The US landing on the moon does not sound at all uncommon, because the United States has successfully landed on the moon as early as the late 1960s. In 1969, Apollo 11 successfully sent Armstrong and Aldrin to the moon. Armstrong uttered his world-famous words during this moon landing: This is one small step for me, but one giant leap for mankind.
After the successful landing of Apollo 11 on the moon, the United States launched a series of manned lunar landing missions. During the lunar landing, the astronauts placed scientific instruments on the surface of the musical instrument to conduct exploration and research on the moon, and also brought back lunar soil and The total amount of lunar rocks is 381.7 kilograms. Some of these lunar rocks are kept in the laboratory, some are used for scientific research, and a small part is given to many countries and regions as gifts by the United States.
In 1978, Brzezinski, then the National Security Assistant to the President of the United States, visited China and presented a 1-gram lunar rock specimen to my country in the process.
Since Apollo 17, that is, after 1972, the United States has not carried out a manned mission to the moon, and in the following decades, the United States seems to have forgotten the moon, and no one has ever landed on the moon again.
And this has also aroused the doubts of many netizens, who believe that the US manned moon landing is a scam. Otherwise, after 50 years, the technology has been updated and iterated many times. Compared with the past, today’s technology is more advanced. No manned moon landing yet again?
With only 0.5 grams of lunar rock, Ouyang Ziyuan’s team not only knew that this lunar rock came from the US Apollo 17 mission in 1972, but also knew that it was a sample collected in the southeastern landing area of Chenghai on the moon, and it was a high-titanium lunar basalt. , and even the chemical composition, isotopes, minerals of the rock, and whether it is located on the sun side or the back side of the moon is clear.
“Only studying this 0.5 gram stone, we published a total of 14 related articles.” Ouyang Ziyuan said.
In other words, it is true that the United States has carried out manned moon landings in the last century, but the question is why 50 years later, the United States has restarted manned moon landings but there are many problems?
Why is it difficult to land on the moon now?
On the surface, the difficulty of manned landing in the United States is mainly due to the constraints of multiple elements such as rockets, spacecraft, and extravehicular space suits.
In the Apollo program, the Saturn V was used for manned landing on the moon, and the United States has not been able to build a rocket like the Saturn V.
On the one hand, it is because the Saturn V has high thrust, but it is not cost-effective. It takes about 180 million US dollars to produce a rocket, which is equivalent to 1.2 billion US dollars today, and it is also a non-recoverable rocket. The cost of launching one is too high. Taller.
Another reason is that the Saturn V has not been used for many years, and the technology has been lost. Moreover, the Saturn V is a product of a specific era. Today, there is no need to manufacture such an expensive rocket to launch the spacecraft, but to develop a new moon landing rocket. The crescent rocket that the United States is currently preparing to launch is the “new generation of moon landing rocket space”. launch system”.
Extravehicular space suits are very important for astronauts, because the lunar environment is very harsh, there is no oxygen, there is no suitable air pressure, there is still a lot of high-energy radiation in the atmosphere, and the temperature is not suitable for human survival. Astronauts must wear extravehicular space suits to get out of the cabin.
But the embarrassing thing is that all the extravehicular space suits in the United States today were made in the last century, and a total of 18 sets were produced, of which No. 1 can only be used for experiments, No. 2 was damaged in ground experiments, and in the space shuttle accident. Lost 4 pieces, and lost another 1 set when the Dragon spacecraft mission failed. Of the 11 remaining, seven are under maintenance, and four remain on the International Space Station, where water leaks are frequent.
Not only that, the technology of producing extravehicular space suits in the United States has been lost, and extravehicular space suits need to be re-developed.
However, the process of research and development was not smooth. The original plan was to produce two sets of extravehicular spacesuits available for flight by 2024, but the progress is not satisfactory now, and additional investment will continue. It is estimated that the total investment will need to exceed 1 billion US dollars to build A new extravehicular space suit will be released, and the production date will also be pushed back.
From this point of view, it is difficult for the United States to return manned people to the moon.
In fact, the fact that the United States is difficult to carry out manned moon landings is essentially related to the national conditions of the United States. The reason why it was possible to carry manned people to the sky in the last century, but can’t do it now, is mainly because it was the period of the US-Soviet hegemony.
In this context, the United States used its national efforts to develop the aerospace field. It can be said that the technology at that time was so advanced because of money. The United States spent about 25 billion US dollars for the “Apollo” moon landing program. The funding accounted for 5% of the national budget that year, while after the Apollo program was cancelled, the aerospace funding accounted for only 0.5%. Everyone can see that this investment is too big, even in the United States, it is difficult to maintain such a large expenditure for a long time.
After the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, the United States could no longer maintain such a large expenditure, and the reduction of the budget in the aerospace field also made it difficult to maintain many projects. Naturally, projects with low input-output ratios such as manned moon landings would no longer continue. Is to start turning to explore Mars.
Why restart the manned moon landing now?
There are many reasons for this. On the one hand, in order to maintain the status of spaceflight, the United States restarted the manned moon landing due to political and military considerations.
On the other hand, various countries have successively put forward plans for manned landing on Mars, and before manned landing on Mars, they must first train troops on the moon.
In addition, there are many resources on the lunar surface, and manned landing on the moon can detect lunar resources, especially helium-3, which is recognized by the world as an efficient, clean and safe nuclear fusion power generation fuel. This resource is very scarce on Earth, but the detection shows that helium 3 is abundant on the moon, and humans can use these resources in the future.
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