It’s a strange situation, no doubt about it. Democrat space advocates siding with Republicans, lunar resource advocates trying to take the spotlight off NASA’s Mars fantasy, and the NewSpace mob trying to keep the SpaceX aura intact after their golden child exploded.

A reason for exploration is to discover these types of differences, people once thought humans could not go faster than about 20 mph, and now human can travel at hundreds of mph, but there consequence of traveling at over 20 mph- ie, a collision at over 20 mph can be lethal. And we could not possible know about all the consequences of going over 20 mph, without actually going at speeds faster than 20 mph and learn ways of dealing with traveling at these higher speeds.

I would say making a top down type decision of assuming human can only survive in a 1 gee environment, is a policy decision which is criminal or at least, stupid.
One could decide that you don’t want to go more than 20 mph or that you don’t want to live in environment greater or less than 1 gee, but such personal choices are quite different a public policy type decisions.-particularly when it’s not based upon any information.

One aspect is the need to explore Space, another aspect of this, is lower the cost to get into space.
In my opinion NASA needs to explore space in such manner that it’s related to how one can lower the costs to get into space. So in terms of priority of exploration, NASA’s top priority
should exploration that could lead to lower the costs of going into space.
If there was commercial lunar water mining this would lower the costs of getting into space. NASA mining lunar water wouldn’t lower the cost of getting into space. So NASA should explore the Moon to determine if and where there could be minable water on the Moon. That NASA has failed to do this over the last 10 years or so, is failure of the agency, whereas not sending crew to Mars, has not been a failure of the agency- rather than desire of doing this first, is the policy failure.

And that it took until 1998 to determine that there could water in the Moon, is another failure of this agency over the many decades, it’s existed.

And that NASA do not have system that can refuel rockets in LEO, is another long term failure of the agency and general NASA focus upon having a earth launch owned and operated by the agency as been a failed policy over the decades- it’s the wrong focus of the limited resources NASA is provided to explore Space.

Conclusion is that it will be more than 20 years and probably even a decade after that that a system that can deliver prop to L2 from Earth to do so at the same cost as a Lunar system. But when evaluating LEO that is not the same story. The cost of delivery of prop from Earth by the FHR would be $1,600/kg equal to the same as it would cost to deliver prop from the Moon. The two systems would be direct competitors fro LEO prop sales and it would be available volume that would determine who the front runner supplier would be. BTW the max amount of prop that the before mentioned Lunar system could deliver per year to LEO would be 8,750mt. But that is also equivalent to over 200 FHR flights in one year. A flight rate not likely to be achievable in the next 10 or 15 years but such a delivery amount from Lunar prop could reach such levels in 15 years without much transfer tug hardware.

Chemical rockets operating between the Earth-Moon Lagrange points and high Mars orbit would be much more efficient than nuclear rockets operating between LEO and high Mars orbit– because of the substantially lower delta-v requirements when launch vehicles from the Lagrange points. Plus the delta-v requirements to supply water and propellant for interplanetary vehicles launched from the Lagrange points is substantially lower than trying to supply fuel and water from the Earth’s deep gravity well.

IVF technology being developed by the ULA will enable us to utilize hydrogen and oxygen very efficiently.

Commercial crew vehicles will been in operation long before the SLS is launching humans into space.

Marcel

I strongly doubt the practicality of a spacecraft from the Moon diving 200,000 miles into Earth’s gravity well and radiation belts from GEO to pick people up from LEO. Super Heavy Lift Vehicles bypassing LEO and going directly to and returning directly from the Moon are by far the most efficient method. LEO is a dead end Marcel.

“-reduces the cost of traveling from cis-lunar space to Mars or Venus-”

Not even addressing the fact that chemical propulsion is a non-starter for human interplanetary missions why would we go to Mars or Venus? If we had a fleet of true spaceships launched and supported from a Moon base replacing our nuclear deterrent on Earth then scientists might ride along on missions of opportunity (like scientists sometimes are guests on nuclear submarines under polar ice). In that respect the ocean moons of the gas giants are far more interesting and worthwhile destinations.

“-retrieve malfunctioning commercial and military satellites from GEO and GPS orbits-”

A couple dozen large shielded GEO telecom space stations crewed with technicians would completely replace the satellite junkyard and be superior in all respects. Assembling these stations in lunar orbit and transiting them back across cislunar space to GEO would remove the need for retrieval and repair.

“-Commercial Crew vehicles capable of reaching LEO easy access for its passenger to the lunar surface via reusable LOX/LH2 shuttles-”

Again, LEO is a dead end. As for LOX/LH2; while it is the highest performing practical propellant combination it is not so practical without a massive Earth-based support infrastructure. The volatiles most likely trapped in lunar ice may be used to make methane which would be a much easier to handle and store propellant for the first generation of reusable lunar shuttles. Later generations may use beam propulsion and hydrogen as a mono-propellant.

“-explore the Moon to determine if there is minable lunar water, because it supports future Mars settlement.”

Human beings require one gravity. It just keeps being ignored. The space colonization movement of the 1970’s really started with the singular conclusion that NO natural bodies in this solar system besides Earth are suitable for “settlement”- due to the requirement for one G.

There is a long list of other reasons why Mars is a non-starter as a second habitat for humanity. But emoting sci-fi fans from the days of H.G. Wells all the way to the present have always been easy targets for scammers trying to make a buck (or get public support).

It is really a bad thing that this attaching of the ice on the Moon directly to Mars settlement is coming up more and more often. It drags the critical resource for space exploration down into the cesspit of P.R. gimmicks and phony space advocacy.

Dr. Spudis mentioned “one piece of an overall space strategy that is currently in complete disarray”, and that “one piece” that has always really bugged me.

If the private space god had started with something larger than the maritime equivalent of a canoe I would probably be a true believer. But…..the reality is the building block of this NewSpace “revolution” is a very low-powered mediocre engine that severely limited anything that could be accomplished from the start. We can see the consequences of this in a vehicle that violates the KISS principle 27 times over. I would add the miracle of propellant crossfeed is the guarantor of the optimistic payload and that feature does not appear to be forthcoming.

When I was 11 years old NASA studied that one piece of an overall strategy that I believe is critical to any effort to expand humankind into the solar system. The present 5 segment SRB at 3.6 million pounds of thrust is the most powerful booster on Earth- but a reusable booster surpassing this awesome device with a much higher thrust and Isp is what is needed.
I call it “the methane monster.”

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19720015132.pdf

Mars settlements *require* mining water in space.
Mars exploration doesn’t.
But Musk is focused on settlement, rather than Mars exploration.

I think Mars and the Moon require exploration first. And neither has been explored.

NASA should explore Mars due to the possibility that Mars might be suitable for Mars
settlements. But we don’t know that Mars is suitable for Mars settlement, just as we don’t know if the Moon has minable water.
NASA should explore the Moon to help determine if lunar water is minable.
Whether lunar water is minable depends upon many factors, but one factor that NASA can control, is exploring the Moon to determine whether it could be minable.
Likewise NASA can explore Mars to determine if human settlements are possible.

But NASA can’t or shouldn’t mine lunar water, and NASA can’t or shouldn’t settle Mars.

If one comes to the conclusion that NASA should explore Mars due to the potential for settlements [rather some quest to find alien life], and you realize that lunar water mining [or other mining of water in space] is *required* for Mars settlements, then it’s logical to explore the Moon to determine if there is minable lunar water, because it supports future Mars settlement

The first is to use robots as companies like Moon Express are exploring. It is possible that semi-expendable robot landers will be able to ferry water up to empty upper stages in lunar polar frozen orbits. If this proves practical then a thriving industry in cislunar space can be established without even landing humans on the Moon again.

The second is to find super large lava tubes theorized to exist in certain areas. These tubes may be very large- so large that small cities can fit inside them. This would allow humans to move right in with inflatable structures but would require human-rated landers. Because these tubes are not likely to exist near any of the polar ice deposits then a way to transport water from these polar regions to the tube sites will also be required.

The third avenue was proposed by Gerard K. O’Neill and had a minimal human presence on the lunar surface using electromagnetic rails guns to launch vast amounts of building materials into cislunar space for constructing artificial spinning hollow moons. The ice on the Moon may make this even easier by using Jules Verne gas guns to fire large payloads of ore and water towards space factories.

Ideally all three avenues will be exploited and support each other. Eventually beam propulsion would be used for travel in the vicinity of the Moon and finally to enable millions to migrate to space colonies from Earth. The SLS is the first step and succeeding iterations of Super Heavy Lift Vehicles will eventually generate thrusts triple and quadruple that of the original.

When a rip-off is being perpetrated on the public unusual contracts and methods of stealing are used.

A certain internet “entrepreneur” stepped in after the Columbia disaster with a promise to deliver cargo and astronauts to the ISS. In addition to a campaign contribution preceding the infamous “blunt been there speech”, this bizarro Tony Stark type sued the Air Force of his adopted country and threw the spy satellite program into disarray. He should have been more worried about insuring his hobby rocket did not blow up instead of trying to land on barges.

There is no revolution.