October 24, 2007: XICHANG – The launch of China’s first lunar probe Chang’e-1, on a Long March CZ-3A booster, was successful, a Chinese official announced Wednesday evening at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. Li Shangfu, director of the Xichang launch center, made the announcement after the orbiter successfully entered the […]
Link: http://ssafe.org/ From Moon Society President Peter Kokh October 10, 2007 — We are used to NASA being the source of most space initiatives. But times are rapidly changing. The Space Prize phenomenon, after the long awaited success of the X-Prize Challenge, now seems to have developed a self-sustaining momentum with prize-driven developments likely to […]
Read More… from Moon Society Joins Space Solar Alliance for Future Energy (SSAFE)
Fellow Moon Society Leaders, fellow Moon Society members, and others who actively support a human return to the Moon and the establishment of an Earth-Moon economy; The proposed Congressional ban on spending for “Humans to Mars” programs would seem to be in our favor. But as is often the case, first assessments can be quite […]
Read More… from We oppose any Congressional ban on “Humans to Mars” programs
July 28, 2007 – The Society’s Leadership Council, at its July 18th meeting, put together a dual incentive plan for this year’s membership drive. The drive is aimed not only at encouraging new members to join the Society, but to encourage former members to rejoin us. THE FIRST THIRTY persons to join the Society will […]
The Moon Society’s role in The Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) The George W. Bush Administration has proposed a Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) for the United States in which NASA will lead an effort to return human crews to the Moon, “to stay.” This vision, however, is already in process of slowly being eroded […]
by Peter Kokh, President of the Moon Society There are three principal human space expansion pathways advocated by persons preoccupied with one of three principal imperatives. Each of them sees space as important to the ultimate challenge facing humanity: survival of mankind. 1) Planetary Defense of our homeworld from potential impactors (Near Earth Asteroids) […]
In a 1999 book (an updated edition is due in 2007) “The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Colonization” by David Schrunk, Burton Sharpe, Bonnie Cooper, and Madhu Thangavelu, the authors brought up the concept of a lunar railroad as a primary method of expanding out from the periphery of an innitial outpost towards a […]
[Ra•ma•da (Ra MAH da) – a Spanish word common throughout U.S. treeless plains and desert areas for the shade-providing shelters at roadside rest stops.] The sketches available of various Moon Base designs, be they the product of NASA think tanks or of outside sources, share an ivory tower penchant for neglecting patterns of likely land […]
Read More… from RAMADAS: “Yard” and Work site Canopies for Lunar Outposts
Download our PowerPoint Slide Show version 1.02 http://www.moonsociety.org/moonbasesim/proposals/AnalogMoonbaseProposal.ppt For those who do not have PowerPoint, you can download the PDF file version of this Slide Show http://www.moonsociety.org/moonbasesim/proposals/AnalogMoonbaseProposal.pdf Earlier this year, a Moon Society Crew “took over” the Mars Desert research Station outside Hanksville, Utah for two weeks, hoisted our flag, and got our feet wet […]
As promising as lunar lavatubes are for the future of lunar settlements, in the early days of the frontier, it is more likely that the main settlement complex will be on the surface, covered with a regolith blanket, and that a nearby lavatube will be used for area-hungry unpressurized applications such as warehousing and storage, […]
Read More… from Usefulness of Terrestrial Lavatubes in a Lunar Analog Research Station Program
