A “lunar vehicle” sounds like travel to the Moon to me.
In my view there are three destinations in the immediate future:

1. The lunar poles by robots to get water shielding.

2. Wet workshops in lunar “frozen orbits” that astronauts will eventually crew.

3. These workshops transited to GEO to take possession of the telecom arena.

A permanent lunar base is further out and any constructs in the L-points even further.

The first place humans are likely to go are workshops in lunar orbit…after radiation shields have been filled with lunar water by robot landers.

Other fanciful destinations do not make much sense if a step-by-step infrastructure is the goal.

It is not my job (or desire) to spend a lot of time defending Bezos. You have the right to have as low an opinion of Bezos (or anyone else for that matter) as you choose. But that statement is just plain a distortion of Blue Origins publically stated intentions.

If you want to learn about the total scope of what they are planning you could read about it here:

http://www.space.com/34034-blue-origin-new-glenn-rocket-for-satellites-people.html

There are plenty of other articles about the New Glenn and New Shepard rockets easily available as well.

The BE-3 engines are intended as upper stage engines for both of those boosters and the ULA Vulcan as well (as noted in the technical paper Dr. Spudis linked in the article to which this comment section is attached).

If you choose to ignore that information, that is your privilege as well; but it does nothing increase your credibility.

I will now abstain from any further discussion of this subject with you.

I am sure the Bezos dream of a suborbital amusement park ride is important to him, but not so much to those advocating a lunar return. As I stated, the BE-3 is barely in the thrust range for a workable “Super Lander” able to lift water shielding off the surface of the Moon. The throttle down number is not a big deal considering something big will probably always need to be landed- even empty upper stages.

The other question is propellant. While deriving a hydrogen pump from a kerosene pump is not going to work the RL-10 was years ago converted to methane from hydrogen by NASA in a test project. It is conceivable the same kind of derivation might allow a methane BE-3 to be almost immediately useful in a cislunar infrastructure. As Dr. Spudis inferred, the laws of physics are the ultimate factor in what works and what does not. If methane can be produced from lunar ice the ease of storage and transfer may make it the workhorse that makes it all happen.

“The only missing piece is a lander to put people on to the lunar surface.”

Robots could go first. I would argue that Bezos could build methane Super Landers on a production line and eventually send dozens or more of them to the Moon on SLS missions as his new project- and forget about tourism.

Winning the social media battle is one area where the Space Agency is taking wrong turn after wrong turn.

Supporting the “horizon goal” of Mars is…..going to fail miserably. It is like saying fusion reactors will be online “very soon.”

The space station to nowhere has never been a real draw. It is essentially a bunch of tin cans going around and around. There is no progress, no exciting discoveries, no bright new future in LEO. Just circles.

Elon Musk taking his throne in Muskopolis on Mars is not fooling anyone either. Making scientifically inaccurate sci-fi dramas is one thing but actually going there is not happening. No way.

The Moon is waiting and so is social media. If Trump wants to build infrastructure then the Moon is the only place that is going to happen.

You can take your hat off to him and state NASA “leaders” have no technical skills and lack basic knowledge but the SLS is looking pretty good.

Mr. Musk has soaked the taxpayer for several billion in funding and subsidies- much of it “free” support from NASA facilities. His hobby rocket has blown up twice and NASA would actually be showing poor leadership if they risked their people on it. I have zero respect for anyone singing his praises while damning NASA.

In terms of a logically laid series of steps splashing the space station to nowhere and it’s worthless LEO taxi’s, dumping the Absurd Retrieval Mission, and indefinitely shelving the J2M would be the way to go. But largely due to the pernicious influence of NewSpace on the space agency that is going to be a battle.

The argument has been made that the unacceptably high risks of human Lunar missions, as exemplified by Apollo 13’s near disaster, were a part of the political factors that helped end our trips to the Moon.

Science and what is affordable, doable, and useful have been excluded as has mission risk analysis during the the last six years in NASA’s leaders’ and Elon Musk’s ongoing ‘Mars Soon and Cheaply Too’ blather.

Both going to and returning from the Moon require some significant backup options for when things go bad. And most assuredly, things will sometimes go very bad.

The Orion and its European Service Module offers the useful option of directly heading fast for a wide ocean on Earth, and that is one risk reduction aspect of the International Orion that might remain quite valuable for many decades.

An enlarged version of the Orion’s Service Module seems a likely future evolution of the system. The Service Module may someday have a different propellant combination.

If we Americans and Europeans are serious about building infrastructure on the Moon and in the rest of Cislunar Space and servicing, modifying, and expanding that infrastructure, then various versions of evolved International Orions could fly lots of missions for many decades into the future.

Use of the Orion for many decades should compliment or enable the use of a wide variety of other human rated spacecraft in Cislunar Space.

As far as resupplying spacecraft with propellants while in orbit, we do have some experience in doing that at the ISS. Maybe some of that experience will be relevant for a wide variety of propellants.

Perhaps very large cylinders of liquid propane and oxygen could be exchanged for near empties in space and thus avoid some of the risk issues with refilling spacecraft propellant tanks in orbit. The empty cylinders could eventually be refilled on the Moon.

Propane or maybe propene (also known as propylene) could be more useful for Landers than methane.

“The P-19 first stage vehicle is undergoing refurbishment in preparation for continued flight test operations with the LOX/propylene 5K-lbf engine and closed-loop thrust vector control.”

From: ‘Current Projects – April 2015 – P-19’
At: http://www.garvspace.com/Current_Projects.htm

‘Vector Space Systems, a micro satellite space launch company comprised of new-space industry veterans from SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, McDonnell Douglas and Sea Launch, today announced it has finalized the acquisition of Garvey Spacecraft Corporation.’

From: ‘Vector Space Systems’ Jul 20, 2016
At: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vector-space-systems-completes-acquisition-of-garvey-spacecraft-corporation-to-enhance-micro-satellite-launch-capabilities-300301053.html

Thanks for the link.

There is (in addition to the article) a very good discussion in the comments section (by other researchers) as to the limitations of the study that should not be ignored.

This is not an attempt by those respondents (or myself) to dismiss the subject only to note that the research is not dispositive of a final answer.

I agree that for long term missions BEO some level of increased radiation protection is required (don’t really know of anyone who does not).

The real question is how much/of what kind. This will likely require monitoring of crew on various length missions and for decades after to reach final answers (as is being done on the ISS for the LEO environment).

In the meantime the Orion is really built to be a transport not a habitat and various habitat designs (including the Cygnus derived one you reference in your article) will all have shielding capabilities included.

It should also be noted that the Cygnus pressurized volume is small enough to directly benefit from synergy with Orion Life Support/Crew Accommodation Systems.