Apollo 18 trailer shows why we can never go back to the Moon

From: http://io9.com/

Meredith Woerner —

Space mockumentary Apollo 18 has been shrouded in mystery for months. But no longer! The first ever trailer for Gonzalo López-Gallego's lunar horror epic is out, and it looks intense. Let the space madness begin!

The only information we've had about this film was this little tidbit, "A film about the real mission to space in the 1970's that was canceled by NASA." And a tagline "there's a reason we've never gone back to the Moon." The trailer, however shows a whole lot more. In this actual footage from the secret Apollo 18 mission, you see creatures inside the spacemen's suits (so they believe), alien viruses creeping across their torsos and what looks like... a time-slip? (At one point in the trailer, doesn't it look like they're uncovering their own bodies decaying amidst the Moon rubble? Or perhaps it's another lost astronaut team?) Either way, we like the gritty old-camera feel (whether that's the actual camera, or just a filtering technique). Let's hope this film can resurrect the "found footage" style out of the overused gutter.
Here's the new (much longer) synopsis:

Officially, Apollo 17, launched December 17th, 1972 was the last manned mission to the moon. But a year later, in December of 1973, two American astronauts were sent on a secret mission to the moon funded by the US Department of Defense. What you are about to see is the actual footage which the astronauts captured on that mission. While NASA denies its authenticity, others say it's the real reason we've never gone back to the moon.

Apollo 18 will be in theaters on April 22nd.

Watch it in HD over at Apple Trailers.

July 22, 2009 Solar-Powered Moon Rover to Explore Apollo Landing Site

Solar-Powered Moon Rover to Explore Apollo Landing Site

by Ariel Schwartz

Solar power doesn’t have to be limited to Earth-based gadgets — at least, not if Carnegie Mellon roboticist Dr. William Whittaker has anything to say about it. Whitaker and Astrobiotic Technology have teamed up to develop a solar rover prototype that will explore the Apollo moon landing site and find out how materials used in the mission have fared over all these years.

The rover, which has been entered in the competition for the $25 million Google Lunar X Prize, features two motors in the hub of each wheel, a flat radiator tilted up to the sky on one side, and a half-cone of solar generators on the other side to power the wheels, run computers, and beam stereo HD video back to us on Earth.

There’s just one problem left to figure out: how to protect the rover from minus 240 F lunar nights. The team is experimenting with different ways to package lithium ion batteries to be able to function after two weeks of exposure to air that is nearly as cold as liquid nitrogen. Stay tuned to find out the results of the team’s experiments when the solar rover lands on the Apollo moon site in 2011!

+ Astrobiotic Technology

Via Boing Boing Gadgets

New NASA capsule Orion resembles Apollo

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Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Engineers and technician run a structural mass properties test on a test module of the Orion crew exploration vehicle at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base.

The agency unveils the test module for structural testing at Edwards Air Force Base. The capsule, designed to carry humans to the moon, looks a lot like the one that first did so four decades ago.

By John Johnson Jr.
October 30, 2008

Reporting from Edwards Air Force Base -- NASA rolled out its next-generation space capsule here Wednesday, revealing a bulbous module that is scheduled to carry humans back to the moon in 2020 and eventually onward to Mars.

Unlike the space-plane shape of the shuttles, the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle looks strikingly similar to the old Apollo space capsule that carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon and back in 1969, with Armstrong and Aldrin becoming the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.

There is one key difference, however. The test module, unveiled at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, is substantially bigger -- 16.5 feet in diameter compared with Apollo 11's 12.8 feet.

The craft's extra girth will allow it to carry six astronauts instead of Apollo's three.

"This is the same shape as Apollo," said Gary Martin, the project manager for the test program at Dryden. "But the extra space translates into twice as much volume as Apollo."

Still, cramming six astronauts inside will make it "pretty cozy," he said.

The test module, or "boilerplate," is undergoing structural testing at Dryden, which is located at Edwards Air Force Base north of Lancaster on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

The series of engineering tests began Wednesday with a relatively simple one: A man pushed the craft as it sat balanced on jacks and springs. Instruments then measured its momentum to make sure it didn't swing too much or too little.

"We're looking for pretty smooth motion and nice oscillations," said Cathy Bahm, deputy project manager for the test program.

In the coming weeks, engineers will truck the capsule out to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where they will test the launch abort system, an emergency escape system for astronauts.

There are years of development still to go. But if things go as planned, the capsule could begin carrying astronauts to the International Space Station as early as 2014. Orion will sit atop a powerful new rocket, called Ares.

The major goal for Orion is to send Americans back to the moon by 2020, the first step in establishing a permanent moon base.

A manned journey to Mars would probably take place sometime after 2030.

In designing Orion, NASA has shunned the space-plane concept embodied by the space shuttle as too vulnerable to flying debris during launch. The dangers of that configuration were demonstrated by the loss of Columbia in 2003, which broke during reentry after a piece of debris tore a hole in its left wing.

The return to putting the astronauts on top of the rockets will leave a four-year gap between the retirement of the shuttle in 2010 and the first flight of the new vehicle. That is unless the next administration changes its mind and decides to keep flying the shuttle, something that current NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has opposed.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Littleton, Colo., is building the real Orion, but the boilerplate model undergoing testing at Dryden, built at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, is nearly identical.

Weighing in at 14,000 pounds, it is missing only the avionics and instruments inside.

When completed, the capsule will weigh about 17,000 pounds.

Johnson is a Times staff writer.

john.johnson@latimes.com