Moon shot
SpaceX rocket’s lunar crash teaches a valuable lesson: don’t skimp on filling up the tank
Part of a SpaceX rocket crashed into Moon early on Wednesday. While scientists pore over data from this “unintentional” experiment, the most important takeaway for the rest of us is to always tank up before starting on a long journey. You see, that rocket upper stage could have become a satellite of Sun, had SpaceX fuelled it more generously. Alas, call it private contractor miserliness or whatever, SpaceX put just enough fuel in the tank to get the job done. Which was to deliver two landers – one American, the other Japanese – to Moon last year. Once the rocket upper stage ran out of fuel, it became uncontrollable space debris, until Moon’s gravity pulled it in, and wham!
How could Musk, who’s spent years addressing range anxiety of Tesla buyers, allow this? Luckily, no harm was done. The 4-tonne projectile hit Moon at 8,690kmph and, scientists are guessing, left a crater 60 feet wide and 15 feet deep. They aren’t sure because no satellites were positioned to capture the moment. A ground-based telescope captured the dust plume, revealing traces of sodium and lithium. But don’t start planning a moon mining mission for lithium yet. The lithium likely came from the rocket itself. As for sodium, we have enough of it here on Earth, and too much in our junk food-fed bodies.
Truth is, this Moon strike is nothing like Nasa’s “intentional” hit in 2009 that revealed the presence of ice in Moon dirt. That’s why Wednesday’s hit was treated with minor scientific interest. More interesting than the hit itself was the way independent astronomers tracked the rocket stage, calculated its trajectory and predicted the spot where it would strike. Plus, there’s a valuable lesson for the future – not to be careless with rockets around Moon. Nasa’s Artemis programme aims to set up a Moon base that astronauts will visit routinely. So, rockets randomly falling out of the sky could be disastrous. Nasa and SpaceX are going to talk this out. But the solution is obvious: when fuelling rockets, embrace range anxiety.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
