[amsat-bb] Re: ILN... Is this our future ride to the moon? MM

[James French]

On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 05:53 -0700, MM wrote:
> Yes Exactly!
> 
> We need to form a proposal team that can evaluate the data to find out
> if an EME-Repeater is viable.
> 
> Time is short.

One thing, Miles.

Frank Bauer commented:
On another topic, WRT the Lunar ILN, if you read the solicitation, they
are discussing *15 kg* payloads.  And these need to accomplish some
scientific objective to further lunar exploration.   Given this, I do
not think the ILN is a viable AMSAT project.

What would be the SCIENTIFIC payload that we would be providing?

I know that I mentioned in previous replies that we MIGHT be able to
land a chance on something that A government would be doing if we could
MAYBE provide a communications package for a craft. Going by Frank's
statement and putting it into the context of what we are planning, I
would NOT be surprised that we got turned down because we are not prov-
iding something that contributes to the SCIENTIFIC nature of the
mission. The government probably ALREADY has a contractor to build and
provide the communications package(s) for these missions.

Is there anything else that is being proposed that we can get in on the
ground floor to provide this knowledge and equipment? I haven't seen
anything and personally I didn't even know about the ILN even.

I am NOT trying to be the one to burst the bubble here. This subject
HAS been brought up a number of times over the past four years of putt-
ing something on the lunar surface. Each time, the answers and suggest-
ions have gotten better as we have gotten more people that know what it
takes climb on board the discussion. Hopefully this time this discussion
will get past just that, discussion, and progress to an Idea of Concept
stage that can then be taken to the next step, finding a suitable candi-
date for this.

James W8ISS