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Tom,
If I was a better artist, I would draw pictures of what I wanted to convey to other people. Unfortunately, I'm no Bob Ross.
I don't like typing more than I absolutely have to in order to convey information. If I refer to my notional Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Widget as a S-Widget, then my post could be ten times shorter if I refer to that S-Widget ten times in a few sentences. Do I really have to write "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" ten times or can people who are interested in the content of my post just start at the top, read the acronym definition once or refer to our space acronyms sticky, and then know what I'm talking about?
It takes me awhile to understand some of what GW posts if I don't already understand the concepts involved. I write software for a living and GW engineered rockets for a living. Even so, if I'm sufficiently interested in the subject matter I'll take what he told me and then go read about the topic to try to better understand what he told me. He's pretty responsive to narrowly focused technical questions related to rocketry, orbital mechanics, and fluid dynamics.
How many other places except NASA, universities, or aerospace corporations can you talk to a real rocket scientist and get pointed in the right direction, with respect to your idea? It's free education focused specifically on what you're interested in. If there are some acronyms or terminology you don't understand, Google is your friend. As much as I've learned from posts from GW, Rob, and SpaceNut, I've learned even more by going off on my own and exploring topics of interest to me.
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rbd512-
I'd like to second your appreciation for the input of GW on this forum. It takes me some time and effort to get a full understanding of some of the things discussed here, only because a lot of my math and physics is very rusty--vintage 1957-1961. My chemistry, on the other hand is pretty up to date. Part of my struggle is not conceptual, but dealing with the changes in units utilized; I have a relatively recent copy of Sears and Zemansky, as well as pulling out a copy of Thomas for the math. But--I'm getting there.
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Tom,
If I was a better artist, I would draw pictures of what I wanted to convey to other people. Unfortunately, I'm no Bob Ross.
I don't like typing more than I absolutely have to in order to convey information. If I refer to my notional Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Widget as a S-Widget, then my post could be ten times shorter if I refer to that S-Widget ten times in a few sentences. Do I really have to write "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" ten times or can people who are interested in the content of my post just start at the top, read the acronym definition once or refer to our space acronyms sticky, and then know what I'm talking about?
It takes me awhile to understand some of what GW posts if I don't already understand the concepts involved. I write software for a living and GW engineered rockets for a living. Even so, if I'm sufficiently interested in the subject matter I'll take what he told me and then go read about the topic to try to better understand what he told me. He's pretty responsive to narrowly focused technical questions related to rocketry, orbital mechanics, and fluid dynamics.
How many other places except NASA, universities, or aerospace corporations can you talk to a real rocket scientist and get pointed in the right direction, with respect to your idea? It's free education focused specifically on what you're interested in. If there are some acronyms or terminology you don't understand, Google is your friend. As much as I've learned from posts from GW, Rob, and SpaceNut, I've learned even more by going off on my own and exploring topics of interest to me.
I learned my typing from using the internet, in the age of typewriters, I took a typing class in school, but I only really learned how to type when the internet really took off.
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Sorry, Tom. If I don't understand the acronyms, I'm going to bitch and moan. Prerequisite of being an old curmudgeon, I suppose. I'm still a one-finger typist, myself. 15-60 wpm. Usually closer to 15, especially with that damned auto-correct in most software these days.
Oldfart1939:
I quite agree about units of measure. I was lucky enough to see both used in high school physics, but we used mostly US units in the workplace before I retired. I'm therefore more familiar with them. I try to convert for readers here, although I still do rocket and ramjet ballistics in US units for myself, as the only familiar landmarks to detect error.
That being said, my first tools were metric, because my first car was a VW beetle. I learned combat driving at 36 HP in Dallas traffic, before there were any freeways at all.
Believe it or not, I still have that same ancient VW beetle in mothballs out here on the farm. It still runs fine, when I do pull it out of mothballs. Even after 15+ years in storage.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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GW-
Back when I was still in engineering school, I simply loved both Statics and Dynamics--and all units were in Feet-Pounds-Seconds. I don't really have any problems making the conversions, but as you said--it's easier to refer to absolute measurements in familiar units. Units which were new to me were Pascals, Newtons, etc. I also have a private pilot certificate, so measurement of altitude is still in mm HG or inches, Hg. Conversion of units was always how the professors made people look stupid.
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How many other places except NASA, universities, or aerospace corporations can you talk to a real rocket scientist and get pointed in the right direction, with respect to your idea? It's free education focused specifically on what you're interested in. If there are some acronyms or terminology you don't understand, Google is your friend. As much as I've learned from posts from GW, Rob, and SpaceNut, I've learned even more by going off on my own and exploring topics of interest to me.
Thanks for putting me in that company of names....Likewise I do as well as I can to try my best to understand, learn from doing my own research and I may get it wrong.....I am that guy that reads 500 pgs of a manual on a problem to point out in that one genius moment on page... ### to the real engineer that it was the reason for the problem...
Now back to what we know about doing a Space X Dragon mission to the moon let allow any other type of capsules is that some need more modifications to them than do others. In the likes of more fuel, service modules and power creation sources. None have a lunar lander with only space x Dragon cargo being the closest for modifications for a practical lunar lander. The Atk / Orbital Cygnus is a clean slate lunar lander to design around as well which gives the rigid shell, solar panels ect... to turn it into one with engines and legs.
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It would appear that a real decision needs to be made in regards to the type of lunar mission we are seeing in our projection, and whether it's merely a sidestep on the way to Mars or not. I really believe it's time to move on beyond the concept of a small throwaway lunar lander--just to reprise Apollo. We now have orbital assembly capabilities that were lacking in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We no longer have the monster Saturn V booster, but emerging reusable booster first stages such as Falcon Heavy. The comments coming out of Hawthorne, regarding another Falcon 9 upgrade with more thrust, should translate to the Falcon Heavy at some point, too. A redesign of the Dragon cargo trunk into a fuelled and strongly powered descent/ascent stage, to and from the lunar surface should be relatively straightforward engineering project. NASA has allowed use of the Russian built RD-180 engines on the Atlas series of rockets; why not consider incorporation of Russian MMH/NTO engine from the Proton M "Briz" upper stage into the trunk? This is the S5.98 engine developing 19.62 kN of thrust, with a specific impulse, Isp = 328.6 sec. This could be augmented using the Super Draco engines in a parallel application for lunar landing and takeoff, if the entire vehicle mass is still to large due to unconsumed fuel onboard. having this engine available should allow something of a reverse engineered total vehicle mass to be calculated. TLI should be carried out by a Falcon Heavy second stage. For the engineers among us: the engine specifics are Mass; 95 kg. Engine diameter: 0.98 meters; engine length: 1.15 meters. The actual "Briz" stage carries 19,800 kg of propellant/oxidizer, allowing a total burn time of 3,200 seconds. Engine is rated for up to 8 restarts.
I suggest this engine, or a suitably similar one manufactured to U.S. specifications for the simple desire to keep from having to reinvent the wheel.
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2017-03-12 17:57:04)
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The decision going forward is already set on two different set of requirements that do only basically stasrt with trying to alter what we have to come up with the results that fit the requirement for either destinations.
Using the Dragon or Cygnus for one or the other or both as the starting point only means that we are trying to make the least amount of alteration to one versus the other for the destination.
I think that the Cygnus can have two distinct designs based on the basic shell works for both as its already customizable in length and other features as it was a building block for use in the ISS under another name but by the same manufacturer. Both designs are nearly a full up start except for the space which the crew would be inside of. Everything else is just listing the specifications for what we need and adding this to the design of it for both destination seperately as the moon needs no heat shield parachutesect.. as mars does even if we start with the same size canister for a design consideration.
Not to ignore the Space x Dragon the same holds true with the moon needing the least to make it happen once converted for use as a lander.
The unknown that I would need first is if a Super Draco once altered for moons vac parameters could it launch the capsule back to orbit with the fuel it currently has if it was setting on the moons surface an if not then we delete them from the capsule to aid with the redesign which would start with the truck not being discardable but part of the crews lander stage that would return to orbit under a new engines and fuels ration.
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Discussion of possible landers for returning us to the Moon here:
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 74#p135674
Bob Clark
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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The sense of most of what I see on the news and on the internet, including industry newsletter emails, is that we'll do the moon before Mars. At least as long as this administration continues. Private entities like Spacex may disagree, and may or may not act on that disagreement, we'll see over time. But it won't happen as fast as we hoped.
I actually think that there are three big things to accomplish in the next several years: (1) doing something useful on the moon, (2) going to Mars, and (3) doing something about asteroid impact protection. Sort-of wrapped up with #3 is a 4th, except it's not really separate: is there anything useful we can do with asteroids? (like mining, but not restricted to just that).
Now, #1 gets down to what is really useful to do on the moon? Is it just to reprise Apollo, or is it something else? If something else, then, what exactly? I've seen mining proposed, but the thinly-spread elements and minerals do not support any viability to such an enterprise.
For example, I've got something similar to Martian hematite "blueberries" in the white-rock caliche limestone here on my farm, similar to much of central Texas, but the pounds of nuggets per ton of rock is low. Too low, or there would be iron mines here. There never have been, and this geology has been known for over 150 years. Plus the environment does not require spacesuits, and you can burn fuel for power with the free local air to get cheap power. Off Earth, none of that is true, which inherently raises costs.
I've suggested putting a nuclear propulsion experiment station on the moon where there are no neighbors to annoy and no ecologies to destroy. But few have picked up on that.
On the backside, radio astronomy would be far more effective than down here. You're in a huge radio shadow, reducing noise in the signals you are dealing with. That's been proposed since before Apollo.
Some sort of human survival research base also makes a lot of sense, since a lot of the other places we'd like to go have some, but not full, Earth surface gravity. It's just not at all the same as floating around in zero gee. Plus, the environment on the moon is actually harsher than many of the places we'd like to visit. If your stuff works on the moon, it should work elsewhere too.
Anybody got any other ideas?
It's important, because of the sizes and variations of lunar lander designs we'll need. Reprising Apollo requires a pretty minimal vehicle. Doing more ambitious stuff requires a lot bigger, more capable lander. Simple as that. How many tons of stuff do we land?
There a similar question that applies to Mars: do we do Apollo flag-and-footprints, or do we establish something more permanent? Makes a huge difference to the type of lander designs, and also to the basic mission architectures. We've been arguing about that here in these forms for years. I haven't seen an answer yet.
Even the asteroids benefit from sitting down and thinking through exactly what we want to do with them. A science and sample mission is one thing, digging deeper for cohesive properties to support deflection schemes is different entirely, and mining is something more entirely different yet again. That last also suffers from a completely-unknown yield-per-ton of material processed problem, just like mining here on Earth (or the moon, or even Mars). Actually, my bet is that we'll have to do some things in all three of those categories before we can decide.
My final point is that there will never be one type of mission design that can support all possible activities for any one destination. You're crazy if you think there is. There are some mission architecture and vehicle design approaches that yield better commonality (which eventually but NOT immediately leads to lower costs), though, and minimum thrown-mass ain't it!
Budgets have been driving us very hard toward min thrown mass for Mars and the moon, and maybe it's past time to re-think that political / management approach. That last may require re-thinking who we elect for most of the offices. None since LBJ have given a damn about human spaceflight.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-03-15 16:29:32)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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Nasa has a habit of recuycling its own work when it stopped for a decade as the vision for Space exploration has been. The era kicked off quite a few topics here and I am going to give the first of The Vision and why are we going back to the moon Also I can give other topics a bump as well that way they will show up in the active post....
We did quite a bit of discusions way back around the 2004 - 2008 before it got shelved in favor of COT's to which Nasa should have always been trying to cultivate and not cost plus contract SOP's....
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Nickel mining? The Luna regolith is meant to be in a reduced state due to the bombardment with solar protons. Scoop up the regolith, bake out any volatiles, use a magnet to pick out the magnetic elements, and dump the regolith out the back.
Tourism? Perhaps, if the infrastructure is built to get the costs down (reusable craft, water mining etc).
Propellent production? I think it will require a lot more missions to be launched to make it pay it's way, unfortunately. It gains in value the more expensive launch costs are, but on the flipside they make the base more expensive...
Crashed asteroids? Sure, but then people might start asking about crashed asteroids at the bottom of Terran oceans and undercut you. Seriously, finding a 10,000 tonne Nickel-Iron meteorite at the bottom of the ocean and raising it would make you very, very rich.
"I'm gonna die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy." - If this forum was a Mars Colony
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The old topics which had gotten started a long time ago has the answers within them... As I posed the question in The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program. If we do go we need to go in a sustainable manner and for good cause to explore, to answer questions and to stay as we will not go anywhere if we stay risk adverse to travel beyond LEO.
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Thanks Spacenut. More stuff there than I can even read, with these tired old eyes.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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I took a shot at bounding analyses for lunar cargo and crew landers, and a revision in the lunar orbit variation of crew Dragon to go with them. The cargo landers each deliver 5+ tons to the lunar surface, and the crew lander ascent stage can carry as many as 6 back to lunar orbit. Modified crew Dragon with 2800 kg of propellant stored in its trunk should be capable of returning 6, even 7, crew home from lunar orbit to an aerobraked and propulsive landing on land.
All these vehicles size at 13 metric tons thrown weight, which Falcon-Heavy should be able to deliver all the way into lunar orbit, flown fully-expendably. Details posted over at http://exrocketman.blogspot.com, in an article dated 3-18-17. The idea behind this was not just to reprise Apollo 11, but to start a small but more-or-less permanently-occupied base on the moon. Benefits appear to be orders-of-magnitude greater than Apollo "flag-and-footprints", while costs look to be orders of magnitude less than Apollo. Timeline seems to fit within 1 or 2 presidential terms.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-03-18 16:40:46)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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It appears to me, that given the $$$ required to revisit the Moon for more than another "Flag & Footprints" excursion, we could actually have a viable mission to Mars for an 18 month research expedition. Dr. Zubrin admonishes us for being "seduced" by the nearness of the Moon. It will be many generations before a viable Lunar civilization will arise, simply due to lack of useable in-situ resources.
I'm definitely in the Mars-next camp, not a Back-to-the-Moon supporter.
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Over at "exrocketman", I had it very roughly estimated as about $4-5 B to put a 6-man research installation on the moon for about 3 months, and something like $1 B per year to keep it open continuously. But not if "old space" does it. Nor if NASA does it.
Whether such a thing should precede Mars, I dunno. All I did was bound the problem as a clean-sheet design, using Falcon-Heavy to set thrown masses. Anything that Bezos can do with his New Glenn rocket should fall in the same ballpark.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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The problem plaguing NASA is a long "logistical tail." "Old Space" is too deeply beholden to "cost plus" financing and that form of contract to be competitive. If NASA is involved, figure on it costing at least double or triple the figure you've quoted. Of course all the hardware will be "Old Space," and prohibitively expensive. My solution: put it up to a competitive bidding process with SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and Blue Origins as the bidders, along with "Old Space." Maybe get top 2 competitive contractors with a bonus prize of $1 Billion for the first to achieve the surface of the Moon?
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2017-03-18 22:22:24)
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Well the last time a competition was wanted by old space it was at the inception for what was the Vision for Space Exploration back around 2007 which would have pitted them to creating a means to get to the moon about a decade ago.
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Over at "exrocketman", I had it very roughly estimated as about $4-5 B to put a 6-man research installation on the moon for about 3 months, and something like $1 B per year to keep it open continuously. But not if "old space" does it. Nor if NASA does it.
Whether such a thing should precede Mars, I dunno. All I did was bound the problem as a clean-sheet design, using Falcon-Heavy to set thrown masses. Anything that Bezos can do with his New Glenn rocket should fall in the same ballpark.
GW
That $4-5 billion initial cost is much less than what the ISS was. Anyone know what is the yearly cost of the ISS?
Bob Clark
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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Other than the massive administrative tail involved at NASA, it's costing us roughly $80 million per astronaut for the Russians to transport our crew to the ISS, and if we figure SpaceX charges something like $70 Million per resupply mission, and I don't have numbers from Orbital ATK, just add it up. That's the bare bones of it, not counting the "research projects." I'm coming up with roughly a bare-bones $1 Billion annually for 8 resupply missions and 4 astronauts. It's the Government, so figure--at least double or triple that figure for "real numbers."
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They just have to be a little more competitive that the Russians, they can retrieve their lower stages, the Russians can't, so SpaceX's operating expenses are lower than the Russians, they will take as much profit as they can while remaining more competitive than the Russians in launch rates. Eventually other companies will figure out how to reuse their rocket boosters and the price will come down further with competition, but right now SpaceX has a sort of monopoly in this technology, and they are cashing in. This will fuel the drive to make further technological innovations when their competitors finally do replicate this technology, they'll have something else.
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Just taking a wild stab in the dark relative to maintaining ISS: crew of 6 at $80M/person twice a year ~ $1B/year. Supply rockets every 3 months at $100M each: pretty close to $0.5B/year. More incidentals beyond that. Total somewhere in the $1.5-to-2B/year range.
As for the cost to build it, launch prices were very much higher then: somewhere near $8K/pound ($16M/ton) or higher for thinks like Delta and Titan, and nearer $100M/ton with shuttle delivering 15 ton items for a launch cost near $1.5B every time it flew.
I was very careful to point out that my lunar base idea (which is very much smaller than ISS) could be as inexpensive as projected, only if NASA (or any other government) wasn't involved. It would have to be a base started by a commercial entity for commercial purposes.
The trap to avoid would be doing the development items as government-run programs. Those would be the lunar landers, the surface habitats, the front-end loaders, and adding propellants to the crew Dragon trunk. Do those as government programs, and they don't complete for years, or for a decent cost, if they ever succeed at all.
That does take a visionary commercial entity; most are not, being almost exclusively focused on near-term bottom line. But there are a few, unlike 20 years ago when what became ISS was first begun. Bigelow wants to put a commercial station in orbit, and has begun to make noises about a station in lunar orbit. We'll see what they eventually do, which in turn depends on commercial crew to orbit capability.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-03-23 09:23:44)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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This will probably come down to an "OldSpace" versus "NewSpace" bidding; if I were running things there would be a budget established for a Lunar landing by 2019 of $3 to $5 Billion, with the competition open to all bidders. The goal: more than an Apollo 11 Redux, but also land a base module for long-term habitation and begin establishment of a permanent presence on Luna.
I see that GW's and my figures in my post # 96 are in pretty good agreement.
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2017-03-23 09:55:02)
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Imagine if the US Government paid General Dynamics to build a car and sell it to the public using a cost plus contract. General Dynamics then will come up with several car models that they propose to build, and the government will pick which one, then there will be cost overruns which the government pays for and General Dynamics will reap a huge profit. Would you want to buy a General Dynamics Car is made by this process?
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