New Mars Forums

Aloha there,

Clunking... to the Moon... I was at the ISU summer session last year and under the constraints of a team project came up with the idea of transferring the ISS to a trans lunar orbit where it intersected the moon every two orbits or 14 days. We did a fairly detailed array of calculations mass etc for it and although Mars wasn't the destination (restrictions of project requirements) its an interesting read especially the engineering stuff... You can find it by right clicking the links and going for the save option  http://www.spacesurgeons.com/documents/ … pdf]Metzli http://www.spacesurgeons.com/documents/ … pdf]MEtzli executive summary

there both hefty file 32 and 22 megs respectively... please do feed back any comments to me.

Cheers

1.
Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid oxygen are not the most expensive components of the actual launch vehicle and although air breathing is the best way for a future vehicle, my point is that costs are artifically kept high at the moment and its all the excessively extra staff, facilities and random other "required" costs that are putting up prices.

2.
a. International co-operation, for the sake of internatonal co-operation is pointless I agree as in the case of the ISS. I mean every module being attached to it is designed from scratch rather than using one standard design.

b. Though lets say no co-operation but buisness agreements are signed for example,, using the russians purely for the launch capability offered by Energiya... another group for the upper or interplanetary stages... one standard design for the actual hab modules... This prevents duplication of research and cuts costs. True it will be difficult as every group will try and claim if u have a"A" u must have "B" etc and piss a lot fo people off who are completely excluded from the partnership.. but hey space exploration should stop being a charity.

1. Energiya... seems to be the KEY to getting to MARS... to everyone but the POWERs that be...   

What are the chances of a private consortium... getting the services of this launch vehicle... ?   Is it feasible.... ?  and ofcourse cost effective.....  I'm thinking of the Energiya 200 tonne capacity configuration

I mean ... this thing could launch modules the size of SKYLAB into orbit... and hence slash the cost of the ISS construction process.... in one fail sweep.. if initially folks decided to design things sensibly.....

2. on a seperate note... Why is it that every European ATV is destined to burn up in the atmosphere.... ? It seems  mighty waste of something that could effectively be a transfer vehicle  between LEO stations... or indeed.... possibly linked together to form some sort of larger transfer vehicle... But its present  post ferrying up supplies role would make it the worlds most expensive garbage truck.....