Time to return to the Moon?

[funkedup]

oh i have an idea lets build a giant laser orbiting the earth made out of ores from the moon theres an idea...lets set it up so it homes in on arrogance and stupidioty then kills the cause of it all.

Working on it, but we need you need to reply with your GPS coordinates.

[HFMudd]

Shuttle to the moon - here is why you would not do it that way.  It takes fuel to push the mass out of earth orbit to get to the moon right?  The more mass the more fuel including fuel to push the fuel that pushes any extra mass and the shuttle has a lot of extra mass that you don't need to take to the moon with you.  A short list off the top of my head:

1) Wings
2) Windows
3) Wheels
4) The cargo bay doors
5) All those fricken re-entry tiles
6) The Arm
7) Sheet metal that makes it aerodynamic
8) Internal truss work to bolt #7 to.

You would be far, far better off to use the shuttle to carry a much lighter vehicle into LEO and then use one or more additional shuttle flights to fuel that vehicle.  Keep in mind though that each shuttle launch costs around $500,000,000 ($4 billion shuttle operation budget / eight launches year) and that the shuttle launch capacity is more or less completly absorbed by the ISS.  

So, that is why we don't send a shuttle to the moon.

Let's ask a different question though.  Why don't we design a lunar vehicle that can be assembled remotely in space and use a few Russian Zenit launches ($20,000,000 or so each *I think*) to get it to LEO and fueled.  To that I have no answer.  Some years back I was at a small presentation Robert Zubrin and he had some napkin calculations of just how cheap it could be to send one person to the moon and back if NASA were not involved, IIRC he was in the $100 million ballpark.  Still a bunch, but only %20 of one shuttle launch.  And the idea exists in various forms still, for example I think LunaCorp has some ideas in this direction.

If I had my druthers the ISS would not be there and the shuttle operation taken away from NASA and privatised.   NASA's mission is and has been to push the technology required for space exploration.  That is a noble goal and a worthwhile one.  But it is not the way to operate on a buget.  Let NASA do what they do best which is to operate beyond LEO.

As to LEO I would have liked to see the ISS budget used in actual competive bidding, building and testing from various aerospace firms for reusable launch vehicles.  As an example of a "might have been" examine the DC-X test vehicle.  Here was a good, simple, off the shelf sort of idea.  What happened to it?  Well, NASA got involved in the issue and had a competion between the firms for *proposals* for which only one would get picked.  Referring to my previous paragraph, guess witch got picked.  Yep, not that one, the one that was selected was the one the "pushed the technology envelope" the most.  (Venturestar)  As it turned out it pushed it a bit too far and was never completed before the winds changed and the budget was cut.

Anyway, I seem to have lapsed into rant mode.  Sorry.  But at least you know why sending a shuttle to the moon would not really be practical.

[Tac]

There's no real reason to return to the moon at the moment. It would be too expensive with little or no return. Remember, the shuttle goes up today MAINLY to deliver/repair commercial, military and sometimes, scientifical payloads. Lately they've been churning the ISS and Hubble up.

Take a look at Discovery Wings, they've been doing quite a few specials on NASA and SHUTTLE program.

Since the beggining SHUTTLE has been a great success, but its WAAAAAY too expensive, thats it great drawback. The Russians left NASA eating their dust in terms of efficiency over cost, but not on versatility and safety. Thats why NASA has been working hard on making a new shuttle... they  need to get rid of the super-costly rocket boosters. Heck, some people have even suggested using gargantuan helium balloons to "lift" the shuttle to 100k alt and then drop the shuttle and have it use its own power from there.. but the problem still is the shuttle will have to achieve escape velocity before breaching atmosphere.. and not even the SR-71 can do that.. you need a rocket or something just as violent.

The only thing I can think of that would be worth returning to the moon now would be to set up a radio telescope array.

Radio telescopes dont really need to be a huge dish like the one in Arecibo.. but rather a linked series of smaller radio telescopes inside a sphere/circle.

So, if the put a radio telescope on the moon..on some spot in the moon, with a geostationary satellite relaying information from the lunar telescope to earth... AND if you have a series of radio telescopes around the earth, the lunar telescope and whatever telescope is in line of sight of the moon at the time would act as a radio telescope the size of the earth-moon orbit.  

[CyranoAH]

Let's finish the ISS first, shall we?

Daniel

[Tac]

ISS is a waste of money.

[Thrawn]

No it isn't.

[Soda]

If they really wanted to return to the moon quickly they would probably hoist the components for a intermediate spacecraft into space with a russian rocket (or the space shuttle) and then use that spacecraft to go there and back.  It would probaby look a lot like the Apollo lander and capsule with some new technology worked into the equation.  You have to figure that the technology in areas like computing has to be 1000 times lighter, smaller and more reliable than what they put into the Apollo craft.  NASA also has vastly more experience with fuel cells, communications, and just about everything else that took them there 30 years ago.  The reason to use the Russian rocket would be cost and the fact that they could probably lift the whole orbiter, fuelled, into low earth orbit so it could meet up with the crew and lander that the shuttle would bring up.  I'm not saying it would be easy, but it would probably be fairly feasible to do it using a number of NASA off-the-shelf components that they have great experience with already.

It's probably feasible in a fairly short timeframe though I don't think the drive to invest the $$ is there to even bother to attempt it.  Lots of NASA's cash is spent just making service flights with the shuttle to the ISS and Hubble and the general cost over-runs on the ISS.  NASA just has to get something cheaper to launch stuff into orbit than the shuttle.

Some day though it'll happen.  You have to wonder if there were to try a Mars mission if they wouldn't test out about half the technology on a more local hop to the moon and back.

-Soda
The Assassins.

[Voss]

I believe Mars is out and it's probably pointless now, anyway.

SSF/ISS is a good first step, but we have a long way to go.

I believe the Japanese will probably be the next country on the moon. Perhaps, they will make use of our services in getting there...

[Leslie]

My brother used to work as chief of the Propulsion Division at MSFC in Huntsville, Alabama.  He did this for 13 years.  One of his jobs during this time was to conduct think tanks, where he would listen to ideas from people like in this forum thread.  Before he became chief, he was in Preliminary Design as an Aerospace Engineer or physicist...don't know exactly what his official title was, however he was with NASA for almost 40 years all together.

He had some pretty neat stories to tell about Werner von Braun, who he knew personally and worked with in Huntsville.  He said von Braun was quite the ladies' man, and women loved his accent.  My sister-in-law actually got to dance with von Braun at parties.  

Anyway, back to the topic.  Jimmy (my brother) recalled that when von Braun told President Kennedy that it would indeed be possible within a ten year deadline to land men on the Moon and return them safely to Earth, the people at NASA almost went into a panic.  They did not believe at the time it could be done, and felt that von Braun had gotten them into a project they could not deliver on.  Well, as we all know, NASA did deliver through superhuman effort.

Sabre, my brother said exactly what you said concerning the Shuttle;  that it was not designed to go to the Moon...way undermodeled, as you put it.  He did make an interesting comment about the Shuttle computers, that the average desktop PC is about ten times more powerful than the ones on the Shuttle.  He was refering to Pentium I and II models.

Another comment he made about space travel via rockets, was something to the effect that it was a miracle every time one of them didn't explode on the pad or soon after launch.  When the Challenger exploded, it didn't really surprise him much...even if it had been launched under ideal conditions.  The successful launches were lucky ones, in his estimation.  I know this isn't very optimistic, saying all this, and please don't take it as a negative toward NASA.  On the contrary, it demonstrates how complex such a venture really is.  There are many unknowns involved, even with all the precautions NASA takes.  

He said, people have a popular saying...we did it once, we can do it again.  That's simple not true when it comes to going to the Moon and returning safely.  If people only knew the complexities involved in our Shuttle launches, they would still be in awe of such an event, instead of taking it for granted.

Unfortunately my brother passed away in 1999 at the age of 62.  I miss him very much.

Les

[Sombra]

You want to return to the moon quickly, safe and cheap? You don't have problems with subcontracting some of the work to the russians? Forget the shuttle! I know a ship that is not under-modelled The lander on your part.

About the ISS and the cheap launchers. I'm for the ISS and the cheap launchers, but I think that it has been choosen the wrong order. Seems much more logical to me designing caravel and then try sea travel than going everywhere in a rowing boat.

Greetings

P.S. What are the "cheap launchers" (not for tourism) that seem to be more likely to be constructed now that the X-33 has been cancelled?

P.S.2 Carl Sagan, the man who insisted to install a photographic cameras on the first space probes stated that space exploration should not be justified on the technological benefits for the life on earth (teflon, tang...). If that money was inverted directly on "down to earth" research greater revenues should come.

[Leslie]

Greetings Sombra!  Thank you for the web site link.  That's a pretty cool one.

The Shuttle will eventually be phased out.  It's too impractical and expensive.  Rockets will probably gain more usage one of these days, because they are less expensive and more reliable.  It's not feasible to build a rocket that could go to Mars.  It would have to be about the size of the Empire State Building to launch from the ground.  A Mars vehicle would have to be built in space.  

This will happen some day I hope.

Les:cool:

[Dowding]

I believe Mars is out and it's probably pointless now, anyway.

How do you come to that conclusion? There is likely to be huge mineral wealth on mars. They discovered huge quantities of water on mars only a couple of weeks ago - which would be vital for any manned exploration (from fuel to just plain old drinking water).

It may not be possible now or even in our lifetimes, but it will come.

The Earth can only support so much life, and unless we utilise the oceans for life support it's going to get very crowded within a couple of centuries. Of course the richer, more developed nations could share their wealth with the poorer nations, but that really isn't an option. To keep their position as leaders of the world, they are going to have to expand.

[HFMudd]

Sombra,

Granted there is a huge difference between a suborbital ballistic flight and LEO but, I'd say the best bet for cheap access is private industry.  See The X Prize

Recent advances in cable construction from carbon nano-tubes also has made thebeanstalk idea a problem of will rather than technology.

[Sabre]

Thanks for the post, HFMudd.  I was working on exactly the same post but ran out of time yesterday.  You saved me the trouble of answering.

As regards to the ISS, I don't believe it is a waste of time, only a waste of money as currently managed.  It has two goals, or should have.  First, to gain experience living and working in space.  Second, to serve as a micro-gravity research station with an eye to commercialization of space.  NASA's poor-spending practices asside, the biggest mistake was internationalizing it, instead of leaving it a wholy-USA venture.  I say this as a matter of program management, not one of national pride.  The old saying is: "A camel is a horse that was designed by committee.  That's what the ISS has become.  Had the US chose to go it alone like they originally planned to (back when it was called "Spacestation Freedom"), keeping it's goals simple and clearly in mind, it is likely it would have been operational several years ago.  Instead, it's goals have become fuzzy, with the new primary one being to "Promote international cooperation in space."

As for the reasons for returning to the Moon, there have been numerous ideas put forth over the years that would justify the establishment of a permanent manned presence on the Moon.  There is no reason to go, unless it is to forward that goal.

P.S. The overwhelming reason for establishing colonies on other planets is to insure the survival of the human race.  It's the obvious reason, but is often overlooked or ignored in these debates.  Mars will be colonized, because it likely contains all the elements for a self-sustaining colony.  The moon doesn't, but colonizing it first would be a logical step in preparing for Mars.

[Steven]

<>

Really?  You mean in the liquid form and not ice?  I know they have polar ice caps, or I think I've heard that.  And they suspect permafrost just under the surface.  

Seeing Mars first colonized is a dream of mine...one I'm sure will remain just a dream.  

Ohh, found this article about great quantities of ice recently found:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2013000/2013114.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2009000/2009318.stm