Comments on: “Where, Why and How?” – Concerns of the House Subcommittee on Space

By: Ten Easy Pieces | Spudis Lunar Resources Blog

Ten Easy Pieces | Spudis Lunar Resources Blog — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 15:25:47 +0000

[…] “Where, Why and How?” – Concerns of the House Subcommittee on Space […]

By: Why SLS? | Leading Space

Why SLS? | Leading Space — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 15:55:47 +0000

[…] From a recent post by Dr. Paul Spudis, “'Where, Why and How?' – Concerns of the House Subcommittee on Space“: […]

By: Paul Spudis

Paul Spudis — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 09:11:35 +0000

But why should NASA retain its own launch vehicle?

Largely because they have requirements that are not satisfied by commercially available vehicles.

anybody who is interested in the moon (or Mars) and is interested in launch vehicles only to the extent that they are a means to an end

Precisely as I state in the lunar architecture paper (p. 5): http://spudislunarresources.nss.org/Bibliography/p/102.pdf

It seems unlikely there will be any money to do much exploring with SLS.

It seems likely that there won’t be any civil space program at all given the (lack of) direction we are going and the rate at which we are pursuing said oblivion.

By: Ken

Ken — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 05:58:16 +0000

Indeed, as I should have noticed in reading your blog post, you suggest that SLS may be “Congress’ way of retaining a semblance of spaceflight capability within the agency.” But why should NASA retain its own launch vehicle? The Air Force has been getting on pretty well for sometime now without having its own launch vehicles. For that matter, so has NASA for the most part — think of all of the great missions it has launched [i]without[/i] using the Shuttle.

Furthermore, regardless of whether retaining a NASA-managed launch vehicle is a good idea, anybody who is interested in the moon (or Mars) and is interested in launch vehicles only to the extent that they are a means to an end must still confront Squyres’ concern. It seems unlikely there will be any money to do much exploring with SLS.

By: Warren Platts

Warren Platts — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 16:41:29 +0000

Well in reality, if not the movies, both kinds of gold are found in the exact same ore body.

By: billgamesh

billgamesh — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:48:49 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo9nHXF6_UA

Yes, especially considering they found gold way back in 1929 (5:40). But as soon as they landed they realized what they should be doing is looking for water (4:20).

By: Warren Platts

Warren Platts — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 12:49:32 +0000

Lou Friedman remarked that America and the Soviets raced to the Moon fifty years ago and found “no gold” there.

An ironic comment considering that LCROSS found potentially hugely lucrative (and literal) gold deposits with concentrations measured in the thousands of grams per tonne…

By: Warren Platts

Warren Platts — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 12:42:25 +0000

The other advantage of international partnerships is that the agreements tend to keep the program on track. It’s easy to break a promise to ourselves; but if there’s a piece of paper that says we are committed to another country to do something, that’s practically inviolable…

By: billgamesh

billgamesh — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:30:47 +0000

I was not aware the liquid hydrogen (or oxygen) could be stored on the three day journey from Earth to the Moon. Maintaining the liquified gases in those tanks during the journey to the Moon is not as easy a trick as it is made out to be. Operated out of a Lunar underground hangar and used to fly up and latch-on to cargo and passenger modules from Earth and bring them back down to the base might work well on a single sortie type mission.

More efficienct than lander after lander coming down but first you need a base. And to build that base IMO the first step will be those hypergolic landers setting down.

Make no mistake- the ice on the Moon is the resource that enables the exploration and colonization of the solar system. Even if cryogenic shuttles fly up from lunar underground bases and bring back down cargo from lunar orbit, there will still be a need for hypergolic propellants. Any large manned geo-stationary platforms will mass thousands of tons- including the Moon water they will use for radiation shielding- and these quasi-spaceships will require both cryogenic and storable propellants for their launch from the Moon and insertion into geostationary Earth orbit. These cislunar stations that could provide telecomm services far more efficiently than current networks, are really just spaceships without nuclear engines.

It is these nuclear engines that can be assembled, tested, and launched on missions outside the Earth’s magnetosphere from the Moon that enable interplanetary travel.

So the people that want to go to Mars should understand the Moon is the way to get there. Bypassing the Moon means shielding and propulsion become extremely difficult problems while using the ice for shielding and the lunar location as a staging point for nuclear operations will insure success.

By: Robert Clark

Robert Clark — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 09:12:32 +0000

A single stage hydrogen-fueled lander derived from the Centaur is discussed here: This could even be tested on the SLS first launch in 2017 to make a landing on the Moon.