U.S. company plans to send inflatable hotel to moon
Where was your last vacation? Grandma’s house for Easter? Disney World? A foreign country? How about traveling to another world?
Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance announced plans to send an inflatable habitat to low lunar orbit within five years. Bigelow, the habitat builder, has experience in such endeavors. In 2006, it launched Genesis I, an inflatable habitat in Earth orbit, a proof-of-concept test intended to last five years that is still in orbit. A year later, they launched Genesis II, also still in Earth orbit. Last year, NASA helped test their inflatable modules by allowing one to attach to the International Space Station as a test of actual human occupation. NASA plans to keep it at least through 2020 to allow for long-term testing of the unit. United Launch Alliance builds the big rockets necessary to put the unit in orbit.
The lunar unit, designated B330, has about half the space of the International Space Station. It may serve as housing for NASA astronauts as they study the moon for extended periods of time, preparing for potential lunar colonies.
NASA and other space agencies around the world recently generated new interest in studying the moon and the universe without the radio interference prevalent on Earth. China announced plans to create a colony on the lunar far side for scientific research. A Japanese lunar orbiter, “Selene,” recently discovered a giant, underground lava tube on the moon, large enough to fit a good-sized city. Such a location would protect humans from the dangers of radiation so prevalent in space that make the moon’s surface so dangerous.
Bigelow Aerospace also plans to the use the B330 as a must-see tourist location, a lunar orbit hotel. Although they have not announced travel costs or daily room rates, they do promise the most exhilarating views from your room window and amazing zero-gravity tennis.
November highlights: If you have a clear view of the eastern horizon with no trees, buildings or hills in your way, you may witness an interesting astronomical sight on the Nov. 13. The two brightest nighttime objects not counting the moon are Venus and Jupiter. These two planetary luminaries will be separated by only half the moon’s diameter. They will be quite low and float in the morning twilight, so locating them won’t be easy. You might even need a pair of binoculars to spot the pair. Astronomers call such an event a conjunction, and this is the closest Venus-Jupiter conjunction for the next five years.
The Leonid meteor shower occurs on the night of Nov. 17, Friday night to Saturday morning. Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through the debris of material trailing a comet. The Leonids comes from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Unlike most meteor showers, the debris from Tempel-Tuttle is heavily concentrated just behind the comet, which has a 33-year orbit around the sun. The Leonid showers that occur just after the comet passes by are incredible. The record meteor shower was the Leonid shower of 1966, which produced meteors at the estimated rate equivalent to 150,000 per hour for a period of time. We have to wait 15 years before we get another chance to see such a sight. This Leonid shower is expected to produce only about 20 meteors per hour. This is also the night of new moon, so there will be little natural light pollution. Your best bet of seeing the display is to watch between midnight and 6 a.m. and get away from city light pollution.
Planet visibility report: As the month begins, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus will sit close to the sun and be difficult to catch in the twilight. Jupiter and Venus rise in the east just a bit before the sun while Mercury sets less than an hour after the sun in the west. Mars rises almost three hours before the sun and Saturn sets two and a half hours after the sun, so both should be visible — Mars in the morning and Saturn in the evening. Full moon occurred three days ago with new moon happening during the meteor shower on the Nov. 18.
Wayne Harris-Wyrick is an Oklahoma astronomer and former director of the Kirkpatrick Planetarium at Science Museum Oklahoma. Questions or comments may be emailed to wizardwayne@ zoho.com.