Artemis, the conquest of the moon.

I remind you that the Artemis mission is an international program led by NASA, I mention it because the headlines always talk only about NASA, but behind it there are many nations and behind it there are many engineers from different places and also a lot of public budget, that is why we are all interested in how this project is going, because we are all embarked on it or at least a large part of humanity.

The launch of the Artemis Mission will be very soon, for next Wednesday, to be exact, it would be the first of the launch windows in the month of April, April 1, the specific window opens on April 1 and would extend until April 6, it is not that all of those days are available to launch the rocket, each launch window lasts about 2 hours.

But why is the Moon circling the Earth and only approximately 384,000 km away? Why can't rockets be launched at any time? Why are there such specific windows? It can be understood that there are launch windows for missions to other planets, because the orbit of the Moon planet in particular, it has to be in a suitable position to be able to make the trip in the shortest time possible and using the least amount of fuel possible, but in the case of the Moon is circling us, it should be easy and in theory it is easy, there are a lot of launch windows, from April 1 to April 6 there is one every day.

The problem is that you have to perfectly align several things, the position of the Moon in its orbit, the rotation of the Earth, the geometry of the safe return trajectory, the energy needs of the Orion spacecraft, because it also has its fuel limitations and the operational limitations of the rocket that is going to launch the spacecraft and that has to load fuel and cannot be fully loaded and ready to launch at any time, these types of rockets need to be loaded and placed in their position and can only be on the launch pad for a while. Certainly, if you do not have to take them back to the hangar or unload the tanks again, they are quite complex operations. I hope that in the future they simplify all this, which would make launches into space much cheaper.

In addition, NASA held the Ignition event on Tuesday, March 24, at the agency's headquarters and this event was designed literally, “to motivate industrial partners,” was what it said in one of the texts, and also to motivate NASA personnel and to make public opinion aware of the multiple initiatives that are involved in this entire Artemis program and in Returning to the Moon to stay and establish a base there.

Which also includes a spaceship project with an atomic engine, the energy generation would be through a fission reactor, not fusion, this ship or nuclear ship, they also call it that, was initially designed to travel to the moon, and they had been evolving for many years. What happens is that they have now presented it to make a trip to Mars, to be fair, the project would be super unnecessary because it would reduce the travel time to Mars, but of course, you have to do the initial mission to see how it works.

Another thing that was discussed at this event was to eliminate a project that was already underway, the lunar space station, which to be fair I always thought was not necessary and was also a danger to the astronauts, this station in the architecture of the trips to the moon that the Artemis program had planned and which by the way Europe had already built a module, specifically it was built in Italy, that module was already ready, at least the exterior structure, it would have to be equipped inside, what the module essentially was was already ready, in that architecture, that space station would be orbiting the Moon, in fact, NASA already carried out a mission to send a ship to locate the best orbit to place that orbital station on the Moon and it would serve as an entry port, that is, the ships would arrive at the lunar station and there the astronauts would board the lander, which could be from SpaceX, the Starship lander, or the one from Blue Origin, and then they would go down to the Moon, then, on the Moon, the lander would load with fuel, it is assumed that in an advanced base where fuel could already be manufactured and would take the astronauts to that orbiter, to that lunar space station.

It would also serve for research, to control other robots from orbit to manage and explore the moon, etc., it would make sense, I don't see it at all, in fact, my opinion is that it exposed the astronauts to more risks, such as weightlessness, because whoever was in that station would be exposed to weightlessness and also to cosmic radiation and that was not necessary, the ship can arrive, land, load fuel or whatever, it could be done easily without needing that lunar station. And in the lunar base, on the lunar surface, the astronauts would be much better protected, they would suffer somewhat, on the Moon there is not much gravity, it is one sixth of Earth's gravity, it is not ideal for human health, but it is much better than having nothing and we already know that in the long term weightlessness is very bad for human health.

And in addition, the lunar base is supposed to be covered with a layer of regolith, in fact, the part of the lunar base has been very well worked on by the European Space Agency, which is within the Artemis program, the design could be built autonomously as much as possible, that is, we would not see astronauts with pick and shovel, we would not see them, they would be robots and autonomous systems, it is assumed that this lunar base would be covered by lunar regolith, which is the dust and rocks on the surface of the moon and that it would provide the base with 50% of the protection against cosmic rays.

Keep in mind that the cosmic rays in a base on the moon reach you only from above, while in a station in space they reach you from all sides, if you give me the choice of a mission in the lunar space station or in the lunar base, I always prefer the lunar base.

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! The truth will set us free and science is the one that is closest to the truth!

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