SaveTheHubble

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• Dennis Wingo commented on Beyond Augustine
  Can you provide a reference indicating the 100 meter one is enough to eliminate terrain shadowing year-round? Nope, it was beer talk with some folks at LEAG last year. 1500 meters is not frightening if we are making a lot of ISRU Inconel....

• J.Fincannon commented on Beyond Augustine
  "These are much more accessible than the floor of Shackleton, which has a terrible 45 degree incline down to a very small floor." The Kaguya data shows from one part of the Shackleton Rim that the average slope from top to bottom is ~30 degrees. It could be less with judicious paths. Might be a little nerve-racking to drive ~10km like that, but is within the LER specs. But I would want to check it out roboticly first because the dirt attributed may be a problem....

• Dennis Wingo commented on Beyond Augustine
  The Kaguya data shows from one part of the Shackleton Rim that the average slope from top to bottom is ~30 degrees. It could be less with judicious paths. Might be a little nerve-racking to drive ~10km like that, but is within the LER specs. But I would want to check it out roboticly first because the dirt attributed may be a problem. I would really like to see your source on that. The images that I saw at LEAG last year made it look really bad....

• J.Fincannon commented on Beyond Augustine
  "I would really like to see your source on that." The JAXA folk released the Kaguya LALT full dataset on Nov 2. This dataset has each datapoint. https://www.soac.selene.isas.jaxa.jp/archive/ This was the "preliminary release version" if you are interested... http://www.kaguya.jaxa.jp/en/science/LALT/The_lunar_topographic_data_e.htm I can send you some nice surface zooms of Shackleton, they are very interesting. Looking at the South Pole with zero degrees longitude at the top of the image, the more reasonable path ( less than 30 deg slope) is at the 1-2 o'clock position of the crater. Starts at 900m and goes down to -2773m with about 8 km of...

• Dennis Wingo commented on Beyond Augustine
  Cool, thanks! Will have to look at it over the holidays....