We are in the closing hours of this long European trip, in fact, have been here long enough that all of the ads I receive on YouTube are in French. I no longer need to turn off the sound as I cover them with my hand. The French language is, some might say, guttural, that is, they seem to be flowing words more than speaking them plainly. I’ve picked up a few, and use translate apps for signs, and so can manage.
I had the privilege of meeting and spending time with an occasional commenter here, Jan Spreen. We ended up in proximity by chance in the Provence area of southern France, so he drove a few kilometers to meet with us. I had a delightful time picking his brain.
Jan left a comment on the blog a while back that stuck with me. In fact, I urged that Petra read it carefully as it appeared on its surface to deconstruct the possibility of moon landings and return in total. Petra regarded it as changing the subject, and I lost track.
But my initial take was this: Set aside everything about the possibility of going there, landing there, taking off from there hooking up with a vessel moving at 30,000 mph and safely returning. It’s all easily deconstructed, in my view. It is the last part, safely returning, that Jan addressed. He calculated the speed at which the lunar module (most recently used in Artemis) would be travelling, as its return trip was really a freefall. By the time of encounter with Earth’s atmosphere, the vessel would be going 12.4 kilometers per second, and (would have by then disintegrated anyway) would vaporize. No skidding, no rescue at sea. None of that. Metal particles is all that would be left, organic matter would be part of our sunsets.
It was mission impossible.
We talked at length, and I presented my objections, one of which was a settelite service we once subscribed to, ViaSat, which offered a TV signal said to come from satellites placed in geosynchronous orbit with Earth … impossible, says Jan. The Earth offers powerful downward pull that will bring down a satellite out of orbit promptly, within hours if not a day or two. I told him of our problems with Viasat’s unreliable signal that could be taken down by a storm in the US southeast – which actually happened more than one time.
That, he said, only means that the signal is land-based and originating from terrestrial sources. Duh, facepalm time. Where, I asked? Who knows … mountaintops, towers. Father Mark, who used to write here, said he was told by a military officer that many of these signals come from balloons. The logic was irrefutable. No terrestrial storm could take down the signal originating 22,000 miles high.
I won’t go further, as I am already at the edge of my personal “boldly go”, but understand that readers here have long maintained that space travel is impossible, along with space stations, orbiting satellites and Starlink.
Today we catch a short flight to Lisbon, and tomorrow home to Denver after a four hour layover at JFK, the airport named after the president who faked his death in 1963. Jan was up to speed on that too.
Piece of Mindful 