When you talk to people about the moon, some people get excited about creating a human settlement, others see a perfect place for lunar mining, and still others see the perfect place to put a radio telescope on the moon's far side, shielded from all the electromagnetic 'noise' that earthlings are pumping out every day.
It doesn't take long to realize that there will need to be some way to play air traffic control for all of these different groups and their diverse needs.
For example, the astronomers see the back side of the moon as a precious haven of electromagnetic quiet. Now, if a settlement were to grow on the near side of the moon and they wanted to have an orbiting communication system to allow them to talk to other explorers, robots, and settlements- they might put up a series of communications satellites. If we are not careful or if no one is keeping track of what all the different lunar "user groups" are up to we could have situations that just dont work.
Consider, three zippy little communications satellites put up around the moon could easily interfere with the astronomy needs of a user group that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to get their lunar telescope built. That is just one example of how groups could impinge on each other.
Luckily there could be a technological solution. If lunar communications systems switched to optical communications for example, sending 1's and 0's as individual photons, maybe that could make a huge difference. If the two user groups are working together, I am sure we can work it out.
In the end we really need to think about the whole moon and coming up with a model that allows people to fulfill on what they are there to accomplish. I think that having this process publically will give us an opportunity to raise the profile of private spaceflight and demonstrate that we have learned something from living on Earth.
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Perhaps a series of
Perhaps a series of conferences dealing with space policy, infrastructure, economic developmemt, and the role of the private sector would be useful. Quarterly conferences could focus on specfic issues, keep space in the public discussion, educate the people and the media, and give some cover for politicians who want to deal with expanding the human economy into space.
laser data link
Microlaunchers is preparing a proposal for a laser diode based
data communication system for GLXP entrants. It will be based
on the NEO data link in the web site:
http://www.microlaunchers.com/7816/L3/laser/laser-link.html
The ground receiving system requires simple amateur astronomy
grade telescopes of 12 to 20 inch diameter--perhaps several,
to average out twinkle effects.
Diode laser is a nearly ideal way to dend, receive data as it
is unobtrusive and does not interfere. There can be literally
thousands of such links, and they will be like deep red 10 to
13th magnitude stars (about 5th for lunar distance).
Charles Pooley
Zoning
An interesting post. There is in fact a bit of literature on this already. The late French astronomer Jean Heidmann, from 1994 to 2000, argued for protecting the entire lunar far side beyond the libration zones for radio astronomy.
More recently, Italian astronomer Claudio Maccone has suggested smaller zones for exclusion of other activities. He first suggested (2002) that the libration zone was not the only area likely to experience radio interference in the long term because people might eventually build infrastructure in the L4 and L5 regions of the Moon's orbit. That implies the zone free from interference would shrink to between the 150 east and 150 west meridians on the far side. More recently (2007) he has argued that the protected zone should shrink to a circle 60 degrees across centered on the middle of the far side.
These plans would also suggest that communication orbiters should not operate over the quiet zone, and would exclude a comsat in a halo orbit around the L2 point over the central far side. As you suggest, optical communications go a long way towards resolving this issue.
Phil Stooke
Author of "The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration"
Departments of Geography and Physics/Astronomy
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada