Science: Homing on the Moon

Projected traffic to the moon is getting heavy. Latest notion for a moon vehicle is the Aerobee M, which Aerojet-General Corp. has just thought up, using available hardware. If given priorities and $30 million, Aerojet says it can hit the moon in less than a year.

According to Aviation Week, the Aerobee M solves the propulsion problem with five stages of solid-fuel rockets, starting with a cluster of four Aerojet Seniors, which were developed for the Navy's Polaris missile. The initial guidance problem is not solved at all. Instead of attempting the extremely difficult feat of steering the vehicle accurately during its quick spurt through the earth's atmosphere, Aerojet proposes to fire it from a launcher pointed in the general direction of the spot in space where it is expected to meet the moon.

This rough aiming is not good enough, either to hit the moon or to orbit around it. So toward the end of the journey a scanning device will pick up the moon's sunlit face, fix its position, and an artificial brain will figure out what to do next. It can light a small steering rocket to correct the course. If a landing on the moon is scheduled, a backward-acting retrorocket can be fired to reduce speed and impact. A different use of the two control rockets will make the vehicle orbit around the moon to report the scenery on its unknown far side.