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[ti:Space Odyssey]
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[00:00.85]Lesson 35
[00:03.08]Space odyssey
[00:11.10]When will it be possible for us to think seriously about colonising Mars?
[00:19.13]The Moon is likely to become the industrial hub of the Solar System supplying the rocket fuels for its ships,
[00:27.37]easily obtainable from the lunar rocks in the form of liquid oxygen.
[00:33.54]The reason lies in its gravity.
[00:36.79]Because the Moon has only an eightieth of the Earth's mass,
[00:41.43]it requires 97% less energy
[00:46.02]to travel the quarter of a million miles from the Moon to Earth-orbit than the 200 mile-journey from Earth's surface into orbit!
[00:57.44]This may sound fantastic, but it is easily calculated.
[01:03.17]To escape from the Earth in a rocket, one must travel at seven miles per second.
[01:10.27]The comparable speed from the Moon is only 1.5 miles per second.
[01:17.34]Because the gravity on the Moon's surface is only a sixth of Earth's (remember how easily the Apollo astronauts bounded along),
[01:27.97]it takes much less energy to accelerate to that 1.5mps than it does on Earth.
[01:36.60]Moon dwellers will be able to fly in space at only three percent of the cost of similar journeys by their terrestrial cousins.
[01:47.18]Arthur C.Clark once suggested a revolutionary idea passes through three phases: