Comments on: Constant Moon

By: Claudina Roncoli

Claudina Roncoli — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 02:06:04 +0000

Yep! That’s my cousin Ralph! He rawks!
He is the one real geek in our family! We are so proud of him!
Way to go Ralphie!

Also, thanks to Ralph, my entire family’s signatures have been scanned into the hard-drive of the Cassini project that’s been to Saturn–after 7 longs years of travel!

By: Marlon R. Howell

Marlon R. Howell — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 00:36:34 +0000

I love the zoomable Moon. All the times I’ve looked at the Moon from my backyard and I never realized that it had all that writing on it.

By: Doug Kenline

Doug Kenline — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 02:29:48 +0000

I can’t find the United States flag.

http://www.moonmovie.com

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 20:27:12 +0000

I knew that clickable map looked familiar. It’s the one we use in the basic astronomy labs at Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University).

I’ve lost track of how many labs I’ve TAed and had to help people find where the Apollo missions landed with that map…

By: Evolving Squid

Evolving Squid — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 15:37:34 +0000

Hmm… good points there.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 11:54:58 +0000

Having recently seen a BBC dramatisation of the Space Race, I cannot believe the Russian technology was more advanced than the Apollo hardware. Although I suppose it depends what you mean by “advanced”.

In my understanding, all of the Russian missions to the moon were relatively small spacecraft (certainly nothing approaching the 20 or 30 tons of the Apollo CSM). Therefore, it was easier to choose whatever trajectory was desired for translunar injection. Apollo, on the other hand, would have required significantly more fuel to move from Earth orbit to a translunar trajectory that was anywhere other than near the equator. The Surveyor missions landed near the lunar equator because the Apollo missions would have to.

By: Evolving Squid

Evolving Squid — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:26:11 +0000

I have an old copy of the NG map that is used for the zoom thing. The one thing I noticed about it which is kind of interesting…

The US lunar landings are all bunched relatively near the equator. The Soviet landings are mostly quite far off the equator.

It strikes me that it should be easier, both computationally and energy wise to travel to the moon, choose an orbit, and land near the equator than it would be to go far off the orbital plane. It makes me think that the Soviet technology was probably more advanced than the American technology of the period.

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable would like to comment? Is there a reason beyond “the Russians were showing off”? Or is it not really that much more difficult to orbit and land off the earth-moon orbital plane?

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 15:37:27 +0000

Nice article, BA. I love that direct visual comparison of the Earth and the Moon (I’m just in the middle of re-reading Andrew Chaikin’s “A Man On The Moon” at the moment).

By: Beche-la-mer

Beche-la-mer — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 08:50:00 +0000

I love that topographic map of the far side of the moon on page 21. I’ve stuck it in my visual journal (and blogged about it)… I’m not sure Ralph Roncoli would have expected to inspire an embroidery project with the image!

P.S. I’ve read that Larry Niven story, too.

By: din

din — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 06:14:38 +0000

I’ll rather zoom onto areas in the moon than discuss a judge’s personal views. Alas, the judge’s comment may have more affect on me in the long term.

Now if only I can find that bit of land that I purchased on the moon years ago. If nasa builds on it, I’m going to charge them rent

din

By: drogidy

drogidy — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 06:13:02 +0000

“the latest lunar gravity field, LP150Q, is a 150th spherical harmonic degree and order model”

The latest?!?! What happened to the earlier ones. I miss those.