I disagree with a lot of your problems. Put the first telescope in Shackleton crater. That will block the Earth and the sun. It will have a near-constant solar power source. It is a constant temperature. Computing would be very efficient at that low temperature, allowing massive processing of images. I grant that building a support base there is a prerequisite, but it's where so many proposals for the base are anyway. Imagine a networked array of telescopes spread across hundreds of kilometers, not just visible light but infra-red and radio telescopes With that sort of size, we would be able to clearly image other planets.
@ Good luck with that. The world will be taken over by ignorance, purely by the sheer numbers... Unfortunately ignorant people are not only on ground level, they have made their way up into all levels of society. The only thing that will keep them from burning your stuff on the moon is the lack of atmosphere.
+++ All telescopes will be displaced by our low cost [$5MM], compact telescope with a broad field magnification from 10X to continent resolution/discernability at 100 light year distance. Similar performance on the obverse side with table top sized microscopes where even the interior of the nucleus will be viewable. Path to atomic scale electronics manufacturing with real time defect removal for perfect outcomes each and every time. I think I'll call it the Tiny Wonder Scope
Modernly, if they maintain the telescope in local range, and powerful in size and feature. It will be successful. Future telescopes wouldn't need to be a mirror or large at all. Just have over 100s to 10,000s plus small camera sencors zoomed from almost...to exactly a partical beam wide
I recently thought a lot about telescopes on the moon and began to investigate. After watching this video I feel a little bit naive. Awesome Infos! Thanks. :)
@@LaunchPadAstronomy I saw you repeatedly made comments on my videos and I admit only just now I found your channel. I regret not having done this earlier. I will certainly do some binge watching soon. :)
This is the first video I have seen from you (and I watch way to much UA-cam). Very nicely done sir. Well paced talking, so information can really sink in. All without some cheesy music over playing your voice. Excellent graphics. Fact's very well laid out, so well researched. Love how you stated James Webb scheduled for sometime "this decade". I usually watch 2 to 5 video's from someone before subbing , You got it in one.
I watched the video twice because there was so many interesting information . I never thought there would be so much consideration n obstacles to overcome to build a telescope on the moon . I never imagined a liquid mirror would be possible . The video was very exciting because it showed the possibilities of astronomy in the future is astronomical. Once again , thanks Christian for another awesome video.🖖
A little off topic but I've been admiring the design of the four new telescopes preview picture since the last video. All four a completely different shape coming together in such a satisfying package. Always been a fan of the celestial purple/blue color palette, too.
Launch Pad Astronomy, the pleasure is mine. However, you have missed one crucial thing here. Sputtering. On the moon in the pure vacuum conditions there is a way to make reflective surface to sputter it with aluminium or other metals relatively easy. And it doesn’t require any massive amount of sputtered material or complex equipment.
A cheap lunar based astronomical system would be a few seismometers that detect micro meteorite impacts to measure the meteor shower densities such as Leonid. Three seismometers would allow calculating exact locations and sizes of lunar collisions and eliminate all false readings. Larger impacts would also allow calculating internal lunar structure by analyzing seismic readings
Excellent video. I'm slightly sad that there are so many issues with having a telescope on the moon as i've dreamed about this possibility for a very long time. Lol
100% agree. no need to place telescopes in space when you can place them at either pole of the moon and look out at the cosmos. Easyer to keep people here to repair anything that breaks quickly, and polar placement of settlements allows for water ice harvesting from permanently shadowed craters. Also a good place to set up solar panels to make electricity.
in theory you could designate the far side of the moon as a radio quite zone. this would mean that a lunar positioning system similar to gps or any communication couldn't be used for the far side. communications would have to be routed through cables to the near side and LPS would have to use satellites in the L1, L4, L5 points of the moon. this is only for the ultra low frequency telescopes though. if we could find a different place to do that (like on an asteroid tidally locked with the sun) then the exclusion zone is not needed.
Point to point laser communication could be used. Similar to what the Starlink sats use, but on lunar relay towers. Positioning farside observatories near the terminator would minimize the distance and number of towers needed.
I have a question about these moon based radio telescope, they are able to help in seti mission? I saw or read somewhere in internet that ska will be able to detect the signals of an airport within 1000 light years, they has better or similar sensibility? I read also the papers but I haven't seen nothing of precise about, also for THEZA(therahertz exploration and zooming in for astrophysics) that is an interesting concept for esa voyage 2050.
I subscribe to a couple dozen science channels, and none of them are talking about this technology! Thank you for bringing me exciting new ideas to think about! In these days of Doom and Gloom, it's nice to know that humans are doing something to be proud of.
Something like this was covered at a space development conference. if you build a telescope on the moon you could not be close to a rocket launched base because of the dust raised.
@neil u Moonship, that's what I call SpaceX's proposed ship to get us to the moon. Moonship will probably have hypergolic rockets, like the Dragon capsule will use in case of an abort on launch, located close to the top of the rocket so that when it is on it's way down to land on the moon it will not be using it's main rockets at the bottom of the rocket to land. They will probably use those rockets to greatly slow the rocket as it comes in to land, to hover the rocket high above the surface, and then transition over to the hypergolic rockets located close to the nose of the rocket so that it will not kick up a lot of dust when it lands. Hope that made sense...
I agree for the most part... Any moon based telescope is going to take some engineering to make it work. The first missions to the moon to build a base will result in landing pads being constructed to make it so that no dust gets kicked up. The first decades of any moon base will be messy, but we will eventually engineer it to make it more possible to do moon telescopes... Any telescope is going to be miles away from any base, and we will probably build covered roads to get to and from the telescopes, but once we have a rough and ready base on the moon, we will construct landing pads to mitigate against lunar regolith pollution. Just build massive pads with curved up edges so that the rocket isn't stirring up regolith and the rockets output gets redirected up away from the moon's surface. We could also fashion some way to harden all the regolith around a base so that it's like rock instead of dust.
I think that any moon base we build will be messy as hell from the outset, but we will eventually build landing pads for rockets to land such that lunar regolith will not be kicked up to any great degree. All you have to do is set the edge of the landing pads to redirect the thrust upwards so that it isn't interacting directly with the lunar regolith. Also, when it comes to something like SpaceX's Starship, the moon variant of Starship, let's call it Moonship, will not use it's main thrusters to land (more than likely). It will have rockets close to the tip of the rocket... As the Moonship comes in to land it will use it's main rockets to greatly slow its descent. At a certain height, the rockets close to the top of the ship will kick on and the base rockets will turn off so as to not kick up lots of regolith. Moonship will be a huge ship, to be sure, but the moon's gravity is much much less than earth's is so smaller rockets at the top of the Moonship should be able to handle landing the ship safely. My two cents...
Finaly, someone agrees, with a Telescope On The Moon, two massive ones, we would prefer, on the polar points of the Moon, two BIG eyes👀 watching everything out there, same to every moons in the local area of the Solar system. 11:30 The video mentions the liquid mirrors not moving, fixed, they simply needed to be carved egg-eliptic, with the deflect mirrors arm doing 85% the pivit rotation, same method on 17:00, the video also shows it almost exposed, that to needs a rugged dome frame or hatch bubble.
I remember watching a documentary about the manned missions to the moon and how the moon has this super razor sharp magnetic "moon dust" that seems like it could be a major problem for lunar observatories, it was a huge problem for human astronauts. This along with no shielding for impact events such as very fast moving tiny bits of debris which could rain down on your super expensive and sensative lunar observatory turning it into very expensive shards of sadness. To have any medium to long term lunar observatory you'd need something capable of repairing itself and find a way to manage this super nasty ubiquitous moon dust.
Yep, moondust is going to be a problem. I discuss it in the video but I didn't quite make the point that any observatory would have to be protected against moondust contaminating the telescope or mitigating against micrometeorite impacts.
Given the JWST sun shield and the oragami sun shield of another telescope it would seem to me that a radio telescope of significant size would not be a huge engineering challenge (compared to a JWST). If we could map Mercury from Arecebo with radar we should be able to do similar things with a space based radar. Including mapping the solar system flotsam. It would also seem to me that getting a 'low tech' solar sail going would also be something to look in to. I know a bunch of 'higher tech' things have been proposed but can we start small?
10:40 partial pressure of mercury on Earth is FAPP zero, exactly like in the lunar vacuum, so I'd say that mercury should not evaporate any faster in the lunar vacuum than it does so on Earth. If it's protected against excessive heating by direct and indirect light that is. A protection that is necessary anyway to prevent thermal expansion/contraction. -- Right?
For most of my (long) life, have envisioned a 2 telescope set; both space based. One near earth (or an earth Lagrange point) and the 2nd at a Mars Lagrange point). Although technically very difficult, it would produce a single telescope with a truly spectacular aperture!
I truly love the idea of this and cannot wait untill it happens I'l also like to see a couple one behind our sun and two behind pluto and a space and refueling station there.
So what places in the outer solar system would radio astronomy be able to be done, since I noticed you only said “ the only place in the inner solar system that is in permanent shadow of the radio signals”
With electrostatically levitated dust on the moon, this could be a problem with a lunar telescope. Since such dust rises and falls at lunar dusk and dawn, so perhaps a lunar telescope could have a cover that would close at those times.
11/11 as always! I do have a quick fan question =). What's your favorite Grateful Dead Song? I noticed the Dead Scrapbook in the background forever ago =D.
Not making concrete plans was the mistake the first time around. A basic do-over of Apollo is pointless. The technology to put infrastructure on the moon has to be the goal.
There's always a workaround, just need to be clear with what you really want out of the tool, then design it. There are so many ways we can observe the universe and I get a little giddy when I think about all of the stuff we just _can't see_ but it's always there.
05:16 that's not even a minor concern. once they can build something meaningful over there, they can easily afford an orbiter. even better, there will be several orbiters around the Moon already. mankind won't have to launch another one just for communication purposes. 18:10 "Save life on Earth!" - 2020. Then "Save radio silence on the far side!" - 2120 and I hope we'll need volunteers to keep everything clean and shiny.
They could transmit by towers so no cables necessary. Communication towers on Earth do this already. Far side pretty rocky so high peaks readily available. Advantage is continuous contact vs intermittent with a satellite relay. This keeps reminding me that astronomers forget their engineering as soon as they graduate.
Seems to me like moon telescopes don't make much sense until we have the infrastructure to build every thing, the telescope itself and the manufacturing equipment, on the moon. At that point, moon astronomy would have many clear advantages for some applications.
Run a fiber optic cable from the telescope on the back side of the moon to the front side of the moon where there is radio relay communication or lazer light relay or microwave relay communication sending messages back to the Earth.
Lunar-based astronomy could be controlled from the surface of Earth without satellites around the Moon although satellites around the Moon is a good idea satellites around the Moon and radio astronomy might conflict a little bit one way is to have along with lunar industrialization which would help produce the materials necessary to manufacture these telescope facilities to run fiber optic communications over the surface of the Moon to the near side and not all the way around necessarily but at least close enough that you could get line of sight to Earth with a radio telescope and from the radio astronomy on the far side through the fiber optic cabling to an uplink and that uplink could communicate directly with established on orbit satellite systems around the earth like starlink.
Charles McIver . Launch reliability not so much the problem, I think the biggest question/threat is, will it unfold as designed once in space? If it doesn’t perform as designed it will end up as a multi billion dollar bit of space junk.
The whole "difficulty of going and doing stuff" on the Moon depends on the success of Starship. Plus the future Moon pirates, like in that (quite weak imho) Ad Astra movie.
@@LaunchPadAstronomy lol. I guess even the stupid SciFy channel movie where Mercury comes out of it's orbit and it's gravity starts making cars float (not only cars and other lose objects... no people, nor the mantle), was more scientifically accurate than Armageddon
If there is such a drastic temperature shift on the moon , the insulation required must be equivalent to the Kepler Telescope that is continually being bombarded by radiation from the sun. What is the difference? Is it because of the changing temperatures?
So this is why one of those radio telescopes should be one of the first things built on the moon. Should also look to build one in the outer solar system.
I just realized that telescopes already mostly do slow automated things, so the communication-delays beteen Earth and the far side of the moon barely even matter.
From around 1990, when I first read about VLT and interferometry, I have had a vision of eight points on the Lunar surface, like in the corners of an imaginary cube, with three telescopes in each point. All four telescopes covering one of the six resulting squares, should be connected via interferometry. Sadly I never got around the problem of connecting those telescopes with high enough accuracy. Though, after seeing the results from the Event Horizon Telescope, there might be (first) light ahead. Or maybe an simpler, more direct solution. Maybe via satellite. :-)
EHT gets much higher resolution just on account of Earth being larger than the Moon. But if recovers on Earth and the Moon are linked together, that would be way beyond anything we could achieve from Earth orbit!
As it turns out, silver is more common in lunar rock than it is in the Earth's crust. Also, the moon is *particularly* rich in aluminum. So if you set up lunar foundries... You have ALL the aluminum for structure and silver for circuitry you could ever need! WAY THE HECK CHEAPER THAN SHIPPING IT FROM EARTH!
This is Bullship just like you do on Mars when you can communicate with the Mars rover and make it turn left and right you can do the same thing on the moon with a telescope by putting a device that a make it change from a regular lens to a filtered lands
What about the planet Mercury for Ultra-Low Frequency wavelengths? Slower rotation than the Moon combined with complete absence of Earth's radio signals and protection from solar radio waves suggest great potential.
I while the rotation is slower, Mercury isn’t tidally locked you the Sun the way the Moon is to Earth, so any telescope would have to withstand ~800 F temps for several weeks at a time. Then there’s the fact that the radio loud Earth and, at that close distance, Loud Sun would be in it’s sky much of the time. So I’m not sure Mercury is the place to be for that kind of astronomy. Interesting idea though!
The lunar lander when it landed didn't have a problem with dust particles because photos never showed any moon dust on any of the lunar modules landing legs or extensions
Excellent. We need a lunar international station & telescope... FOR YESTERDAY!!! Also builder robots so they can be sent to space, moon and mars to build.
As size increases, I suspect that there's a limit based on the lines of gravity converging quicker than on the larger Earth. Your parabola might not be what you expected.
True, though even for the Moon it'd have to be pretty ridiculous size. I still think gravity wells and Moon dust aren't worth it and anything that isn't radio should be in space :)
Ok, so the weight and vapour pressure of elemental mercury explains why you can't use it for a space-based liquid mirror. But why would it have to be mercury? There are other metals or alloys which would have similar optical properties: Galinstan alloy (gallium/indium/tin) has an enormous liquid range, from about -20 up to over 1000 degrees C, is less than half the density of mercury, and has no vapour pressure so wouldn't evaporate in a vacuum. Or why not use sodium-potassium alloy? That also has hardly any vapour pressure, a liquid range from -11 to about 800 degrees C, and is much lighter too, with a density lower than water. It is a bit pyrophoric, but that's not much of a problem in space where there is no oxygen.
I am so happy that pace exploration has restarted that very soon both near and far Human space inhabitation will begin and that Humankind will land on the moon again once more but this time for real to use so many different applications of it I like the idea of Moon industries and Moon stella and matter and space phenomena observation the best I also think that we should build a near space object observatory up their in order to protect the Earth and the moon base I just cannot wait Space 1999 is just a little late but I am so glad that it eventually did make it to the show.
Mercury mirror on the moon, kept in the shadow, would cool down to way below below the freezing point of Mercury. Meaning the mirror would solidify. Why hasn't this been contemplated? If useful, the mirror could be pointed anywhere instead of just straight up.
Once you put something in space, why make it twice as hard getting it down to another surface? This requires extra fuel, assembly, and runs additional risks of accidents. Plus all the regolith that may cover lenses and get inside the equipment requiring extra maintenance.
I think it's really cool that you interact with your viewers, but I know there will come a time where you won't be able to be as responsive, because I think your channel is going to get huge.
me watching: him: you cant do that 3 mins later him: actually you can, but you cant 3 mins later him: but there's a solution, but you still cant 3 mins later him: actually you can do that, but there's a problem me: ._.
🔴 The future of space-based astronomy is very promising. Check out 4 new space telescopes NASA wants to build! ua-cam.com/video/R8KlX2OFg-s/v-deo.html
i have a good idea lets put a magnifying glass on the moon and point it at my house with the sun shining through it
I disagree with a lot of your problems. Put the first telescope in Shackleton crater. That will block the Earth and the sun. It will have a near-constant solar power source. It is a constant temperature. Computing would be very efficient at that low temperature, allowing massive processing of images. I grant that building a support base there is a prerequisite, but it's where so many proposals for the base are anyway. Imagine a networked array of telescopes spread across hundreds of kilometers, not just visible light but infra-red and radio telescopes With that sort of size, we would be able to clearly image other planets.
your channel has become an add. Not worth it.
I like @Launch Pad Astronomy .. because you don't add music or sound effects. I want to learn. .. I go elsewhere for entertainment.
Thanks!
This has to be the easiest, cheapest way to revolutionise ‘Earth based’ astronomy to “Earth Moon’ Astronomy on a mega scale.
Well, the idea has potential :)
@ Good luck with that. The world will be taken over by ignorance, purely by the sheer numbers... Unfortunately ignorant people are not only on ground level, they have made their way up into all levels of society. The only thing that will keep them from burning your stuff on the moon is the lack of atmosphere.
+++ All telescopes will be displaced by our low cost [$5MM], compact
telescope with a broad field magnification from 10X to continent
resolution/discernability at 100 light year distance. Similar performance on the
obverse side with table top sized microscopes where even the interior of
the nucleus will be viewable. Path to atomic scale electronics
manufacturing with real time defect removal for perfect outcomes each
and every time.
I think I'll call it the Tiny Wonder Scope
Modernly, if they maintain the telescope in local range, and powerful in size and feature. It will be successful. Future telescopes wouldn't need to be a mirror or large at all. Just have over 100s to 10,000s plus small camera sencors zoomed from almost...to exactly a partical beam wide
I recently thought a lot about telescopes on the moon and began to investigate. After watching this video I feel a little bit naive. Awesome Infos! Thanks. :)
Sir, I’m honored you got something out of my work. I’m a huge fan of yours.
@@LaunchPadAstronomy I saw you repeatedly made comments on my videos and I admit only just now I found your channel. I regret not having done this earlier. I will certainly do some binge watching soon. :)
Wonderful to have you along for the ride, but please excuse my cheesy animations :)
@@LaunchPadAstronomy They seem perfectly fine until now XD
Only because I use public domain animation. When you see my stuff it pales in comparison:)
Amazing! This has to be the most informative video I've seen in a long time-and I watch a LOT of videos.
Thanks I’m so glad you enjoyed it!
Incredible video! I always learn something new that leaves me saying the same thing every time, "How do I not know about this?!?!". THANK YOU
I only recently discovered your channel, but great content dude! You filled quite a few hours of my life in the mean time :)
Welcome aboard and glad to have you along for the ride!
This is the first video I have seen from you (and I watch way to much UA-cam).
Very nicely done sir. Well paced talking, so information can really sink in. All without some cheesy music over playing your voice. Excellent graphics. Fact's very well laid out, so well researched. Love how you stated James Webb scheduled for sometime "this decade".
I usually watch 2 to 5 video's from someone before subbing , You got it in one.
Totally agree. Better than any space/science program on TV right now. Just great stuff.
I watched the video twice because there was so many interesting information . I never thought there would be so much consideration n obstacles to overcome to build a telescope on the moon .
I never imagined a liquid mirror would be possible .
The video was very exciting because it showed the possibilities of astronomy in the future is astronomical.
Once again , thanks Christian for another awesome video.🖖
A little off topic but I've been admiring the design of the four new telescopes preview picture since the last video. All four a completely different shape coming together in such a satisfying package. Always been a fan of the celestial purple/blue color palette, too.
Of course there is a German astronomer called “Beer”
🍻🍺
In German, beer is Bier. Beer sounds Dutch, so it might be a common name in Germany. It's Dutch for "bear."
Sorry to be such a…beer.
Hi Christian. Great video, as always. Keep it up!
Thank you, Sergusy!
Launch Pad Astronomy, the pleasure is mine. However, you have missed one crucial thing here. Sputtering. On the moon in the pure vacuum conditions there is a way to make reflective surface to sputter it with aluminium or other metals relatively easy. And it doesn’t require any massive amount of sputtered material or complex equipment.
Wow I hadn't heard of sputtering before. Very cool!
A cheap lunar based astronomical system would be a few seismometers that detect micro meteorite impacts to measure the meteor shower densities such as Leonid. Three seismometers would allow calculating exact locations and sizes of lunar collisions and eliminate all false readings. Larger impacts would also allow calculating internal lunar structure by analyzing seismic readings
Good idea!
"... set to launch this decade."
lol, nice jab
Yeah, hedging my bets :)
"Begin Cheesy Animation" -- love it!
(And those solutions to the problems of lunar telescopes are clever as hell.)
So you noticed when I used my own stuff vs. the NASA B-roll, huh :)
@@LaunchPadAstronomy You are truly the heir to Miyazaki.
Christian, you are a gifted speaker. I enjoy your videos very much.
All very good points. I learn so much from your channel, thanks for sharing your education 🙏
Wish my professors were so easy to listen as this gentleman
Excellent video. I'm slightly sad that there are so many issues with having a telescope on the moon as i've dreamed about this possibility for a very long time. Lol
100% agree. no need to place telescopes in space when you can place them at either pole of the moon and look out at the cosmos. Easyer to keep people here to repair anything that breaks quickly, and polar placement of settlements allows for water ice harvesting from permanently shadowed craters. Also a good place to set up solar panels to make electricity.
This is a great video and wow that moon dust isn’t nice stuff is it
It's nasty stuff for sure. Try to avoid contact with it if at all possible.
Space is a nasty place. There's nowhere out there that's a nice place to be.
Just came across your channel. Was a bit suspicious at first but once into it, thought it was really good and subscribed. Thank you.
Glad to have you along for the ride!
17:42 this joy face after the joke "not in the world but in the entire solar system" 😄
Great video! The quality of the clips used was great :)
Thanks!
After watching all these months I've finally caved and got Magellan. I need more space! Thank you guys!
Cool! Enjoy :)
Nice topic. I have never watched a video about this matter. Well explained and illustrated. Congratulations.
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!
ThatCopernacus guy, he really started something !
in theory you could designate the far side of the moon as a radio quite zone. this would mean that a lunar positioning system similar to gps or any communication couldn't be used for the far side. communications would have to be routed through cables to the near side and LPS would have to use satellites in the L1, L4, L5 points of the moon. this is only for the ultra low frequency telescopes though. if we could find a different place to do that (like on an asteroid tidally locked with the sun) then the exclusion zone is not needed.
Point to point laser communication could be used. Similar to what the Starlink sats use, but on lunar relay towers.
Positioning farside observatories near the terminator would minimize the distance and number of towers needed.
I'm all for a FARSIDE or the LCRT. They seem to be somewhat practical and would be offer so much science.
Thank you for the explanation
My pleasure, thanks!
I have a question about these moon based radio telescope, they are able to help in seti mission? I saw or read somewhere in internet that ska will be able to detect the signals of an airport within 1000 light years, they has better or similar sensibility? I read also the papers but I haven't seen nothing of precise about, also for THEZA(therahertz exploration and zooming in for astrophysics) that is an interesting concept for esa voyage 2050.
I subscribe to a couple dozen science channels, and none of them are talking about this technology! Thank you for bringing me exciting new ideas to think about! In these days of Doom and Gloom, it's nice to know that humans are doing something to be proud of.
Really glad you enjoyed it. I don't do tech often but when I do, I geek out hard on it :)
Great video once again! Thanks so much!
My pleasure, and glad you enjoyed it!
Something like this was covered at a space development conference. if you build a telescope on the moon you could not be close to a rocket launched base because of the dust raised.
Khalid
Good point!
@neil u Moonship, that's what I call SpaceX's proposed ship to get us to the moon. Moonship will probably have hypergolic rockets, like the Dragon capsule will use in case of an abort on launch, located close to the top of the rocket so that when it is on it's way down to land on the moon it will not be using it's main rockets at the bottom of the rocket to land. They will probably use those rockets to greatly slow the rocket as it comes in to land, to hover the rocket high above the surface, and then transition over to the hypergolic rockets located close to the nose of the rocket so that it will not kick up a lot of dust when it lands. Hope that made sense...
I agree for the most part... Any moon based telescope is going to take some engineering to make it work. The first missions to the moon to build a base will result in landing pads being constructed to make it so that no dust gets kicked up. The first decades of any moon base will be messy, but we will eventually engineer it to make it more possible to do moon telescopes... Any telescope is going to be miles away from any base, and we will probably build covered roads to get to and from the telescopes, but once we have a rough and ready base on the moon, we will construct landing pads to mitigate against lunar regolith pollution. Just build massive pads with curved up edges so that the rocket isn't stirring up regolith and the rockets output gets redirected up away from the moon's surface. We could also fashion some way to harden all the regolith around a base so that it's like rock instead of dust.
If you build a telescope on the Moon you want it close to the base because that is where the brooms are.
Great. A new channel to keep me awake at night.
Thanks! And sorry about that :)
Thank you for this very interesting and well documented video 👌🏻✅👍🏻
awesome video! a huge liquid mirror telescope on the moon would be an extraordinary tool
Appreciate it!
Putting a telescope on the moon is a brilliant idea!
I think that any moon base we build will be messy as hell from the outset, but we will eventually build landing pads for rockets to land such that lunar regolith will not be kicked up to any great degree. All you have to do is set the edge of the landing pads to redirect the thrust upwards so that it isn't interacting directly with the lunar regolith. Also, when it comes to something like SpaceX's Starship, the moon variant of Starship, let's call it Moonship, will not use it's main thrusters to land (more than likely). It will have rockets close to the tip of the rocket... As the Moonship comes in to land it will use it's main rockets to greatly slow its descent. At a certain height, the rockets close to the top of the ship will kick on and the base rockets will turn off so as to not kick up lots of regolith. Moonship will be a huge ship, to be sure, but the moon's gravity is much much less than earth's is so smaller rockets at the top of the Moonship should be able to handle landing the ship safely.
My two cents...
Those are some really cool points. Thanks!
Anyplace humans live ends out being quite messy. As a species we aren't very responsible with our garbage.
Finaly, someone agrees, with a Telescope On The Moon, two massive ones, we would prefer, on the polar points of the Moon, two BIG eyes👀 watching everything out there, same to every moons in the local area of the Solar system. 11:30 The video mentions the liquid mirrors not moving, fixed, they simply needed to be carved egg-eliptic, with the deflect mirrors arm doing 85% the pivit rotation, same method on 17:00, the video also shows it almost exposed, that to needs a rugged dome frame or hatch bubble.
He should have atleast 1million subscriber,🙁🙁
Christian, your channel is simply awesome.
Thanks Scully!
I remember watching a documentary about the manned missions to the moon and how the moon has this super razor sharp magnetic "moon dust" that seems like it could be a major problem for lunar observatories, it was a huge problem for human astronauts. This along with no shielding for impact events such as very fast moving tiny bits of debris which could rain down on your super expensive and sensative lunar observatory turning it into very expensive shards of sadness. To have any medium to long term lunar observatory you'd need something capable of repairing itself and find a way to manage this super nasty ubiquitous moon dust.
Yep, moondust is going to be a problem. I discuss it in the video but I didn't quite make the point that any observatory would have to be protected against moondust contaminating the telescope or mitigating against micrometeorite impacts.
Great channel! Where’s it been all my life?
Thank you for the very interesting videos!
My pleasure, and thanks!
Genius Professor. Great video .
could we not build and anti static device to prevent or manage the static build up of moon dust?
Given the JWST sun shield and the oragami sun shield of another telescope it would seem to me that a radio telescope of significant size would not be a huge engineering challenge (compared to a JWST). If we could map Mercury from Arecebo with radar we should be able to do similar things with a space based radar. Including mapping the solar system flotsam. It would also seem to me that getting a 'low tech' solar sail going would also be something to look in to. I know a bunch of 'higher tech' things have been proposed but can we start small?
10:40 partial pressure of mercury on Earth is FAPP zero, exactly like in the lunar vacuum, so I'd say that mercury should not evaporate any faster in the lunar vacuum than it does so on Earth. If it's protected against excessive heating by direct and indirect light that is. A protection that is necessary anyway to prevent thermal expansion/contraction. -- Right?
For most of my (long) life, have envisioned a 2 telescope set; both space based. One near earth (or an earth Lagrange point) and the 2nd at a Mars Lagrange point). Although technically very difficult, it would produce a single telescope with a truly spectacular aperture!
Why not Sun /Earth L3 and L2 (or anywhere around earth) ?
I truly love the idea of this and cannot wait untill it happens I'l also like to see a couple one behind our sun and two behind pluto and a space and refueling station there.
Great article. Mining the moon will eventually provide most if not all building materials for those telescopes.
Hopefully mining will provide the materials needed to build mining equipment too. Uhm.... wait a minute :/
Randomly wondering why no telescopes on the moon. Great video thx.
Great video. Thank you, subbed.
Awesome, thank you! I'm glad to have you along for the ride!
Amazing video.😍😍
So what places in the outer solar system would radio astronomy be able to be done, since I noticed you only said “ the only place in the inner solar system that is in permanent shadow of the radio signals”
With electrostatically levitated dust on the moon, this could be a problem with a lunar telescope. Since such dust rises and falls at lunar dusk and dawn, so perhaps a lunar telescope could have a cover that would close at those times.
11/11 as always! I do have a quick fan question =). What's your favorite Grateful Dead Song? I noticed the Dead Scrapbook in the background forever ago =D.
It's a tribute to my mom who raised me "on the bus". My favorite Dead son-g? SONG? I gotta pick one???? Fine, U.S. Blues.
Thanks for sharing
Wonderful 👌👍
We've got to get to the Moon first, let's stick with that.
Not making concrete plans was the mistake the first time around. A basic do-over of Apollo is pointless. The technology to put infrastructure on the moon has to be the goal.
Thank you on your explaination Sir, Its seems my hypothesis to put mirror telescopes at the moon is non viable enough.
There's always a workaround, just need to be clear with what you really want out of the tool, then design it. There are so many ways we can observe the universe and I get a little giddy when I think about all of the stuff we just _can't see_ but it's always there.
05:16 that's not even a minor concern. once they can build something meaningful over there, they can easily afford an orbiter. even better, there will be several orbiters around the Moon already. mankind won't have to launch another one just for communication purposes.
18:10 "Save life on Earth!" - 2020. Then "Save radio silence on the far side!" - 2120
and I hope we'll need volunteers to keep everything clean and shiny.
Question: Is it possible, in theory, to grow crops in a pressure vessel on Mars? Thanks for a response.
Farside sounds promising!
They could transmit by towers so no cables necessary. Communication towers on Earth do this already. Far side pretty rocky so high peaks readily available. Advantage is continuous contact vs intermittent with a satellite relay. This keeps reminding me that astronomers forget their engineering as soon as they graduate.
Nice vid. I also have the Grateful Dead Scrapbook!
Cool!
It really seems like we should be investing in getting these farside radio telescopes set up before we fill up the surrounding space with radio noise.
Thank you Anna
Agreed!
Very similar, but updated and corrected version of the PBS Space Time episode from Apr 5, 2017.
How about putting one on the poles where it is dark year round
Thank you for not putting music over your video
No problem, it's less work for me :)
Seems to me like moon telescopes don't make much sense until we have the infrastructure to build every thing, the telescope itself and the manufacturing equipment, on the moon. At that point, moon astronomy would have many clear advantages for some applications.
Run a fiber optic cable from the telescope on the back side of the moon to the front side of the moon where there is radio relay communication or lazer light relay or microwave relay communication sending messages back to the Earth.
Lunar-based astronomy could be controlled from the surface of Earth without satellites around the Moon although satellites around the Moon is a good idea satellites around the Moon and radio astronomy might conflict a little bit one way is to have along with lunar industrialization which would help produce the materials necessary to manufacture these telescope facilities to run fiber optic communications over the surface of the Moon to the near side and not all the way around necessarily but at least close enough that you could get line of sight to Earth with a radio telescope and from the radio astronomy on the far side through the fiber optic cabling to an uplink and that uplink could communicate directly with established on orbit satellite systems around the earth like starlink.
would the moonquakes affect it's suitability for astronomy?
Ya well, let’s see if the JWebb is ever even finished
It's fully assembled. It just has to launch now.
Charles McIver . Launch reliability not so much the problem, I think the biggest question/threat is, will it unfold as designed once in space? If it doesn’t perform as designed it will end up as a multi billion dollar bit of space junk.
Why not SpaceX?
The whole "difficulty of going and doing stuff" on the Moon depends on the success of Starship.
Plus the future Moon pirates, like in that (quite weak imho) Ad Astra movie.
I had some expectations for that one, but it was only slightly better than Armageddon.
I saw Armageddon in the theater. I regret everything.
@@LaunchPadAstronomy lol.
I guess even the stupid SciFy channel movie where Mercury comes out of it's orbit and it's gravity starts making cars float (not only cars and other lose objects... no people, nor the mantle), was more scientifically accurate than Armageddon
@@LaunchPadAstronomy Roger Ebert on Armageddon:
"No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out."
If there is such a drastic temperature shift on the moon , the insulation required must be equivalent to the Kepler Telescope that is continually being bombarded by radiation from the sun. What is the difference? Is it because of the changing temperatures?
beautiful bro
Thank you so much 😀
So this is why one of those radio telescopes should be one of the first things built on the moon. Should also look to build one in the outer solar system.
I just realized that telescopes already mostly do slow automated things, so the communication-delays beteen Earth and the far side of the moon barely even matter.
From around 1990, when I first read about VLT and interferometry, I have had a vision of eight points on the Lunar surface, like in the corners of an imaginary cube, with three telescopes in each point.
All four telescopes covering one of the six resulting squares, should be connected via interferometry.
Sadly I never got around the problem of connecting those telescopes with high enough accuracy.
Though, after seeing the results from the Event Horizon Telescope, there might be (first) light ahead.
Or maybe an simpler, more direct solution.
Maybe via satellite. :-)
EHT gets much higher resolution just on account of Earth being larger than the Moon. But if recovers on Earth and the Moon are linked together, that would be way beyond anything we could achieve from Earth orbit!
Night side of Mars still an option if moon builds up radio interference on the dark side?
As it turns out, silver is more common in lunar rock than it is in the Earth's crust. Also, the moon is *particularly* rich in aluminum. So if you set up lunar foundries... You have ALL the aluminum for structure and silver for circuitry you could ever need!
WAY THE HECK CHEAPER THAN SHIPPING IT FROM EARTH!
This is Bullship just like you do on Mars when you can communicate with the Mars rover and make it turn left and right you can do the same thing on the moon with a telescope by putting a device that a make it change from a regular lens to a filtered lands
What about the planet Mercury for Ultra-Low Frequency wavelengths? Slower rotation than the Moon combined with complete absence of Earth's radio signals and protection from solar radio waves suggest great potential.
I while the rotation is slower, Mercury isn’t tidally locked you the Sun the way the Moon is to Earth, so any telescope would have to withstand ~800 F temps for several weeks at a time. Then there’s the fact that the radio loud Earth and, at that close distance, Loud Sun would be in it’s sky much of the time. So I’m not sure Mercury is the place to be for that kind of astronomy. Interesting idea though!
The lunar lander when it landed didn't have a problem with dust particles because photos never showed any moon dust on any of the lunar modules landing legs or extensions
Apollo 12 / Surveyor 3
You're welcome.
Excellent. We need a lunar international station & telescope... FOR YESTERDAY!!!
Also builder robots so they can be sent to space, moon and mars to build.
Very interesting.
As size increases, I suspect that there's a limit based on the lines of gravity converging quicker than on the larger Earth. Your parabola might not be what you expected.
True, though even for the Moon it'd have to be pretty ridiculous size. I still think gravity wells and Moon dust aren't worth it and anything that isn't radio should be in space :)
Ok, so the weight and vapour pressure of elemental mercury explains why you can't use it for a space-based liquid mirror. But why would it have to be mercury? There are other metals or alloys which would have similar optical properties: Galinstan alloy (gallium/indium/tin) has an enormous liquid range, from about -20 up to over 1000 degrees C, is less than half the density of mercury, and has no vapour pressure so wouldn't evaporate in a vacuum. Or why not use sodium-potassium alloy? That also has hardly any vapour pressure, a liquid range from -11 to about 800 degrees C, and is much lighter too, with a density lower than water. It is a bit pyrophoric, but that's not much of a problem in space where there is no oxygen.
Indeed, there's plenty of other options, one of which I discuss in the video.
I am so happy that pace exploration has restarted that very soon both near and far Human space inhabitation will begin and that Humankind will land on the moon again once more but this time for real to use so many different applications of it I like the idea of Moon industries and Moon stella and matter and space phenomena observation the best I also think that we should build a near space object observatory up their in order to protect the Earth and the moon base I just cannot wait Space 1999 is just a little late but I am so glad that it eventually did make it to the show.
Mercury mirror on the moon, kept in the shadow, would cool down to way below below the freezing point of Mercury. Meaning the mirror would solidify. Why hasn't this been contemplated? If useful, the mirror could be pointed anywhere instead of just straight up.
Once you put something in space, why make it twice as hard getting it down to another surface? This requires extra fuel, assembly, and runs additional risks of accidents. Plus all the regolith that may cover lenses and get inside the equipment requiring extra maintenance.
I think it's really cool that you interact with your viewers, but I know there will come a time where you won't be able to be as responsive, because I think your channel is going to get huge.
Well, I do try when time allows. I think it’s important, but I have to remind myself to make the next video :)
me watching:
him: you cant do that
3 mins later
him: actually you can, but you cant
3 mins later
him: but there's a solution, but you still cant
3 mins later
him: actually you can do that, but there's a problem
me: ._.
14:17 - Not true. There was also the radiation that decoupled from matter we see today as CMB.
Can you imagine what we will have 2030... Amazing 🪐
you don't need cables or an orbiter. Much easier to drop a few dozen repeaters on the highest crater edges and ridge lines.
free path optical frequency communication would work well in the vacuum of the moon.
Good point, hadn't thought of that!
Should be sending telescope module pieces and construct a monster unit with a moon base.