Re: superhero space navigation

IsaacKuo wrote:
> On Apr 15, 2:22 am, Leonard Erickson <sha...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> No, but you can pressurize it and come back in a week and see what the
>> pressure is.
> 
> Okay.  And to no one's surprise, you find out that the
> pressure is lower.  Now what?  You can't just find the
> leaks by looking for them around the outside.

How much lower? Some leakage is inevitable, perhaps even desirable as a 
way to flush out contaminants that would otherwise build up over time.

If it's more than is desirable, spray another layer of sealant on the 
interior. Sealant is cheap.

> You talk about steel gratings and window screen mesh
> and such.  For the large areas involved, the only way I
> can imagine that being acquired for cheap would be
> landfill diving.

Or theft, or perhaps salvage from recently-abandoned structures if you 
don't want to get too illegal.

> Ah, that just sounds silly.  No, if I wanted a secret
> hideout for cheap, I'd just find some secluded place on
> Earth.  There are plenty of mountainside caves which
> are largely inaccessable.  There are plenty of
> random islands which are rarely if ever visited.

I considered suggesting that too, but I assumed the Moon had been 
selected for plot purposes. Plus, a Moonbase is _cool_. Lots of kids 
have secret clubhouses in the woods, this one would beat them all. :)

> The demo satellite can be a simple aluminum cookie
> sheet.  Just set it spinning so anyone can see it blink
> like a lighthouse.

It'll be hard to convince people that's not just a bit of space debris, 
especially since you can't specify the orbit exactly.

Sputnik 1 was really simple - a pressurized sphere the size of a 
basketball, some radio antennae, a battery, a 1-watt transmitter going 
"beep", and an internal fan that turned on whenever the temperature 
exceeded 36 degrees. Maybe something like that? Have it transmit an 
advertisement instead of just going "beep", that should be easy enough 
to rig up.

Oh, way back near the beginning of this thread I believe it was 
suggested that one might get funding by selling Moon probes. I still 
think that's likely to draw too much attention, assuming the 
authenticity is believed at all, but perhaps if you're negotiating with 
a satellite company you could prove your mettle by handing them one of 
their own old, defunct satellites? Returning a satellite to Earth is 
harder than launching them, and they'd be ideally suited to confirming 
the craft's authenticity. The only problem is somehow _finding_ the 
satellite. Getting a GPS unit that works in LEO would be very useful here.

On an unrelated note, perhaps exploring shipwrecks for loot would be 
another good way to get a little funding. There are some whose locations 
are known but that are too deep and inaccessible to have been worked 
over before.

>> And if you are on Farside, you can try marking things to help you find
>> your way. Nearside, any useful marks that aren't spottable by a good
>> telescope on earth won't be much use until you are fairly close.
> 
> If you assume that no one can see the Farside, then
> obviously no one can reach the Farside.  That implies
> that no one can reach the Nearside either.  So why
> do you care if the marks are visible by a good telescope
> on Earth?
> 
> If someone can reach the Nearside, then they can
> also reach the Farside.  At that point, they can see
> anything on the Farside also.

There are probably ways to put markings on the Moon that will blend in 
with natural features if you don't know what you're looking for. I was 
thinking of suggesting a big smear of titanium oxide powder earlier, it 
would look bright and white and could be shaped in such a way to point 
out a location, but selenologists who notice its sudden appearance would 
probably assume it's just unusual ejecta from a fresh crater (which you 
could also provide, possibly by accident if you misjudge your speed on 
approach :). But I suspect using natural landforms as guideposts will 
work fine, making this unnecessary.

If you want to be able to communicate with Earth, though, Farside's not 
good for that. You'd need communication satellites or a really long 
cable running to a transmitter on Nearside.