Human habitat in outer space

China is going to try to send humans to the moon.

40 years later.

But it will take a major effort to get there, and China has the fastest computers in the world. They have set no time table, they are being realistic.

Compare that to the speed (and ease) with which we went to the moon. Apollo 10 returned to mother earth May 21, 1969. Apollo 11 lifted off July 16,1969. That's 56 days. That's all it took in 1969 to get Apollo 11 off the ground. Boy, it sure was easy to go to the moon in 1969. The white paper that was just released by the Chinese was 5 years in the writing; and that was just to look at such a huge undertaking.

The USA announced it would return to the moon in 2005. What was the timetable for that mission? 15 years... and after five years we were way behind schedule and scrapped the whole project. But it only took 56 days the first time we went there. Why the huge discrepancy?

The answer is simple... this time, we are looking at REALLY sending humans to the moon; and it is still beyond our reach. Building a habitat to orbit the earth at a height of 200 miles is quite an achievement, but building a habitat that actually leaves low earth orbit, penetrates the Van Allen belts and endures total submergence in the solar wind and rays requires vastly greater technological advances if you want the humans to live. We aren't even ready to handle the radiation poisoning. Let alone the micrometeorites that buzz along at 50,000 mph and faster. Then there's the matter of heat buildup... as long as you orbit the earth, you cycle between the sun and the shadow of the earth; heat is not a problem... but once you leave low earth orbit, you are in the sun and only the sun the entire trip. Once you penetrate the Van Allen belts, you are in the solar wind the same way. That means heat and radiation poisoning, non-stop.

Okay, we have never been there. How do you know that? Easy. None of the Apollo craft had any cooling for the cabin. Three inch skin of aluminum absorbs sun rays, and very quickly reaches a temperature of 250 degrees F. That is no sweat for a robotic mission, the aluminum skin can handle 250 degrees F and there is no transmission of heat where there is no air... so the equipment inside the cabin is perfectly cool. But on the Apollo missions there was a pressurized cabin, so you have convex heat of 250 degrees F building up in the cabin with no way to dissipate that heat... and no cooling system. Water boils at 220 degrees F. The human body is 90% water. There is no heat exchange with a total vacuum, so there's nothing taking that 250 degrees F off the outside of the aluminum skin of the craft.

You could argue that there are ways to cool the cabin, but all such argument is rhetorical. The bottom line is Apollo cabins had no cooling system. Why not? Because NASA circumvented it by pretending that space travel to the moon was a cold event. Look at the Apollo 13 mission; they had to shut down cabin systems and the result was a chilly cabin in the 40's; the astronauts had to put their suits on for warmth.

The day after Nixon signed the document ending the Vietnam war, he cancelled the entire Apollo program on a dime. Apollo 18 mission was already completely purchased, everything was built, paid for, and ready to go. The crews were already selected and trained and ... weren't needed to distract the kids from the war anymore.