Bezos gets his Moon wish with $3.4 billion lunar lander contract
https://newatlas.com/space/blue-origin-moon-lander/
A lot of old links and bookmarks are dead some were not archived but it once featured in the news. Like the Apollo Lunar Module (LM), Altair was envisioned as having two stages. The descent stage would have housed the astronauts, life-support equipment, and fuel for the ascent-stage motor and steering rockets. In year 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a proposal to cancel the Constellation program.
]]>The Zubrin plan of the cover page is using insitu water ice mining for refueling the LEV aka apollo stye LEM...
A Falcon Heavy is used to deliver another cargo lander to orbit, whose payload consists of a fully fueled Lunar Excursion Vehicle (LEV). This craft consists of a two-ton cabin like that used by the Apollo-era Lunar Excursion Module mounted on a one-ton hydrogen/oxygen propulsion system filled with nine tons of propellant, capable of delivering it from the lunar surface to Earth orbit.
We do not need to use the failed ISS assembly method to build moonships.
It's a question of money.. Mir was assembled in space and it did quite ok.. ...
No--it was cramped, and was to be replaced by Polyus style Mir 2 modules-- 80-90 tons each)--abandoned because they invaded a muslim country and became overextended. And they took it out on their space efforts
Sound familiar?
]]>We do not need to use the failed ISS assembly method to build moonships.
It's a question of money.. Mir was assembled in space and it did quite ok.. ISS would to, if it didn't use Space shuttle to deliver 20 MT payloads at the price of 1000 - 500 M$ per launch..
Russian needs to either bring back Energiya or stick to comsat launches.
Russians have Proton/Angara, ESA has Ariane 5, China will have Chang Zheng 5, USA has Delta IV/Atlas V/Falcon 9.. they are all in the 25 MT to LEO range.. they cost around 100 M$ to launch and all are in production/design.. and ALL are underutilized (they would cost less if you launched more of them).. you can do the same thing (20 MT to lunar surface) with 6 launches (1x lander, 1x cargo, 1x manned, 3x booster stages to LLO) or even 4 launches (1x lander, 1x manned, 2x booster to LLO) compared to 2 launches (Ares I, Ares V).. it even costs the same (or less), with the exception that you don't need to develop new rockets..
therefore, I don't think russians, europeans or even chinese will build 100+ MT to LEO ship anytime soon.. they can save all that development/infrastucture building money and just increase launch rate.. russians don't have a luxury of throwing money at problems.. they only have 10% of NASA's budget.. they have to be creative..
NASA will scrap Shuttle.. and since it has no operational manned rocket anymore it will need to develop new rockets.. and since it has 15 B$ it can build 100+ MT rocket.. it will help it to save all those workers (and votes in congress) in Florida and elsewhere.. it will still cost NASA (remember those workers?) 500 M$ to launch, but this time they will get 5x MT to LEO (compared to Shuttle).. and those big rockets will be very usefull once you go to Mars.. others will have to do space assembly/refuelling/docking/stacking things, while NASA will go direct (or if NASA will launch big stuff on Ares V for them, but that's a matter of politics/pride)..
The problem I see is.. If you can launch 5x 120 MT to LEO to build Mars ship.. why bother with developing space utilisation.. it costs a lot of money, it's risky.. just build rockets for a low, low price of 500 M$ and forget about all that development.. but that way they will never develop and use anything that would be sustainable in the long run.. estimated 2,5 B$ to change crews on moon? What are they thinking...
think of what russians could do if they had NASA's money, but still had to be 'creative'.. my guess is.. russians/europeans/chinese will manage quite well, only with 1/5 of the money NASA spends + they will have to USE new technologies (they will not have luxury of 120+ MT LEO NASA has).. which will eventualy open space beyond LEO (and then SSTO will make sense)...
]]>Russian needs to either bring back Energiya or stick to comsat launches.
]]>Zero-gravity ship building is a pipe dream too for the next half century at least. This is so far away that there is no sense in discussing it. Mining base metals or propellant from the Moon/asteroids is again a thing of a dreamy far future, its just so hard to do that its not easier than Earth launch.
We must learn how to seperate Oxygen from metal oxides.. we know how to do this on earth.. We must learn how to weld metals together.. we know how to do this on earth.. if zero-g causes you problems, then you just build first smelter that spins enough, so it works.. and once you weld your first wheel together, fill it with air, spin.. from then on it's just like earth.. you don't even need to research anything new.. only use what you use on earth..
This is the wrong way of thinking.
NASA plans to spend 2,5 billion dollars each time to send 4 people to moon for 6 months (not even to mars).. build everything each time, and throw it away.. and you think my way of thinking is wrong?
Space construction, operation, etc are all very expensive endeavours and their cost must be weighed against just building it here where we have all the food, water, and energy in abundance and just launch it.
Yes.. space construction.. but if you are working in 1 G environment, protected by few m of concrete from space, its like working on ship on earth.. and since have all the energy that you need (sun shines 24 hours a day, 365 days a year), you can light up your greenhouse, that will give you food and recycle water..
you know.. like those greenhouses that produce food when there is - 70 degress celsius outside.. on earth south pole.. http://www.antarctichydroponics.com/international.htm
I am not just talking in the short term but the long term as well, that the initial costs are so massive and the operations cost still so high by virtue of its difficulty that competing with Earth will be difficult. For instance, Lunar mining/smelting and factories to build anything of useful scale would be very large, as would factories and support. Can this really be cheaper than just building on Earth and flying from here? Not just now, not just in the short term, but ever.
You just need to build 'factory' that can melt iron oxides (mirrors and sun?) insert CO or H to remove Oxygen from it, recycle gass, and form this iron into sheets. Repeat. Weld sheets together and.. you have your 1 G spacestation.. how much would this weigh? 10-100 MT? You send it once.. complicated parts? Rapid manufacturing...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_prototyping
Again, reuseability is not always the cheaper option. A tug or lander will have to fire its main engine four times for each trip, and so to even last ten trips you'd need an engine with four times the service life of the best engine, the RL-10. If the lander or tug can't make many missions, then there is no point in bothering with them at all, particularly when they have to be big enough and have enough thrust to move 100's of tonnes of payload.
Then we will just have to build better engines.. if they are made to last 10 times they can be inproved.. to 20.. to 50.. and more.. and make them easy to repleace/fix.. then send one container full of engine parts to LEO and that should cover it.. you don't dump whole car when it's tires wear out..
Oh, tugs/landers WOULD make many missions.. there is all that O2 or watter to move around and containers to be delivered.. especialy if that costs you nothing extra to launch them.. it's not like they have to be rebuilt every time because they must do 10 km/s to get to LEO and airbrake back in one big fireball..
No! You make it sound like building these big ships will be cheap and their cost negligible, this is not only untrue, but frankly its misleading. If these vehicles cost anything like what I expect (say $500M each) then building 100 each is one hundred billion dollars.
since we are talking about something like ATV or progess.. ATV costs 70 million euros, progress is even cheaper (30 million $?).. but even it costs 500M each.. NASA is planing on building/designing all those things anyway.. so how is 500M reusable lander different than 500M expendable lander? It's the same thing.. reusable lander only has bigger tanker and more/better engines..
and since you reuse them.. you only build them once.. NASA has 15 billions to spend each year.. thats 15 landers/tugs that will last you looong time (you fix them, remember).. costs fall once you don't have to send all that propelant from earth.. and once everything is built, delivered and works.. then you send ocasional new lander/tug, spare parts and lots of payloads.. 20 MT to LEO costs you 100 million $.. Ares V + Ares I + EDS + lander that does the same job (deliveres 20 MT to moon) costs 2,5 billion.. and nothing even exists..
Building a vehicle to last 15 years without expensive servicing (eg new engines) will be a tall order, and will add to the cost of each unit built substantially.
Russian Parom is supposed to have 15 years on orbit life with servicing.. and if you design engines to be easily fixed in orbit, then you only replace engines.. or even only parts that get worn out..
Furthermore, fuel boiloff really is critical for such a scheme, that if travel times are slow or the vehicles have to wait in orbit alot of that fuel is going to be lost.
Most of the fuel will be in LEO station (where you convert water or store O2 and H2) lunar orbit/L2 and on moon .. they will not move, so you can aford to reliquify boiloff + chill everything realy good.. that fuel will get transfered to tugs/landers right before they go.. that means it will be there for few days.. only exception would be tug that slowly aerobrakes back to LEO.. but it can cary water, so you don't have boiloff problem.. or O2, but O2 does not boil off that fast.. plus, if you keep your tanks in shade they will be cold..
in a ways ships and spaceships are the best comparisson
But they aren't, that was my whole point. Your comparison is wrong because they are nothing at all alike.
But they should be... we build them out of steel.. we build them big.. we build lots of them.. and we build them simple.. we keep them in the water but load them with cranes/boats in harbors (only use drydocks to fix them).. hell, we even make ships that cary cryogenic fuel on warm see with capacities of up to 200,000 m3 (LGC).. and that ship has to survive large waves, corosion and storms.. and they cost in millions not BILLIONS..
There is no future in this massive base idea if it is just to extract fuel from the Moon.
if you plan on building moon base, you might just ass well build something that's not complete waste of money.. and when you have base that is CHEAP TO RUN it will not end up like Appolo...
a mirror big enough to reflect enough sunlight to heat literally millions of tonnes dust anually is not happening. No, there are not lots of ways.
who said anything about ONE mirror.. you put LOTS of simple mirrors on the tops of mountains and point them all to one big black box below.. then just throw dirt in it, and move mirrors a little..
like this, only upside down.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy..
Things are NOT simpler for smaller asteroids, because it takes the same amount of fuel per tonne of asteroid to stop their spinning reguardless how big they are.
It's spinning? well.. unless it's tumbling horibly then you land on it's axis (like you would on north/south pole on earth).. if it's tumbling then you can use something that would look like a spider and try to grab it.. if rock is strong enough you would be basicly hanging upside down from it.. and you basicly landed on asteoroid and you can start pickin up/minning.. if that part that you grabed brakes off, well.. congratulation - you just picked up part of asteoroid.. put that part to tug, and repeat.. when tug is full start engines to meet with earth, do lunar flyby and you are in earth orbit..
A small asteroid might be easier, but its also worth much less.
it doesn't matter how big asteroid is.. it matters how much can you get to earth orbit.. even 10m wide would need a lot of propelant.. but if it's delta-v to earth is small enough to get it.. it will be done.. 1982DB needs just 0.06 km/s..
The fuel to get to multiple smaller asteroids will also be larger than one central asteroid.
well.. since you must process asteoroids in HEEO, L5, L1, L2, werever.. you will have lots of fuel.. and since you already have almost all the speed that you need... the easy to reach small asteorids will get picked up/mined first.. but once you have few that have water/H2/O2 in them around orbit, you will have more than enough fuel to go to harder ones..
You simply not caring how its done doesn't make the problem go away; there is a principle in applying quantum mechanics to real-world situations that is apt here, that if something is very very unlikely then it is for all intents impossible.
No, I am saying that I don't care what is the best way.. even I can find some ineficient easy ways to get things done.. what it the optimal way is for someone else to find out (remember those billions that will cost to design things)..
And if you see problems that are fundamentaly showstopers, then point them out..
But its not just "unfortunate," its a show-stopper. It stops your plan completly. If you have to bring Hydrogen from Earth, then there is no point bothering to lug Oxygen from the Moon to mix with it, it would be better just to bring the Oxygen from Earth too for everything except landing. The Moon, as mentioned, even if it does have ice it won't be practical to extract Hydrogen in quantity,
Lander that is reusable can be built. O2 can be extracted on moon. H2 could be sent from earth (even you think this is good idea). IF there is ice on moon you could export it all the way to LEO. If it's not.. well O2 is 90% by weight, so you need to bring only 10% H2 from earth.. but, as I said.. we should send something to check if there is ice.. and if there is, it would be easy to get it (just heat the soil and you have steam).. there is nothing complicated with mirrors and boxes..
and comets require much more fuel to reach plus spin just like asteroids do. Not to mention the whole random surface explosion bit.
Actually.. 10% of know asteroids need less delta-v than to land on moon.. as for 'random sufrace explosions'.. it's not like you work on atomic bomb.. if you have problems with sun heating surface, then just block the sun with some simple deployable sunshade..
To do so in any reasonably amount of time before the cargo of rocket fuel boiled off would need a heat shield, which would weigh about as much as boiloff condensing equipment or extended tankage I bet. This saves little versus powerd braking I bet.
It depens what you are transporting.. if you airbrake 100 MT of water into LEO then you get 100 MT of water.. you burn all needed fuel to bring water from moon to LLO/L2, after that tug aerobrakes slowly to LEO.. if O2.. well.. you would need boiloff condensing.. but most of the figures i have seen point to few percent boiloff a month.. so instead of 100 MT of O2 you get 90 MT after a month or two in LEO.. not realy big deal.. the only unknown is heat shield.. but if you made it big enough and did not went to low it would not heat that much so it would not have to be all that strong/heavy..
This is something small, but you can make it bigger.. or hotter.. or slower.. http://aria.seas.wustl.edu/SSC01/papers/11-8.pdf
Not true, your tugs will have to wait at least some in Lunar orbit for return fuel, and I doubt that you can leave for Earth any time you want from polar orbit without incuring a large fuel penalty.
good point, but you could go to/from polar orbit and L2 at any time.. and lunar orbit would be good for about 4 months before you crased.. enough to refuel and split before you ended on moon..
Which requires an orbital water cracking/cryogen liquifying station with tank farms, which will cost money. Lots of money if ISS construction is any guide. You keep on adding and stacking up these ten digit infrastructure expenses, and it just can't compete with less reuseable arcitectures.
Yes you would need liquifying station with tank farms.. but, what is so complicated about them that they would need tens of billions of dollars? They are tanks for O2, H2, H2O, cracking plant (basic electolisis - we do this on earth), liquifying (compress, remove heat, expand - liquid) and cooling.. oh and pumping.. and that's it.. it's not like we don't know how to do this things on earth some 100 years.. but even if it does cost a lot of money to develop this thing.. once you developed them you don't have to develop them again.. just build few of them and you are set..
but one has legs (lander), other has big panels to airbrake with (tug)
So you want to go through all this trouble to develop a different vehicle that trades thrust and a little structure for an aerobrake shield and boiloff condenser? Why? Just use the lander and powerd braking, skip the tug alltogether.
Aerobrake alows you to return from moon with propelant for FREE (propelant wise).. you pay the price with shield and boiloff condenser.. but if you can return more of it to LEO than you need to get tug back to LLO, than it's worth it..
you split it, because you don't need shield, condenser an solar panels on moon (not to launch with them anyway) and you don't need legs on tug, you get two different ships.. but if you didn't need lot of mass to aerobrake, you could just make one.. in any way they would use same engines, electronics, docking/refueling, navigaton.. so actually they are not all that different and most of the things would have to be developed only once..
]]>http://www.energia.ru/english/energia/n … 07-01.html
But I would go one step futher.. they show you need only one propulsion stage to make lunar flyby, but two to go into LLO.. why not make lunar flyby that will go to L2.. it needs only extra 0,33 km/s delta-v to enter semi-stable (0,1 km/s delta-v stationkeeping a year) L2 helo orbit.. it will take you 8 days to go from LEO to L2.. you can return to earth with 0,33 km/s delta-v.. if 8 days is too long, you can go to L2 directly with delta-v of TEI + 1,2 km/s.. and you will get there in 4 days..
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/docs/hal … tation.pdf
Why L2? well.. you can reach any spot on moon from there.. and you can even use high inclanation earth orbits to get there (moon flyby saves you propelant) like ISS..
And when you are there.. you are already on Interplanetary Superhighway System.. you can go slowly with very little delta-v onto this highway, or you can go to mars the regular way.. you do lunar flyby (or if you want you can do moon-earth or even moon-earth-moon flybys) and off to mars you go.. you already have almost all the speed to do that.. you do need propelant to bring stuff from earth, but you would need all that propelant anyway to go to mars, and you can take your time.. combine all the parts for mars spaceship, test everything, send it to mars.. and on the way back use flybys to return to L2.. refit it, and reuse it..
http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~shane/paper … s_2001.pdf
the same way you could return material from asteoroids.. you need only TEI (which is basicly what you have in L1 or L2) + 0.06 km/s to get to or from 1982DB,.. and once you have this material in high earth orbit, you don't need to haul all that propelant from moon (well even if you dont find easy water you get lots of O2 on asteroids in oxides).. you just use moon, L1, L2, earth to change orbits.. and aerobraking (so you don't need to burn 3,1 km/s worth of propelant) of tugs to bring extracted O2 or water to LEO (so you can do 3,1 km/s TEI to reach any of those orbits from LEO)..
http://www.permanent.com/t-theory.htm
So, you get from 6x 20 MT launches to change crews (still cheaper than building 2 new rockets + everything else), to one soyuz/klipper launch to LEO, tug to lander changeover (either direct in HEEO, in LLO, L2 or via station in L2) Lander to moon.. with more propelant you could just combine tug and lander in one ship that can airbrake to LEO or land on moon.. they are quite similar (lander has bigger/more engines + legs - airbrake mass)... everything is reused, what is broken gets fixed either in LEO, L2 or moon, you send only spare parts (cheaper than new ships all the time), and each crew costs you - one soyuz/klipper to LEO costing 60 million $... dirt cheap compared to 2,5 billion $ pricetag for Ares V + Ares I...
And you also can build reusable mars ship, that you don't have to throw away because you need that much propelant that you must send from earth that it is just not worth it.. you build it in L1, L2, L5, HEEO.. in one safe orbit (so you don't have to wory about whole thing falling to earth like ISS would do if you would stop raising it's orbit), from wich you can do flybys to go to other places.. and since you can get material from asteoroids (they are just rocks that fly their own orbits around the sun) all you need to learn how to do is: make thick (1 cm? 10 cm? how much do you need?) sheats of metals (iron will do just fine), weald those pices together and you can make any large structure you need.. once you have airtight structures, you can fill it with air and make concrete 'walls' few m thick (protection against everything outside - radiaton, flairs, punctures).. from then on it's like building luxury cruise liner.. wheels (gravity = place to live, grow food, work), boxes (spacedock = place to work/fix on spaceships protected from radiation and with normal air.. no need to use spacesuits.. T-shirts would do just fine).. small, complicated things you get from LEO (ISS is 500 MT whole).. big things you build on site.. and from there on you can do anything..
oh, and when you reuse mars space ship, the price for one person to get to mars orbit is: 20 million per person + price of spare parts divided by number of persons.. (once you build this of course).. anyone interested?
]]>Even if we do find Lunar ice as a fine layer of snow, I think we ought to forget about it, since its just not worth the trouble.
Since we don't know if there is ice there, how much ice is there, how hard it would be extract it, let us concentrate on O2 in dirt.. we KNOW we can get it and how.. we can hope to get rest of H2 some day, but since O2 is 90% of all the propelant needed, we can send H2 from somewhere else (earth, asteroids,..).
how would I do it.. NASA will build Ares V.. i don't think anyone doubts that.. if you have ways to put 130 MT to LEO it makes everything much more simple.. but even if you don't build it everyone has rockets that can put 20-25 MT to LEO for about 100 M$ (Delta IV, Atlas V, Chang Zheng 5, Proton, Ariane 5). You size lunar lander for your maximum LEO size (or if you have 100+ MT launcher for half that size)
Our priority is to start producing O2 as soon as posible..
if you have only 20 MT LEO you do it like this: You launch 20 MT container, launch 20 MT EDS, meet with container, do TEI and wait there. You launch 20 MT lander (loaded with fuel), launch 20 MT EDS, meet with lander, do TEI, pick up container, land on the moon. 4x launches, 2x EDS, 1x lander, 1x container, 3x dock - 20 MT on moon. Repeat untill you have basic base on the moon that can start making O2. If something blows up and doesn't get delivered there is no rush.. you just re-send it.. once everything is set up, you do 4x launches.. only this time container is for human transport to the moon + suplies.. when everything is ok, you do 2x launches, EDS + something that can suport crew for 14 days, can stay in LLO for some time (a year?) and can return crew back to earth.. resuply moon with 20 MT containers, change crews with manned ship.
if you have 130 MT LEO, you can skip meeting with EDS in orbit, but you deliver only 60 MT to the moon. you do 2x launches untill you set up base, later you do either 1x big launch that deliveres 60 MT to the moon surface or you pick up your CEV + deliver smaller container..
Resuply would include H2 (if you can't get local).. if there is easily exploitable H2 you can make new fully reusable EDS ('tug').. but, even if there is none, you are already producing O2 (90% of needed propelant), that you can transfer to the 'tug' in LLO for trip back to earth.. if you can get H2 from other places than earth, you have ready market for it on moon..
]]>Get Ares V built at all costs.
Oh definetely. I'd even prioritize that over the Ares I and CEV.
Consider large HLLV nuclear-electric craft under a black budget that can also be used as probes
Nuclear is a major iffy - sure it provide constant and maybe even more power than solar but if you plan for more than a couple RTGs you'll have not just every enviormental agency on your back but the Atomic Associations.
These can come later and are a bone thown to the all-science folks. This will be for cargo only and reusable.
Good to see you're being realistic.
Place a station in Lunar orbit with small micro-landers for quick sample returns with the station as a safehouse.
A similar discussion was made before - Lunar space stations aren't nessicary and it'd be wiser to keep landers on the moon rather than worry over a free-floating platform being dragged down by the surface's uneven gravity.
The moon base would be near any fissure, evacuated lava tube found and filled with air.
Not a bad idea actually once you find such sites; I heard similar ideas floated for Mars too.
Direct missions with capsules atop Ares V.
A lot of mass can be moved very quickly--and the science mongers get JIMO out of the deal too.
Good news and bad news. I agree with the Ares V idea, especially to allow for larger varriants of the CEV. Bad news is JIMO is dead - it and Prometheus were canceled just before O'Keffe resigned.
Good to see some people thinking here and with different ideas.
]]>Here is how I would undertake such a scheme.
Get Ares V built at all costs.
I would do as you suggest, and then expand a bit
Consider large HLLV nuclear-electric craft under a black budget that can also be used as probes
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/intaltug.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/stages/erta.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/engines/11b97.htm
These can come later and are a bone thown to the all-science folks. This will be for cargo only and reusable. Place a station in Lunar orbit with small micro-landers for quick sample returns with the station as a safehouse.
The moon base would be near any fissure, evacuated lava tube found and filled with air.
The nuclear tug can take 100 tons to Geosynch--or the moon perhaps. Ares launched the tug and the payload in two flights.
Direct missions with capsules atop Ares V.
A lot of mass can be moved very quickly--and the science mongers get JIMO out of the deal too.
]]>'tug' comes, picks up this container, loaded with 30 MT of propelant (H2 and O2), goes TEI, moon orbit insertion and waits in LLO empty (well.. at least without O2.. it could have extra H2 to transfer to lander) for lander.
You miss the whole point, you will need about 100MT more propellant to push that 30MT off the surface to Earth plus a little left for the tanker/lander to go back down again.
To get this fuel you will have to process 6,500MT of Lunar dust to extract its Hydrogen (assuming 0.3% Hydrogen). This is really a huge figure! Let me try and put this in some perspective, that the biggest dump truck in the world (Cat 797B) can haul 300MT of dirt and itself weighs 275MT. Its power plant, which is a hybrid drive, is about 2.5 megawatts (ISS solar arrays = 0.18MW).
All that Lunar mining, all that dirt processing equipment, all that power requirement, and all the people and supplies required to produce it. How can this possibly be better than a 20MT throw-away booster? Short answer: it can't! The fuel and rockets to send supplies enough to support a mining operation that size exceeds the fuel you produce!
Forget the tug, forget importing fuel to Earth orbit, it doesn't make sense.
]]>it would actualy be easier to build such star base than ISS.. you need tehnology to smelter/refine metal into sheets, weld this sheets together... where do you get material? the same place you get H2O - moon, asteroids, comets
No. Zero-gravity ship building is a pipe dream too for the next half century at least. This is so far away that there is no sense in discussing it. Mining base metals or propellant from the Moon/asteroids is again a thing of a dreamy far future, its just so hard to do that its not easier than Earth launch.
yes, it will not be easy... the point is, that you need to develop space resources to the point where you don't need all that much stuff from earth... what it would take to make it from lunar metals
This is the wrong way of thinking. Space construction, operation, etc are all very expensive endeavours and their cost must be weighed against just building it here where we have all the food, water, and energy in abundance and just launch it. I am not just talking in the short term but the long term as well, that the initial costs are so massive and the operations cost still so high by virtue of its difficulty that competing with Earth will be difficult. For instance, Lunar mining/smelting and factories to build anything of useful scale would be very large, as would factories and support. Can this really be cheaper than just building on Earth and flying from here? Not just now, not just in the short term, but ever.
you build them sturdy and just fly them untill they can fly no more
Again, reuseability is not always the cheaper option. A tug or lander will have to fire its main engine four times for each trip, and so to even last ten trips you'd need an engine with four times the service life of the best engine, the RL-10. If the lander or tug can't make many missions, then there is no point in bothering with them at all, particularly when they have to be big enough and have enough thrust to move 100's of tonnes of payload.
build them sturdy.. build lots of them... only costs are to build them and launch
No! You make it sound like building these big ships will be cheap and their cost negligible, this is not only untrue, but frankly its misleading. If these vehicles cost anything like what I expect (say $500M each) then building 100 each is one hundred billion dollars.
if they are built to last 15 years and you have 10 - 100.. of them in various stages of return to LEO.. who cares about travel times.. use the one that is curently checked, loaded and in LEO..
Building a vehicle to last 15 years without expensive servicing (eg new engines) will be a tall order, and will add to the cost of each unit built substantially. Furthermore, fuel boiloff really is critical for such a scheme, that if travel times are slow or the vehicles have to wait in orbit alot of that fuel is going to be lost.
If you add condensing equipment (or large fuel tanks), beware, because if a vehicle is reuseable its empty mass can be more critical, not less. For each tonne of vehicle mass you add, you are going to burn several tonnes of fuel round trip each time. Multiply this by ten trips and it begins to add up... how much better is this than a cheap one-shot throw-away EDS stage direct from Earth that doesn't need a boiloff condenser or extended fuel supplies?
in a ways ships and spaceships are the best comparisson
But they aren't, that was my whole point. Your comparison is wrong because they are nothing at all alike.
you would need a real base.. probably something that is dug into mountain.. so you have lots of space in caves with air so you can do everything as you would do on earth... you would grow your own food and recycle water/air so suport costs would not kill you
No no no, that is my whole point, the cost of this massive Lunar base project, it can never possibly compete over facilities on Earth coupled with less expensive launch. Even building the super SSTO spaceplane would probably be no more expensive. It might look good on paper, but later on when we are able to build such a thing, we would also be able to build more advanced launch vehicles (much less a space elevator). There is no future in this massive base idea if it is just to extract fuel from the Moon.
you can build converyer belt.. you can build cable carts..you can make mirrors so you don't need to bring all that soil to the top, but you can heat it from above
But there really aren't, the cost of building a conveyer belt up a several kilometer run up a mountain side would be ruinously expensive to build on the Moon, and a mirror big enough to reflect enough sunlight to heat literally millions of tonnes dust anually is not happening. No, there are not lots of ways.
how you get stuff from them is a engineering problem.. but things get simpler if you have to deal with very small asteroids.. like.. 10 m across.. or one that is not spinning realy fast.. i don't care how it is done if you can get stuff from that rocks to tugs and deliver tugs to earth orbit
Again, engineering problems are no less of a problem if they are insurmountable for intents and purposes. There are some things that are just so hard that they will never be worth bothering with. Things are NOT simpler for smaller asteroids, because it takes the same amount of fuel per tonne of asteroid to stop their spinning reguardless how big they are. A small asteroid might be easier, but its also worth much less. The fuel to get to multiple smaller asteroids will also be larger than one central asteroid. You simply not caring how its done doesn't make the problem go away; there is a principle in applying quantum mechanics to real-world situations that is apt here, that if something is very very unlikely then it is for all intents impossible.
otherwise all this is unfortunate.. moon is a good start and once you have propelant to spare you can get it from other places (comets?).. it's still workable, because you must send H2 from earth, but you can get O2 from moon.
But its not just "unfortunate," its a show-stopper. It stops your plan completly. If you have to bring Hydrogen from Earth, then there is no point bothering to lug Oxygen from the Moon to mix with it, it would be better just to bring the Oxygen from Earth too for everything except landing. The Moon, as mentioned, even if it does have ice it won't be practical to extract Hydrogen in quantity, and comets require much more fuel to reach plus spin just like asteroids do. Not to mention the whole random surface explosion bit.
i read a report that it is posible to aerobrake from GTO to LEO, so i guess it would be posible.
To do so in any reasonably amount of time before the cargo of rocket fuel boiled off would need a heat shield, which would weigh about as much as boiloff condensing equipment or extended tankage I bet. This saves little versus powerd braking I bet.
there is no need for stable lunar orbit
Not true, your tugs will have to wait at least some in Lunar orbit for return fuel, and I doubt that you can leave for Earth any time you want from polar orbit without incuring a large fuel penalty.
you could load tug with water so there is no boiloff no matter how long it takes to get there
Which requires an orbital water cracking/cryogen liquifying station with tank farms, which will cost money. Lots of money if ISS construction is any guide. You keep on adding and stacking up these ten digit infrastructure expenses, and it just can't compete with less reuseable arcitectures.
but one has legs (lander), other has big panels to airbrake with (tug)
So you want to go through all this trouble to develop a different vehicle that trades thrust and a little structure for an aerobrake shield and boiloff condenser? Why? Just use the lander and powerd braking, skip the tug alltogether.
More to come later
]]>No offense but asteroid cities and free-floating star bases shall remain fiction for a good century at least. Fiction conceived by people who overlook the physics and politics of real space travel.
'star base' like that would need lots of material.. but it would be built the same way cruse ships are.. it would actualy be easier to build such star base than ISS.. you need tehnology to smelter/refine metal into sheets, weld this sheets together, once airtight spin, and you would have no idea that you don't work on earth.. everything would work the same.. where do you get material? the same place you get H2O - moon, asteroids, comets..
Neviden, I get the sense that you believe a few things that just aren't true: 1) Lunar (or asteroid for Hydrogen) infrastructure will be easy to set up and produce very large quantities of propellant. This is not the case, and the expense of Lunar extraction must be weighed carefully.
yes, it will not be easy.. all-reusable, LEO exporting propelant production infrastructure size would be big.. but that is not really the point i try to make..
the point is, that you need to develop space resources to the point where you don't need all that much stuff from earth.. you can start small, but you should know where are you going.. thinking big forces you to focus more on what can you build and how and less on how light something is.. manufacturing.. refueling.. extraction.. if it is too big to send from earth, what it would take to make it from lunar metals..
2) Reuseable landers will be capable of an arbitrary number of flights with little care or risk. Due to the very large propellant masses needed, consequently a very large number of flights will be required or extremely large landers/tugs.
you build them sturdy and just fly them untill they can fly no more.. new landers would take care of critical stuff (cargo, humans).. old for noncritical (water, propelant, metals or anything else).. plan it soo, that if they fail, there is no big deal.. main obstacle is of course engines, but i have read somewhere comments about RL-10 from designers, that if you don't stress them too much, they will run forever (not really, but you get the point)..
3) Travel times are irrelivent and storage long enough for reuseability will be easy. Slow aerobraking imparticularly would require a large number of vehicles with very long storage.
build them sturdy.. build lots of them.. if one breakes, no big deal.. you would use them to send stuff to TEI and to help transfer propelant/water to make this posible.. you could even use them to return material from the rest of solar system.. once you develop them, only costs are to build them and launch into LEO.. if they are built to last 15 years and you have 10 - 100.. of them in various stages of return to LEO.. who cares about travel times.. use the one that is curently checked, loaded and in LEO..
4) Your outrage about cost by comparing it to Earthly things is arbitrary and irrelivent. These all add up to an expensive, impractical way to get back to the Moon.
I am not outraged about costs.. but if we plan to send more than 4 people to moon or mars, you have to look at costs.. in a ways ships and spaceships are the best comparisson..
First of all, we do not know if there is any water on the Moon. We don't know if there is a single drop.
well.. we all agre that we have to check what is there.. and if it is there, how best to extract it.. if there is no or very little Hydrogen there, there would be no point..
How are you going to move all that Lunar dust? You would need an armored legion of extremely durable dumptruck rovers and a massive supply of electrical power to operate them plus regular human tending for maintenance and supplies for that.
you would need a real base.. probably something that is dug into mountain.. so you have lots of space in caves with air so you can do everything as you would do on earth.. you would have machine shop that could make lots of things localy (with stuff like rapid prototyping machines).. complicated parts would be sent from earth, easy parts would be made localy.. no need to develop everything new since only change would be 1/6 gravity.. you would grow your own food and recycle water/air so suport costs would not kill you, and since you could cheaply send more people that could work there, you could.. and if you need more space, just dig deeper.. if you need more power just build more solar panels/reflectors..
you start small.. 4 crew and landing modules.. LOX extraction from dirt.. then slowly add things.. first you send H2 from earth.. digger, small machine shop.. H2 would be sent untill you get your production started.. first you reuse human lander.. later you reuse (or if first ones were single use - send from earth) cargo modules to transport modules form LLO to surface.. later (when you increase Hydrogen production) you can refuel tugs..
Since the Lunar ice, if it exists, is in perminantly shadowed craters these are likely to be difficult to reach from said mountain by road as a mine would require.
you can build converyer belt.. you can build cable carts.. you can make mirrors so you don't need to bring all that soil to the top, but you can heat it from above (inside a big box, so you can capture steam).. there are many ways that depend on specific location..
Mining from near-Earth asteroids is a fable of crackpots, the lie of asteroid scientist to get funding, and staple of ignorant dreamers. To make a very long story very short, it ain't happening
Mining near-Earth asteroids is less a fable than teraforming Mars, but people still think how it could be done.. asteroids are there.. how you get stuff from them is a engineering problem.. but things get simpler if you have to deal with very small asteroids.. like.. 10 m across.. or one that is not spinning realy fast.. i don't care how it is done if you can get stuff from that rocks to tugs and deliver tugs to earth orbit..
The lack of access to Hydrogen anywhere except Earth is a show-stopper for this kind of ultra-reuseable system. Its not "unfortunate," it makes it unworkable.
yes.. you have to find hydrogen and carbon.. and deliver it to LEO.. otherwise all this is unfortunate.. moon is a good start and once you have propelant to spare you can get it from other places (comets?).. it's still workable, because you must send H2 from earth, but you can get O2 from moon.
You can't aerobrake into Lunar orbit, since the Moon has no atmosphere.
You would only aerobrake into LEO. To get to Lunar orbit you would use propelant.
~Aerobraking into Earth slowly with solar pannel drag might not be possible, since the atmosphere is 115X thicker than the Martian atmosphere.
i read a report that it is posible to aerobrake from GTO to LEO, so i guess it would be posible..
~There is no stable Lunar orbit, all vehicles in Lunar orbit must expend nontrivial amounts of fuel regularly.
there is no need for stable lunar orbit.. nothing stays in orbit for long.. tug comes from earth, lander from moon.. later they return back..
~Boiloff collection adds substantially to the power, mass, and longevity issues for tug vehicles. Since this must be carried back and forth, it requires several times its mass to lug it around.
most of tug's propelant would be in LEO.. on the way back to LEO you could load tug with water so there is no boiloff no matter how long it takes to get there..
Next, I don't believe you fully realise just how much fuel it would take to make such a scheme work: I would estimate that for every tonne of payload you want to send to Earth from the Lunar surface, you'd need around 3.0 tonnes of propellant. For every tonne you want to send from Earth to the Moon, you need about 4.0 tonnes of propellant. So lets say you have a 5MT lander (dry) and you want to get it to Earth, pick up 20MT, and return to the Moon?
+It takes 100MT of fuel to go from Earth to Moon
+You have to bring all the fuel from the Moon for this
=You need over 400 metric tonnes of fuelThis is assuming powerd braking at Earth since solar pannel braking is iffy, long term storage of cryogen fuel is undesireable, assumes near-zero mass for fuel tanks, and assuming near-100% propellant utilization. Its probably over 500MT with these factors. For one 20MT load.
there is not one.. there are two ships.. they are similar, but one has legs (lander), other has big panels to airbrake with (tug)..
Is this really any better? Put the 20MT load on top of a CLV and launch a second CLV with a booster or launch a single 40MT class rocket (Delta-IV HLV "6,6,3" or tripple Atlas-V). Send this to Lunar orbit, launch a Lunar lander up to it, bring the cargo down. Estimate 50MT for acent and 25MT for decent, 75MT total.
ok, I will explain one more time...
- Expendable Rocket caries container to LEO. 20 MT waiting to be delivered.
- 'tug' comes, picks up this container, loaded with 30 MT of propelant (H2 and O2), goes TEI, moon orbit insertion and waits in LLO empty (well.. at least without O2.. it could have extra H2 to transfer to lander) for lander.
- 'lander' loaded with 100 MT of propelant goes into LLO, meets with 'tug' picks up container, transfers 15MT of propelant to tug, then returns to moon with container. (if you don't have enough H2 on moon you transfer 'tugs' extra to 'lander' to be stored on the moon)
- another lander launches with 40 MT of water/O2 and 60 MT of propelant. meets with 'tug', transfers water/O2, returns empty to moon. (you can repeat this couple of times.. depeanding how much capacity 'tug' has - more you load it, more time it will take to aerobrake back to LEO)..
- 'tug' starts engines, starts aerobraking and slowly returns to LEO with load of water/O2 (40 - 120 MT)
- once in LEO 'tug' either transfers propelant to LEO depo or electrolises water into H2 and O2 with solar panels for next trip..
cost of moon propelant to bring 20 MT container to moon: 30 + 100 + 60 = 190 MT. Large? Well.. once you have everything running it is free..
But this will work even if you only have O2.. instead of water you return LOX via airbrake to LEO. So you have LEO depo full of LOX, so you only need to send H2 from earth.. 100 MT of hydrogen will get you 100 MT of cargo delivered to moon..
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