Under the Double Eagle

24 Responses to Under the Double Eagle

1. Joe says:

   September 2, 2015 at 6:59 pm

   Is there an estimate of the size/mass of such a prospecting vehicle?
   • Paul Spudis says:

     September 3, 2015 at 2:27 am

     The mission only existed in conceptual form, so no detailed design was ever produced. The TOPAZ-II by itself was a bit over a metric ton, so I would think that the whole spacecraft would be a couple of tons. It was to have been launched by a Proton, which does 7 metric tons to GTO.

     I am thinking the new resurrected version would be sort of comsat-sized (several tons), launched on an Atlas 5.
     • Joe says:

       September 3, 2015 at 2:38 pm

       Looking at the power density capabilities of the ISS solar arrays (sorry – my only reference point) that seems entirely reasonable.

       Now the question is, how would such a mission be funded?
       • billgamesh says:

         September 4, 2015 at 7:45 pm

         Now the question is, how to abandon LEO and redirect that 4 billion plus a year into more tooling and workers at Michoud for increased SLS core production and a flight schedule of 6 to 8 flights a year.

         Then it is a question of getting those upper stage Ehricke/von Braun wet workshops into lunar polar frozen orbits along with the prospectors and then robot landers.

         I saw the IMAX movie “Journey to Space” narrated by Patrick Stewart today. It featured about 30 seconds of some spectacular shuttle lift-offs which I greatly enjoyed and the rest was…propaganda. For anyone well read on space history it was a fairy tale. The ARM and human mars mission portrayal and trivializing of radiation hazards and hypogravity debilitation did not surprise me having read the same misinformation for years. It claimed that ARM was going to help protect the planet from impacts which was perhaps the most blatant deception.

         With this stuff being digested by the public the future looks bleak.
     • LocalFluff says:

       September 4, 2015 at 4:50 am

       My impression is that there’s no longer any need to speculate about TOPAZ nuclear power in cislunar space. That’s both radioactive and Russian, a double whammy political no-no. Wouldn’t solar power easily achieve 5 kW in lunar orbit today? The asteroid cruiser Dawn has about 10 kW (at 1 AU) and Boeing et al say they are developing a megawatt solar power plant for spacecrafts (with something like 50×50 meter solar panels I suppose). That should be great not only for electric propulsion and high communication bandwidth, but also for remote sensing like radar and this particle beam thing. Beaming down power could maybe keep a Lunar mission active during the fortnight.
       • LocalFluff says:

         September 4, 2015 at 4:51 am

         OT: Funny headline since Unter’m Doppeladler is a late 19th century Austrian piece of march music. Incredibly, Wikipedia knows to tell:
         >”Under the Double Eagle” is well known in country music, having been recorded by a number of guitar and banjo players, several of them identified with the Bluegrass style.<
       • Paul Spudis says:

         September 4, 2015 at 7:09 am

         If you had read my piece at Air & Space, you would have seen that use of solar arrays is exactly what I proposed.
         • billgamesh says:

           September 4, 2015 at 8:18 am

           Though I am a huge fan of exploring the ocean moons of the gas giants like Europa, Enceladus, and others, surveying the ice deposits on the Moon should be the first priority and primary focus of the entire Human Space Flight community. The billions a year that disappear into keeping the space station to nowhere going in circles and providing corporate welfare to NewSpace does nothing but trap us a couple hundred miles up- a dead end.

           This prospecting mission was made for the SLS which could deploy not one but several and also possibly park the first empty stage of a multitude in those all important lunar polar frozen orbits.

           Once the ice is mapped robot landers can land on the deposits and ferry water back up and fill the empty stages with hundreds and eventually thousands of tons of water- creating a pipeline of fully shielded crew compartments waiting for astronauts to occupy. Attach a tether between these compartments or join them in a torus and spin them and they become space stations with Earth gravity and radiation allowing multi-year tours with no ill effects.

           By mating a propulsion module with a space station it becomes a spaceship and a spaceship is always the best space station. Then it will be time to go to Europa.
         • LocalFluff says:

           September 4, 2015 at 11:37 am

           I missed the last paragraph of the article, I thought it was strange to not mention it. The ISS uses about 100 kW, and 1000 kW spacecrafts seem to come true any day now, if there’s demand. If beamed space solar power in vacuum is workable, then that’s great for activities in shadowed locations on the Moon.
         • Joe says:

           September 4, 2015 at 2:51 pm

           LocalFluff:

           “If beamed space solar power in vacuum is workable, then that’s great for activities in shadowed locations on the Moon.”

           Alternatively, solar reflecting mirrors could be placed in Lunar orbit to illuminate the surface and allow solar energy collection to take place on the Lunar surface.

           http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceres/images/figV-1-5.GIF
         • billgamesh says:

           September 5, 2015 at 8:17 am

           Four 5-mile-wide Soletta mirrors in lunar orbit does not sound too practical. Could be a good project to test space solar energy components for eventual use in GEO though so it has merit. Because there is no atmosphere or weather some extremely large reflecting mirrors on those “peaks of eternal light” or whatever they are called might be a better way to go to initially power a lunar polar base. Or “trashcan nuclear reactors” might be the best considering such powerplants will eventually be required for true spaceships.
         • Joe says:

           September 5, 2015 at 3:59 pm

           billgamesh,

           “Four 5-mile-wide Soletta mirrors in lunar orbit does not sound too practical. ”

           Actually reflectors of that size have compared well to power satellites of similar capabilities which was the original subject.

           However the rest that and the rest of your post serves to reinforce the intent of my original post.

           There are a number of ways to achieve the objective and all should be evaluated based on the desired objective.
2. billgamesh says:

   September 3, 2015 at 10:16 am

   My favorite SDI program was the bomb-pumped X-ray laser promoted by the real-life Dr. Stangelove Edward Teller. We may never know exactly how much money disappeared into the black trying to make this idea work but one thing is for sure- it generated tons of data on designing H-bombs that direct energy in one direction.

   With enough plutonium sitting in storage to immediately send a dozen or so hundred thousand ton spaceships on missions to the outer solar system, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion is the key to interplanetary travel. There is no other practical system and none on the horizon. Nothing else will work and the public is completely uninformed about this. It never ceases to amaze me.

   H-bombs are also the solution to lifting several million tons of solar power satellite components from the surface of the Moon into cislunar space. Maybe Obama should have talked about that during his recent Alaska visits.
   https://iceonthemoon.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/the-only-cure-for-climate-change/
3. billgamesh says:

   September 3, 2015 at 10:24 am

   http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/two-senators-seek-gao-review-of-nasa-commercial-cargo-contracts

   I would not be expecting any funky falcon faux heavy flights to the Moon anytime soon. The best any true space advocate can hope for at this point is for LEO operations to end and that chunk of change directed into SLS and Moon return. A new administration will soon decide if I see human beings leave Earth again in the quarter century of lifespan I have left.
   • Joe says:

     September 3, 2015 at 2:43 pm

     Not sure the “piling on” is fair, it is still interesting to see SpaceX and it’s on-line supporters being held to the same standards they have gleefully held others.
     • billgamesh says:

       September 4, 2015 at 7:50 am

       I have not doubts; it would take libraries of vehement prose to restore balance to the force after years of shills like Coastal Ron polluting the blogosphere.

       Zero concerns about being “fair” to that mob of cyberthugs and shills.
       • Joe says:

         September 4, 2015 at 10:11 am

         Since the subject of SpaceX inevitably came up.

         You might enjoy this article form the Orlando Sentinel:

         http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/os-spacex-next-launch-20150903-story.html

         It pretty well sums up the current Falcon 9 status.
         • billgamesh says:

           September 4, 2015 at 11:46 am

           How far the mighty have fallen. It is just so sad and depressing seeing that cheap exploding hobby rocket marketed as the future.
         • Grand Lunar says:

           September 4, 2015 at 5:00 pm

           It won’t let me read the article without some sort of subscription.
         • billgamesh says:

           September 5, 2015 at 8:01 am

           Try this link.
           It is strange how ULA has close to 100 launches in a row yet the human-rated falcon which is supposed to carry astronauts blew up and nobody is really discussing this. Is NASA really going to risk people on something that blew up…..AGAIN? I don’t think so. Especially considering the toxic dragon which is loaded up with hypergolics so it can “land like a helicopter.” Riiiight. Someone is going to throw the B.S. flag sooner or later.

           http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0901-spacex-delay-20150901-story.html
         • Joe says:

           September 5, 2015 at 8:48 am

           Grand Lunar,

           Curious, I just tried to access the article and it does not make such a request.

           At any rate some of the highlights are:

           (1) SpaceX once had plans for up to eight more launches this year, including the debut of its new rocket, the Falcon Heavy. But all are on indefinite hold.

           (2) At his July 20 news conference, he (meaning Musk) offered the possibility the company could resume launching again as early as September. But during a business conference in California on Tuesday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the company now has pushed back launches for at least the next couple of months.

           (3) But others, starting with U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who chairs the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, still wonder whether that’s all there is to the accident.

           On Aug. 4, Smith sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden expressing concern that NASA plans to use the Falcon 9 to send astronauts to the International Space Station. Smith urged NASA to run an independent investigation, with recommendations for the company it hired.

           (4) Bolden replied three weeks later that NASA is independently investigating, revealing a probe the agency had not previously announced. He suggested NASA has the legal authority to demand changes it might find prudent before it puts any more payloads on the unmanned Dragon

           (5) George Abbey, a former NASA official and now a senior fellow in space policy at Rice University, said SpaceX’s private-satellite customers likely are patient. But they want to make certain the cause of the explosion is found and that quality-control programs are improved, he said.

           Abbey noted the underwater-salvage operations SpaceX has done to look for debris of the Falcon 9 in the Atlantic Ocean.

           “That would indicate they really want to get some confirmation of the strut, or they are possibly looking at other possible causes the accident,” he said. “That uncertainty is probably causing some unease with their customers. It ought to. And it is probably causing some unease with NASA as well.”

           (6joew) Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said most SpaceX customers likely are more interested in making sure that the company addresses all concerns than in the time it takes. He also noted at least one potential customer has taken a satellite to a European rocket.

           As long as SpaceX is not launching, “understandably, that will happen. It’s a two-way street. A lot of these folks, they have timelines. They have investors, and investment requirements they have to meet,” Stallmer said.
4. Grand Lunar says:

   September 3, 2015 at 6:48 pm

   I can imagine many applications from such a mission were it to take place.

   On its own, I imagine it would be an important investigation in lunar science.

   Weren’t there missions that used lasers for similar tasks as this one?
   • Paul Spudis says:

     September 4, 2015 at 1:50 am

     Weren’t there missions that used lasers for similar tasks as this one?

     No. There was a proposal in the 1990s to do an experiment called LIBS (Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy) on a surface rover, but no one ever proposed to do it from orbit and nothing like this or like Double Eagle ever flew.
     • Grand Lunar says:

       September 4, 2015 at 4:58 pm

       Interesting.
       I wonder why LIBS didn’t materialize.

       I seemed to remember a Russian Mars probe to fly to Phobos and conduct a laser experiment, but the probe went out of control.

       Of course, it has been years since I read that, and I’ve since forgotten what it was called.

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