Short Summary Of the Lunar Program

-
Let's try to put it together the first amazing Moon race (let's say up to 1976), before I will continue to browse other fascinating topics.

The really first note we have got in the article History of the solar wind, but the actual real success was the first flyby achieved by Soviet Luna 1.  Soviet lunar program consisted of Luna and Zond projects. They were unmanned programs mostly to orbit or impact the Moon. Luna 9 achieved the first soft landing on the Moon. 

 The early missions of Pioneer program was the first American unmanned mission directed to the Moon. That missions were followed by Ranger program impacting the Moon. The next project was Surveyor program, which was the first project to achieve soft landings and were important for Apollo program to map the surface for landings.

The first man in space on the orbital flight was the Soviet cosmonaut Jurij Gagarin (on April 21, 1961) . And the first one day long space flight was achieved by Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov on August 1961. The first American project with astronaut onboard was Mercury program. That was followed by more complicated project Gemini program.

Not the last one but one the biggest step in the history of humankind is the landing of human being on the Moon Apollo program.

And that I would call it as the beginning. I was hoping that I will experience in my life something similar to Apollo program, but there is still some hope.

I will shortly continue with Apollo-Soyuz Test project, Skylab, Soyuz, Mariner program. Before I will get to the recent and future projects and hopes.

In the end I would like to show you my favourite picture from Apollo 11 (credit to NASA).

NASA: Apollo 11 Earth rise

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Apollo 8 delta-v calculation

-
Image
The Apollo 8 Apollo 8 mission launched on December 21, 1968, and it was the second crewed spaceflight mission flown in the Apollo space program. The first mission, Apollo 7, stayed in Earth orbit. Apollo 8 mission was the first ever mission to leave the Earth's gravitational sphere, and to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times and returned home. It went without the landing. However, the mission was the first mission to see and take a photo of the far side of the Moon.  The mission consisted of three astronauts: Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders.  Apollo 8 was the third flight and the first crewed launch of the Saturn V rocket.  Earthrise: Taken from Apollo 8; source: Wiki When building a rocket, it is a good thing to do staging. Staging basically means throwing away big, expensive parts of your rocket while the rest continues on the way up. The main advantage is not to carry dead weight.  When one has multiple powered stages, the question a...
Read more

Exercise on single stage vs. two-stage rocket

-
Image
Exercise: 1. Single stage rocket:  Before a rocket begins to burn fuel, the rocket has a mass of  m r,i =2.81×10 7 kg, of which the mass of the fuel is  m f,i =2.46×10 7 kg. The fuel is burned at a constant rate with total burn time is 510 s and ejected at a speed v e = 3000 m/s relative to the rocket. If the rocket starts from rest in empty space, what is the final speed of the rocket after all the fuel has been burned? What we know: initial rocket mass m r,i =2.81×10 7 kg initial mass of the fuel m f,i =2.46×10 7 kg t = 510 s v e  = 3000 m/s So, we can calculate the dry mass of the rocket m r,d =m r,i -m f,i =0.35×10 7 kg. The mass ratio is then R = m r,i  /m r,d =8.03. So, the final speed of the rocket is then: V r,f =Δv r =v e lnR=6250m/s. 2. Two-stage rocket:  Now, we have similar example, the same rocket as in the previous example, but the fuel will be burnt in two stages ejecting the fuel in each of the stages at the same relative speed (v e  =...
Read more

Specific impulse

-
Image
Specific impulse  I was many times using the term specific impulse. So, let's speak about it in more detail.    Specific impulse (usually abbreviated I sp ) is a measure of how efficiently a reaction mass engine, such as a rocket using propellant or a jet engine using fuel, generates thrust. A propulsion system which has a higher specific impulse uses the mass of the propellant more efficiently than a propulsion system with lower specific impulse. Now, in the case of a rocket, this means less propellant is needed for a given delta-v, so that the vehicle attached to the engine can more efficiently gain altitude and velocity. For all vehicles specific impulse (impulse per unit weight-on-Earth of propellant) in seconds can be defined by the following equation: Thrust is force, the thrust obtained from the engine (newtons or pounds force), g 0 is the standard gravity, which is nominally the gravity at Earth's surface (m/s2), I sp is the specific impulse measured (secon...
Read more