NASA Ready To Announce Deep Space Human Mission (Update)
NASA wants to send astronauts beyond the moon, Orlando Sentinel
“Top NASA officials have picked a leading candidate for the agency’s next major mission: construction of a new outpost that would send astronauts farther from Earth than at any time in history. The so-called “gateway spacecraft” would hover in orbit on the far side of the moon, support a small astronaut crew and function as a staging area for future missions to the moon and Mars. At 277,000 miles from Earth … “
Keith’s note: NASA PAO has provided this verbose, stock-phrase rich, non-denial-denial response to the Orlando Sentinel article: “NASA is executing President Obama’s ambitious space exploration plan that includes missions around the moon, to asteroids, and ultimately putting humans on Mars. There are many options – and many routes – being discussed on our way to the Red Planet. In addition to the moon and an asteroid, other options may be considered as we look for ways to buy down risk – and make it easier – to get to Mars. We have regular meetings with OMB, OSTP, Congress, and other stakeholders to keep them apprised of our progress on our deep space exploration destinations. This concept is a part of the Voyages document that we mentioned in an earlier Update posted on NASA.gov in June: http://go.nasa.gov/NASAvoyages.” Refer to page 26 of the chapter titled, “Habitation and Destination Capabilities.”
What happened to unmanned fueling depots in HEO? Wouldn’t this be the next logical step to space exploration instead of some Gateway spacecraft thats manned 24×7 orbiting the moon? If the moon is about 240,000 miles from earth and this craft is at 277,000 miles which is stated in the article that puts it 37 miles above the moon surface, this puts it into the LEO zone of the moon. One would think that providing unmanned fulling depots in GEO, HEO, and around the moon would provide greater flexibility for space exploration.
http://upload.wikimedia.org…
Check your math Yohan, that’s 37,000 miles beyond the moon. And it’s not orbiting the moon.
This is not news. The study for an E-M L2 staging post were reported back in February.
http://www.space.com/14518-…
The proposed launch rate of SLS of one per year makes this proposal DOA. Other issues (safety, duration, and so on) are just nails in its coffin.
I don’t expect this to go anywhere.
The low SLS launch rate is not a problem. The heavy lift SLS is used to launch the spacestation. We can not afford to build more than one spacestation a year. The visiting astronauts will have to use a cheaper launch vehicle.
IIRC from the proposal the biggest load would be a new Russian core module with smaller bits being backup / spare ISS & shuttle parts. Seems a lot of these could ride on much cheaper birds than SLS.
NASA says that manned SLS launches will cost about $500 million per launch (about $50 million more than the Shuttle). So that’s quite affordable for a $8.4 billion a year manned spaceflight related budget.
Marcel F. Williams
Marcel,
“quite affordable”? I have to strenuously disagree. Evaluating the cost should be relative to the alternatives, not the total budget. $500M is far too much for any single launch and it would set a horrible precedent for the big aerospace companies. This proposed station is modular, so it won’t be necessary, and probably not even doable, to launch the whole thing at once. Pull up the numbers (proposed for both) for lift capacity, price per kg to orbit, and total launch cost for both SLS and Falcon Heavy. The Falcon Heavy will likely take more than one launch for this job (we don’t have a total mass yet), based on max lift, but even so the total cost for lofting the components named will work out to be much less than for a single SLS launch. This is actually a better risk as well; if one FH fails you don’t lose everything like you would with one SLS failure. And it’s a safe bet that FH will be tested, flown and proved before the first SLS test flight (a very expensive test flight). Once you have the “package” into orbit, the stage to take it to its destination is the same in either case and is a much less costly item than getting to LEO.
Also consider that some of the proposed modules of this station//spacecraft are from other countries, and so they may be required to, or request to, launch their own components themselves, which would further reduce the need for anything like SLS.
I don’t understand, Marcel. You constantly argue to kill the ISS to “save” $3B a year (your number), even though it operates 365 days a year, year after year, and does work that we can’t currently do anywhere else. Yet you are in favor of $0.5B for a single SLS launch, a number which history pretty much guarantees will end up being way below the actual total launch cost. It just doesn’t make sense, to me.
And finally, consider the number of people who have not hesitated to give the opinion that SLS will be canceled before it’s finished anyhow.
Steve
” I don’t understand, Marcel. You constantly argue to kill the ISS to
“save” $3B a year (your number), even though it operates 365 days a
year, year after year, and does work that we can’t currently do anywhere
else.”
Sorry, but there’s no way we’re getting $3 billion worth a year worth of tremendous science out of the ISS. Using those ISS LEO funds for beyond LEO development would be much more scientifically and commercially beneficial.
NASA needs to focus its resources on establishing permanent outpost on the Moon and Mars and developing rotating artificial gravity space stations and interplanetary vehicles. The ISS helps you with none of that.
And right wingers that don’t want NASA to have a heavy lift vehicle just don’t want the Federal government doing anything! They just want us to trust the corporations. But I like a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And, believe it or not, capitalism has actually flourished under such a system!
Marcel F. Williams
Marcel,
Attack the real problem. It has been known for a long while that only a portion of the ISS budget actually gets spent on ISS operations, but the situation hasn’t been fixed.
Also, the ISS budget has never yet hit $3B. The first year that it is scheduled to hit the $3B mark is FY2014, according to NASA documents.
“There’s no way we’re getting $3 billion worth a year worth of tremendous science out of the ISS“
Come on; that statement is just plain silly. You’re neither a fool nor a rookie, so you know research can’t ever be quantified like that, anywhere, by anyone. In fact, nothing that NASA, or any similar entity, does can be quantified like that. Are you expecting SLS or Orion to return anything at all worth the amount spent on them? Everybody loves the Hubble, but has it ever given us back anything that you can hang a dollar amount on for all that’s been spent on it? If you’re going to say sorry, it should be for having typed that paragraph at all.
I’m afraid that I’m confused by your last paragraph. As far as I can see, it has nothing to do with the rest of your post, my post before it, or this thread.
I certainly agree with you regarding the desirability of a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” but I don’t understand how the rest of the paragraph connects to that ideal in any way.
The main point I made in my post was that your stating that SLS launches at $500M would be “quite affordable” is not valid in my opinion. I think you’d have a hard time getting many people to agree with you, especially since SLS will not be the only game in town, and will almost certainly end up being the most expensive alternative. That’s just my opinion, of course.
Steve
NASA needs to focus its resources on establishing permanent outpost on the Moon and Mars and developing rotating artificial gravity space stations and interplanetary vehicles. The ISS helps you with none of that.
False
ISS is actually the key to doing this in an affordable manner.
As a staging ground and assembly point, its existence today is far more important than the fantasy existence of anything else.
Each Saturn V launch cost $400 million in 1972. It is highly unlikely that the SLS will meet a number anywhere near this.
The $3 billion a year ISS program is unnecessary for beyond LEO missions. Plus its microgravity environment is inherently deleterious to its occupants.
The Lagrange points are a much better staging ground for missions beyond cis-lunar space. And appropriately lunar water shielded artificial gravity space stations located at the Lagrange points could be commercially utilized for repairing and redeploying malfunctioning satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
It would also be much cheaper to supply life sustaining water for drinking, washing, air, and fuel from the Moon to a Lagrange point space station than to supply water to the ISS from Earth.
The key to dramatically reducing the cost of beyond LEO missions is to utilize extraterrestrial resources like water from the Moon, Mars, and the moons of Mars plus transporting large meteoroids by light sail to the Earth-Moon Lagrange points for water exploitation.
Marcel F. Williams
The majority of the cargo transported to the ISS is materials that can only be made on Earth. I would say that the key to reducing the cost of missions to BLEO is to reduce the cost of missions to LEO.
The SLS is potentially irrelevant to this mission. It makes the mission easier but it isn’t strictly necessary. Launch the bits with EELVs and assemble them the way they did ISS. Having to use commercial cargo and crew rather than the shuttle will make assembly somewhat more challenging but not fatally so.
The only part of this that is absolutely SLS-critical is… er… is… No, got nothin’. Just about every part of it can be done using existing, shortly-to-be-deployed or relatively easy-to-deploy upgrades to existing launchers. Add in-orbit robotic rendezvous and you’re there. Even propellent transfer only comes into it when you’re talking about about using the station as a staging point for Lunar surface ops.
If you ask me, NASA is wisely planning for a possible SLS cancellation of downsizing to just the 70t IMLEO/30t escape Block-1A.
Ben,
Good call on NASA’s possible intent for SLS; I’d bet that way. On the other issue, using commercial cargo and crew should work out a lot cheaper than using the Shuttle or SLS, especially if NASA is allowed to use sane contracting terms instead of being forced back to FAR regulations and cost-plus. Another potential real plus would be if the commercial people were involved in the on-site assembly. Developing commercial “astronaut” capability for space construction opens up a whole lot of doors that have been deliberately kept closed fora long time, to our detriment. The only change I would make to your post regards EELVs, since reusable LV systems are now being looked at by a number of teams.
Steve
Until we achieve routine access to LEO, forget it. NASA’s plan is to retro spam can up there and tell the taxpayer to shut up and pay up.
Bernhard,
That was not NASA’s plan. It was solely the doing of Congress. If you look back over several decades, you see a pattern that really stinks with respect to “space plane” programs. Step 1: NASA Administrator proposes and sells it; Step 2; before it can achieve the required results, Congress cancels it for reasons (reputedly) related to money. This has happened over and over again. Check the X programs and their dates. Even the ground-breaking X-15 suffered the same fate.
Steve
This looks like a good opportunity for Space X to get the supply contract for L2. After all, Elon said that he wasn’t trying to directly supplant the SLS with his heavy Falcon but to support the various functions that the SLS wouldn’t cover. Makes sense doesn’t it?
And at last, the first step of Gerard K. O’Neill’s High Frontier is finally being taken.
There’s a really political context to this proposal:
1. Some people support the space program, probably most.
2. Some of those support manned space
3. Some of those support manned deep-space.
4. Group 3 is divided into advocates of one of: Moon, Mars, Phobos, asteroid, and let’s not forget the “Hundred Year Starship”.
Right now the SLS has support from among all the group 3 factions. But there is a problem once you go beyond a generalized “deep-space” advocacy and you choose a specific destination. You alienate all of the other destination advocates, and your deep-space popular support base fragments down to perhaps 25% of group 3, which itself is a small subset of the original majority population that supports the space program in general (GPS, weather, etc.).
The announced lunar L2 way-station seems to be trying to stay destination agnostic while defining a deep-space mission. So, like SLS, it’s “deep-space” but without a destination.
Is there a good reason to go to L2? Why would we go to L2 if the Moon were the destination? If we’re going to an asteroid or Mars, will going to L2 on the way reduce fuel or mass requirements? Will it reduce the project or mission time?
Both the Orlando Sentinel and the LA Times attribute the below to a “NASA report”:
“From NASA’s perspective, the outpost would solve several problems.
It gives purpose to the Orion space capsule and the Space Launch System rocket, which are being developed at a cost of about $3 billion annually. It involves NASA’s international partners, as blueprints for the outpost suggest using a Russian-built module and components from Italy. And the outpost would represent a baby step toward NASA’s ultimate goal: human footprints on Mars”.
I don’t find the above really convincing toward astronautical justification.
grassrootsofone,
This is my opinion only, but I see L2 as a good choice for initial steps like this because it’s location has both scientific and HSF advantages, and the HSF advantages don’t lock you down to a single final destination. There are certainly other locations which have greater overall possibilities for development, but they suffer from the factionalism that you refer to because they are much less general purpose than L2 and basically restrict where you can go from there (even though you can do a lot at them; E-M L4 and L5 are good examples, you can do a lot there, but they are not ideal waypoints to destinations farther out).
Steve
Any space station placed at one of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points is going to require substantial radiation shielding capable of protecting astronauts from cosmic radiation and solar events for several years at a time– if they are to truly simulate the radiation exposure of future manned interplanetary journeys.
And that’s going to require at least a meter or two of mass shielding (hundreds of tonnes). The ice resources at the lunar poles would be the cheapest source for supplying such mass shielding to the Lagrange points. Lunar water would also be the cheapest source for fueling future manned interplanetary journeys launched from the Lagrange points.
Marcel F. Williams
Marcel,
Unless you capture yourself a NEO asteroid of appropriate size and tunnel into it for your habitable space. In other words, instead of adding shielding to your station, add a station inside your free fall shielding.
This is no longer science fiction. More than one way to do it has been figured out. Maybe its time to test some of those methods. It would be one way to implement Buzz Aldrin’s logical “conveyor belt” system.
Steve
I fear that like listening to Nixon meant being stuck in LEO for 30+ years, getting stuck with a stupid single moonbase we’d be likewise screwed for even longer.
Logisitics to the entire solar system comes first. All the following missions can exploit it, like a shared ladder to the stars, after.
There’s no doubt in my mind that if we had built a Moon base back in the 1970’s, we’d probably already have a similar base on Mars. That’s because the technology needed to live on the Moon can also help yo to live on Mars. Plus lunar resources such as water can make it a lot easier to travel to Mars.
But I knew that the space station would keep NASA perpetually trapped at LEO when Reagan first proposed the idea back in the 1980s. And its still keeping us trapped at LEO today.
Marcel F. Williams
That might be convenient for small habitats that don’t produce artificial gravity, but if you want to avoid microgravity induced problems with astronaut vision and general health during multi-year round trip missions to Mars, you’re probably going to need large diameter spacecraft that can produce artificial gravity.
You can specifically shield only the small habitat areas of a rotating space craft with the appropriate amount of water without it being too massive to be moved from the Earth-Moon Lagrange points to high Mars orbit (~1.74 to 2.03 km/s of delta v). But you’d have to refuel the vehicle again for a return to cis-lunar space with fuel derived from water from Deimos. But refueling the spacecraft from Mars orbit, utilizing resources from Deimos, should be substantially cheaper than when its fueled in cis-lunar space from lunar resources, thanks to the extremely tiny gravity well of Deimos.
However, water delivered from the Moon for fuel might get substantially cheaper if portable mass drivers are utilized to deliver ice to L1 or L2. And such an electric powered launching device (terrestrially used as a weapon) with the appropriate delta-v capability to launch objects from the surface of the Moon has already been developed by the US NAVY.
But reducing cost by utilizing extraterrestrial resources is supposed to be part of the fun of pioneering the solar system.
Marcel F. Williams
There’s nothing to prevent you from building a rotating habitat inside of Steve’s captured asteroid. Once you’ve developed the technology to tunnel in to build a shielded non-rotating habitat, the same technology allows you to tunnel out a ring. Modules rotate within the ring.
Pick the right type of asteroid and you can produce fuel too. Radiation shielding, thermal mass, fuel/air, and artificial gravity.
Makes an ideal Mars Cycler. Only the crew transport would accelerate our of LEO (or L2) and brake into Mars orbit. Same technology would allow you to build a radiation-shielded fuel base on Phobos/Deimos. The only new technology required beyond that would be an actual Mars lander.
Marcel,
You started out talking about a space station, but when we proposed alternatives to your view you argue using spacecraft. Pick one or the other, please; they’re two entirely different sets of requirements even though there is some overlap.
Steve
The ice resources at the lunar poles would be the cheapest source…
Of propellant!!
Starting with a unmanned lander that does ISRU and just accumulates in a tank, transmitting back “Explore here!, I’ve got lunch, drinks, oxygen, and return props all ready and waiting for you”.
Except if it isn’t going to truly fully simulate the radiation exposure of future manned interplanetary journeys. It will teach us a lot about human factors in deep space without fully simulating those future journeys, and a whole lot more.
The latest work suggests that tolerable (~5% increase in cancer) can justify deep space stays of several months duration with minimal GCR shielding. That’s what we’re talking about here. A 5% increase in risk of death by cancer is small compared to other risks of death in the enterprise. It’s not going to discourage any astronaut from doing the job.
If you’re going to tell an astronaut to climb onto a huge rocket and say “don’t worry, we’re going to keep the radiation level to that which you get on Earth by surrounding you with meters of water” it would be kind of funny, really. Might think about wrapping the astronaut in meters of fireproof pillows just in case, well, you know, something bad happens to the rocket.
One of the important roles of ISS was to simulate the human factors of microgravity that we would endure during future manned interplanetary journeys. It hasn’t done that full simulation yet, but it has taught us an enormous amount about the problem.
If all you want to do is to explore, then you don’t need humans in order to do that. It would be safer and cheaper just to use robots.
If you want to use humans as sort of stunt men and women, enhancing their health risk in expensive flag planting schemes to asteroids, then not properly shielding them and placing them in inherently deleterious microgravity environments for months at a time might make sense.
But if the primary purpose of human space travel is to permanently expand humanity’s presence in the rest of the solar system in order to expand our economic realm and to enhance the survival of our species, then you have to do it in a way that minimizes health risk so that it encourages private industry to follow.
In the future, many people are not going to be staying on the Moon or Mars for just a few weeks or a few months. Many are going to be staying there for years. And some may be staying beyond the Earth for the rest of their lives. And they’ll want to remain healthy while they’re there. So when private commercial industries finally go to the Moon and Mars, they’ll be going there to stay.
But NASA, in the role of pioneers, needs to find out and demonstrate if such things are even possible!
Marcel F. Williams
Finally someone with so common sense ! That’s the key, the Moon is there and has been for a few billion years. Anyone with any construction and logistics background knows you use the best existing “laydown site” to start a build, to save time and costs. Put a primary base under lunar soil, protected from radiation, use it to supply short range shuttle vehicles to build the modules – and at 1/6 G it is less risk to crews at prolonged weightlessness medical issues as well. And from Apollo 13 we know it is possible to be home in 3 days if there is a crisis. Don’t any of these planners read history as well as future fiction?
Anyone with any construction and logistics background knows you use the
best existing “laydown site” to start a build, to save time and costs.
Yes. A EML station. Because we spent a fraction of a trillion to do so on the construction and logistics. This saves time (we can do it now with parts on hand) and costs (known costs).
Put a primary base under lunar soil, protected from radiation …
Same radiation environment as at EML 1/2.
Silica, the primary component of lunar soil, doesn’t shield well. Now what do you do?
You presumed it works like Earth – it doesn’t. Perhaps other misconceptions?
At the Mars Society this year, there was a presentation on making a concrete like material from the Mars soil. A question asked was how well it would hold up to marsquakes. The speaker said there weren’t any, thus no need for rebar. Guess what – there are marsquakes.
Back to the drawing board.
add:
Half the radiation environment at EML1/2
Meant same angular radiation flux density.
Double the exposure (4pi steradians instead of 2pi steradians). GCR is 80% from galactic plane, solar depends on point source projection and magnetic “lensing” / scattering via Van Allens, which get bent in high flux CME’s.
100x+ variance in environment. That’s the hard part.
Same radiation environment as at EML 1/2.
Half the radiation environment at EML1/2. Still, EML1/2 is much easier for other reasons and should come first.
It should come first because of those other reasons.
Exactly.
I don’t understand the advantage of a station ‘in the middle of nowhere’. How come this beat the Moon, and an asteroid, and especially Mars??
EML-2 is the cross roads on the way to all of the Moon, Mars and the asteroids. So it is a good place to build a hotel, spaceship repair yard and propellant depot. (The same applies to EML-1.)
Earth landers like Dragon and Orion need easily damaged heat shields. Lunar landers do not and neither do long range transfer vehicles. So somewhere to change vehicles is useful.
Thanks Steve and Andrew for your very helpful replies.
My problem is that the same rationale was put forward for the ISS. Once you’re in orbit, you’re half way to anywhere, right? It was to be the great ‘jumping off point to the moon and planets’.
Didn’t happen. This sounds like the same idea, but further away and more complicated.
Sorry to sound negative, but given the small and precarious space budget we have to get the next step *right*. Otherwise it’s going to be another dead end.
cuibono,
Fair point about the ISS. There are two factors that I think you have to consider.
First, the half-way to anywhere line, as originally used, was a statement about the energy required to get off the surface of the Earth, and that’s all. It says nothing about the rate of energy expenditure or the source(s) of the energy. It’s one of those lines that has been used as a good argument so many times that people start to make (wrong) assumptions about what it implies.
Second, the natural advantages of a location is space (or on a surface for that matter) are a separate matter from what you put at that location, and what you try to use it for. Most of the original reasons for putting the ISS where it is are valid, but what the ISS itself turned out to be, and be capable of, and be used for, do not take proper advantage of the location’s advantages. Partly, this was political, but ironically, the political “duties” of the ISS are perhaps the ones that have been most successful in terms of original expectations.
Steve
The ISS was built as a international “potlatch” project with no stated objective other than some ambiguious goal of “research”. We already had the space lab back in the ’70s but it was decided to build another one costing the US a hundred billion dollars. We even built it in a Russian orbit inclination when our true allies had a space launch pad practically on the equator.
The L2 makes sense and will accomplish real deep space research. We can even use the Falcon Heavy for resupply several times a years. I have seen videos where NASA has addressed the deep space radiation problem with tubes inside the habitat chamber filled with water to protect the astronauts. We needed a goal that furthered BEO and Congress could focus on and that is L2.
cuibono,
L2 is a “fixed” place in space rather than a massive object with a significant gravity well to defeat. It does have gravitational properties of its own, but they can be useful rather than an impediment. L2 is always the same distance from the Moon. L2 is a good place for telescopes and scientific instruments because it is physically separated from the “noise” from the Moon and the Earth, and better still, the Earth is part of the time between the Sun and L2, so you have the dark sky effect (sort of like escaping city lights on Earth). In terms of travel, getting to L2 is a requirement comparable to getting to the Moon, which we know how to do, so it has all of the advantages of the Moon as a “jumping off” point, but without having to defeat the 1/6G gravity well (what you give up is raw materials being immediately at hand). For observation, it is a good spot for looking out system and in, whereas most places near Earth are one or the other. There are other considerations too, but I think you can see that it has many natural advantages in terms of our space activities.
What we’re talking about is the Earth-Moon L2. There is also a Sun-Earth L2, which has similar advantages and others as well, but they are not identical in terms of their usefulness to human space programs.
Hope that helps some.
Steve
It will be very expensive to support such an outpost with expendable launch vehicles. If we spend most of the budget on a few flights to the moon with expendable launch systems we will be in the same situation we were in 1974.
After Apollo this was our plan:
1. Practical access to LEO with low-cost reusable launch systems
2. A substantial infrastructure in LEO to observe the earth and space, and to assemble and prepare missions beyond LEO
3. Reusable stages to go back and forth between LEO and more distant destinations.
It’s still a good plan. If we develop practical access to LEO first, the other steps will be far less expensive. If we try to repeat Apollo we will end up with the same result as Apollo.
So how does NASA propose to work this out since only 2(?) projects that cover radiation protection are getting R&D funding, just announced this year as well.
Chris,
Please, keep asking that question, every chance you get, especially where there’s a chance that someone who can do something about this problem can hear you. It’s just one of many R&D issues that have been insufficiently considered, but it’s a key one. This is exactly the sort of thing that NASA should have been working on, not the idiotic SLS.
Steve
Sorry slight correction apparently there are THREE projects. Two stations/skins and a suit. None of which solves the current problem with this idea.
I think that I can get behind this (although as a non-US citizen my support is only marginally relevant).
It’s a nice BEO first step for straightened budgetary times and it has the advantage of not requiring a lander and hab development in parallel. The assembly phase only needs existing launchers and commercial crew as it would be carried out at the ISS. Once in place at EML-2, it could even be supported using just Falcon Heavy and the EELV Phase 1 upgrades, should that be necessary. SLS Block-1 would make it easier but isn’t strictly necessary to carry out the project. Something that is SLS-agnostic and even SLS-cancellation-proof is something NASA really needs to be doing.
We’ll even get useful exo-magnotosphere biomedical science done! The other big advantage is, of course, not having to dive into the Moon’s gravity well, so Earth return in the event of an emergency is a lot simpler.
Of course, in the long run, there is the possibility of cargo SLS launches to deliver supplies as well as maybe habs and rovers to the Lunar surface to act as base camps for teams dropped down by reusable landers staging off of the gateway platform. You also thus get the bonus of learning reusuable vacuum lander ops and propellent storage, transport and transfer ops too.
I think that, overall, this is a good proposal and, realistically, is the only option NASA has if it is serious about sending humans beyond LEO again.
Yeah, but Lunar surface needs a lander, something that isn’t going to be funded if you’re also going to be building a hab. So, as the DSH is going to be needed anyway, why not use a stationary version to create an exo-magnetosphere scientific outpost?
Yeah, it isn’t as sexy as Lunar surface, but it might lead to it should the money become available and is, at least, a useful mission that can be set up quickly rather than waiting decades for development of landers under reduced budgets before going beyond LEO.
Yeah, but Lunar surface needs a lander
The landers do not have to be this monster that Altair became. The Altair itself is modeled after the SEI era First Lunar Outpost design. The Altair was designed for Sortie missions, though they never truly admitted that.
A very simple design for a lunar lander was from NASA JSC in the 1960’s for lunar Gemini. It was an open cockpit lander that would only be used to sortie from an orbital vehicle to an outpost on the ground. That could be put into lunar orbit by a Delta IV heavy or Falcon 9 heavy.
“Open cockpit” – that is a space motor bike.
Folks:
The next place for a human presence in space should be geosynchronous orbit (as I’ve said before). Here’s why:
– It’s only hours from Earth reentry or LEO in case of emergencies.
– It’s a good place for fuel depots that can be used to extend the lives of Clarke Belt satellites.
– It’s valuable to have folks in geosynch to do repair work and dead satellite retrieval.
– It’s good practice for deep space missions while having a sustainable economic uptake (read: making money! ).
– It’s cheaper fuel-wise to build and maintain.
– Elements can be slow-boated from geosync with ion drives to L1 or L2 later on when their systems prove out.
– It sure as heck would be an international effort because every nation has a stake in geosync!
Hey, you know I’m all for human space flight, just not this kind. Look where the last grand program for space ‘exploration’ got us. Many of you weren’t even born then.
“Fool me once…”
tinker
We need a Tick pilot dragon trunk repair program to stroll around Geo and fix and build stuff.
traveling around Geo is easy on fuel right Tinker? Is that what you meant?
Not to mention the capability to do maintenance on satellites in GEO. It takes VERY little delta-V to move from one GEO slot to another. We could fix or refuel GEO birds. OR we could salvage perfectly good parts from spacecraft in the disposal orbit beyond GEO. If you have a GEO slot for this station, then the derelict satellites in the junk orbit slowly drift past you like the little boats at a cheesy sushi bar. You just reach out and take what you want. High gain antenna dishes, Phased arrays, propellant tanks, spare thrusters, even some ion drives are likely floating around out there going to waste.
You could probably get 50% of the parts required for deep space missions from the junk already out there.
Stuart:
Sorry about that. The Clarke Belt (named after Arthur C. Clarke) is just another name for geosynchronous orbit which is what I meant about satellite repair.
tinker
Its an excellent place for a commercial space station, assuming that comsat market and insurance providers (and certain international matters) ALLOW YOU TO DO IT.
GSO will be increasingly dominated by non comsat issues, and those issues likely won’t be satisfied by the automated repair/reboost/refuel capability that MDA acquired Space Systems Loral to access – these are the guys who want to profit off it.
Congress won’t sign on for govt HSF however.
So there’s money for commercial, but how much and how soon is the question. This is an excellent area for a extended capability Dreamchaser.
BTW, Boeing may back out of CST-100 due to not enough business see:
http://www.flightglobal.com…
“This is an excellent area for a extended capability Dreamchaser”.
Could be, but your other item about the CST-100 rethink suggests that the X-37C has just become a little more likely.
Both are Boeing but different groups. I know the Seal Beach guys. Can’t deny that X-37C would be my choice, especially as a pilot … but … Dreamchaser is on the inside track here. They’ve earned it.
Anything from Boeing faces the same business issues. Especially in a down economy. This has always been a major issue since they dabbled in CCDEV. SNC’s corporate loading must be 1/10th of Boeing’s if not less.
You can probably get either of these two spaceplanes to serve many of the same missions each other is proposed for. However, the HSF route through CCDEV/CCiCAP is by far the more arduous of the two.
The real pony for Boeing is getting past the EELV scandal and having a key role front and center with CST-100. But they’re afraid of the down select to one and then having the rug pulled out.
They are trying to compel a “select two”. And they are, as usual, right.
Tinker,
I find no problems in your logic, or in the comments that George and Stuart made in response, but what you’re doing is not refining the topic, but rather saying, No, not that, we should be doing something else instead.
Now, maybe your proposal is a great one, but realistically, nothing will come of it just because it showed up in a NASA Watch post, no matter who the poster is. The L2 proposal, however, is on the table with the people that count. All other considerations aside, is there value in the proposed L2 program? I think there definitely is. Even if it is not the ideal “next” step, it is something that can give us several things that we need to either have or learn. So I think we should be taking this opportunity to speak up in favor of the L2 program, or spell out any problems with it that we might see in doing it.
I would suggest not saying anything, if we can help it, that might cause the L2 program to be withdrawn. Based on past experience, it will be either this or nothing at all for a long while (let’s call it a BEO gap). And another gap is the last thing we can afford. I am perhaps being overly paranoid here, but we are clearly entering the season of “Things Being Taken Away,” and I think we need to be careful never to give them any excuses.
Steve
Steve:
” but what you’re doing is not refining the topic, but rather saying, No, not that, we should be doing something else instead.”
I didn’t refining the topic because I was trying to say we should do something else :). So I just picked one “out of the hat”, as it were. Any of them would have done.
It’s not a sustainable way forward.
tinker
Hmmm,
We are clearly seeing this very differently. I liked the L2 concept precisely because I see it as a sustainable way forward. If we don’t start developing useful off-Earth (and past LEO) infrastructure, then we’re never be going to be doing anything with HSF but flags and footprints or stunts, in short nothing but non-sustainable missions.
Try envisioning the L2 “station” as a starting point, both in terms of expanding it later and (especially) as the first of many such “stations,” collectively moving farther out into the solar system as we add them. I could list the items of utility and capability that they would give us, but it might be more convincing if you think it through separately.
Steve
Steve:
If NASA was planning anything like you or I would envision, I haven’t seen it.
Using SLS (or it’s ilk) to launch ‘spare’ ISS modules to Earth/Moon L2 would be wasteful in the extreme for a 70 to 130 ton heavy lift launch vehicle. Falcon Heavy could move the largest single module there (the partly finished ‘habitation module’).
So, there’s a disconnect here between the launch vehicle NASA says it will use and the cargo NASA says it will launch. It doesn’t add up.
If they wanted to make this a less wasteful mission, here’s what I’d do:
Let’s say that SLS ends up being able to launch 100 tons to LEO. Build the spacecraft/station based on what I call a ‘mold-line design’, where the outer hull follows the mold-line of the fairing it would replace. There is no fairing to throw away this way and all the volume inside can be useable. Let hatches and covers into the hull for solar panels, cargo bays, fueling ports and crew access. Launch it unoutfitted and unfueled to LEO. This maximizes structure and interior volume for critical components that must be launched integrated. Once at LEO, outfit with noncritical hardware, logistics and fuel. Then send it off to Earth/Moon L2.
So, what we’d have is a spaceship/station that could be 30 feet in diameter and 100 feet long with most of it’s interior volume pressurized. Crew, cargo and fuel could then be sent from LEO to L2 with any medium launch vehicle. This spacecraft/station could also return to LEO for overhaul and upgrade every few years too.
Not exactly sustainable but at least nothing would get mercilessly thrown away under this scenario (which would be a step up for NASA).
tinker
Fuel depots for GEO satellites and GEO satellite repairs are important, but are hugely unimportant for NASA. NASA isn’t an agency that fixes and fuels communication, weather and resource surveillance satellites, and it is hardly reasonable to send people there to do it. Telerobotics would be hugely productive at that short distance. You think NASA is going to “make money” doing this work? From other countries even? Sorry, but federal agencies don’t get paid by industry to do jobs for them.
Actually, no “nation” has a “stake” in geosync. But many many industries do. Those are the industries that sell their capabilities to a nation. Tell the cable companies that federal funds are going to be used to help fix comsats. That’ll go over well in the ‘biz.
Good ideas to do these things, but industry really doesn’t need NASA to show them how.
Oh, and GEO isn’t “far away”.
OK, that pulls the rug out from under most of your rationale. Got anything better?
Helen:
Sorry, it was the best I could come up with in a few short minutes. I know GEO isn’t “far away” enough and I know GEO isn’t a place NASA is looking to go too. But it is a strategy the would further deep space exploration the quickest, I believe. The corduroy road to the West, as it were. L2 is just another Lewis and Clark scouting mission and I think we’ve done enough of those.
tinker
That makes more sense for a second generation commercial space station. Not for a NASA project.
[Aside: Once you have a manned space station in GEO, it makes sense to attach a bunch of comsat’s to the station. Ie, use the station as a kind of common broadcast “tower” (**), supplying power and handling orbital maintenance, plus providing an on-site repair crew, with customers launching only their actual comms equipment. Hundreds of GEO commsats would slowly aggregate to a dozen or so stations in useful slots.
(** “Silver Tower 1”.)]
Paul,
I like this idea. Do a bunch of them in geostationary orbits (as opposed to just geosynchronous) and you got yourself the ultimate disaster relief network. In theory, you could transmit/relay comms and power to the ground as well, wherever receivers have been installed (each country’s own responsibility). One we have significant space travel, it could be used outward, as well as in GEO and to the ground, (An ATC for spacecraft). The only tech issue I see is having comms and power systems in close proximity in a region that is already noisy and energetic, but I think we should be able solve that one by the time we need it. Great idea.
Steve
Tinker
There are much better orbits for this that are still HEO orbits, less radiation and are compatible with both ISS and KSC launch trajectories.
Dennis:
Could you be a bit more specific? How high an orbit can we fly and still stay protected by the Van Allen Belt? Also, who much of an orbital inclination off equatorial can be used that still provides economical access to GEO?
tinker
Geosynch sats happen to be in the high radiation concentration of the Van Allens, because they need to occupy a narrow band of stable locations anyways – they are hardened for that reason. Look at the radiation belts.
Many orbits allow access to this. Note – one way to rescue GSO sats, or inject them, involves super synchronous orbits and lunar encounters.
However, the cost of changing plane … the biggest effect … is the highest of any of the maneuvers. At some point the cost of access outweighs the advantage of being closer.
Perhaps EML1/2 isn’t a bad choice to visit them from?
add:
Or to let them come to you at L1/L2, with the aid of a tug.
Yes – assuming you don’t foul the deployed antennas / booms / etc.
… specially if you use SEP for the tug.
SEP extends the logisitical system, not unlike a semi tractor pulling 50ft trailers on I-80.
Perhaps EML1/2 isn’t a bad choice to visit them from?
Or to let them come to you at L1/L2, with the aid of a tug. Especially if you use SEP for the tug.
Yes! We have already shown (by arguing against Mars direct) that it would be extremely inefficient (and foolish) to launch a fully fueled and manned mission to Mars from Earth orbit. If you launched a minimally fueled spacecraft with no astronauts to Lunar orbit, you could do it with a small fraction of up-mass from Earth. Once the spacecraft reaches Lunar orbit then it would be fueled from the lunar water deposits.
Once fully fueled, the astronauts would take the usual 3 day trip from Earth and get in their Lunar departure Mars-ship.
This would also give the Mars ship a few months of checkout (and possible repair) before departing.
You know guys, there’s a somewhat simpler possibility here. We tend to think in terms of a single jumping off point for missions deeper into space. For a moment, think of it in terms of war time supply line logistics. Instead of a single clearing house somewhere for supplies, there were multiple “depots” along a supply line route, some manned, some not. A central clearing house as a starting point makes sense from an organizational and efficiency standpoint (in theory), but is not by itself sufficient if it is too far from either your home base or your destination. Ideally, in space you’d want a series of small-scale fuel depots, medical facilities, communications relays, weather stations, maintenance services, tow trucks, etc. along the major route from source to destination.
Although this has been done for thousands of years on Earth, we’ve never tried to set it up and use it in space. It seems to me that, to some extent, we’d need to prove out the ability to do this and test out actually using it (to see if we did it right) before investing in the “central clearing house,” because the nature and requirements of the central clearing house will depend a great deal on whether a supply line depots system can be made to work. This gateway spacecraft program looks to me like it could be a good start on addressing this issue.
Part of what I’m implying here is that we have to start thinking, and acting, in greater than two year chunks. We get the things we want/need in the future only if we plan for them and start working towards them today.
Steve
Exactly, couldn’t say it better.
I’d like to see the gateway used to assemble (and eventually fuel) unmanned probes as stand-in’s for HSF solar system missions to begin with.
In that way we get a ROI for all that SSF/ISS orbital assembly experience (trillions of dollars cost) that the “manifest destiny” “two guys living in a hut on the moon” types want to abandon.
It would prove a logistical exploration framework for going anywhere BEO, for both commercial entrepreneurial and govt exploration.
For starters, you’d fly landers to the moon a decade ahead of “arsenal space” traditional means – sure, they’d start out unmanned and smaller, but would reach qualification for HSF much, much more sooner and cheaper creating the necessary flight history.
You’d do HSF sorties sooner, have a joint market for depots/ISRU with a pre-made bootstrap market, that can be used to reduce cost footprint across any BEO effort, and since its in the optimum location (energy efficient) for access outbound, least propellant usage translates into highest percentage payload mass to any target.
So, as you improve the staging of propellant to the gateway (ISRU, SEP tugs, etc), the cost/frequency of missions affordable improves. You can afford not one but multiple lunar sites, multiple asteroid/planetary sites …
Maximizes choice. Who doesn’t want choice?
add:
You don’t need a gateway for all that though, just unmanned spacecraft refueling at a Lagrange point.
Technically true. Politically false. So if you had such a craft as is, it wouldn’t get used, and then abandoned.
Just like – you don’t really need HSF ISS lab, your could automate / teleoperate. So why don’t we?
Lots of reasons. Let me focus on one. Choice.
Since you’ve gotten a beach head at the “Oregon Trail head” of the solar system with gateway, any change of interest/target … is accomodated. Whatever your first missions are, this as a springboard means you can most effectively deploy, analyze, recover and refine from. Choice is retained in all cases.
Even if you were to think to go a different way long term. In mathematical terms, its a degenerant point WRT potential energy, thus once you start using it, the economics accumulate and are hard to walk away from.
A depot alone isn’t a logistical system. Any more than an army caching supplies/weapons/ammo is either. Logisitical support involves the application of resources in support of mission from a forward position.
In space, business, or war, its all the same.
You don’t need a gateway for all that though, just unmanned spacecraft refueling at a Lagrange point.
It seems to me that you could use the COTS/CC model to develop commercial space stations in LEO, as a cheap way of stimulating development of next-gen space station modules for later use in the L2 station (**), and to provide a later stepping stone to L2 for routine ops.
Bigelow would be an obvious challenger, but Boeing built ISS modules and seems comfortable with fixed cost SAA contracts. Other would probably jump in with their own designs.
(** “Armstrong Station”?)
Paul,
Good thinking. I would, however, suggest one change in what you’ve said — instead of “stations in LEO,” I would have said cis-lunar space, for two reasons: 1) your opponents are going to wave the “been there, done that” flag; and 2) with every step we take we need to lengthen our reach. Going past LEO to cis-lunar doesn’t exclude LEO, but it gives us capabilities and skills that we don’t yet have but will certainly need down the road. Bootstrap.
Steve
“1) your opponents are going to wave the “been there, done that” flag;”
These are commercial stations. They are not the “Flagship program” itself. The whole point of COTS-style programs is to hand over the “been there done that” to commercial service providers.
(Private LEO stations also allow you to hint that ISS can be killed of sooner, to Congressional opponents of ISS. While telling ISS supporters in Congress that it “preserves/justifies/extends” the knowledge gained by ISS, stroking their egos that they supported the right program.)
I’m not sure there’s a great advantage in having a station between LEO and the EML points. Transit is just three days.
However, I do consider those trans-lunar flights to be the next step for commercial space after the LEO stations.
Ie,
-COTS.
-Commercial Crew.
-Commercial LEO stations (commissioned under a COTS model.)
[Traditional NASA contracts for modules to built L2 station. Initially launched and tended by Orion/SLS to keep Congress happy.]
-COTS-to-L2.
-Commercial Crew-to-L2.
[NASA uses Orion/SLS/SEV and the L2 station to plan the next BEO “Flagship”.]
-Robotic in-situ lunar fuel/air production to supply the L2 station, and fuel NASA’s BEO missions (again, commissioned via a COTS model.)
[NASA flies BEO Flagship missions for a decade.]
-Refuelable BEO cargo shuttles (again via COTS.)
-In-situ fuel production systems for asteroids or Martian moons (depending on target for BEO Flagships. Again via COTS.)
[Traditional NASA contract to built long-duration Mars ship. Ie, Nautilus-X.]
…etc, etc.
The idea is that commercial providers follow one step behind NASA, lowering costs and increasing capability, while NASA pushes the envelope. While following two steps behind, you get fully commercial markets developing, taking advantage of the capacity created for NASA.
[That’s my “vision” for space exploration, anyway.]
REPLYING TO PAUL451:
Paul,
Your reply makes sense to me. I see only one remaining major hump to get over. Commercial guys can (probably) build a station a lot faster, cheaper, etc. And I believe that they could run one cheaper as well, but they are still businesses, existing to make a profit, so I can’t see a commercial company building a station of their own, anywhere up there, for a very long time yet, because they can’t make a profit from doing so, and the time until they could realize an ROI on one is still too far in the future for commercial companies or investors. This means that we are still looking at the situation where NASA or other countries’ space agencies are the potential customers for quite a while to come. And that, unfortunately, says to me the the situation and decisions are still very much political, and will be until there is enough total demand for non-government-owned stations to make a profit, by which time LEO is probably going to be an overflowing combination of parking lot and junk yard, so we’ll be going farther out anyhow, except for (hopefully) clean-up and replacement contacts.
So, in my opinion, on the minus side, the dependency on governments is going to remain with us for quite a while yet, and on the plus side, E-M L2 proposal is a first step into BEO HSF for NASA, which is what they said they were going to do, and is what many of us fans would like to see them do. I don’t see how we can use the “stuck in LEO” line over and over as an argument and then propose to stay in LEO instead of doing the fist announced BEO program. We’d be shooting ourselves in the foot and frustrating the hell out of NASA.
“Transit is just three days.“
Transit time is just one factor to consider out of many. In another post below Andrew Swallow an I listed some of the others for somebody else. L2 has a lot of advantages, and those disadvantages it has generally apply only to the same old LEO missions.
Often we put limitations on ourselves that don’t actually exist. For example, when people are evaluating space proposals and looking for pros and cons, even after all this time, most people automatically assume that anything we might do in HSF has to be for a “mission” that both starts and ends on the surface of the Earth. As far as future space systems go, I don’t see that as a requirement. When so many people are arguing for “stations,” wherever they want them to be located, and arguing for “better” ways to get to those stations from Earth and back again, why do we always find it necessary to design HSF missions that include additional hardware and fuel and procedures to start from and return to Earth? If you’ve got the Earth to Station link nailed (as a multi-purpose capability), then why not start and end your mission from a station. From an energy/thrust/fuel viewpoint, it would be more efficient to start and end a BEO mision at L2 than LEO, and a lot cheaper. And that’s just one example.
Sorry, I seem to have drifted off topic. My point is that government involvement — as a customer and in the regulatory requirements — is going to be with us for a long while yet, so things will remain political, even though we’re looking at the “new” commercial way of doing things.
Steve
[From further down the thread]
“so I can’t see a commercial company building a station of their own, anywhere up there, for a very long time yet, because they can’t make a profit from doing so,”
Which is why I think the first generation of private-station technology needs to be developed under COTS-style contracts.
For NASA it dramatically lowers the later cost and risk of commissioning modules for the L2 station, even if that station is a traditional NASA-led cost-plus program.
Afterwards, your LEO-Station bidders have entire working space stations in LEO, done, paid for. With COTS providers able to fly supplies, and CC providers able to cost-effectively fly crew/customers, for a fixed price. Its hard to imagine that capacity going unused.
“This means that we are still looking at the situation where NASA or other countries’ space agencies are the potential customers for quite a while to come.”
Don’t underestimate that second option. While it might not be “commercial”, having multiple governments as customers still gives some commercial drive, and reduces the NASA monopsony.
It the same with my suggestion of LEO-to-L2 crew/cargo delivery also developed under COTS-style agreements (following along behind NASA). That gives any government/agency in the world the ability to buy their way into lunar orbit off-the-shelf. Only from that point on would they need to provide their own hardware/systems. You could have universities doing low-cost lunar robot rovers, or second-tier countries buying 2/3rds of an Apollo style mission, only needing to add astronauts and a lander. Canada or Japan could beat China to be the second nation on the moon, and all for a bargain.
Paul Steve Tinker
Why not have nasa try to do this L2 plan like Steve suggests and as part of it declair that GEO is for commercial space. and then NASA support commercial in a NACA type way and share the tech and R and D. Kind of turn it into the kind of race where we all win. THE SPACE RACE to build the inner solar system railroad. other than the the can its self isnt there a lot to share and also shovel money to the new space guys.
Isn’t a way to boot strap close so as not to waste to much on the front end?????
LOLOL we tick pilots need work!!!
We will be happy to work in LEO GEO or L2
and of course we have our droid Ticks ready to fly first to do the easy stuff. Our ground based pilots get to fly like preditor pilots do and go to their earth home each night.
And sure wish Spacex was building their Falcon heavy launch pad so that it could fly a Falcon 6 pack now. tI would save time later.
REPLYING TO DTARS:
George,
There’s factor that I think we have to take into account when we make any proposals (if it’s true). I strongly suspect that when any government person — Congress or WH; Dem or Rep — talks about what “America” needs in space, they are not really including commercial space, in the way that we discuss it, into the picture, even though some of them support COTS, etc. I suspect that what they’re really thinking/saying is “American government-controlled space” needs…
At first, that sounds kind of silly, at least to me. But the more I reflect on the decisions that have been made, and the opportunities and advantages not taken, the more I believe that this is how they’re thinking. That is one reason (not just jobs and pork) why we have SLS and Orion when “commercial” space is creating cheaper alternatives and are likely to finish much sooner.
I think it’s an attitude absorbed from how they deal with DOD — it’s not enough to have the capability; they must also have absolute control over it. Power is still the most highly-valued commodity in Washington.
Just a thought for your consideration.
Steve
I wonder what you might call a supply chain like you suggest?
railroad?
Islands in the sky?
Tick pilot Construction Co.
No mention of Bigelow’s modules, just “parts left over from the ISS program”. But, no need for SLS if FH works.
Gerald,
How do you envision deploying and using Bigelow modules at L2? If they get used on a program like this then the idea of not reinventing the wheel every time gets reinforced, which would be a big step forward.
Steve
Steve,
Deployment is the easy part: a couple of Genesis 2’s butted together would provide ~22 m^3 of pressurized space and mass 2.6 tonne. I believe that a F9 v1.1 could deliver that to L2 although probably not a docking adapter too.
Using: well, you’d need logistics modules to support anything alive. But as launched it would a good tele-operations testbed,
which I think will be the norm for nearer-term cislunar operations.
Sounds like a plan. And going for a Lagrange point has always made good sense. Hope it gets through.
“From NASA’s perspective, the outpost would solve several problems. It gives purpose to the Orion space capsule and the Space Launch System rocket…”
“Purpose of Orion, SLS” = “Problem”
Indeed.
This proposed mission has exactly no chance of happening by 2020 or anytime for years after. Putting a new outpost so far from earth would costs tens or hundreds of billions of dollars and it is not going to happen when robotic spacecraft can do most anything we desire for a small fraction. NASA certainly cannot do anything like this with its budget and penchant for blowing thru any and all cost estimates with ease. Posts can debate different plans for manned space but it is all just talk and likely to stay that way for decades unless NASA gets smart and starts putting money into new technologies and away from new big rockets that likely will never leave the pad (SLS).
hamptonguy,
You may be right, but then again, you may not. Where did you get your numbers from? I haven’t been able to find any cost extimates for this.
Steve
How about a if it was done where NASA just leased the space from Bigelow and it was done through SAA’s for a fixed price?
Could it be affordable then?
“
It gives purpose to the Orion space capsule and the Space Launch System rocket, which are being developed at a cost of about $3 billion annually”
Okay, this is where I stop and just give up. Are you telling me NASA is looking for a purpose for their new rocket? What, they didn’t have a purpose when they planned it, funded it, starting building it? NASA HSF doesn’t even know where to go(an asteroid? the moon? L2?), and they can’t fund it anyway.
I worked in govt. for 24 years, it can be extremely frustrating esp. when the agency loses it’s direction, just spends a lot of money, and nothing gets done. I’m not a NASA basher, I just feel sorry for all the dedicated people who are suffering right now. I would hate to still have to go to work and realize it’s all for naught and the place I’m working is nothing but a rudderless ship. All that HSF money, billions of dollars, just a freaking jobs program.
Here we go again. Everything you blame NASA for in your post was not NASA’s doing, and in fact was against their will. Congress created and mandated this insanity on NASA. Congress dreamed up SLS and then in front of hundreds of people asked Bolden, now, what are you going to use it for? HE could hardly say, Don’t ask me, it was your stupid idea! NASA is the victim on what you’ve described, not the guilty. This is well known.
Steve
Steve, it’s all under the blanket of the Govt.
A good friend once told me that NASA will never send humans beyond earth orbit (post 1990) unless there’s a military or political reason. I asked why and he said because nobody really cares. In other words, without a true space race we’re not going anywhere.
Let the jobs program continue.
Just for some additional edification; the pdf below is dated 15 Nov. 2011:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/604…
Thanks. I looked for something like this but somehow managed to miss it. I think it’s definitely worth reading.
Steve
why would anyone build a “so-called “gateway spacecraft” would hover in orbit on the far side of the moon” as opposed to a lunar base ? wouldn’t a lunar base be much better protected from solar radiation ? wouldn’t a lunar base be potentially much bigger than a satellite ?
because a base would cost a lot more.
as opposed to a lunar base
One lunar station is like a hundred lunar bases (sorties).
Much the same reason we have rovers on Mars rather than Viking lander – if you need to go exploring, you want to access all over the place.
Tell me one place on the Earth that has all its mineral riches, all its metals, all its sources of energy?
Why do you think that the Moon is all the same, everywhere? It isn’t.
It would be great if everything was convenient, but it is actually very inconvenient. Worse, people on Earth funding it will change minds as to what to get/do (politics). So by being located in space, you can bring all assets to bear on any single lunar location – when priorities shift on Earth for what to do, this architecture shifts with it.
Simply by possessing this capability, you damp down the politics because the problem cannot be exploited for gain/loss.
better protected from solar radiation
Not really.
lunar base be potentially much bigger than a satellite
Not really.
Next stage past gateway and sorties – mobile manned rover to explore regions for longer periods.
I like the idea. (an idea that has been floating since the 70’s.) nevertheless, shore up the radiation problem and lets get on with it!
Sadly I think this will make no difference to anything. “The [NASA] dogs bark but the caravan moves on”.
Given a fair wind, in a few years commercial will be established, SLS will be an obvious boondoggle, Congress will not be able to impose its earth bound priorities, and there will once again be a place for NASA.
But until then, I’m afriad this is all just wishful thinking.
I hear you. But look at what this does. It forces the resolution of what BEO exploration is going to be about. Takes away the sniping.
So either you commit SLS to missions and mission hardware, thus completing the LV definition (necessary for CONOPS / pad design / pad processing / …), or you hold off. If you hold off, schedules will slip and cancellation grows. If you commit, then the budgets for missions factor in, and this being the absolute cheapest and easiest on schedule to meet, anything else being 2-10x more.
Its a put up or shut up to SLS backers in Congress – we’ve got a total cost, put the taxpayer’s money where your mouth is. Starting now.
Ah ha! A development worth watching then. [scales fall from eyes]
I would like to point out that L2 is 1.5 million KMs from earth. It’s waaaay out there, buddy! I would also point out that everybody’s favorite telescope the James Webb origami fold out scope is going to be there also, so the astronauts will have company.
Ralphy:
The L2 point NASA is talking about is the Earth/Moon L2. The one you mention is the Sol/Earth L2.
tinker
Thanks for the info. I didn’t know there were two different L2s.
Ralphy:
There are 5 Lagrangian points for every two celestial bodies; Earth/Moon, Sol/Earth, etc. Sol/Jupiter is interesting because there are whole swarms of asteroids at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points 120° in front of and behind Jupiter in it’s orbit. They are called the Trojan Asteroids.
But the Sol/Earth Lagrange points you mentioned, L1 and L2, would be good destinations for crewed spacecraft. They can be gotten to in less then a month, good science could be done and you just know there’s gonna be a glitch with the James Webb Telescope deployment, right? 🙂
tinker
I thought there were 3 groups around Jupiter. Trojans, Greeks and hildas. With the L4 group named after greek warriors and the L5 for troy.
http://upload.wikimedia.org…
That’s true that Sun-Earth Lagrange points are enormously useful for science. But spacecraft there can easily be brought back to Earth-Moon L1 or L2, for just a hundred or so meters/second of delta V (and a month or so of transit). Propulsively, that’s dirt cheap. So if you’ve got a problem with your spacecraft at ES L1/2 that needs a human touch to fix, it’s vastly smarter to flick it back to EM L1/2 where humans can meet it than to send human beings all the way out to ES L1/2.
Helen:
Yet another good point! Would a repair/science mission use the same time/delta V to go the other way? Earth/Moon L to Sol/Earth L?
tinker
Question: Why L2 as opposed to L1? Wouldn’t being closer to Earth be better?
Is there a deep-space trajectory advantage of some sort?
The NASA report of 15 Nov. 2011 indicates “radio quiet zone” and low latency comm/nav to lunar far-side as some L2 advantages. (http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/604…
I wonder if L2 is chosen over L1 as an attempt to “go beyond” the Apollo project by going farther out.
An excellent question.
Indeed, the “quiet zone” is of value for astronomy, but keeping the zone quiet is not conducive to far side development. Also, if you’re going to do any kind of ISRU, it would be insane to set it up on the far side, unless there is some kind of resource deposit there. Some far-side outcropping of unobtainium, perhaps? I don’t think there is any evidence for that.
Historically, trajectories to L2 have been thought of as being somewhat more economical than L1, but that seems to be true for just certain flavors of trajectories.
Yes, the real reason for L2 is that it’s farther than Apollo, and looking down at what might consider a more mysterious side of the Moon. It has little to do with any long range practical advantages.
you can do a halo orbit at L2 I thought that allowed almost total coverage of the poles as well?
That’s a good point, that one of the resource beds of “unobtainium” (in this case, water) is at the poles. L1 and L2 orbits don’t offer continuous lines of sight into a given pole. But the point here is that a halo orbit at L1 will offer just as much line-of-sight access into the lunar poles as would an orbit around L2. So neither Lagrange point has any particular advantage for lunar polar ISRU work.
“and looking down at what might consider a more mysterious side of the Moon.”
With Earth in the background. One of the most popular images from the Apollo program. We do like taking “selfies”.
More generally, I have read (but the maths is beyond me) that from EM-L2, any point on the moon is accessible at roughly the same delta-v, no energy-hungry plane changes, even for polar landings.
It does require less delta v to place an object at L2 rather than at L1 and to return vessels back to Earth. But I believe it would require nearly an extra day to reach L2 from Earth. It also takes 12 hours to reach the surface of the Moon from L2 vs 9 and a half hours from L1.
I think L1 and L2 are OK for shielded microgravity space stations. However, I wouldn’t place any massive water shielded artificial gravity space stations at L1 or L2 because of the extra delta-v annually required to keep them there. I’d place fully shielded artificial gravity space stations only at L4 and L5.
Marcel F. Williams
Actually, lunar gravity assists make L1 and L2 pretty much equal in accessibility. What you say is true, if you’re restricted to simple Hohmann transfers. Much of the previous work on L1 and L2 didn’t consider LGAs.
Astronauts staying at this station for a couple months or less would not be seriously at risk for radiation. At least according to the latest studies. So they wouldn’t need massive water shields.
But even if they had just a little water, sitting in continuous sunlight, the propulsion required to stay at L1 or L2, which is just a few tens of meters/second/year (maybe a hundred), is easily achieved.
You seem to be saying that artificial gravity stations are harder to stationkeep at L1 or L2 than are microgravity stations. I’m not aware why that should be.
“You seem to be saying that artificial gravity stations are harder to
stationkeep at L1 or L2 than are microgravity stations. I’m not aware
why that should be.”
Artificial gravity space stations are likely to be much more massive than a simple microgravity habitat– especially since the shielded habitat will require an equally massive counter weight.
Marcel F. Williams
Massive counterweight?? I know of no modern concept for a credible microgravity system that uses a massive counterweight. The “counterweight” is usually half the habitat.
Though there’s a thought. Maybe for SLS we can afford a 20mT habitat co-manifested with 20mT of bricks!
A counter weight is required for artificial gravity habitats not microgravity habitats. Of course, you could utilized another shielded habitat as the counter weight for a rotating artificial gravity habitat.
Marcel F. Williams
Excuse me. I mistyped. I know of no concept for a credible artificial gravity system that uses a massive counterweight. The “counterwight” is usually half the habitat”.
But what a thought. Use a SLS to launch a half size habitat with a load of bricks. You get to use an SLS, but you only pay for half a habitat. SLS advocates might well fall for that one!
“Astronauts staying at this station for a couple months or less would not
be seriously at risk for radiation. At least according to the latest
studies. So they wouldn’t need massive water shields.”
Astronauts traveling to Mars and from Mars or in orbit around Mars are probably going to be exposed to significant amounts of cosmic radiation for several years. NASA needs to prove that astronauts can survive such conditions without significantly increasing their cancer rate or damaging their vision. And the best way to do that within cis-lunar space is by adequately shielding habitats (placed beyond the magnetosphere) for continuous occupation for several years– not just a few months.
Marcel F. Williams
No one is saying that these Lagrange point habitats would be occupied for years. No one. These habitats will be small enough that it’s going to be hard to get people to stay there for even a few months. Just as for microgravity, ISS has taught us a lot about it’s effects that we can anticipate for long trips without keeping people up there that long.
Best estimates suggest that humans can endure GCRs (largely unshielded) for several months at a time without seriously limiting their life expectancy. So the first step is to send people for that long, bring them back, and carefully assess the effects on them.
The name of the game isn’t a technological one of proving that we can completely shield habitat occupants. It’s a biological experiment, not an engineering challenge. At least not yet.
What we learn may fundamentally change the shielding strategy that we expect to have to use, or help us establish biological countermeasures.
” No one is saying that these Lagrange point habitats would be occupied for years. No one.”
Exactly! This proposal as it currently exist appears to be designed to perform a wasteful stunt instead of being used to actually help us get humans permanently to Mars.
We don’t need anymore wasteful stunts!
We need appropriately shielded structures that can actually protect astronauts– for years– in interplanetary space. And that shielding and fuel can be easily provided from the lunar poles, meteoroids, and probably from the moons of Mars.
Utilizing extraterrestrial resources is the key to permanently expanding the human presence in the solar system. Not silly stunts to nowhere!
Marcel F. Williams
The effects of shielding from GCR is best tested on animals. Add a module divided into compartments with increasing amounts of shielding. See if increasing the shielding increases the rats and mice’s lifetime.
The experiment is likely to last longer than any of the astronauts tour.
However, I wouldn’t place any massive water shielded artificial gravity space stations at L1 or L2 because of the extra delta-v annually required to keep them there.
We have a lot of data on station keeping in halo orbits from existing craft – more mass generally means more stable not less. And, you could avoid traditional RCS like on the ISS – you dampen resonances in plane of the halo and radial, otherwise the system self stabilizes between two gravity wells. Perhaps you are confused with the ATV’s 20M/s boost of the ISS, or the lunar orbit weekly 100M/s variation due to mascons?
This paper describes a means to get the station keeping down to a fraction of 1 m/s per year.
EML 1/2 stations, when in standby mode without occupancy, will consume much less resources than the ISS does to maintain its inertial (3 axis) platform.
Marcel:
“Artificial gravity” stations need not be massive nor hard to maneuver for station keeping.
Here’s the idea. Your L2 station would be two ships of more or less equal mass. One would be a habitation module, the other propulsion, fuel depot, science and whatever. In unoccupied mode, the two modules would be docked together. An arriving crew would dock with the habitation module end of the stack. Once occupied, the modules would separate on a tether, beam or truss to the proper distance and then rotate on their common center like a baton (do they still make those?). When the expedition is over, reverse the process, the crew leaving the station in it’s unoccupied ‘storage mode’ docked together. Simple, lightweight and, because so little delta V is needed for station keeping, there is probably no need to correct the halo orbit during the crewed segment while the two modules are rotating around each other. But once docked together in storage mode, the L2 station would be free to use thrusters as any ‘normal’ spacecraft.
OK, so there would be a use for L2 after all, I guess; for humanities first test of a pseudo gravity station. I’ve had grander plans of that for years, but this will do.
tinker
It was often heard during the early 90s that the Space Station gave the Shuttle somewhere to go, and the Shuttle gave the Space Station something to do.
I suspect that if this idea survives into the next fiscal year, the same circular logic will be used for the SLS and this so-called “gateway spacecraft” thing.
I didn’t mean to post this twice I get errors that may be do to public/library PC. But ill leave it.
Paul Steve Tinker
remark about Tinker and steves thoughts on L2 vs GEO
and pauls boot strap plan trying to merge commercial space with public space so they/we all use our strengths.
Why not have nasa try to do this L2 plan like Steve suggests and as part of it declair that GEO is for commercial space. and then NASA support commercial in a NACA type way and share the tech and R and D. Kind of turn it into the kind of race where we all win. THE SPACE RACE to build the inner solar system railroad. other than the the can its self isnt there a lot to share and also shovel money to the new space guys.
Isn’t a way to boot strap close so as not to waste to much on the front end?????
LOLOL we tick pilots need work!!!
We will be happy to work in LEO GEO or L2
and of course we have our droid Ticks ready to fly first to do the easy stuff. Our ground based pilots get to fly like preditor pilots do and go to their earth home each night.
And sure wish Spacex was building their Falcon heavy launch pad so that it could fly a Falcon 6 pack now. tI would save time later.
THE DRAGON TRUNK PROJECT
Steve
For the past few weeks I have been thinking about the Spacex dragon program. Of course now it just does micro satellites. Well with the falcon V 1.1 and the falcon heavy on the way and the fact that the Falcons are man rated. I don’t understand why Spacex doesn’t fly each dragon on top of a special faring for each Dragon cargo/or dragon rider flight.
The dragon trunk looks like a typical falcon faring with a dragon mounted on top, It has three columns that reinforce the vertical walls, so the tapered part of the faring has the solar panels and functions as the trunk. The walls of this faring can now blow off if you want them too or you can design into the HULL like tinker suggests.
This makes it possible to launch 30 foot wide payloads with each ISS dragon cargo or dragon rider mission in the near future. The only difference from falcon V1.1 and Falcon heavy “farings” is length.
Doesn’t this make flying lots of stuff cheaper?
So shouldn’t NASA or someone else buy this dragon trunk standard space for all kinds of stuff?
Isn’t this just naming Tinkers build into the hull Idea and making it sellable and easy to plan for much like the dragon Lab program??
Shouldn’t Spacex say right now dragon trunk Space is available on the first or second Falcon V1.1 dragon cargo mission?
Shouldn’t NASA be planning right now to use this extra lift for Tinkers L2 station/spaceship or NASA R and D in LEO, GEO, OR L2??
So let’s say this L2 plan gets legs and NASA wants to do it. It is for SLS to have a mission. Well as Mr. C and Tinker said once SLS could be made cheaper by bolting two falcon heavies on the SLS core to make it a super lifter. Well SLS won’t be ready to fly forever, so by that time, 5 years or less Spacex will have worked out the falcon recover thing and SLS starts looking more like a 7 core, center core to orbit 6 cores recoverable lifter no stacked 2 stage needed right??
So now NASA public space can lift their big stations to L2 or whatever. Plus if congress pulls the funding and the L2 mission goes to hell, commercials will already be working in Geo and NASA could be doing lots of the Good R and D stuff using Dragon trunks as their ride. Plus Spacex by that time could easily build their own cheaper SLS type lifter for Mars for whatever big stuff may need to be lifted.
Lolol Im not sure of the diameter of a Dragon falcon faring, Is it 30 feet? But sure seems like a good cheap volume to plan for GEO hardware and L2 hardware and start building the L2 outpost in a year or two instead of waiting another decade.
Oh lolol spacex needs to build their four versions of dragon trunk/ fairings and send them to the NASA Orion guys and say build your modular space/station/ships out of this. Commercial will take care of the launch and capsule earth return.
Your ticket to ride. Commercial working together with public Space keeping the R and D COST PLUS in the science Labs and the payload fairings.
How much junk you want in our cheap trunk lolololol
Steve
Your point about missions starting from orbit not from earth I agree with big time!
That’s why we need dragon trunk missions that drive down the cost to stay in space at ISS or anywhere NOW!!!!
Even before Spacex does recoverable boosters.
PS
Wasn’t this L2 thread cool. We are starting to talk about cheaper more affordable ideas I think?
Define a mission
What is the Mission
What would Elon do say
The mission is to make living in space it cheaper!!!!!
Well I have to go. need to hop in my Tick suit/vehicle and go harvest some veggies at the green house trunk. Opening, the hatch now, I’ll store them behind me Paul, this TICK is like a little personal Pickup truck. It’s so light its good on fuel too. Since I’m full of it, I run mine on methane from the dragon trunk waste fuel project. One stop shopping at the dragon trunk beam.
NOTE THE TEA PARTY IN CONGRESS AND K STREET
WE ARE ALREADY USING SPACEX TO MAKE HAULING SUPPLIES TO AND FROM ISS CHEAPER.
LET’S MAKE EACH ONE OF THOSE FLIGHTS TWICE AS PRODUCTIVE
THE DRAGON TRUNK PROGRAM
PS of course once Spacex does the first stage recovery stunt lolol they will probably not want to put big dragon trunks on the falcon V1.1
But then they could have at least two recoverable boosters on a falcon Heavy and we are off to the cheapo races and the DREAM.
Just read your point about commercial and agree.
How can we make more noise to get them to seee???
If ME, Mr. McGoo can see this this,
we should be able to change minds.
They see it!!!!
Why are we, are our leaders so blind!!!!!!
http://europe.chinadaily.co…
I hate to rain on everyone’s parade but, it appears that there will be no additional funding in the near future (2013) and perhaps an ugly Cut to the budget will happen placing this news all on ICE.