>From: "Brian Densmore" <DensmoreB@ctbsonline.com>
>To: <kclug@kclug.org>
>Subject: RE: [OT] Mission to the Moon
>Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 08:56:49 -0600
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Brian Kelsay
> >
> > >I think I'm joining the David Nicol wild idea club with this one, but
> > >it seems to me that KCLUG could put Apache in this little box on the
> > >moon and serve a website from the moon!
> > >
> > Do you know what the comms are like between Earth and Moon?
> > I read that for Earth to Mars (Spirit rover) it was something
> > like 5-25 bps.  That's BITS boys and girls.   The guys and
> > girls at NASA have partners around the world with BIG dishes
> > so they can communicate w/ the astronauts.  Adelaide, AU is
> > one, might have one in India or Pakistan, Houston,TX and
> > can't remember where the rest are.  You must be able to point
> > dishes at the Moon from mult.points due to rotation of Earth.
> >  But you knew that didn't you?
>One signal strength decreases geometrically with distance, so
>comparing signal from Mars to Earth and Moon to Earth is useless.
>Not that I support this harebrained idea. As you mentioned you'd need
>to have a dish that tracks the Moon, and of course there would be
>times when of course you'd have no signal at all (roughly 2/3 of every 
>day).
>
> > I saw Jaywalking on the Tonight Show last night and all the
> > id^^pedestrians didn't know who had been to the Moon, how we
>Well you got to take into account were talking about people from L.A.
>here? Or is it New Yawk City? ;)
>
> > she'd make it past Saturn though.  She thought since it is
> > made of gas, that she could pass right through.  Maybe after
> > you were crushed in the gravity.   But it looks so small on TV.
>Well, you know it would be possible to fly through Saturn if you
>could build a ship to withstand the heat and pressure and you didn't
>fly through the center, but stayed high enough in the atmosphere,
>but it would be kind of a waste of energy because you'd have to fly in
>at an angle to keep from burning up and would probably wind up making
>a complete orbit around the planet. But I digress... ;)
>
> >
> >
> > >Anyone willing to invest? We could probably do it for less than five
> > >figures and a whole buncha technical know-how.
> > >
> > >We could rent webspace at http://www.servingfromthemoon.org/ and
> > >allow others to serve their sites from the moon, too. And even
> > >send email "from" the moon. Who has $9,000 to spare?
> >
> > How do you get $9000 from 5 figures?  /me scratches head.  It
> > might work up to the point that it gets posted to Slashdot.org.
>Her did say *less* than 5 figures. ;)
>
>I'm off to get some coffee and aspirin now. ;)
>
>
>
>

The missing pieces you invoke could be supplied by ham radio ...Google for " 
ham radio moonbounce" . That will provide several day's reading and a precis 
of things already degubbed to routine usage . I at first failed to take note 
of the fact that E-M-E is * NOT * a mere doubling of the path losses for one 
way but a much more complex figuring . Also I was misinformed as to the 
concept of bandwith being limited by distance . POWER demand , Beam dynamics 
and system noise budget as affected by the first 2 factors are the speed 
bump . Now if we traded both bandwith and power for complexity and low tech 
arguably a large enough lunar helio mirror array could provide optical comms 
with telescopes as receptors .

Oren

" I bet that converging Ham Radio , Open Source advocacy  , SciFi Fandom  
and some loose cash could stand the established order on it's ear for all 
our betterments  "

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