New Mars Forums

Actually, I think the hardest part of operating on Mercury will be the trip there and back. Without almost crippling amounts of radiation shields everytime the sun sneezes our astronauts will turn into a floating blob of goo. Significant mass will have to be devoted to all forms of radiation protection, even for cargo missions due to sensitive electronics.

If we land as night falls with a nuclear power source, we have about 3 months to get all our gear buried deep enough to provide sufficient thermal and radiation protection. Then we can shut our reactor down and operate under solar power. The following night we run buried pipe and electrical lines to robotic encampments devoted to collecting water on the poles. Once our water source is secured, mining can begin. For safety reasons this will probably be done by drilling tunnels outword from underground bases.

Every bit of brainstorming helps at this point.

But the Moon and asteroids will produce results long before Mars will.

^Not to mention punching out members of the tin foil hat crowd.

Easier in the respect that most of the technology for an Apollo style mission is already in place.

Of course doing a productive mission is another matter.

We can't avoid wars or huricannes. If it wasn't Iraq it'd be North Korea, or a combination of a Bosnia/Kosovo/Somolia. If it wasn't the Gulf, it'd be South Florida, the Carolinas, or Cape Cod.

Space must go on regardless, because within it is solution to most of these problems.

That said, Katrina will no doubt complicate or downright disrupt operations at Micoud (sp?). Thats probably going to set STS-121 back furthur than March. That means we are going to be despirately short on time to finish the station the conventional way. And at this point I don't think we should be trying to finish it the conventional way.

I think the most critical question is if we can get the remaining pieces to the ISS, can the station  finish itself with the arm thats up there now?

If so, we retire the shuttle and pour all our money into CEV and Shuttle-C.

If not, we figure out how to modify the shuttle for an extended or indefinate duration mission, and develope the Shuttle-C.

Either way, I think we are now past the point were we can hope to finish the station by the end of 2010. If we were able to get STS-121 off this year, we might have been able to pull it off. But with the continuing issues with the foam, and with the tank factory offline indeffinately, that chance is past.

Modifying a Shuttle with Station style LSS, power systems, and OSMs that don't leak dangerous fuels into space will be expensive, but I doubt it will cost more than even one years operations costs, that will leave the remaining 3-4 years to get the Shuttle-C going for a multi-month mission in 2010 to finish off the station in one blow. And at that point we will have a launcher capable of the first series of lunar missions, moving up the time table by as much as 4-5 years.

Is that a Buran in the backround?

Zubrin does make some points. The need for 2 launches per mission is an added expense, and any hiccup in either launch would seriously screw up the launch windows for the whole mission.

This could be solved by creating as many reuseable compents as possible. The TLI stage could be reused, and fuel for each mission could be launched with the CEV via a EELV, should we choose to go that route. It would certainly make the Air Force happy.

I would perfer the reuseable route anyway. It might be more expensive at first, but unlike the shuttle, stuff left in orbit doesn't require the massive up keep. It would also reduce the investment in production facilities, making ruts a bit easier to get out of.

If you have to use up all your pee to power electronics, what are you going to drink?

Remember were talking about spiral 2 missions here. No longer than 14 days, or 1 lunar day. There isn't going to be time for building. Spiral 2 should be all about geology so we have a good idea of exactly what we have to work with.

A pair of solar powered 2 man rovers will all the gagets a geologist could dream of built in is all we need. And if we're smart we'll make them capable of teleoperation so the science can continue long after we go home.

It also said the Lunar lander will look very Apolloishl but land with considerable amounts of equipment, including ISRU stuff. The Orlando Sentnal article gave a figure of 23,500lbs.

I think were jumping the gun a little on that. For the first phase we need several missions of relatively simple scouting missions to test reusable transit and surface LSS and to get a good idea of whats available at at least a dozen sites. The same LSS technologies that enable people to stay on the ISS for months at a time aught to be more than enough to aughment the CEV systems and keep 4 people drinking and breathing for a 2 to 3 week Lunar mission. Combine the Service and Lunar module and land and take off with the whole thing, and leave the Service module in LEO. Launch the CEV with a few small transfer tanks that refill the SM. This way we can funnel more funds into the various surface systems for the next phase.

The only tyranical thing Jeb has done is to try to force life on someone who was already dead.

If we can't depend on solar energy for greenhouses because of distance and dust storms, and are going to lose oodles of heat energy to the traditional greenhouse designs, why not bury and insulate the hell out of the things and grow everything with lamps?