The American company Blue Origin – founded in 2000 – is working on a new transport module to take humans to the Moon. The founder of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos (also president of Amazon), revealed the design of what has been baptized as Blue Moon and that will take three years to build. His intention coincides with the challenge of the US Government to return to the Moon by 2024. Could it be the alternative if NASA does not arrive on time? It is clear that the conquest of space has more and more contenders.
The billionaire showed the model of the ship with which he intends to take scientific equipment to the Earth’s natural satellite, beginning with these words: “We are running out of power on Earth. It is time to go back to the Moon. This time to stay there. “
During the presentation, Bezos laid out the details of the Blue Moon spacecraft and all the ways it can be used to explore Earth’s natural satellite.
From new technology to possible manned missions on the lunar surface, there’s a lot of meat on the spit .
What is Blue Moon?
It is a relatively large lunar lander designed to deliver payloads of scientists, lunar vehicles, and even astronauts to the lunar surface. It will also be able to deploy small satellites in lunar orbit as an “additional mission”.
Looking at the images, we can’t help but remember NASA’s old Apollo lunar modules, but of course there are some notable differences. The most obvious, aside from the pretty design, is the huge spherical fuel tank with the words “Blue Moon” printed in large blue letters.
It also has much smaller runways at the bottom of the ship. At the time, Apollo lander engineers were concerned that the lunar soil would be so soft that the lander would sink too far, but today we know that the ground is more solid than they thought.
Another of its differences is that Blue Moon is a fully autonomous robotic spacecraft with built-in mechanisms to drop off scientific equipment, including lunar vehicles, without the need for human intervention. It also includes a star-tracking system and a flash LIDAR device that will allow the spacecraft to navigate autonomously by observing stars in space and features on the lunar surface. “There is no GPS on the moon,” Bezos said.
What is the ship like?
Blue Moon has a 7 meter payload compartment that will stand about 4 meters high with its four landing legs fully deployed. When fully loaded with fuel, the lander weighs approximately 15 metric tons.
By the time it reaches the lunar surface, having burned most of its fuel, the lander will weigh only about 3 metric tons.
By comparison, the lunar modules from the Apollo missions that took astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s were 7 meters tall and weighed 4.3 metric tons without rocket propellant. It will be able to load up to 6.5 tons in a heavier version.
Although the Blue Moon lunar lander is designed to make one-way trips to the Moon, it would also allow round trips for astronauts . Once the astronauts surface, they could, hypothetically, return to NASA’s Lunar Orbital Platform, a proposed lunar space station that would orbit the moon, though Bezos has not offered details on where the crew members of the Blue Moon once they left the Moon.
Be that as it may, Blue Origin is working on two other major projects: New Shepard , a suborbital rocket to take tourists into space; and New Glenn , a partially reusable launch rocket.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, soon echoed this announcement with a particular joke on his social networks: an edited photo of the news about Bezos’ presentation of his rocket in which instead of reading Blue Moon would say “Blue Balls” and write “” Oh, stop bugging Jeff, “including a wink in the tweet.
Regarding the plan of the United States government to advance the arrival to the Moon by 2024, Bezos commented: “I love it. It is the right thing to do. We can help meet that calendar .” It seems that the competition is served.
Image credit: Blue Origin
