Discover article

[jaydeehess]

The March issue of Discover magazine has an article about the plans to go back to the Moon and to set up a base there.

When it is available online I'll try to post a link.

I don't recall exactly what it was but I recall thinking that one item in the article might send an HB into "aha!!" mode.

[Jairo]

Due to the theme, I guess it will be something about a "radiation is dangerous" claim, without the proper context of how and when it's dangerous.

[reynoldbot]

I think Popular Mechanics currently has an article about the upcoming lunar missions and some specifics of the design of the crafts and some of the current problems.

[jaydeehess]

Actually what was having me think along these lines was the mention of the regolith. The dust gets into everything and over the few hours of moonwalk that any Apollo astronaut did it infiltrated the glove joints and other seals.

AH-HA says the HB. The gloves were not up to the task then and would still be difficult to design even today.

Second , the article makes the case for locating at the south(?) pole of the Moon. One reason given is that the "temperature" at the pole would be much lerss extreme.

AH-HA says the HB. The temperature at the supposed Apollo landing sites would have precluded any walking about or the use of such delicate materials as camera film.

The article states that at the equator at lunar 'mid-day' the temperature would be 250F while at lunar 'night' it would drop to -240F, whereas at the pole it would swing from -50 to +50F

,,, and, yes there is mention of the hazards of radiation too.

________________________

Further more , and this goes to the 9/11 conspiracies, the article suggests sintering the regolith using microwaves thus creating a glass 'highway' where there would be no danger from abrasive dust.

The woo-woos go AH-HA, Judy Woods is right. It is possible to disintegrate steel and concrete with a beam weapon.

[JayUtah]

That's what happens when you take a knee-jerk approach to investigation. Any suggestion of difficulty or impropriety gets exaggerated into "impossibility".

[jaydeehess]

The article was written by Guy Gugliotta a former Washington Post reporter who covered science and space for seven years.

Although the article is listed on the front cover it is not the main feature story(which is "GRACE's Gravity MAP") .

I suspect that had the author wished to go into more detail, on for eg. what is meant by temperature on the Moon, he may have been overridden by editors who wanted the article to fit within a certain number of columns and pages. As it is, it is one of the few articles one ever sees in DISCOVER that is continued near the end of the issue rather than in a continuous sequence of pages. The one 'insert' in the article deals with "why go back".

I bring this up because the HB's may well try to use this article.