Space Station V

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-16 12:17:31

Space Station V is the official title of the Space Station seen in the Movie 2001 A Space Odyssey.
What if we attempted to build it?

http://starbase79.com/images/2001Space/ … tation.JPG
We have one real estate developer running for President, Suppose he made building this space station NASA's next Mission.
Particulars:
Diameter of Wheel: 629 feet
Length of Center Hub: 240 feet
Diameter of Hub: 131 feet
Mass: 145,000 tons
Maximum Capacity: 600 persons
Rotation: 1.6 revolutions per minute
Gravity at Level 3: 0.36 of Earth

This is what I read from the diagram, you can do some calculations involving centrifugal force to see if the last is correct.
This seems to be a fairly modest space station compared to some of the things Gerard O'Neill has proposed.

How close are we to building a space station like this?
How much would it cost?
What use would it be for colonizing Mars and settling space assuming it orbits at the ISS altitude?

For comparison, here are the stats for the Saturn V on the Launch Pad:
Saturn V

The Saturn V was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA between 1966 and 1973. The three-stage liquid-fueled launch vehicle was developed to support the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon, and was later used to launch Skylab, the first American space station. The Saturn V was launched 13 times fro…

en.wikipedia.org
Height: 363 feet (110.60 m)
Mass: 6,698,746 pound (3,038,500 kg)
Diameter: 33' 2" (10.10 m)
Maiden flight: Nov 09, 1967
Launch sites: Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 · Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 39A
Manufacturers: North American Aviation · Boeing · Douglas Aircraft Company

So the Saturn V is a 3038.5 ton spaceship on the Launch pad compared with 145,000 tons for this space station! Obviously we'd have a big problem launching all the components for this space station from Earth unless launch costs were drastically reduced.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2015-08-16 12:25:40)

SpaceNut · 2015-08-16 16:41:24

The hub and spokes could be launch per payload capacity but when it comes to the arc it is going to be built in place and later filled.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-17 02:54:59

We're talking about some huge rockets however, such a vehicle if on the launch pad would have the explosive potential of a nuclear bomb. It would be the size of an ocean going cargo ship, it would dwarf the old Saturn V rocket. You probably need a payload capacity of at least 1000 tons, 145 launches of those could build this station.

GW Johnson · 2015-08-17 11:05:39

There were three good reasons von Braun's designs for "Nova" were never built. That was a launcher substantially larger than Saturn-5. There wasn't a design, just several design proposals for it, with first stage thrusts ranging from 15 million to 40 million pounds. The three reasons: (1) too much expense, (2) the noise of a successful launch was lethal to folks on the ground out to around 10 miles, and (3) an explosion on the pad would cause damage and casualties about like a very large fission weapon.

Artificial spin gravity scales from 1 gee at 56 m radius, at 4 rpm. It scales proportional to radius, and to spin rate squared. It is very certain that untrained civilians can tolerate 4 rpm. There is some reason to believe they might acclimatize to 6 rpm without too much trouble, over several weeks. I would rather see a 1 gee design than a 0.36 gee design, because we evolved at 1 gee. You avoid hidden or unanticipated troubles that way.

The wheel is an elegant but expensive way to achieve artificial gravity. The concept dates to the 1930's if you look at von Braun's dreams. Maybe earlier. But it is not the only practical way to do this.

Why not just build one spoke and use that? You have artificial gravity varying from, say, 1 gee at the tips, to zero at the center, level by level along the spoke. Spinning batons are quite stable, and easily built from cylindrical modules that are far more easily launched. It gets down to nothing but module docking, same as what built the ISS.

GW

RobertDyck · 2015-08-17 12:29:44

Launch vehicle size is one reason Von Braun designed Skylab to be launched wet. His first design used a Saturn V, with the 2nd stage launched wet. That would have been a huge station. Sketch in Von Braun's handwriting; click for larger view...

The largest launch vehicle you can reasonably expect is SLS block 2 with liquid boosters. That means core stage with 5 SSME, two liquid boosters each with a pair of F-1B engines, and an upper stage with J-2X engine(s). Block 2 as proposed was to use 1, 2, or 3 engines depending on application, similar to the upper stage of Atlas V. SLS block 2 with liquid boosters and 2 or 3 J-2X engines could lift 150 metric tonnes to LEO. That's the largest.

The problem is SLS is hard to modify to become a self-launching space station. How do you make a beast like Von Braun's Saturn V that launches it's own 2nd stage into orbit? Launch the core stage? Not practical. It would be a huge station, but how?

Saturn IB had a large diameter upper stage. That's what made it practical to launch Skylab wet. The Russian Proton can launch as much weight as Saturn IB, but has a narrow upper stage. That narrow stage reduces aerodynamic drag during launch, but make a station module impractical. The best hope for a self-launch is Falcon X. Will SpaceX build it?

Falcon X as proposed would have a 6 metre diameter core. The S-IVB stage was 3rd stage for Saturn V, upper stage for Saturn IB, and the Skylab workshop. It had a diameter of 6.6 metres. So a Falcon X upper stage could be modified to launch wet just like Skylab. Saturn IB was rated to launch 21 metric tonnes to LEO (185km orbit @ 28° inclination). Falcon X is rated to lift 38 metric tonnes to LEO. I don't have handy mass figures for a Skylab workshop designed to launch wet, but look at Saturn IB. It was able to launch 21 t payload, but the upper stage had an empty mass of 12,900 kg. A wet space station module should mass the total of the two. I'm not sure if the empty mass of S-IVB includes the interstage (which doesn't achieve orbit), but you get the idea.

If you design the upper stage including tanks to be incorporated into your station, imagine now much you could launch with SLS or Falcon X.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-17 15:19:32

GW Johnson wrote:

There were three good reasons von Braun's designs for "Nova" were never built. That was a launcher substantially larger than Saturn-5. There wasn't a design, just several design proposals for it, with first stage thrusts ranging from 15 million to 40 million pounds. The three reasons: (1) too much expense, (2) the noise of a successful launch was lethal to folks on the ground out to around 10 miles, and (3) an explosion on the pad would cause damage and casualties about like a very large fission weapon.
Artificial spin gravity scales from 1 gee at 56 m radius, at 4 rpm. It scales proportional to radius, and to spin rate squared. It is very certain that untrained civilians can tolerate 4 rpm. There is some reason to believe they might acclimatize to 6 rpm without too much trouble, over several weeks. I would rather see a 1 gee design than a 0.36 gee design, because we evolved at 1 gee. You avoid hidden or unanticipated troubles that way.
The wheel is an elegant but expensive way to achieve artificial gravity. The concept dates to the 1930's if you look at von Braun's dreams. Maybe earlier. But it is not the only practical way to do this.
Why not just build one spoke and use that? You have artificial gravity varying from, say, 1 gee at the tips, to zero at the center, level by level along the spoke. Spinning batons are quite stable, and easily built from cylindrical modules that are far more easily launched. It gets down to nothing but module docking, same as what built the ISS.
GW

But consider why tourists might want to visit this station? if they wanted to experience Martian Gravity, they could experience it right there on level 3, without having to travel all the way to Mars, and you don't have to spend 2+ year in space either!

Another reason would be to simulate a Mars Base why not on Mars, one could grow crops on this station under simulated Martian lighting conditions under Mars gravity and see how they fare.

Thirdly a slower rotation rate makes it easier to other spaceships to dock with it.

It would also be great for studying the long term effects of Martian gravity on human physiology without having to go all the way to Mars to do a study. Martian astronauts also will be busy studying the planet to study themselves, and if the effects are detrimental, people on the station could be quickly evacuated back to the Earth's surface, while astronauts on Mars would have to wait for the next launch window and wait nine months after that to get back to Earth.

GW Johnson · 2015-08-17 15:36:55

My point is that in a spinning baton design you have all the possible partial-gee regimes already simulated, if your endpoints are at 1 gee. You can do all the necessary partial gee research, and without any risk. No one need evacuate anywhere.

If 0.38 gee ain't enough, move to a level further out. Try that. We can always move further out to the 1 gee endpoints, we already know that works fine.

If 0.30-something gee proves to be therapeutic enough, then just slow the baton spin rate down. You can always do that! It's not an absolutely-fixed design.

This is what we should have built instead of ISS. And varying the spin rate makes it tailorable to whatever we might find out, once we actually get around to doing the research. Which we ABSOLUTELY CANNOT, with ISS.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-17 16:20:41

But which would make a better Space Hotel, the V space Station holds 600 people?

SpaceNut · 2015-08-17 18:55:40

While we can easy achieve the length of the baton its the diameter thats the issue as a floor thats only 6 meters in diameter less all that is on the walls makes for a very small room. Which has its floor at the outer measurement with the ceiling towards the center of the spinning baton.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-18 06:19:22

Very simply, would you pay $50,000 for a ticket into space and to a spinning space station that is spinning to provide 1g just like on Earth, or would you prefer something different, that you can't experience on Earth, like Mars gravity for instance? Humans can function perfectly well in lower gravity than Earth's. A Martian level of gravity for a given diameter provides for a lesser rate of spin. People who are paying to come up their and stay in the hotel are paying for something different anyway, not something they can get back on Earth, and they probably won't be staying at the space station long enough for the low gravity to be detrimental to their health anyway, after all the space station orbits just above the Earth's atmosphere, and they can return anytime they want, the return ticket I subsumed in their ticket up, after all, we don't want people stuck in the space station and unable to afford going back to Earth cause their ticket was only one-way to orbit! One-way tickets to the space station won't be sold, and I think that is a very safe bet!

Anyway I meant for the space station to be a benchmark, it was predicted in the Movie 2001 A Space Odyssey and it hasn't come to pass, so the question becomes, when will it be? A spinning baton is simply a smaller space station, it would hold fewer people, and I think we can assume that things like that would be build before the construction of Space Station V, we probably would have sent astronauts to Mars before this station is built as well, since a Mars mission by 6 astronauts would be easier to accomplish, so most likely to happen first, however actual colonization of Mars might be preceded by this station, and I'm talking about colonization by hundreds of people, not a handful living under a single dome. That is like calling Gilligan's Island a country.

By the way there is a Gilligan's Island off the coast of Puerto Rico, I looked it up!

Yep this is Gilligan's Island!

SpaceNut · 2015-08-18 18:28:17

Nice Island but so long as Nasa controls the launch vehicle and destination there will be no Vacation spot for those that have the money to make it happen. But for as many as there are those that do have the money its there are just as many that can ill afford that want to go and would give anything to do so.

RobertDyck · 2015-08-18 21:06:26

Ok, let's talk about a new station. As SpaceNut said, NASA will not do commercial. One NASA employee I talked to at the 2005 Mars Society convention claimed there's a law passed by Congress that prohibits NASA from accepting commercial funds. But I've noticed NASA has a university mentality, and university administration and faculty see using anything related to university for commercial gain as somehow unethical. So this station would have to be commercial. I read an article many years ago, an interview with the president of Hilton Hotel chain, who said if launch price per pound got below a critical level, he would build a hotel in Earth orbit. He cited a specific price, but that doesn't matter, it would have changed with inflation. And Bigelow wants to build a space hotel. So we have a hotel operator, and a wanna-be space hotel construction firm.

When the Shuttle was flying, many people talked about using Shuttle ET to build a station. There were problems with that. The spray-on foam would have to be replaced with durable blankets: multi-layer insulation, and micrometeor protection. Blankets on the exterior of ISS modules would do. And Shuttle discarded the tank before achieving orbit; it used OMS for final orbit insertion. Between blankets on the large tank and additional propellant, all you could bring to orbit would be the tank. No payload. And expect to get to 185km orbit, not the nomal 400km orbit of ISS. But the SLS core stage is based on Shuttle ET. And Skylab was designed to be launched wet, as the upper stage of a 2-stage Saturn IB. The pencil drawing proposal from Von Braun that I posted above would launch wet as the upper stage of a 2-stage version of Saturn V. SLS doesn't have first and second stages, instead has boosters and a core stage. So could the SLS core stage achieve orbit? There would be no upper stage at all, instead just an ATV-based service module for rendezvous with the station under construction. Here is an image of a proposed wheel station based on Shuttle ET. Notice a single solar array and ISS style radiator attached to each ET module.

The SLS core stage would also require insulation replaced with ISS module blankets. And hatches installed before launch. To make it work as a station module, you should use a common bulkhead between LOX and LH2 tanks. That means one hatch between them. And put the LOX tank on bottom, so the LOX tank has a traditional sump, and reduce the length of LH2 feed lines. If tanks remain configured as Shuttle ET, then a station module would require one hatch on top of the LH2 tank, a hatch on bottom of the LOX tank, a temporary LOX hatch door shaped as a sump with LOX feed line connected. The feed line would have to be removed on-orbit by an astronaut in a spacesuit, and the sump replaced with a hatch door, and a pressurized tunnel between the two hatches. Way too much work.

The image appears to have a mistake. It shows 3 tanks between spokes for the closest segments, but 2 tanks between spokes for the others. You would want that symmetrical to balance the wheel for rotation.

With no Shuttle orbiter, 5-segment SRBs, and 4 SSME engines, this will achieve higher orbit than 185km. Same orbit as ISS? But if you replaced the SRBs with advanced liquid boosters, could you also carry a little cargo? Eg: a solar array and radiator?

For those who panic at anything installed inside the tank during launch, in this case there would only be hard points where equipment could be bolted later. The only equipment installed during launch would be the hatches and exterior blankets. And perhaps some rudimentary plumbing and wiring for the station module.

Tom, would that be good enough? Each SLS core stage is 27 feet 7 inches (8.4 metres) diameter.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2015-08-19 19:57:51)

SpaceNut · 2015-08-19 16:54:41

Do we have a current status of previously launched Bigelow inflateables? What would it take to make these useable in an effort to create this hotel station? Sort of a time share owned and operated by those that provide the means to get there with supplies and back.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-20 07:34:39

SpaceNut wrote:

Nice Island but so long as Nasa controls the launch vehicle and destination there will be no Vacation spot for those that have the money to make it happen. But for as many as there are those that do have the money its there are just as many that can ill afford that want to go and would give anything to do so.

Being a vacation helps to finance it. I imagine a public/private venture to build the station, the government puts up some funds and private investors put up the rest, in order to get that private money, part of the station at least would be a space hotel, the other part would do research and construction which NASA would do. The public/private venture is set up so NASA saves some money, while the public subsidy would entice investors looking for a return on their investment. This would also justify the large rockets required to launch the parts into orbit to assemble the station, those large rockets can also be used for other things, such as manned missions to mars, space probes, and giant space telescopes for instance.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-20 07:39:32

RobertDyck wrote:

Ok, let's talk about a new station. As SpaceNut said, NASA will not do commercial. One NASA employee I talked to at the 2005 Mars Society convention claimed there's a law passed by Congress that prohibits NASA from accepting commercial funds. But I've noticed NASA has a university mentality, and university administration and faculty see using anything related to university for commercial gain as somehow unethical. So this station would have to be commercial. I read an article many years ago, an interview with the president of Hilton Hotel chain, who said if launch price per pound got below a critical level, he would build a hotel in Earth orbit. He cited a specific price, but that doesn't matter, it would have changed with inflation. And Bigelow wants to build a space hotel. So we have a hotel operator, and a wanna-be space hotel construction firm.

What would a President Trump do? He owns some hotels, and using the precedent that Obama has made, he could make some executive orders, we'll see if the Republican-Dominated Congress is going to Impeach him over that, as it wouldn't Impeach Obama, so I guess so long as Congress doesn't Impeach President Trump, he can basically do whatever he wants, as Pres Obama set the precedent over that. If President wants to build a space Hotel with NASA involved, it would probably get built, and his company would probably own the other half.

RobertDyck wrote:

When the Shuttle was flying, many people talked about using Shuttle ET to build a station. There were problems with that. The spray-on foam would have to be replaced with durable blankets: multi-layer insulation, and micrometeor protection. Blankets on the exterior of ISS modules would do. And Shuttle discarded the tank before achieving orbit; it used OMS for final orbit insertion. Between blankets on the large tank and additional propellant, all you could bring to orbit would be the tank. No payload. And expect to get to 185km orbit, not the nomal 400km orbit of ISS. But the SLS core stage is based on Shuttle ET. And Skylab was designed to be launched wet, as the upper stage of a 2-stage Saturn IB. The pencil drawing proposal from Von Braun that I posted above would launch wet as the upper stage of a 2-stage version of Saturn V. SLS doesn't have first and second stages, instead has boosters and a core stage. So could the SLS core stage achieve orbit? There would be no upper stage at all, instead just an ATV-based service module for rendezvous with the station under construction. Here is an image of a proposed wheel station based on Shuttle ET. Notice a single solar array and ISS style radiator attached to each ET module.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/240000/im … tel300.jpg
The SLS core stage would also require insulation replaced with ISS module blankets. And hatches installed before launch. To make it work as a station module, you should use a common bulkhead between LOX and LH2 tanks. That means one hatch between them. And put the LOX tank on bottom, so the LOX tank has a traditional sump, and reduce the length of LH2 feed lines. If tanks remain configured as Shuttle ET, then a station module would require one hatch on top of the LH2 tank, a hatch on bottom of the LOX tank, a temporary LOX hatch door shaped as a sump with LOX feed line connected. The feed line would have to be removed on-orbit by an astronaut in a spacesuit, and the sump replaced with a hatch door, and a pressurized tunnel between the two hatches. Way too much work.
The image appears to have a mistake. It shows 3 tanks between spokes for the closest segments, but 2 tanks between spokes for the others. You would want that symmetrical to balance the wheel for rotation.
With no Shuttle orbiter, 5-segment SRBs, and 4 SSME engines, this will achieve higher orbit than 185km. Same orbit as ISS? But if you replaced the SRBs with advanced liquid boosters, could you also carry a little cargo? Eg: a solar array and radiator?
For those who panic at anything installed inside the tank during launch, in this case there would only be hard points where equipment could be bolted later. The only equipment installed during launch would be the hatches and exterior blankets. And perhaps some rudimentary plumbing and wiring for the station module.
Tom, would that be good enough? Each SLS core stage is 27 feet 7 inches (8.4 metres) diameter.

Probably modular is the way to go, as that is easier to assemble in space than needing space workers to weld part together in space.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2015-08-20 07:41:21)

SpaceNut · 2015-08-26 21:31:03

SpaceNut wrote:

Do we have a current status of previously launched Bigelow inflateables? What would it take to make these useable in an effort to create this hotel station? Sort of a time share owned and operated by those that provide the means to get there with supplies and back.

I found my own answer.....The Future of Construction in Space, Is the International Space Station the last aluminum spacecraft?

Bigelow Aerospace picked up where TransHab left off, advancing research and development and eventually putting two inflatable test modules—Genesis I and II—into orbit in 2006 and 2007. Both modules, each the size of a van, remain in orbit today. Their batteries ran out years ago; eventually they’ll reenter the atmosphere and burn up.
But they served their purpose. “Genesis I and II validated our basic architecture,” says Mike Gold, Bigelow’s Director of Washington, D.C. Operations & Business Growth. “From a technical perspective, these spacecraft showed that expandable systems could survive the rigors of launch, that our deployment process would work, and that we could successfully integrate windows into an expandable habitat structure.”

02j_sep2015_bigelow-and-garver-web-resize.jpg__420x240_q85_crop_upscale.jpg

BEAM, designed to expand to 16 cubic meters, or about the size of a 10- by 12-foot room, weighs only 3,000 pounds at launch. Its density—that is, its mass divided by its volume—is 88 kilograms per cubic meter. By comparison, the density of the U.S. lab at the International Space Station, Destiny, is 137 kilograms per cubic meter. The ISS’s Tranquility module has a density of 194 kilograms per cubic meter.

Inflatables are also appealingly compact. Folded into its launch configuration, BEAM takes up a space five feet by seven feet.

GW Johnson · 2015-08-27 10:28:41

Imagine a stick of inflatable modules built like BEAM, but with floors in the core that fold out laterally toward the walls. Spin it, and you have my spinning baton station. How many of these can you fling up there at a time with a Falcon-Heavy or an SLS?

If there's not enough floor space at each gee level, then build 2, 3, or even 4 sticks cross-connected to make a fat baton. That would require side docking hatches on an inflatable design. Perhaps difficult, but not impossible.

My point is actually two-fold: (1) here is a very practical way to build a small space station that can supply artificial gravity at levels from 1 gee to 0 gee, in which the therapeutic value of partial gee can be definitively established (something that still must be done), and (2) the same basic architecture serves as an orbit-to-orbit manned craft for interplanetary trips anywhere in the solar system (use the center modules for propellant and supplies, put the habitat at one end, main engines at the other).

The two items have an enormous degree of commonality in terms of technology and construction methods. No need to re-invent the wheel. Nor to build "battlestar galacticas".

There I went and showed you how to go to Mars very soon, but without funding "big space" for decades to the tune of the best part of a trillion dollars. Or more. If they were ever to actually go at all. Read on ...

A minimal one-stick spoke would need something like 10 modules to hit 56 m at 4 rpm. Launching one module per rocket on something like an Atlas-5 HLV or perhaps an Falcon-9 or Falcon-Heavy turns out to be on the order of $100M per launch. That's on the order of $1B to put it there, launch costs only. A well-run program with a short schedule should have launch costs running around 20% of total program cost (rule-of-thumb), at most.

So, that's on the order of only $5B to a minimal spinning space station, nothing at all like the $100+B we spent on ISS. Putting a spinning interplanetary orbit-to-orbit transport craft into LEO by the very same methods should be within half an order of magnitude the same cost: say around $15B.

So how much more will we need to spend to build a lander of some kind? $5B? That totals only $25B for the whole shmear: small gravity research space station plus manned Mars transport craft, plus lander. Plenty of budgetary room for any other stuff I left out.

All this fuss and bother over something like a $trillion+ to send men to Mars and back is a smokescreen for not really wanting to run the risks of going. NASA management, being the bosses of a gov't agency that is extremely gun-shy of killing more crews, really doesn't want to go, but cannot admit that. That's why the prices always (always!!!) turn out to be unaffordable.

This isn't the NASA of the 1960's, who had the Mars mission planned for the 1980's back then. Until it is returned to that earlier culture, NASA will never go to Mars with men. At most men into cis-lunar space. That's why SLS is a reprise of the Apollo moon rocket, nothing more, and at that, it's not as capable, really (wrong SM delta-vee, no lander).

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-28 09:41:32

This isn't the NASA of the 1960's, who had the Mars mission planned for the 1980's back then. Until it is returned to that earlier culture, NASA will never go to Mars with men. At most men into cis-lunar space. That's why SLS is a reprise of the Apollo moon rocket, nothing more, and at that, it's not as capable, really (wrong SM delta-vee, no lander).
GW

It also isn't the NASA of the 1980s either. Going back to the Moon shoud be easy after developing the SLS, we'll be right on its doorstep, their is no reason not to go their or to pretend that the Moon does not exist as NASA has done after the Apollo Program for several decades. You see without the Shuttle, NASA will be looking for a replacement, and since that replacement is basically another Moon rocket, the logical thing to do with that is to make landings on the Moon. Sending Men to Mars is harder and requires a more elaborate infrastructure, but going to the Moon is simple, and there is no reason not to do it, as we have already made the investment to go there.

GW Johnson · 2015-08-29 09:42:37

Going to Mars isn't that much technically harder than going to the moon. It's particularly easy one-way. We sent a probe past Mars only 2 years after our first soft-landing of one on the moon, in the 1960's. The hardest technological part of either trip is getting into orbit around the Earth. That's still true, but prices are factor 10+ more affordable now than they were in the 1960's.

What's different about Mars is the vastly-different requirements for life support if you send people. Moon trips as contemplated up to now are nearly-always less than a month long, so you can ignore microgravity disease, you can simply pack supplies without resorting to any kind of recycling, you can ignore cosmic ray exposure for sure (actually you can ignore that for Mars too), and the odds are good there won't be a solar flare to kill your crew.

Mars is just the opposite: you must do something about microgravity exposures (which NASA management is still unwilling to do = proof that they still don't want to go), the more recycling you do the less mass you have to send, you must shield against solar flares because in a 2.5 year mission it WILL happen, and you ought to reduce cosmic ray exposure as much as is possible (which ain't much right now, but anything helps).

Plant a manned base on the moon, and the requirements become very much like Mars. That's different. That's where going to the moon for a long stay might be useful for going to Mars: you have to solve the very same set of life support problems.

The only things NASA is doing toward that shopping list are (1) working minimal recycling of air and water on ISS with much less than full success, and (2) trying to combat microgravity disease with exercise, when the answer is already pathetically obvious and has been since the Salyuts and Mir: no matter what we do, it ruins bodies within about a year and a half, and that's too short for a Mars trip.

500 years ago, you didn't try to sail across the Atlantic in a rowboat. You took a ship just big enough to pack the supplies for a year-plus trip (boats were very slow then). Going to Mars today is no different. It won't look like Apollo, that's the analog to a rowboat 500 years ago. (That's part of why I object to SLS: it's nothing but a reprise of Apollo-type short moon trip technology, the other objection being it's no price reduction to orbit, either.) But the big ship analog today does NOT have to be $trillion expensive, as I pointed out above.

That overblown price tag is just corporate welfare for the established (and mentally stultified) giants in the business. The real innovation is coming from their upstart competition here the last several years. As has been true throughout history.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2015-08-29 09:47:34)

RobertDyck · 2015-08-29 13:01:41

I could be a smart-ass and point out humans did first arrive in North America in a boat. Vikings arrived at "Vinland" in a long boat. That was an open sail boat. Vikings designed it to be smaller than ocean going ships of the day so they could sail up rivers, deep within continents. Yet it could cross the Atlantic. In short steps. First from Scandinavia to the British Isles, then to Iceland, then Greenland, then finally Newfoundland. Archeologists found a Viking settlement in northern Newfoundland, carbon dated to year 999. And there were beach nuts in the dirt floor of long house. Beach nuts don't grow in Newfoundland, they're in New England. So Vikings travelled extensively from there. Viking sagas describe the settlement founded by Leif the Lucky, son of Erik the Red, later called Leif Eriksson. It was supposed to be about year 1,000 give or take. The archeology site was carbon dated to year 999. That's it.

Some today appear to hope for that sort of thing. But no, there are no "islands" between Earth and Mars. And no, the Moon is not a stepping stone.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-29 18:39:23

GW Johnson wrote:

Going to Mars isn't that much technically harder than going to the moon. It's particularly easy one-way. We sent a probe past Mars only 2 years after our first soft-landing of one on the moon, in the 1960's. The hardest technological part of either trip is getting into orbit around the Earth. That's still true, but prices are factor 10+ more affordable now than they were in the 1960's.
What's different about Mars is the vastly-different requirements for life support if you send people. Moon trips as contemplated up to now are nearly-always less than a month long, so you can ignore microgravity disease, you can simply pack supplies without resorting to any kind of recycling, you can ignore cosmic ray exposure for sure (actually you can ignore that for Mars too), and the odds are good there won't be a solar flare to kill your crew.

How long is the typicall ISS Mission?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati … ce_Station
The International Space Station is continually inhabited, it order to get out money's worth out of this station, they typical crew replacement is infrequent, about once or twice a year. I think with a manned Moon base, we'd want to uphold a similar standards, as the rockets required to replace a crew on the Moon aren't cheap. I figure each crew should stay on the Moon for a year, not a month! If it was a Month, we'd need about 12 Moon Missions per year or else we'd have to abandon the Moon base and leave it uninhabited for much of the time. I think What I am looking for initially is the equivalent of an ISS on the Moon's surface, one that is continuously manned by 6 to 7 people, rather than a repeat of Apollo. Apollo is analogous to Gemini, basically because we sent two men into orbit, and with Apollo, we sent two men to the Moon's surface.

GW Johnson wrote:

Mars is just the opposite: you must do something about microgravity exposures (which NASA management is still unwilling to do = proof that they still don't want to go), the more recycling you do the less mass you have to send, you must shield against solar flares because in a 2.5 year mission it WILL happen, and you ought to reduce cosmic ray exposure as much as is possible (which ain't much right now, but anything helps).
Plant a manned base on the moon, and the requirements become very much like Mars. That's different. That's where going to the moon for a long stay might be useful for going to Mars: you have to solve the very same set of life support problems.
The only things NASA is doing toward that shopping list are (1) working minimal recycling of air and water on ISS with much less than full success, and (2) trying to combat microgravity disease with exercise,

Less need of that if you are on the Moon's surface, weigh an astronaut down with 5 times his mass on the Moon, and he will be walking around with his Earth weight on the Moon. So if a astronaut weighs 150 lb on Earth, he needs to strap on 750 pound-masses of weights consisting of a very dense metal such as tungsten for example, this will keep him fit for his return to Earth at the end of a year.

GW Johnson wrote:

when the answer is already pathetically obvious and has been since the Salyuts and Mir: no matter what we do, it ruins bodies within about a year and a half, and that's too short for a Mars trip.
500 years ago, you didn't try to sail across the Atlantic in a rowboat. You took a ship just big enough to pack the supplies for a year-plus trip (boats were very slow then). Going to Mars today is no different. It won't look like Apollo, that's the analog to a rowboat 500 years ago. (That's part of why I object to SLS: it's nothing but a reprise of Apollo-type short moon trip technology, the other objection being it's no price reduction to orbit, either.) But the big ship analog today does NOT have to be $trillion expensive, as I pointed out above.
That overblown price tag is just corporate welfare for the established (and mentally stultified) giants in the business. The real innovation is coming from their upstart competition here the last several years. As has been true throughout history.
GW

GW Johnson · 2015-08-30 10:51:51

I said any real moon base would entail longer-term stays. I did NOT EVER say just stay for a month or less. There's no point to a base if you cannot stay but a month. Don’t put words in my mouth, please.

What I also said was you must solve the recycling and radiation problems to do this permanent lunar base thing or any interplanetary trips. I see little evidence of NASA yet being willing to solve those problems for such a lunar base.

Orion provides insufficient radiation protection for its crew to survive a major flare event. From that I conclude NASA's current moon mission concepts differ very little from the Apollo-style fast visits of decades ago. 2 weeks, perhaps stretchable to a month. SLS/Orion is a reprise of Saturn-5/Apollo, nothing more. It plays the odds on a solar flare the same way Apollo did.

If NASA sets a base up without addressing those radiation needs, then sooner or later they will kill another crew. No way around that.

That leaves microgravity diseases (note the plural) unaddressed.

Exercise addresses the musculo-skeletal and circulatory diseases, but very likely does not address the vision-loss and immune system degradation problems. Those seem to have something to do with fluid pressure gradients due to gravity. And we still do not yet know what else goes wrong in zero gee.

There's no evidence that loading weights onto a lunar astronaut will be any more therapeutic (musculo-skeletal and circulatory) than any of the other exercise regimes they have tried on ISS. And we don't really know exercise will do much good to extend max times beyond a year; that's something we might learn a little bit about with the Kelly twins on ISS.

So, for a lunar base, if 1/6 gee proves insufficiently therapeutic, then you will just have to rotate crews home every so often, just like we do now with ISS.

There is a good reason most ISS crews usually stay only half a year: they're in better shape for the return. There's not that many gees to endure coming home from orbit (maybe 4-5-ish). From the moon, it'll be worse: Apollo's return typically peaked at 10-11 gees.

So, I suspect lunar crews would rotate every 6 months, perhaps every 4 months, because of the rigors of return. Solve the radiation and recycling problems, and you could have a lunar base you visit only 2 or 3 times a year to swap crews and drop supplies.

A Mars crew doing a free return would see more gees than that: perhaps 12-15 gees. That's why full-gee physical fitness is so very necessary for any minimalist-type Mars mission. To stay fit in space for a 2.5 year round trip, when you simply do not know whether 0.38 gee on Mars is even therapeutic at all, absolutely requires near 1 gee artificial gravity, as far as we know now.

And that's a fact, Jack.

So deal with it, NASA and everybody else. Everyone must deal with it, no matter their type of mission and spacecraft designs. Furthermore, until you know what min gee level is actually therapeutic, you have to plan on using spin gravity levels close to 1 gee.

We know that sleeping quarters could be zero-gee, or else bed rest studies would not in the least simulate zero gee body deterioration. Perhaps recreational time could be spent at low gee, making fun things even more fun, for a crew otherwise at risk of psychological effects from close confinement.

But your daily work station shifts need to be at very near 1 gee, until we know “for sure” otherwise.

GW

PS for Robert Dyck:

A Viking long boat is bigger than what I had in mind as a rowboat, but small enough to require places to stop along the way in the far north Atlantic. It's a ship, but not a big enough ship for a straight shot across mid-Atlantic.

A thought: Vikings were well known for their hostility to the natives when they got to North America. Perhaps the exposure to the elements in that open long boat, and that nasty lutefisk they had for food, explains some of that bad attitude?

RobertDyck · 2015-08-30 13:16:09

GW Johnson wrote:

A thought: Vikings were well known for their hostility to the natives when they got to North America. Perhaps the exposure to the elements in that open long boat, and that nasty lutefisk they had for food, explains some of that bad attitude?

They were well known for in-fighting among themselves, and raiding other countries. They conquered and settled half of England for a couple centuries. Raided monasteries, stealing anything valuable and killing anyone in their way. It wasn't just North American natives, it was their way with everyone. However, they did trade when they couldn't raid/steal. The Ulfberht sword was pattern welded: high carbon steel with low carbon "bloomery" steel. It's believed they used the Volga trade route along the Volga river to the southern shore of the Caspian Sea where they traded with Muslim countries for a block of crucible steel, enough for one sword. I've also heard that Vikings felt North American natives were far too great in number, they couldn't be conquered. So rather than co-exist in peace, they left.

English ate fish as a large part of their diet in the 1490s. When John Cabot discovered Newfoundland and the Grand Banks in 1497, fishermen set sail as soon as they heard. And they set up a fishing camp to process their catch; air drying and salting fish to preserve for the trip back to England. So English ate pretty much the same thing about 500 years later. Oh, wait. Then there's how Europeans treated natives. You could have a point.

RobertDyck · 2015-08-30 15:34:19

GW: what depth of regolith does a permanent Moon base require for radiation shielding? Would sand bags on the roof of a Mars Direct hab be enough? Again I'm thinking of using a Moon mission to develop hardware for Mars. IIRC, studies by Mars Homestead Project team members (including a few students from MIT) said at least 2 metre depth of Mars regolith for complete protection. Sandbags would only provide partial protection. Of course a permanent base on Mars will have the luxury of harvesting ground water, either permafrost or a glacier. MRO SHARAD found glaciers on the side walls of several gullies at mid latitudes. Ground water could soak permafrost layered on top of the habitat, and that wouldn't have to be desalinated. It would freeze, so the Mars permanent base would have permafrost on top, not just regolith. Much better radiation shielding. But if we use a Mars Direct hab as a Moon base, we won't have any of that. Just sand bags filled with dry lunar regolith. And if we use a Mars Direct hab, it will have the rad shelter closet with water tanks for walls & ceiling. Enough?

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-30 20:33:23

RobertDyck wrote:

GW: what depth of regolith does a permanent Moon base require for radiation shielding? Would sand bags on the roof of a Mars Direct hab be enough? Again I'm thinking of using a Moon mission to develop hardware for Mars. IIRC, studies by Mars Homestead Project team members (including a few students from MIT) said at least 2 metre depth of Mars regolith for complete protection. Sandbags would only provide partial protection. Of course a permanent base on Mars will have the luxury of harvesting ground water, either permafrost or a glacier. MRO SHARAD found glaciers on the side walls of several gullies at mid latitudes. Ground water could soak permafrost layered on top of the habitat, and that wouldn't have to be desalinated. It would freeze, so the Mars permanent base would have permafrost on top, not just regolith. Much better radiation shielding. But if we use a Mars Direct hab as a Moon base, we won't have any of that. Just sand bags filled with dry lunar regolith. And if we use a Mars Direct hab, it will have the rad shelter closet with water tanks for walls & ceiling. Enough?

You know, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't consider living in the Moon rather than on the Moon. A lot of the problems of living underground on Earth (ground water) don't exist on the Moon. Also digging tunnels in the Moon is a lot easier than digging tunnels in the Earth, the dirt and rock only weighs one sixth as much! The density of Moon rock is 3.34 tons per cubic meter, under lunar gravity it weighs 0.56 tons per cubic meter. One Bar of atmospheric Pressure is approximately 10 tons per square meter, thus a tunnel filled with air at 1 Earth's atmosphere of pressure can support almost 20 cubes of lunar rock on top! So think of it this way, you can have a tunnel 20 meters below the surface of the Moon pressurized at Earth's sea level of atmospheric pressure, and you wouldn't have to worry about a cave-in so long as the tunnels are air tight. You could have cathedral like spaces underground without the need for columns to support the weight above with the air pressure being sufficient to support the ceiling above. And I think 20 meters of lunar rock ought to block the radiation from even the worst solar storms!

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