M0000n
April 11, 2018 3:15 AM Subscribe
Tour of the Moon in 4K (slyt)
It's like IMAX, but at home.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:16 AM on April 11, 2018
posted by cjorgensen at 6:16 AM on April 11, 2018
I love this! I didn't know about the isolated boulder perched on the central peak of Tycho; that's poetic and amazing. How long might it be before a human being could reach that boulder and take samples? Since the 60s, we've had the technology to go to the moon and walk or drive around, but an EVA suit is surely too bulky to climb a mountain before you'd run out of oxygen, and the summit looks too uneven to land anything. Even a Curiosity-style rover would have difficulty getting up to the peak.
The best solution I (neither a scientist nor, god help us, an engineer) can think of would be to build some kind of "spring-heeled Jack" device into your EVA suit, and ascend the mountain in a series of mechanically assisted jumps. Which would be fun, but risky: you'd need a way to land safely, and a way to steer while aloft, and a fallback of some kind in case your spring-loaded leaping device got clogged with lunar dust.
I would like to see further lunar exploration in my lifetime; I dearly want to know more about what's up there.
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:52 AM on April 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
The best solution I (neither a scientist nor, god help us, an engineer) can think of would be to build some kind of "spring-heeled Jack" device into your EVA suit, and ascend the mountain in a series of mechanically assisted jumps. Which would be fun, but risky: you'd need a way to land safely, and a way to steer while aloft, and a fallback of some kind in case your spring-loaded leaping device got clogged with lunar dust.
I would like to see further lunar exploration in my lifetime; I dearly want to know more about what's up there.
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:52 AM on April 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
How much do I love the nod to 2001's TMA-1 ("its origin and purpose still a total mystery") in the narrator's description of the hundred-meter boulder lying atop Tycho crater?
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:31 AM on April 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:31 AM on April 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'll take a stab at answering that: "quite a bit"?
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:23 PM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:23 PM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
How long might it be before a human being could reach that boulder and take samples?
It should actually be easier to reach the top of that boulder than almost any other point within Tycho, because it's so much closer to us.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:45 PM on April 11, 2018
It should actually be easier to reach the top of that boulder than almost any other point within Tycho, because it's so much closer to us.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:45 PM on April 11, 2018
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Still looking for the golf balls, though.
posted by MtDewd at 6:16 AM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]