I guess I care so little about our next trip to the moon that I didn't even read about what the plan is until recently. Well, here's how we plan to do it. There's going to be two rockets. One will basically be a cargo-only rocket, very similar to the current shuttle, minus the orbiter. It'll carry the cargo at the top, and it'll carry more cargo than the shuttle currently can. Then there's the crew rocket, which will be a single solid rocket booster, with the crew module at the top. That way, the crew can't get hit by debris, and there won't be any foam to worry about.
For the moon mission, the cargo rocket will send up half the ship that'll get them to the moon, and they'll dock in orbit before taking off. It all just makes so much, well, SENSE, compared to the current shuttle. :P But as I've ranted before, it's also super boring to go back to the moon. Still, it's interesting reading the design for the mission, because it's all but a checklist of all the lessons we've learned from the poorly-designed shuttle.
Also, did you know that Spirit and Opportunity have their own Livejournals? I like how Opportunity's is all girly and bubbly, and Spirit's is all cantankerous and goth. Spirit's has a link to her calendar view. You have to do some URL-hacking to get Opportunity's calendar view.
I love Spirit's post about the Beagle's demise, complete with pretentious goth poetry. :) Here's Spirit's post from the day she landed. Opportunity first and second posts mention the difficulty communicating with Spirit when it originally landed.
And now, your unrelated image of the post, the prototype design for the $100 laptop that MIT is developing for the UN, for use in third world countries. Note the hand-cranked power!
