[amsat-bb] Moon Missions are possible

[MM]

Here is my 2-cents.

Forgot about the rocket contest.  
Building a rocket to fly and land on the moon is
beyond most of our capabilities.  The amateur radio
community has very limited funds and only ~2 million
users world wide.  My suggestion for getting to the
moon is to Piggyback on someone else’s rocket.  Just
like we have been doing for years with Arian and
Leo-sat applications.  Lets plan on going to the moon
without the contest.

NASA is going to the Moon starting in 2010-2015 with
Unmanned landers.
So, why build a rocket and lander when we can hitch a
ride on the NASA lander.
Look at all of the money we can save.  No rocket, No
navigation, No controlled lander. All we have to worry
about is getting a cube sat size box to pass the tough
nasa flight saftey requirments.  And we could have it
running in 5 years or less from the moon.

Keep It Simple Details.

Camera:
Re-use NASA existing lander cameras and use those to
send back to earth a few SSTV or digital images via
Amateur Radio.  When ever possible, reuse existing
hardware, do not redesign the wheel.

Transmitter:	
	A simple Mode B / J Transponder (2 meter and 440),
for SSB/CW. Sorry the moon is too far away for FM.  We
can copy the Analog Transponder circuits for AO-10. 
The A0-10 satellite is still running when it has good
sun, so that proves the concept of the stable Analog
circuit.  Avoid DSP and complex digital circuits,
Radiation will kill them.
I chose Mode B and J becaue this is the most popular
format, its what the hams want!  We do not want GHZ!

Antennas:
	If possible try to reuse the existing antennas from
the Lander.   If not, then stuff on a pair of 9 dBd
Helix loops.

Power:
	Here is the hard part.  I still do not know what the
plans are for providing power to the landers.  If it’s
Nuclear, Great, we will have power for 24/7. Solar
panels would work for 14 days per month. If its
battery only, we are kaput.


As for the contest, If some billion dollar university
wants to take on the project, Great.  The ham
community can design the transmitter and focus on what
we do well and leave the rest to the billion-dollar
university.   

Other deep space Flights:
There are some Russian companies looking into the
possibility of Moon-Flyby-Tourist rockets.  Tourist
can pay $50 million and then fly to the space station.
 After a few days on the space station, they will then
fly to the Moon.  They will not land; they will just
do a few orbits and then return to earth.  Now we will
have the opportunity to put ham gear on the Tourist
rockets and maybe even toss a ham satellite out the
door from Moon Orbit.


73 Miles WF1F

www.marexmg.org



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