but difficult-to-test condition.
Also at Space News and SYFY Wire.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday March 13 2021, @11:35PM (3 children)
>but the moon base they could have (and should have) built before I was even born and could be building even now isn't going to happen.
It would be a real shame if the Russia/China alliance built theirs first, but I suspect we'll get ours. Even if it's the result of just one or two ILV scouting missions before they're abandoned and a few Starships get a base established before the Asian moonbase establishes itself as the "definitive" Moonbase.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @12:40AM
Competition with China and Russia might provide the political will to make it happen but the US is on the wrong side of the economic cold war this time and is happily spending itself into oblivion with nothing to show for it. See F-35 and SLS for examples. It will take a major change in leadership to pull out of that death spiral and there is a lot of money in all the wrong places riding on not fixing things. For all of its faults and failures the Trump administration was a drunken stumble in the right direction on a few issues, but the Biden administration seems set on putting the gravy train back on track.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday March 14 2021, @02:04AM (1 child)
I don't see the shame, beyond making the U.S. look slow and inefficient which is old news at this point. All nations should cooperate on the Moon. The U.S. should find a way to drop the exclusion policy, if only to allow the most basic levels of cooperation. Send all geologists on lunar field trips.
https://futurism.com/china-and-europe-may-build-a-moon-village-in-the-2020s [futurism.com]
There could be a Mars race... a race for second place.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday March 14 2021, @04:45AM
Perhaps we have different definitions - I've always heard "It would be a shame..." used as roughly synonymous with "It would be disappointing...", no actual shame involved.
That said, I agree, cooperation would be great - but I'm not sure how realistic it will be. Even if we cooperate for a foothold on the Moon, as the space race takes shape over the next few centuries I suspect capitalism will become the driving force, with nationalism not far behind. Nationalism being an excellent tool for capitalists to avoid scrutiny, liability, or any other semblance of responsibility that might hurt their bottom lines.