The NASA official who requested anonymity also told a really interesting story. When President Bush announced recommencement of the lunar program the National Aeronautics and Space Administration asked aged researchers who had taken part in the Apollo expeditions earlier to meet experts who were going to start a new mission. One of the aged researchers who came to the meeting had designed a device to measure lunar radiation. The device could measure radiation before humans landed the planet and could transmit information even when the Apollos were back to the surface. In the framework of the program heaps of records were collected. But when the program was no longer financed and stopped the bobbins with ciphered films were discarded. But the old engineer took the films and placed them to his basement where they are still being kept. Unfortunately there is no opportunity to decipher the films as a special device able to decode such records was also utilized when the program ended.
The NASA official admits that the flights to the Moon were rather a political mission as the USA wanted to gain revenge after the Soviet spaceman Gagarin was the first to enter the space. And the USA spent $150 billion to start the lunar program to demonstrate the power of the American science and engineering. It was a very expensive project that was easily abandoned as soon as financing was stopped.
The American Internet service Google is ready to pay $20 million to a private company that succeeds in landing a buggy on the Moon for transmitting photo and video information of one gigabyte in size right to the Earth surface. The sum is to be paid in case a buggy lands the Moon before 2012, and a company may get just $15 million if it launches such a buggy within the two next years after 2012.
At that, Google conditions that such a buggy must walk at least 40 centimeters along the Moon surface, transmit a series of pictures from the Moon including ‘a self-portrait’ against the lunar background, a panoramic picture of the planet and on-line video.
As it turned out, meteorites hit the lunar surface oftener than is usually believed which is really dangerous for automatic stations and manned spaceships. The Moon has no atmospheric protection, and even a small meteor can cause a tragedy if it hits a spaceship or a manned space station.
Today, the Russian project of the Moon expedition is even less developed than it was under the direction of Korolev.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
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