In recent times, there has been a lot of talk everywhere about the possibility of returning to the moon with a manned mission. There is however some drawbacks to this concept and one of the largest is getting there. Many people wonder why we have yet to return to the moon, while at the same time they fail to look at the current space shuttle design. The space shuttle is a large cargo ship, it has plenty of fuel holding capabilities to launch a full-sized bus into orbit, but it lacks the ability to reach the moon. It is just way too big. While there has been much research on the concept of returning to the moon’s surface, everything points to the return of the rocket.
The new NASA lunar lander which is in development stages now is known as the Altair and it is part of the project that has since been entitled as the Constellation Program. This new lander is capable of seating 4 astronauts comfortably for a 1 week stay on the surface of the moon. However this lander cannot reach the moon alone without the help of a rocket. We are not talking about the space shuttle, but rather a rocket almost similar to the style currently used by Russia and China.
Working in conjunction with the Orion spacecraft, the Ares V rocket will launch the crew of four from Cape Canaveral. Once in a low Earth orbit, the lander will then rendezvous with the Orion who will take them to the moon and of course back.
The Ares V rocket is a two stage rocket that lifts off from a vertical position and is capable of carrying 188 tons of cargo. However when this rocket is used for the Constellation Program it will only be able to carry 71 tons because of added equipment and fuel.
The goal of course is that the Altair is launched and lands on the moon’s surface by 2018. There are many reasons why we need to return to the moon, and it has absolutely nothing to do with cheese. Matter of fact, there is one item that composes almost the moon’s entire surface, which is very rare here on Earth and that is Hellium-3 or He-3 for short. This item is a very light-weight non-radioactive isotope of the Helium atom which has 2 protons and a single neutron. It is believed that if one can get a substantial amount of this He-3, they can create nuclear fusion which would have absolutely no radioactive side-effects.