Fly Me to the Moon: An Insider's Guide to the New Science of Space Travel

171 Pages·2007·3.99 MB·English

by  Edward Belbruno

e
Fly Me to the Moon

Fly Me to the Moon
AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO THE NEW
SCIENCE OF SPACE TRAVEL
e
Edward Belbruno
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2007 by Princeton University
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton
New Jersey
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Belbruno, Edward, 1951–
Fly me to the moon: an insider’s guide to the new science of
space travel / Edward Belbruno
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12822-1 (cl : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-691-12822-7 (cl : alk. paper)
1. Gravity assist (Astrodynamics)—Popular works. 2. Celestial
mechanics—Popular works. 3. Chaotic behavior in systems—Popular
works. 4. Many-body problem—Popular works. 5. Outer space—
Exploration—Popular works. I. Title.
TL1075.B45 2006
629.4'111—dc22 2006043749
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Printed on acid-free paper.∞
www.pupress.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
e
This book is dedicated to the exploration of
the Universe and to everyone who has helped
me in my journey.

Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Chapter 1 A Moment of Discovery 1
Chapter 2 An Uncertain Start 5
Chapter 3 Conventional Way to the Moon 9
A Fuel Hog 14
Chapter 4 A Question 17
Chapter 5 Chaos and Surfing the Gravitational Field 29
What Is Chaos? 31
Chapter 6 Using Art to Find Chaotic Regions 37
An Oil Painting Unveiling Dynamical
Processes 37
Chapter 7 WSB—A Chaotic No-Man’s-Land 41
Chapter 8 Getting to the WSB—Low Energy
Transfers 49
Chapter 9 Rescue of a Lunar Mission 55
Skepticism, Politics, and a Bittersweet
Success 63
Chapter 10 Significance of Hiten 69
Chapter 11 Salvage of HGS-1,and a Christmas
Present 77
Chapter 12 Other Space Missions and Low
Energy Transfers 83
LGASReincarnated: SMART1 83
viii contents
Europa Orbiter and Prometheus 85
A Lunar Transportation System 91
Chapter 13 Hopping Comets and Earth Collision 95
Potential Earth Collision 108
Lexell 109
Jupiter-Hopping Earth-Crossing
Comets Present a Danger 111
Kuiper Belt Objects and Neptune
Hopping 113
Ballistic Escape from the Earth-Moon
System, and Asteroid Capture 115
Chapter 14 The Creation of the Moon by Another
World 119
Chapter 15 Beyond the Moon and to the Stars 129
Pluto to Alpha Centauri 129
Comets Moving between the Sun
and Alpha Centauri 133
Chapter 16 A Paradigm Shift and the Future 137
Bibliography 141
Index 147
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Sometimes, history comes fast.
A mere 65 years, 7 months, 3 days, 5 hours, and 43
minutes after Orville Wright left the ground on the first-
ever powered flight, Neil Armstrong, the commander
of Apollo 11, uttered his first comment from the Lunar
surface, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has
landed.”
Of course the Wright Brothers’ 1903 “aero” plane was
heavier than air. Their new fangled machine would be
quite useless across the quarter-million-mile airless gap be-
tween Earth and the Moon, as would every airplane in-
vented and designed since. So the Apollo missions cannot
be considered the natural extension of tinkering with
winged craft, even though the lunar module of Apollo 11
was named for a bird.
In the era before heavier-than-air flight, there was
lighter-than-air flight—back when drifting slowly through
Earth’s atmosphere in the gondola of a hot air balloon was
all the rage in the western world. To move effortlessly with
the breeze was not enough for Jules Verne, the celebrated
visionary and science fiction writer. Instead, he set the
Moon in his sights, and knew that such an airless journey
precluded the use of balloons and other imagined flying