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Space Stations, Space Shuttles and Beyond - The Aerospace Discussion Thread
BenRG:
SpaceX plans to send two space tourists around the Moon some time in 2018.
Once again, he's crazy but it might be the right sort of crazy. With the Trump administration leaning towards scrapping the open-ended and expensive Mars objective in favour of returning to the Moon, proving that one's commercial product could handle cargo and crew delivery to cis-Lunar space is a bit of commercial good sense.
It is quite possible that Musk is planning to get his ship to the Moon in December 2018, the hemicenteniary of Apollo 8 (the first time humans had ever left the Earth's sphere of influence). It's a mostly meaningless milestone in practical terms but would have powerful symbolic value. FWIW, I consider the time-line Musk proposes is probably unachievably aggressive but I believe that this is doable by 2020.
Regarding NASA's interest in this matter, this may all feed into the possibility of a 'MoonLab' station at EML-2 for various bits of crewed exo-magnetosphere research. This is something that NASA has been toying with as it became clearer that the asteroid redirect and rendezvous mission proposal for the first crewed SLS flight wasn't generating political support. If Falcon Heavy/Dragon can prove this mission profile, then NASA have a CRS provider lined up and ready to go to support any such program. So, it is at least in their best interests to cooperate and encourage.
If SpaceX can rig up an Main Propulsion System (MPS) for the Dragon (maybe a knock-off of the pressure-fed Kestrel engine used on the small Falcon-1), it might even be useful as a crew transfer vehicle for cis-Lunar space, enabling NASA to concentrate SLS on throwing large cargoes (including Boeing's proposed ultra-simple lander) to the Moon or cis-Lunar space. As crewed Falcon Heavy will launch from LC-39A (and any NASA supporting mission will probably have NASA decals on the spacecraft), NASA will be able to claim with a straight face that it is a 'NASA vehicle and mission'.
It would be kind of ironic if the oft-derided CLV/CaLV launch profile happens after all, just with Falcon-9/-Heavy as Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) and SLS as Cargo Launch Vehicle (CaLV) instead of Ares-I and -V (Yes, I'm suggesting that Falcon-9 could launch a Lunar Dragon to LEO to meet up with the lunar lander and EUS).
DuneCanid:
I was eight years old when Armstrong took his "one small step". First time i got to stay up past 8pm.
This country does not lack the technology, or the people, or the money to go back to the moon. Even the orbital junkpile that is a Kessler event waiting to happen is not an impediment. What this country (and maybe even the planet) lack is the WILL.
This isn't worrying about falling off the edge of the world, like a fair share of Columbus's crews worried about.
The Admiral wrote about Lunar travel limited by the tech of his day. I have to think that he passed away utterly astonished that we hadn't been back. (He died in 1988.) The tech of this day and age is way more than enough to do what exploration in the past only did in limited amounts: advance parties.
It is possible to gun stuff at the moon in either fast or slow orbits and make controlled landings. And with those landings, probes could be deployed. WORKING probes, able to deploy equipment for later live crews, conduct surveys... even BUILD from lunar regolith.
These things are absolutely possible at a mere 400,000 kilometer range. Proof of that is on the surface of Mars, in the shape of the active Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity and the sadly nonfunctioning Spirit. These devices were only supposed to work for ninety days. Spirit worked for over 2000 days before failure... and Opportunity has done more than TWICE that, and is still working. This all being done with solar power, on a planet subject to dust storms, wind speeds, abrasive fines, and orbital mechanics that makes for long periods of radio down time. For the same money and launchers, I'd bet a DOZEN larger, more robust rovers could have been on the moon. And more than just science packages. Construction... and even repair of each other... or get REALLY ambitious and go to the cold war era probe sites and see how they stood the test of time.
Frustrated musings, perhaps.
Is it cold in here?:
Ohh, that would make me happy. I'd add another project along with the heavy construction work. If there's ice in polar craters, another good job for the robots would be to split it into hydrogen and oxygen and fill cylinders. It would be handy to having breathing materials and fuel cells ready to go when the humans arrive.
DuneCanid:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 15 Mar 2017, 00:21 ---Ohh, that would make me happy. I'd add another project along with the heavy construction work. If there's ice in polar craters, another good job for the robots would be to split it into hydrogen and oxygen and fill cylinders. It would be handy to having breathing materials and fuel cells ready to go when the humans arrive.
--- End quote ---
The Byrd Crater Hypothesis. Better to confirm the resource is there before building something to use it.
First thing on the moon for building should be mirrors and solar arrays. If what I saw of the Apollo data on the regolith is what I think I saw, boil out the oxygen using mirrors for heating and shade for cooling. The industrial chemical groups woefully under represented on the moon are chlorides, nitrates and hydrates
BenRG:
It's amazing what you can do if you decide to use human biological waste products in the area of increasing the chemical diversity of an extraterrestrial planetary body.
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