Abstract
Three U. S. presidents (all Republican) have committed to sending humans back to the Moon and beyond: President George Bush, Sr., in 1989, President George W. Bush in 2004 (the Moon by 2020, Mars in the 2030s) and President Donald Trump in 2017 (the Moon in the 2020s, Mars in the mid-2030s). Brave words, but not accompanied by the necessary funding – so far.
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Notes
- 1.
There are at least three different weights that are pronounced “ton.” For brevity, I use the word “ton” to signify a weight of 1,000 kilograms (about 2,205 lbs) instead of “tonne” or “metric ton.” Note that in the United States and Canada, “ton” usually means 2,000 pounds, while in the rest of the world it usually means 2,240 pounds.
- 2.
- 3.
The SpaceX team got to calling the explosion of one of their rockets “a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” but that didn’t stop the failures hurting.
- 4.
See for example [12].
- 5.
The combined rocket and spacecraft previously had the working title Big Falcon Rocket or BFR.
- 6.
Hopper test: the rocket flies up a hundred miles or more and then returns to the ground a hundred or so miles away – it “hops” there.
- 7.
Internet chat forums are full of “on the one hand” methane is better in this way, but “on the other hand” kerosene is better in that way.
- 8.
See for example [15].
- 9.
Two examples of such reasons among many: methane gives off less pollution than kerosene when burned; methane can be extracted from sewage gas and thus help meet recycling targets.
- 10.
Musk clarified the $5 billion estimate as “not more than $10 billion and not less than $2 billion” in the Sept. 17, 2018, press conference when announcing the identity of the first Super Heavy/Starship customer.
- 11.
The world’s largest ocean liner that hit an iceberg in the north Atlantic in 1912 on its maiden voyage from Britain to New York, sinking with the loss of about 1,500 lives. The wreck was located in 1985 by oceanographer Robert Ballard. Later expeditions recovered artefacts from the wreck.
- 12.
Videos of this dramatic return from space of the rocket can be seen on YouTube; for example the July 2018 landing is 40 minutes into the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRDhdHRyyjc&feature=youtu.be
- 13.
Some people put the boundary at an altitude of 50 miles.
- 14.
The first of these was launched on a Falcon 9 on December 23, 2018.
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Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(mythology)
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Norris, P. (2019). When Will the United States Go Back?. In: Returning People to the Moon After Apollo. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14915-4_10
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