The Case for the Moon

GCNRevenger · 2003-11-19 16:46:22

We will need a new "great big booster" some time down the road (even if we built a space elevator for bulk cargoes) but at the moment building an SDV in the 100-120 ton range makes the most sense. The Shuttle Stack itself is not that expensive, and creating and SDV would be easier than building a whole new booster. So, the cost of launching 2-3 SDVs in the near term (the next 20-30 years maybe) would probobly trump the economics of developing and launching a whole new rocket.

I would also like to kind of mention that the Shuttle Stack is actually not that far removed from the SRB Saturn concept... the major difference is that they beefed up the cryogenic stage (to what I think a almost rediculus degree), put the engines in Shuttle, and dropped the kerosene stage. The Shuttle external tank is even made in the same factory that produced Saturn-V F1 stages if memory serves.

In the long-run, after large >1,000Isp on-space engines become commonplace then payloads from a rocket of that "magnetude" could be ferried out and having a rocket bigger than SDV makes sense.

Tyr · 2003-11-19 18:19:49

The SDV works just fine for me. We can use the ETs in orbit for many purposes. With the longest carbon60 nanofibers being only 20 cm long, a far cry from 22,400 miles, I think we'll be using rockets for a long time.

GCNRevenger · 2003-11-19 21:38:13

Even if you could accuratly and reliably aim a meteor cannon at the Earth, you still-still have the problem of getting the stuff down to Earth's surface. And even if we did have a space elevator that could "capture" the Lunar ore payloads and send them down, a few tons at a time in two or three days, the economics just don't make sense. Except for He3 or rare minerals, there just isn't any profit in mining the Moon for minerals to be sold on Earth.

I'd also like to mention just how far we are away from being able to build spacecraft in orbit using base materials and only limited Earth-manufactured parts/materials. Its hard enough to build a space ship on Earth, I would hate to think of the mess of doing it anywhere but here for the forseeable future.

Palomar · 2003-12-09 08:11:02

I don't agree with this

*However, some folks here might find the following article of interest.

--Cindy

Rxke · 2003-12-09 11:19:35

Poll: Americans support low cost return to the moon

Spacedaily

(or is this the wrong thread?)

Palomar · 2003-12-12 11:43:36

Flags & Footprints Fever { -yawn- }

*Not what I want to read. I guess originality IS dead and "been there, done that" rules. It's everyone else's turn, now, to play King of the Hill for A Week (30 years after, but what the heck, huh?).

--Cindy

Shaun Barrett · 2003-12-13 06:22:02

Is this reporter for real?!!
America is going to do what? ... When?
Return a sample from the Moon by about 6 or 7 years from now?
In the same length of time or less, America went from John Glenn's Mercury flight to Armstrong and Aldrin's stroll on the lunar surface. And almost everything in between was so new that nobody had ever done anything like it before; everything had to be researched, devised, planned, built, tested and launched ... from scratch!

Returning samples from the Moon is old-hat. The USSR did it a third of a century ago.
Here we are in 2003, having landed a rover on Mars 4 years ago, and we're going to have to wait until 2010 before the once pre-eminent space power on Earth can get its backside sufficiently in gear to bring us some Moon rocks!!! .... AGAIN !!!!!!!!!!!!

Well please excuse me if I fail to get too excited about that. If this represents the proposed pace of space exploration from here on, I'll be long dead before the next boot-print on Luna, never mind Mars!
???

SpaceNut · 2018-11-25 17:18:47

For those that want mars the moon is not the direction of choice

SpaceNut · 2019-07-21 15:17:18

oh no need to fix this one...

Reasons would be to say its not a hoaks...then to stay

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-05-12 05:07:56

Colombia signs Artemis Accords

https://spacenews.com/colombia-signs-artemis-accords/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-18 14:55:53

South Korea orbiter Danuri images

https://www.kari.re.kr/kplo/danuri/mult … searchWrd=

Shadow Cam

https://www.shadowcam.asu.edu/images/1288

In December 2022, the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) successfully placed the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO, also known as Danuri) satellite into lunar orbit. KPLO carries six instruments, one of them being the NASA-funded ShadowCam. Designed and built by Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS), ShadowCam is a younger sibling of the successful Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), Narrow Angle Camera (NAC). ShadowCam adds to our knowledge of the Moon by imaging within permanently shadowed regions near the poles. Since the lunar spin axis is only tilted 1.5 degrees, the Moon barely has seasons. The poles are in a perpetual state of dawn to dusk, with the Sun always on the horizon. As a result, depressions near the poles never receive direct solar illumination, areas known as permanently shadowed regions or PSRs. LROC has imaged nearly all of the Moon at meter scale, except within PSRs. The LROC Narrow Angle Camera design was modified so that ShadowCam is 200x more sensitive than the NAC to image within PSRs, taking advantage of light dimly reflected from nearby topography. For film photography, this would be the equivalent of increasing from ISO 100 to greater than 12,800 without increasing grain.
What does it look like where the Sun never shines? Well, now we know - in at least one place! This portion of the interior of Shackleton crater does not immediately look different than normally illuminated craters found elsewhere on the Moon. The upper twenty percent of the image shows the base of the steep wall, and the rest of the image is of the hummocky crater floor. Track (arrow, image below) shows the path of a 5-meter diameter boulder that rolled down the steeply sloping crater wall and came to rest on the floor. Boulder tracks are commonly found elsewhere on the Moon.
Due to its relatively small size, the temperature of much of the portion of Shackleton crater shown here rises above the water ice stability point temperature (110 K or -261 degrees Fahrenheit) in summer. Therefore, this area is not the most likely host for frost or ice at the surface. Perhaps elsewhere in this crater where temperatures are lower, there might be ice or frost waiting to be seen!
Shackleton crater makes for a fun first test of ShadowCam because it was also the first portion of the Moon imaged by LROC. That first LROC image showed the illuminated rim of Shackleton but none of the interior. In this image, ShadowCam reveals the interior but none of the rim because the detector is so sensitive that it saturates whenever viewing terrain directly illuminated by sunlight.
As the KPLO mission progresses, ShadowCam will be imaging all of the lunar permanently shadowed regions with pixel scales better than 2 meters, searching for frost and ice, looking for any changes with time or season, assessing the geomorphology of this frigid terrain, and mapping out the terrain for future surface exploration by missions such as the NASA Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, also known as VIPER.

https://www.shadowcam.asu.edu/images/1284

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-02-18 15:05:55)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-03-01 05:03:18

First ispace mission on track for April lunar landing

https://spacenews.com/first-ispace-miss … r-landing/

SpaceNut · 2023-03-01 20:48:28

Thats better than the failures which were ride shares for the SLS launch...

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-03-18 12:02:44

NASABudget- Major activities: In 2023 will begin a steady cadence of Lunar Missions though CLPS, Artemis II will launch in '24 and SpaceX will conduct an unpiloted test of their HLS, In 2025 Artemis III will launch returning humans to the Moon

https://twitter.com/genejm29/status/1635328044046127106

funds?
https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1 … 3231149059

I can’t comment on specifics since I get funded by NASA & others to do work on these kinds of questions and I am bound by NDAs. But I can say NASA and all the space companies are all over these questions and I believe there’s no showstopper.

Military?

'The Air Force Research Laboratory is asking companies to submit ideas on how they would design and develop a spacecraft to monitor outer space beyond Earth’s orbit.'
https://spacenews.com/industry-proposal … satellite/

What are the Artemis Accords?
https://www.space.com/artemis-accords-explained

According to NASA (opens in new tab) as of January 3, 2023, the nations signed up to the Artemis Accords are as follows:
Australia
Bahrain
Brazil
Canada
Columbia
France
Israel
Italy
Japan
Luxemburg
Mexico
New Zealand
Nigeria
Poland
Republic of Korea
Romania
Rwanda
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States of America

2 hrs, Cars and Japan Lunar rovers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbvvHQhqhqU

Europe inflated base
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Imag … _Moon_base

Chinese base?

Launch: TBD (2027?)
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/l … uture.html
Chang'e 8 is designed to test technologies necessary to the construction of a lunar science base. It will also conduct surveys and scientific experiments.

'China Outlines Plan for an International Lunar Research Station'
https://twitter.com/marsboy/status/1501965435595542537

New Starship HLS landing renders
https://twitter.com/jenakuns/status/1631175612709875712

As work on HLS continues, we want to pause and thank a few of our HLSMajorLeagues members. They are diverse and essential to all the work we do for NASA. Keep an eye out throughout the month for each "stat" card, and try to "collect" them all!
https://twitter.com/Dynetics/status/1635362592183992320

Update from Dynetics (Andy Crocker) on their Human Landing System crewed lander, includes new updates on their NASA NextSTEP-2 Appendix N technology risk reduction work
https://twitter.com/ac_charania/status/ … 2282662918

old video on goal of land by 2024

Human Landing System Comparison | Which Artemis Lander is Best?

does not care for Lunar Lander used for Mars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSg5UfFM7NY

NASA foresees gap in lunar landings after Artemis 3

https://spacenews.com/nasa-foresees-gap … artemis-3/

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-03-18 12:23:18)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2024-03-06 15:20:03

NASA's ice-hunting VIPER moon rover getting ready to slither to the launch pad
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nasas-ice-hu … 35627.html

A New Era of Moon Exploration Is Upon Us
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-o … is-upon-us
The wildly ambitious Artemis program aims to get us back to the moon for good.

NASA’s Trio of Mini Rovers Will Team up to Explore the Moon
https://www.nasa.gov/technology/robotic … -the-moon/

SpaceNut · 2024-03-17 17:06:53

Like all plans we question why from the leaders that come up with where we are going and not where we could go as well.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2024-03-30 04:00:20

China appears to be trying to save stricken spacecraft from lunar limbo
https://spacenews.com/china-appears-to- … nar-limbo/

perhaps support for the Chang’e mission Landers and Rovers

Queqiao relay satellite, which has been orbiting in a halo orbit around the Earth-Moon L2 since 2018

Radio astronomy satellites designed to support the Chinese Lunar Exploration

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecr … id=QUEQIAO

https://web.archive.org/web/20180518183 … nge-4.html

Lunar Orbit VLBI EXperiments to use the 4.2 m antenna as a radio telescope during the four hours the satellite spends over the Moon's north pole it will be used in conjunction with Earth based devices, terrestrial telescopes for long-base interferometry

Communication with the lunar surface is accomplished in the X band, using a high-gain 4.2 metres (14 ft) deployable parabolic antenna,

halo orbits around the Earth-Moon L1 and L2 are unstable

the satellite consumes 80 g (2.8 oz) of fuel for a small orbit correction maneuver approximately every 9 days

pdf
https://jdse.bit.edu.cn/sktcxb/en/artic … 04.004.pdf

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#76 2003-11-19 16:46:22

Re: The Case for the Moon

#77 2003-11-19 18:19:49

Re: The Case for the Moon

#78 2003-11-19 21:38:13

Re: The Case for the Moon

#79 2003-12-09 08:11:02

Re: The Case for the Moon

#80 2003-12-09 11:19:35

Re: The Case for the Moon

#81 2003-12-12 11:43:36

Re: The Case for the Moon

#82 2003-12-13 06:22:02

Re: The Case for the Moon

#83 2018-11-25 17:18:47

Re: The Case for the Moon

#84 2019-07-21 15:17:18

Re: The Case for the Moon

#85 2022-05-12 05:07:56

Re: The Case for the Moon

#86 2023-02-18 14:55:53

Re: The Case for the Moon

#87 2023-03-01 05:03:18

Re: The Case for the Moon

#88 2023-03-01 20:48:28

Re: The Case for the Moon

#89 2023-03-18 12:02:44

Re: The Case for the Moon

#90 2024-03-06 15:20:03

Re: The Case for the Moon

#91 2024-03-17 17:06:53

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#92 2024-03-30 04:00:20

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