Category Archives: The Moon

Living in Space, Space Settlement, The Moon

Moontopia contest entrants design lunar colonies

Eleven Magazine sponsored a contest called MOONTOPIA, which invited people to submit designs “for a self-sufficient lunar colony for living, working, researching and space tourism”. There were hundreds of entrants and they chose one winner and 8 runners-up. See descriptions of the nine designs at Moontopia competition-winners show nine visions for lunar architecture – dezeen.com.

The winner was Lunar Test Lab:

The Testlab settlement is based on the idea of the Russian Babushka Doll – one layer protects the next. On the very inside of the settlement are the Pods, which inhabit the private sleeping quarters, the communal rooms, the greenhouse, as well as the experimental labs and the necessary machinery to sustain life on the moon. Between the pods and the outer most protective membrane is the void that acts as yet another protective layer between livable and unlivable space.

Here is one of the runners-up called Platinum City:

 

Inhabitants:

3000 permanent ‘post-human moon citizens’.

Size:

Currently spanning 7km from the city to the space elevator port and growing. Awaiting teraforming landscape update and expansion of the drone membrane artificial atmosphere.

Space participation, Space Radio, The Moon

Amateur radio enthusiast bounces signals off the Moon with balcony antenna

The ARRL ( American Radio Relay League) recently sponsored the “Moon bounce” EME Contest in which contestants demonstrate “Two-way communications via the earth-moon-earth [EME] path on any authorized amateur frequency above 50 MHz”. One entrant did his Moon bouncing from his balcony: Austrian Moonbounce Enthusiast Demonstrates Success with Small-Scale Setup | ARRL

Hannes Fasching, OE5JFL, of Braunau am Inn, Austria, has demonstrated that you don’t need a huge antenna system to operate EME (moonbounce) successfully. Fasching fired up for the October 22-23 weekend of the ARRL EME Contest, using a small horn antenna on 1.2 GHz.

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The 1.2 GHz mesh antenna for EME – Hannes Fasching (OE5JFL)

“Because of other commitments I had only a few hours to be QRV in the first part of the ARRL EME Contest,” he said in a Moon-Net post on October 26. “As tests with my recently built 23-centimeter horn antenna were promising, I decided to give it a try to work some stations.” Fasching placed the horn on his balcony with an 80 W solid-state amplifier.

Operating WSJT, he logged contacts with Switzerland, Russia, Germany, and the Czech Republic. He also heard stations in the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, and Italy on digital modes and in the UK, Czech Republic, Denmark, and Italy on CW.

Fasching, who also has a 7.3-meter homemade dish, has uploaded recordings of some EME signals to his website, along with the results of tests with his small system.

Find more about Fasching’s setup at EME using small antennas – Hannes Fasching (OE5JFL)

Listen to this sci-fi sounding recording by Fasching of the EME signals:

 

Multiple media, Space Science, The Moon

Videos: Moon gems from Japan’s Kaguya spacecraft

Check  out these nice views of the Moon and Earth from the Japanese Kaguya (Selene)  mission: New Gems from the Moon | The Planetary Society –

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Although the mission took place in 2007-2009, only now has

 the Japanese space agency, JAXA, […] publicly released the entire data set from Kaguya’s HDTV cameras. The iconic views are all there…plus some gems that haven’t been widely seen before. One reason they weren’t previously released may be that some of them are “marred” by lens flare and other imperfections, but I think such things lend interesting visual texture and context to the images and videos.

Enjoy a few examples below, then visit the Kaguya HDTV Data Publication System website if you want to explore further.

More than seven years after Kaguya’s planned impact on the lunar surface, it’s good to have these fresh visions, courtesy of the moon’s brave princess.

Contests and Games, Space business, The Moon

Video: Bob Richards and “Moon Express 2017 – A private lunar mission”

In a recent SETI Institute seminar, Bob Richards of Moon Express talked about the company, the Google Lunar XPRIZE, and the business case for commercial activities on the Moon: Moon Express 2017 – A Private Lunar Mission Enabling Science & Commerce – Bob Richards (SETI Talks)

From the caption:

The health of our home planet and the survival of our species will only be secured through the use of space resources and the expansion of Earth’s economic sphere to the Moon and beyond. Creating an off-Earth economy and multi-planet civilization will safeguard the long term prospects of humanity.

Bob Richards is Co-Founder and CEO of Moon Express, Inc. (MoonEx), a privately funded lunar transportation and space resource development company, striving to become the first commercial company to land on the Moon, a challenge only accomplished by 3 superpowers in history. Located at Cape Canaveral, Moon Express has contracted for 3 launches to the Moon with Rocket Lab between 2017 and 2020, is partnered with NASA under its Lunar CATALYST program, and is one of only two teams in the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition with a verified launch contract.

In this talk Bob Richards outlines Moon Express and it plans to develop lunar resources, and how this goal has set in motion technological, political, legal and regulatory precedents that will allow humanity to rationally and peacefully embrace and develop the Moon as the world’s eighth continent.

Space Arts, Space Models, The Moon

Kickstarter: “MOON – the most accurate lunar globe”

Here’s a cool Kickstarter project that has reached nearly three times its goal with 3 weeks left: MOON – the most accurate lunar globe by Oscar Lhermitte and Kudu — Kickstarter

The MOON globe aims for accuracy:

MOON is unlike traditional lunar globes that uses 2D photographs or illustrations of the Moon. 

1. it is a truly accurate 1/20 million replica of the Moon featuring all the craters, elevation and ridges in accurate 3D.

2. it has a ring of LED lights that revolves around the globe, constantly illuminating the correct face of the moon and recreating the lunar phases as seen from Earth.

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