Stealth Pilot wrote:

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 05:56:32 -0600, nick hull wrote:


In article ,
Stealth Pilot wrote:


navigation to the moon is a piece of cake. launch just before midnight
on a moonlit night and have the robot navigator stay focussed on the
large polarised dot of light in the sky and head for it.

Won't work; you cannot go directly to the moon, you have to go around
the earth because of gravity and the earth's rotation. In any case, it
will take several days to get there

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/


can you tell me why a vehicle making a steady 100knots cant get to the
moon?
oil tankers traverse the world at 12 knots.

ok the full plot is ...launch on a moon lit night. get a stable
ascent, lock in the inputs from the stabilising gyros as setpoints.
proceed in a straight line. when the clock indicates that the moon is
almost in position each day scan the forward sky for the moon.
compute the course correction, adjust, lock in the gyro inputs as
setpoints. proceed in a straight line.
uniform motion in a straight line requires no thrust.
you merely need thrust to adjust for gravity.
toward the moon adjust course to chase the trajectory with a view to
getting almost to lunar speed.
since the moon isnt spinning it shouldnt be too hard to arrange an
intercept sorta like driving in a parallel lane to another car on the
freeway.

actually, rather than having a smart arsed tilt at you I'd appreciate
some comments on what would be actually be needed.

Stealth Pilot
free men live in societies where guns arent needed.




IIRC escape velocity from earth orbit is about 24,ooo mph (minimum)

100 kts won't even stay in orbit. That's up around 18,000.

While it may not make sense, launching straight up will not put
you into orbit. Nor is it a workable way to get to to moon.

The trick here is to aim for a point about 50 miles in front of where
the moon will be - when you get there. Which is all done with
computers!

Just like Apollo did, boost into earth orbit, TLI (Trans Lunar
Injection) takes you out towards the moon, course corrections as
required, then a braking burn to lunar orbit.

THEN you still have to get down, but without squishy people aboard
that might be easier that it was back then. A big burn to drop the
speed and a multi-balloon air bag to absorb the landing impact.