Ms. Sanchez, now that you and your girlfriends are astronauts, how do you think we should locate and quantify sources of water on the moon?
Oh that’s simple. First you need to have enough fuel to get there. We didn’t have enough on the NS-31 so we’d need more. Then you just fly low enough to see the blue color of the water, which is easy since the Moon is so much smaller than the Earth. Then as soon as you spot it you radio back to Earth so they know when you’re directly over it and they can mark it on their maps.
Wouldn’t you need enough fuel to return to Earth too?
Well yes I suppose, but bringing along some fishing line and hooks and bait would probably be better since they wouldn’t weigh as much, which would make flying close to the ground easier. We’d have plenty to eat and we could just wait until we were picked up!
We’d need a camping stove and tartar sauce too of course.
What if the water was on the far side?
[laughing] That’s funny! How about: “The cows can’t fish because they don’t have opposable thumbs.”
Artemis III can’t go until the SpaceX HLS Starship is ready. Assuring its readiness will involve at least one unmanned test landing prior to Artemis III’s departure. The obvious way to regain lost ground – literally – in lunar “water” researches is to send VIPER as cargo on the HLS test mission along with one or more of the “Grace” hoppers, one of which was lost on the most recent Intuitive Machines mission. Also send along at least a pair of Optimus robots, dressed in the latest model of the SpaceX EVA suit, to put VIPER and the hoppers onto the surface.
One would, admittedly, be risking VIPER and the hoppers on the first landing of a previously untested lander, but that was always the plan for VIPER anyway. And the first hopper sent didn’t benefit from being on the second mission of its lander type. All one has to assume here is that SpaceX can match Firefly’s success, just at a much more massive scale.
Stopped reading when I hit Artemis. Doesn’t matter because Artemis will never launch, let alone land on the moon. The life of the program is now measured in days, if not hours.
The US could partner with China to put the first Dollar General Store on the Moon!
Ms. Sanchez, now that you and your girlfriends are astronauts, how do you think we should locate and quantify sources of water on the moon?
Oh that’s simple. First you need to have enough fuel to get there. We didn’t have enough on the NS-31 so we’d need more. Then you just fly low enough to see the blue color of the water, which is easy since the Moon is so much smaller than the Earth. Then as soon as you spot it you radio back to Earth so they know when you’re directly over it and they can mark it on their maps.
Wouldn’t you need enough fuel to return to Earth too?
Well yes I suppose, but bringing along some fishing line and hooks and bait would probably be better since they wouldn’t weigh as much, which would make flying close to the ground easier. We’d have plenty to eat and we could just wait until we were picked up!
We’d need a camping stove and tartar sauce too of course.
What if the water was on the far side?
[laughing] That’s funny! How about: “The cows can’t fish because they don’t have opposable thumbs.”
Artemis III can’t go until the SpaceX HLS Starship is ready. Assuring its readiness will involve at least one unmanned test landing prior to Artemis III’s departure. The obvious way to regain lost ground – literally – in lunar “water” researches is to send VIPER as cargo on the HLS test mission along with one or more of the “Grace” hoppers, one of which was lost on the most recent Intuitive Machines mission. Also send along at least a pair of Optimus robots, dressed in the latest model of the SpaceX EVA suit, to put VIPER and the hoppers onto the surface.
One would, admittedly, be risking VIPER and the hoppers on the first landing of a previously untested lander, but that was always the plan for VIPER anyway. And the first hopper sent didn’t benefit from being on the second mission of its lander type. All one has to assume here is that SpaceX can match Firefly’s success, just at a much more massive scale.
Stopped reading when I hit Artemis. Doesn’t matter because Artemis will never launch, let alone land on the moon. The life of the program is now measured in days, if not hours.