Review of recent Chinese mission & others

[odysseus2000]

The UK came up with the Skylon, a ground to orbit to ground based rocket plane:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)

It was a way to get crew and payload to orbit which could then have been the starting point for a UK space station and eventually a mission to the moon.

This has been a classic UK endeavour, a brilliant, world leading idea that was then throttled by various governments, bureaucrats and such and only since Elon got his relandable rocket goings has the project suddenly got more support, but whether it ever gets to a working system, who knows.

Regards,

I've been following the HOTOL\Skylon project, in its various guises, since the 80's. There's undoubtedly some brilliant engineering there. However, I have doubts whether the project will ever be commercially viable partly due to Musk's development of the re-usable first stage Falcons and possibly the Starship. Unfortunately it may be the case that the naysayers who question the single stage to orbit concept are correct.

RC

It is like many other ideas, until it is tried no one can be sure. If one can fly to orbit, return & refly multiple times at relatively low cost it is potentially the ideal service machine for satellites & the possible Dyson sphere folk are actively talking about.

Falcon is still not fully reusable, so a device that is would presumably have some cost & schedule advantages.

Perhaps it was too early. Back in the 80’s there was not the huge space race that is now unfolding.

Dunno, it just seems such a nice concept that may end up in the dust bin & then get developed by someone else.

Regards,

[ursaminortaur]

Chinese samples being opened, but doesn’t look like they opened the capsule with the moon dust, which seems a good idea since it should go through some decontamination and/or virus/bacteria confinement just in case there is something very unexpected in the sample:

Yeah, just imagine if they kicked off another covid...

V8

Far too late to worry about that now. The Earth and the Moon have been exchanging rocks for billions of years and tests have shown that bacteria embedded in such rocks could survive reentry. Also the quarantine procedures on the Apollo missions were ill thought out and wouldn't have prevented any organism from being released on Earth.

https://www.iflscience.com/after-returning-from-the-moon-the-apollo-11-crew-quarantined-then-it-all-went-wrong-69367

"In all probability, the microorganisms that seemed most likely to evolve on the Moon would have infected the astronauts, contaminated their spacecraft, escaped into the Pacific Ocean, and breached containment in the LRL, just as tests on plants – and bacteria apparently returned from the Moon – made headlines across the United States," Degroot writes in the paper. "The quarantine protocol looked like a success only because it was not needed."

There were many problems with the procedure, outlined by Degroot. The capsule used to land the Apollo 11 crew in the Pacific Ocean vented itself as it came down, potentially releasing any microbes into the atmosphere. Then when it touched down in the ocean, it was opened in order for them – and any deadly microbes – to escape into the ocean.

“If lunar organisms capable of reproducing in the Earth’s ocean had been present, we would have been toast,” former NASA planetary protection officer John Rummel told the New York Times.

The astronauts too could have been in danger as they returned from the Moon to their craft.

"Moon dust was everywhere. Because it irritated the skin and lungs, both astronauts slept in their helmets and gloves that night. Removing all the dust was clearly impossible," Degroot wrote. "If it had harbored a pathogen, it would easily have infected the astronauts."

When astronauts returned to Earth, the film they used to take photographs of the Moon was quickly processed for the public. While the films were sent to be decontaminated using ethylene oxide gas, five technicians found that they had been exposed to moon dust while handling it.

NASA, who knew that contamination from alien lifeforms was highly unlikely, also likely knew that there were many failures in their quarantine procedure. By the time it was over, 24 people had been quarantined for potential contamination. Degroot writes that NASA, motivated by beating the Soviets to the Moon, did not take the time to create adequate protections for astronauts, nor Earth.