Thursday, March 5, 2009

Final Focus; further research needed

When I wrote my Blog Analysis essay, it became real to me that there were very few things that I needed to know more about. If there was anything I would be interested in pursuing is the Altair Lunar Lander (The craft designed to land on the moon) and how they plan to solve the problem of dust rising around the landing sight. (Something that was a big problem in the Apollo missions. There is no GPS on the moon, landing is done largely by identifying landmarks on the lunar surface. Hence, if the dust flies up, they can no longer see those landmarks, and they could be landing on jagged rock, a major catastrophe.) I feel that as far as the Ares rocket is concerned, progress has been made since the blog started, but it has been very slow and filled with delays. Though it is late in the blog project for this, I think the best choice would be to broaden the research to things also related to the rocket. For instance, the lunar lander, the Orion crew capsule, and the astronauts that will be going to the moon. My oral presentation will talk about the problems that the project has endured, and what is being done to fix them. If I find in the next few weeks that there are problems with the Altair Lander and the Orion capsule, I will add those to the oral presentation. The main problem is stability on the launch pad.