A satellite put into orbit around the moon will stay there, right? Nope! Most lunar orbits aren’t stable enough for a satellite to stay in orbit. Why is that? The answer is something called Lunar Mascons. Mascons are “mass concentrations”. It’s a region of the moon’s crust that contains a different concentration of mass than […]
Tycho Base – How was it built?
In the world of Belitopia, Tycho Base was built as a series of four “pods”. These four pods were connected via short tunnels between them in a straight line format with two pods acting as the end caps of the line. Each pod was approximately rectangular in surface area, and had a flat underbelly with […]
Apollo Lunar Base
What about a permanent base on the moon? We’re starting to think about that now…in 2020. That’s 50 years after we first landed on the moon, and some 46 years since we last set foot on the moon. That’s too long… Why did this happen? We lost interest in the moon and after Apollo 17 […]
For All Mankind
For All Mankind is the new Apple TV+ show starting in the fall of 2019. It talks about the Apollo space program under the assumption that the Soviet Union beat us to the moon. First, a bit of a warning: there will be minor spoilers here for the new Apple TV+ show “For All Mankind”. […]
Skylab
The Space Race wasn’t just about who could get to the moon first. There were other battlefields where the space race was fought. One of those battlefields was in building a permanent manned presence in space in the form of a space station in low earth orbit. Such a station would not only be a […]
The Venus Flyby p2
This week is the conclusion to the two episode series on The Venus Flyby, in the world of Belitopia.
The Venus Flyby
Among the many missions that came out of the Apollo Applications Program, one of the most amazing was the Venus Flyby mission. Imagine, using the same Apollo technology that brought us to the moon, for a long duration mission to fly by our nearest planetary neighbor, the planet Venus.
Apollo Applications Program
The Apollo space program was much more than a set of missions to the moon. It was also a technology platform. A technology platform that provided the basis for future space programs.
Apollo +
The Apollo space program. The quintessential peak of human kinds manned space program. The funding that went into this program was astronomical, around $120 billion dollars, adjusted for inflation. But once we landed on the moon, we lost interest in space. With the reduced interest in space came reduced funding…and our future in space suffered. […]