Actually
Rather than a drunk trying to say Brexit, Beresheet sounds more like the result of ursine activity in the woods
Canada has lunar dreams as Germany worries about what lies beneath
Rebooting robots, lunar robot arms and a rocky path to Martian drilling joy. It's last week in Space. While the world had its eyes on SpaceX’s new Dragon spacecraft, or was getting ready to light the candles on Apollo 9’s 50th birthday cake, Israel was casting a worried look at its Beresheet lander, as it continued its way …
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Wednesday 6th March 2019 14:28 GMT Daedalus
Re: Extend perigee?
Yes exactly. One burns the rocket when deepest in the gravity well, but the object is to raise the height of the farthest point in the orbit: the apogee. At some point in this particular scheme the apogee becomes the aposelene and then the process has to work in reverse to set up a parking orbit around the moon, from which the landing can be initiated. In a gravity well, kinetic energy is an important quantity, so you add velocity where your velocity is already high to take advantage of the velocity squared relation.
So text correction please, O appropriately named Mr. Speed.
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Wednesday 6th March 2019 20:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: DOOM - The Moon mission
"Let me guess, if it makes it to the moon they will take credit for the mission (although they are just hitching a ride to a landing, nothing extraordinary in that)."
Right - like the Apollo spacecraft system (CM, SM, LM) wasn't extraordinary because it just hitched a ride on a Saturn V. Okay, that job was some orders of magnitude harder, but still: Beresheet is a combined spacecraft and lunar lander: of course it's got to hitch a ride on something to get into orbit. Doesn't mean it's not impressive just because its developers didn't also develop a launcher.
The Beresheet spacecraft is now operating in Earth orbit using its own rocket engine to travel to lunar orbit, and then - with luck - will use the same engine to perform a landing. I know I couldn't design anything to do that.
Even if the spacecraft just achieves lunar orbit and goes splat on landing, I'd say it'd still be an extraordinary achievement taking everything into account. It takes a lot of engineering to turn an idea like "Let's build a craft to travel from LEO to land on the moon" into actual hardware which works, especially if you've got no prior experience and a very tight budget as in this case.
Yes I know they're using a modified existing engine design (originally developed by Royal Ordnance and now made by Nammo at the former Rocket Propulsion Establishment in Westcott) and I expect lots of other more or less off-the-shelf parts - it's still a cleverly done bit of kit worthy of a lot of respect even at this stage of the mission.
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Wednesday 6th March 2019 14:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Canada has to pay for it's miliatry protection
Canada has to pay for it's military "protection" by the USA in many ways.
Often it's by giving political support for whatever international venture the USA thinks needs the appearance of a coalition, or by arresting those thinking that visiting Canada would be safer than visiting the USA.
But the USA also demands money, so Canada buys almost exclusively American military equipment, even if the equipment isn't suitable or Canada could design and build it's own. And Canada has to fund various projects including NASA projects.
Of all the forms of payments Canada makes our Space Program has the most public support and gives many Canadians pride and hope, regardless of naming conventions, so I think it's the best of all the choices.
Personally I would have called it Space Hook or The Justin Grabber or maybe The Hadfield Reach Around but the name doesn't really matter. Just being there reminds Canadians of their many space firsts.
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Wednesday 6th March 2019 17:50 GMT Arthur the cat
Re: Canada has to pay for it's military protection
Canada has to pay for it's military "protection" by the USA in many ways.
Given the geography, the only country likely to invade Canada is the USA, so that's rather a protection racket. "Nice country you've got here, be a shame if it got broken."
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Friday 8th March 2019 14:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Canada and Russia border
Look again, as far as those Canadians aware of Canada's claims Russia is too close for comfort.
The water between us has proven to not be much of a barrier when it comes to Russian incursions into areas claimed by Canada. So much so that at one time the Russians had better ocean floor topography of some of our key water ways, far better than the Canadian military.
We've been assured that is no longer the case but that's what our government claimed before.
BTW: Canada also had and deployed nuclear weapons against the Russians. I'll leave out the search terms but if someone is interested, and has a few hours, those incidents and the lies told to Canadians at the time makes for an interesting story.
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Wednesday 6th March 2019 20:41 GMT CountCadaver
Re: Canada has to pay for it's military protection
There's a reason the US has so many military bases close to the Canadian border, mainly as they for years were paranoid that Canada might invade, backed by the rest of the Empire.
They even drew up a plan to invade Canada, using colour code names blue for themselves and red for us in the UK, whilst not naming us directly. At the time they considered the plan, they reckoned they would have get it over and done quickly as "red will rapidly reinforce" and at the time we had one of the top militaries in the world and there was a strong potential Blue might not have come off too well if we'd chucked the whole empire at them.....
It always beggars belief that we chose to not to give the 13 colonies 1 or 2 MPs each to stave off an independence drive, 26 vs 650, or even why we didn't abandon this sodden cold island in favour of North America or even Australia.....the mind boggles.....for starters you'd stick yourself nice and far away from your main threats at the time (France, Holy Roman Empire, Spain) and gain a vast amount of land and resources
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Thursday 7th March 2019 14:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: USA military bases along Canadian border
The USA has invaded Canada, repeatedly.
The threat of yet another invasion was one of the two main reasons for the northern British Colonies to Confederate. The other was reciprocity, to avoid economic domination by the USA.
But Confederation would have never happened if Britain had not made it clear they wanted nothing to do with Canada and would not come to our defense should the USA invade again.
Shoulda, coulda. even at the time there were those who suggested that the British North American possessions should be kept and secured but India was more profitable and was considered far less likely to want independence.
As a result Britain gave up the many and increasingly valuable resources contained in what is today Canada.
I'm sure the USA appreciates that, Which is a good thing because it appears most Canadians don't. Heck we pay made in USA prices, in USD, for our own resources and products and can't see why anyone would consider that a problem.
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Thursday 7th March 2019 12:49 GMT password1234567890
Agree that the Canadarm3 moniker lacks a certain je ne sais pas. I propose colouring the arm gold and going with "bra d'or" instead, the golden arm for the francophobes. I suppose for my fellow insecure about our identity Canadians we could call it like a film sequel: Canadarm: bra d'or. It's gotta be better than Smarmy McSpaceArm, no?
Side note: there was a strong ale in Canada back in the day called Brador but the fact that you could get hammered on 2/3 as many shouldn't be too much of an issue in the current discussion (that I'm no doubt having with myself).
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
