NASA shares details of lunar surface missions–and they’re pretty cool
“One of the limitations on returning samples is the Orion spacecraft, which will carry astronauts back from lunar orbit to Earth. Chavers said the Orion spacecraft does not have any designated space for a box of sample rocks taken from the lunar surface. “We just don’t know what the capability will be,” Chavers said of bringing rocks back to Earth inside Orion. This would seem to be an important detail to nail down.”
Keith’s note: There are times when I am convinced that NASA people are simply unaware that people are actually listening to what they say. The answer should have been “Of course we’ll be bringing Moon rocks back. We’re working on the exact mass/volume right now” – unless NASA is actually not planning to bring Moon rocks back to Earth – after spending tens of billions to go back to the Moon.
I was disappointed to read that the Artemis lander requirements now call for 35 kg of samples (with 100 kg now changed to a goal). Apollo 12 managed that, and the sample mass was over 100 kg by Apollo 17. And I’d have to call the lack of any current sample return capacity in Orion to be a bit of a design flaw. Certainly a correctable one, but it’s details like that which make me wonder. When people claim it’s superior to Apollo or Dragon 2, and that this justifies needing to launch on SLS, I have to wonder in what way it is superior.
I’m afraid to ask how much unpressurized cargo a SpaceX Starship would be tasked to carry back…and I’ll bet that no one will need to explain the need for it to Elon.
For Orion it would be so easy just to say, “We don’t need to bring back this or that, let those burn up with the service module…oh look, there’s now weight space for rocks.”
The best estimates are that an operational Starship would be able to deliver 100 tons to the lunar surface and return 50 tons to Earth per flight. That’s about 45,000-46,000 kg or so. I imagine on the HSF version lunar tourists will probably be limited to 50kg or so per person to keep as souvenirs. However customs might have a say on how many kg would be duty free.
If you assume that each Starship flight costs the same as a FH flight then you are looking at a return cost of around $2,000 kg. That would come out to $2/gram. For reference, Gold sells for around $50/gram and Silver about $.60/gram so the Starship could make lunar mining profitable if you find the right market for the lunar samples. Moon Rush anyone???
BTW, a good PR stunt for SpaceX would be to use the lunar material bought back for a special production run of Tesla’s, somehow embedding the lunar material in the vehicles. The “Lunar Roadsters” would make nice collectible vehicles as well as paying for the flight. ?
Maybe not if the Starship landed somewhere other than US soil.
Why would it land anywhere than the spaceport it was launched from? As for customs, remember even the Apollo astronauts had to go through customs when they returned. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy. ?
The Apollo 11 customs declaration was actually a joke (which you probably know already…) But not that you mention it, and I looked up a copy, the form didn’t include a declaration of the cargo’s value. I wonder what the laws are on cargo imported from international (or unclaimed) territory.
The closest I can think of is a friend who almost got in trouble shipping rocks (samples) from Antarctica to the United States. He had to declare their value, and someone said he should list the cost of replacing them if lost. That would be another trip to Antarctica for him, and that’s not cheap.
Before he could make that mistake, someone warned him not to. Boxes of apparently ordinary rocks, with a declared value over $10,000 _will_ get undue attention from US customs officials. In one case, the shipment got held up for months while some inspectors tried to figure out what someone was trying to pull and whether contraband was somehow concealed in the rocks.
Yes, one of many areas that will need to be addressed as space commerce industrializes the Moon.
If you top up the propellant tanks of the Starship in LLO with orbital tanker. Then maybe even over 100 tonnes payload from the Moon back to Earth.
As I mentioned downthread, Orion has a requirement for sample return for Lunar missions.
The amount was small as it was anticipated that lots of the samples would be processed in the lunar base before selecting “interesting” ones for return to Earth.
If I understand you correctly, you mean Orion _had_ such a requirement at some point. I’ve seen too many requirements which were changed, waived or just plain lost in the shuffle. I’m not entirely sure there is still such an un-waived requirement. I could certainly see someone deferring it to Artemis III (perhaps even IV), since it isn’t needed until then and the mass margins are probably a bit uncertain until then.
But that logic about only needing a small amount is interesting. It’s very different from some of the arguments I hear in favor of planetary sample returns. Once the samples are on Earth and properly curated, they are available for study almost indefinitely. An Apollo sample can, today, be analyzed using techniques which did not exist in 1972, in order to test a theory no one had even imagined in 1972. That logic has also been applied to Martian, cometary and asteroidal sample returns.
If you are pre-selecting the samples based on the current, hot theories and ideas, that logic isn’t as applicable. If you can always go back and collect more, that’s a moot point. But if you’re collecting the samples before opening an area to mining or something, it might be an issue.
The original design goal of Orion was to support lunar missions of up to 6 months duration. As well as crew transfer to ISS and cargo delivery to ISS, missions that were dropped after the CC contracts looked like they would deliver acceptable vehicles.
The lunar surface operations were envisioned as taking place at a base – so you have to cull out samples to the “interesting” ones. You can collect a lot of rocks in 6 months. The sample return requirements were at the spacecraft level and were unlikely to be dropped.
As I said below, this quote was a Marshall guy talking out of his … hat.
I, for one, will be waiting with great anticipation for the exponential increase in our understanding of the cosmos and for textbooks to be re-written.
I’m waiting for further exponential increases in cost to add this capability.
Here’s guessing that your wait will be much shorter than mine.
I keep looking for the Facebook ‘laughing’ icon to select. Who wrote the requirements for Orion? Oh yea, same guy who could not get them written appropriately for Constellation and for Mir before that. Why does NASA put people who are proven incompetent in charge of functions they’ve demonstrated they know nothing about.
Requirements are usually written by committees. Like anything written by a committee they are a bit ambiguous, self-contradictory and ungrammatical. That’s not exactly a good path forward.
I think I know how requirements are done or can be done-the real expertise is in getting the appropriate language in, in spite of the committees. I was responsible for level II and III systems requirements for a couple programs (including ISS) and was pretty successful getting the requirements into the contracts. The people who did this job on Constellation and Orion had no such experience. Those were the entire organizations that had no experience. Some of us more experienced people were told we were not needed.
And it doesn’t help when requirements and “what” is wanted is overwhelmed by an organization that loves process and “how”, these after all being cost plus, activity focused, pay to cut the grass by the hour contracts. Then someone comes in asking where the high level requirements are and why all the vagueness in the ones that are found and yes, my experience was your services are no longer needed either.
Remember, Orion is the spacecraft program that constantly said they had to redesign alot, or put the design details on hold, due to the launch vehicle definition changing. The Orion program has taken the excuse “it’s the other elements responsibility” to whole new levels.
(edited)
Launch vehicle changes did cause a lot of requirements churn. Ares I had a lot of changes as it evolved (including reducing the allowable Orion mass a few times). Then there was the switch to the SLS, which caused more churn. Then just as the definitions got stabilized, the SM design was replaced by the ESA SM. More churn.
Poorly managed requirements aren’t unique to human spaceflight. In some cases, I think the approach was that requirements are important and therefore certain amount of time and effort must be spent on them. At the right phase of development a project must generate an impressively large number of requirements and put them into an appropriate, configuration managed data base (generally a piece of junk I think NASA developed in-house.)
I don’t think that’s very useful unless everyone affected knows about the requirements and can satisfy then (rather than waive them when they find out their subsystem is affected.) And the requirements need to actually reflect, well, what is required. Some things can’t be tested before launch, but people are expected to sign off on every requirement before launch. So requirements often get cast in terms of things that may or may not really reflect what is required but which can be verified on the ground.
Lets put some astronauts or flight directors in charge of things like configuration management. I don’t think they know what it is.
Let’s review, 2006 Lockheed is award contract to build Orion for ISS and 2020 lunar missions. Seems like there should be an allocation of space and down mass for a rock box returning with the crew when the Altair mates with Orion after walking on the moon.
Then constellation gets cancelled and Orion gets redirect for an astroid sample return mission. That would seem to indicate a need for downmass and location for a rock box to bring back samples from an asteroid.
Now Orion is redirected to go to Gateway transfer to two crew to use a commercial lander to spend 6 days on the surface and return to gateway with 35-100 kg of rocks.
So how did this requirement for a rock box location and down mass capability get lost over the 13 years. This is like when band’s Green room riders they stipulate no brown M&Ms cause if the concert hall can’t take of the specific little details how can they be trusted to do the big important things like stage setup and pyro installs.
Probably because it’s been 13 years…
This what happens when you keeping changing the mission. Orion has had its mission change at least four times, first replacing the Shuttle to ISS, then as a lifeboat for the ISS, then for the ARM and now for the Gateway.
It’s not just a place for a sample box – does Orion have enough fuel to boost the 35-100 kg from lunar orbit back to the Earth? At 100 kg we are essentially talking about an extra crew member in mass (sans spacesuit).
The mass of samples would be in the mass balance. It was a very high level requirement – at the spacecraft level.
right on the money Keith … not “no sir, we’re not doing that” but “yes sir, we’re looking into the details”.
How much material (food?) is consumed during the mission ?
Face… meet palm.
I helped write the top level requirements documents for Orion for Lockheed Martin. There were requirements for sample return for lunar missions. (Unless NASA removed them.)
This is a Marshall guy talking out of his … hat.
The requirements were for a relatively small amount, as it was expected that most samples would be processed at the lunar base.