Comments on: Have We Lost the Moon?

By: LocalFluff

LocalFluff — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 10:24:28 +0000

My impression is that most of the money that has gone into ARM and now LOOP-Geezuschrist has gone to the Solar electric propulsion, which is a good thing because it is so generally useful. I still have hope that a new NASA administrator will cancel this old ARM heritage from the last administration and put something on the Moon instead. Shouldn’t a congressman as NASA administrator be expected to make some big (visible) changes, and deliver something for the public that helps his future career? Am I maybe being too wishful.

By: Paul Spudis

Paul Spudis — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 06:33:35 +0000

We will see, won’t we?

By: LocalFluff

LocalFluff — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 06:16:27 +0000

Is a cycler really needed for the Moon? The crew could go there in a Soyuz style spacecraft, it’s only a 2 days trip. People travel like that in buses and trains. It’s another thing spending half a year going to Mars, then a cycling hotel would be nice. I think that a Lunar cycler could make sense only if there’s serious material trade between the Moon and Earth, and that’s for our children to deal with. First steps back to the Moon should be kept simple and effective. So much will be discovered that it is hopeless to today try to plan for any further future.

By: gbaikie

gbaikie — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 01:43:27 +0000

June 13Falcon Heavy • STP-2
Launch window: TBD
Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the U.S. Air Force’s Space Test Program-2 mission with a cluster of military and scientific research satellites. The heavy-lift rocket is formed of three Falcon 9 rocket cores strapped together with 27 Merlin 1D engines firing at liftoff. Delayed from October 2016, March 2017 and September 2017. Delayed from April 30. [March 5]

And
Late 2018Falcon Heavy • Arabsat 6A
Launch window: TBD
Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the Arabsat 6A communications satellite for Arabsat of Saudi Arabia. Arabsat 6A will provide Ku-band and Ka-band communications coverage over the Middle East and North Africa regions, as well as a footprint in South Africa. Delayed from first half of 2018. [March 2]
https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/

So, maybe 3 a year, or one every 4 months plus quite a number of falcon9.

By: gbaikie

gbaikie — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:38:29 +0000

I think NASA should built a LOX depot at a low cost. And NASA should do this, to start a depot market in Space.
NASA shouldn’t attempt to have depots and be competitor in depot market, which it hopeful can play a part in starting.
The goal of NASA making a depot is not to lower the price of rocket fuel available in space, as it’s meaningless and foolish goal, but NASA could demonstrate that having lower cost rocket fuel sold in space could have lower price.
It is competition which lowers price (of anything) and NASA should not be competing with business.
But it seems to me, that lower cost of doing a Mars exploration program, will involve using depots, and depot use is not something one can regarded as operational.
And in addition it seems to me that depots at low lunar orbit, are on a critical path of commercial lunar water mining.

So NASA building a LOX depot at LEO, which can be used mostly for robotic missions (such as lunar robotic landers), should be something NASA get up to operational capability.
So NASA starts with lunar exploration (not manned lunar exploration) and starts by making depot with robotic missions can use.
Depots elsewhere, should built because they are profitable thing to build, and NASA should not be building them, and trying to make them “profitable” – NASA isn’t in business and making profit, it not what governments should be doing.

By: Vladislaw

Vladislaw — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 17:57:56 +0000

University of Colorado, Boulder did a paper on that .. a good read.

https://cbboff.org/UCBoulderCourse/documents/LunarCyclerPaper.pdf

By: Gary Church

Gary Church — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 17:56:40 +0000

“Some independent means to get cargo and (probably) crew down to the Moon will have to be developed, which means that the LOP-G is irrelevant to lunar return.”

And nothing on it is shielded from heavy nuclei. A “storm shelter” and heavy nuclei shielding are two completely different things.

The more I troubleshoot this problem the more often I come back to the wet workshop. Debilitation is the secondary problem and a tether system can provide artificial Earth gravity by spinning a pair of workshops which are already engineered for a multi-G launch. Unfortunately a SLS iteration will be difficult to make effective in terms of re-purposing as a heavy nuclei water shield since that takes about 15 feet of outer envelope and around 20 feet or more of center compartment (and thousands of tons of water). This entails a stage at least 50 feet in diameter (Saturn V was 33 feet); a “fat workshop” as a universal building block deep space crew compartment. Launching such a stage would require a Nova-size Super Heavy Lift Vehicle larger than the SLS. The water will be brought up from the lunar poles.

This Fat Workshop could possible have crew in one shop and at the end of the tether the other would be a propellant splitting section for producing oxygen and hydrogen (or perhaps methane). As a Lunar Cycler this could fly around the Earth and the Moon taking on board water from landers and refueling the landers (and possibly performing maintenance in an inflatable wrap-around hanger) and also taking on/dropping off astronauts when near the Earth. Others might be in frozen Low Lunar Orbit (LLO).

By: Vladislaw

Vladislaw — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 17:38:45 +0000

I was thinking that by allowing one in LLO it would win out over time and the halo would be canceled. I would think commercial capital will want to go towards the LLO over the halo orbit and that would help NASA move to the moon and forget mars for now.

By: Gary Church

Gary Church — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 17:23:57 +0000

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/nasa-chief-explains-why-agency-wont-buy-a-bunch-of-falcon-heavy-rockets/

Over four hundred death-to-SLS comments…..and you complain about one-sided? Puh-leez.

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 12:53:22 +0000

“As far as SpaceX goes, now that Falcon Heavy has flown once, I look forward to the cascade of FH launches for the rest of the year. Should be about one every two months, no? Oh wait — it’s Elon, so his attention is elsewhere. Quelle surprise.”

You have probably noted that Musk has “tweeted” his intention to shut down production of Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy hardware and fly out the inventory before 2022. By then he says his Mars booster (the BFR) will be “operational”.

You have to hand it to him. It is not everyone that can announce the termination of a new product (the Falcon Heavy) before its first test.