Monday, August 26, 2024

CHINA’S PROPOSED MAGNETIC MOON LAUNCHER

 

CHINA’S PROPOSED MAGNETIC MOON LAUNCHER

This story was shared courtesy of B., and when I saw it, I immediately thought of Robert Heinlein and his novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. But that aside (for the moment), this article is one of those cases where plans for the weaponization of space are being carefully marketed behind a narrative of commercial development and exploitation. Here's the story:

China could develop rotating launcher on moon to send lunar resources to Earth

China has big plans for the Moon, and for its commercial development, and for how to get all that "stuff up there" from "up there" to "down here":

Chinese scientists propose a magnetic launcher on the moon for cost-effective resource transport to Earth.

The magnetic levitation system, based on the hammer throw principle, would spin faster and launch the capsule toward Earth.

Leveraging the moon’s high vacuum and low gravity, it could eject payloads twice daily at about 10 percent of current transport costs, according to researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering.

What a great, clever idea! Ahh those clever Chinese! Just create a magnetic catapult, with a big rotating arm, and literally throw the cargo toward the Earth. What could be easier or more cost effective? Because with such a system, no more expensive rockets needed. One could use this to throw multiple cargos at Earth;

The researchers explained that the system’s technical readiness is relatively high. Since it only requires electricity and no propellant, it will be compact and simple to implement, they wrote in the journal Aerospace Shanghai.

And it will save energy too, because during the "slow down" process, you can use that big rotating arm to generate more electricity, which will be used to spin it up again, and so on:

The proposed launch system would use a 50-meter (165 ft) rotating arm and a high-temperature superconducting motor to launch capsules filled with lunar resources.

The system will use solar and nuclear energy, with over 70 percent of energy recovered after each launch by converting kinetic energy back to electricity during deceleration.

Oh... and it will be an aid to international peace and amity too!

The team behind the project suggested it could be part of a proposed Russian-Chinese joint effort to establish a research station at the lunar south pole by 2035. The launch station would cost approximately 130 billion yuan (US$18.2 billion) to build.

Well three cheers for the Chinese lunar catapult, international amity and concord, and a coming age of Helium-3 energy!

Except that the idea isn't originally Chinese, and there are obviously "other" potential uses for such a device. This is where the noted science fiction author Robert Heinlein comes in. For those who only "read" science fiction novels if they appear in particularly bad Hollyweird adaptations, Heinlein's name might only be familiar through a bad Hollyweird adaptation of his novel Starship Troopers. Like many science fiction authors, Heinlein explored the cultural impact of emerging technologies and the cultural and policy impacts they had, and Starship Troopers was no different. The Martian Chronicles are no different.

But perhaps the novel which is the fullest exposition of the explorations of the various themes of political commentary and the uses of emerging technology is an overlooked novel, and in many ways, his masterpiece The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In the novel, Heinlein considers a number of themes at length: how to organize conspiracies (and what is wrong with the classical cellular versions of conspiracies: they're usually "two dimensional" and thus lacking in lateral means of communication between cells.) The novel also considers what we may call the "Elon Musk" scenario of a computer so large and powerful that it "wakes up" and becomes self-aware and intelligent.  Heinlein's computer is called "Mike", and is located on the Moon. Mike becomes a member of a cell of lunar rebels revolting against the tyrannical rule of Earth. Somewhere along the way of this plot progression, someone proposes using the Moon's catapult system - which is used to launch cargo toward the mother planet - to launch large boulders instead. In affect, the lunar system becomes a novelized version of another popular technological classic: the "mass driver", a weapon which literally works simply by lobbing or hurling a large inert mass at a target in space, destroying or damaging the target by sheer kinetic energy. So-called "Rods of God" or "Rods of the Gods" kinetic weapons are another variation on this idea. In the novel, Mike, being a self-aware super-computer, naturally does all the calculations  and fire control for using the lunar catapult as a weapon, and the bombardment of Earth commences.

The novel even points out that, in terms of the Earth-Moon planetary system, the Earth lies at the bottom of the gravity well, and the Moon occupies the all-important and advantageous "high ground". Bombarding the earth is simply a matter of running the right calculations, choosing an adequate mass. and propelling it at the right velocity before releasing it, and gravity and kinetic energy does the rest.  Force equals mass times acceleration. It's as simple as that and has been known since Newton. And the records of such bombardments are found all over the surface of this planet. Meteor crater in Arizona is a case in point:

The Incredible Barringer Meteor Crater of Arizona | Amusing Planet

Meteor Crater outside Winslow, Arizona

And this of course brings us back to the Chinese lunar catapult plans, because just as in Heinlein's novel, the same - the exact same - technology is both a weapon and can be used for other more peaceful purposes. One must not - and this is quite the crucial point, and applicable across a wide spectrum of similar technologies - one must not envision this as a technology of peaceful purposes which can also be used under certain circumstances as a weapon, but the converse: it is a weapon which can under certain circumstances be used for peaceful purposes.  Before we greet the Chinese proposal with congratulations and kuddos for such a breathtaking idea and one benefitting international amity and concord, this fact should be born in mind, and Heinlein's warnings be heeded.

See you on the flip side...

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Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

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