nasa plans bigger moon base

[watermelony2k]

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/070920_nasa_moonbase.html

instead of sending up several smaller habitats to form a lunar habitat, nasa instead wants to send up to three larger habitats -- unmanned -- before the astronauts actually arrive.

There are also plans for a new type of lunar rover, one that would have a pressurized environment and allow astronauts to drive in normal t-shirts and pants. The rover will also hopefully be capable of going on two-week missions if needed.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

This doesn't surprise me. Two reasons that support this new approach:

1) They're currently assembling ISS in many small pieces, and that's taking forever AND running billions over budget.

2) If they're going to go to Mars, they'll have to do exactly that, and confirm the habitat works before launching the astronauts.

Mark

 

[Brent]

way cool, I hope they succeed, and I hope all goes well so we have a moon base by 2020, though I'm hoping sooner!

 

[Johnny Rico]

Mark_Nguyen said:
This doesn't surprise me. Two reasons that support this new approach:

1) They're currently assembling ISS in many small pieces, and that's taking forever AND running billions over budget.

Well, to be fair, the Columbia disaster didn't help any, plus the fact that NASA only launched one mission in 2005. We kinda got off schedule there a bit. We basically lost three years of construction time there.

And I would also argue with the assessment of "small pieces". These "pieces" aren't really that small. They just look small as a whole part of the station. When you get astronauts outside doing EVAs, one can see that these "small pieces" are really quite big.

So really, this new plan for a moon base that has several large pieces, one could then really say that these pieces will be F'in HUGE in comparison to what the Shuttle is capable of puttin' up in space.

I'm still not quite sure how this new Ares V cargo rocket is supposed to work. I know it'll hold a lunar lander, but can it hold these supposedly large pieces for this lunar base?

 

[flux_29]

^ And in 2010 the remaining shuttle fleet is being retired.

 

[FemurBone]

Johnny Rico said:
I'm still not quite sure how this new Ares V cargo rocket is supposed to work. I know it'll hold a lunar lander, but can it hold these supposedly large pieces for this lunar base?

That's what I want to know.

With all the rocket power they would need to build a moonbase, they could be landing astronauts on Mars.

 

[Outpost4]

^ Can we please not go through that again and stay on this topic? Your point on bypassing the Moon and going straight to Mars was well and exhaustingly made within the last 60 days in another thread.

Considering that most of the volume of a habitat module would be air, maybe the Ares V could send one straight to the Moon that would unfold along the way. The Ares V is going to be big. NASA says it will lift more than 286,000 pounds into low Earth orbit. It should be able to send a significant mass to the Moon.

 

[FemurBone]

^No we can not not go through it again. You can't sit up here and denounce the discussion of related topics that you don't agree with. I see mentions of the ISS and the Columbia in this thread. So I am going to discuss a trip to Mars!

And the Ares V can put 143,300 lb into Lunar orbit. But that weight includes the fuel needed for orbital insertion. You would need additional fuel for landing.

 

[Outpost4]

Thank you for the info. Say you're left with half that figure, 70,000 pounds, on the surface of the Moon. That's significant. 35 tons. Imagine 15 full sized SUVs. It would be that amount of mass. That's big.

I think the answer is yes, the Ares V could do it. It would take a few launches but it could do it.

 

[FemurBone]

Well comparing the Ares V with the Saturn V. The Ares V is about a third stronger. So take the lunar lander and add a third to that.

But, according to the article the delivery will be unmanned, so that eliminates the mass of the crew, the crew space, consumables and fuel for a return trip. So that could make a difference in the amount of mass that could be landed on the moon. How much, i'm not sure. Perhaps someone familiar with the equations can crunch the numbers.

So I imagine something 2 or 3 times the size of the lunar lander.

 

[Outpost4]

The always questionable Wikipedia gives the Apollo Lunar Module's mass as both 32,399 and 36,218 pounds. That could simply be the difference between the early LMs and the ones used on Apollo 15-17, which were upgraded.

In any case, we're in the same ballpark. Say 70,000-100,000 pounds on the surface of the Moon from an Ares V. Do that a few times and you'll have a significant moon base.

 

[Outpost4]

Thinking about this overnight, the Ares V also makes re-supplying the Moon base possible. If you can send it 40-50 tons of stuff at a time, you only have to do that every so often. For example, a Progress Cargo Module can carry 1700 kilograms (3,748 pounds) of supplies for the ISS. NASA source

Boy, it will be nice to have a heavy lift vehicle again for the space program. As a child of the 60s, I miss the Saturn V.

1764x1318, 300dpi version

 

[anti-matter]

All this moon base talk is a big red herring bull sh!t deal for us. we neglected the moon for 30 f-ing years because there's nothing there...now the Red China...our biggest trading partner what's to go to the moon so we are forced to compete.

I warn you all this is nothing more than a ruse a improper response to a power play strategy move in the pursuit of 'defeat by detail'...it's the same way we brought down the Soviets. Now the Chinese will out spend and school us in the fine art of bankrupting a nation.

If we throw money at this...nothing good will ever come from it. We'll all be looking to Red China to act in the worlds best intrest. Put a fork in us...we're done!

 

[FemurBone]

^The United States has the money to do it. and I wouldn't mind them building a moon base...after they land astronauts on Mars. Not before.

Outpost4 said:
Thinking about this overnight, the Ares V also makes re-supplying the Moon base possible. If you can send it 40-50 tons of stuff at a time, you only have to do that every so often.

But you have to remember that most of that 50 tons was fuel for the orbital insertion burn and fuel for the actual landing on the moon. Not to mention the weight of the actual spacecraft itself.

While on the moon, the astronauts lived in the ascent stage of the lunar module which weighted about 5 tons empty. So that's 5 tons worth of living space/cargo space.

That doesn't include the weight of the cargo which wasn't all that much. Just the astronauts, their consumables, some light weight equipment, the lunar rover and fuel for the ascent stage.

 

[watermelony2k]

anti-matter said:
All this moon base talk is a big red herring bull sh!t deal for us. we neglected the moon for 30 f-ing years because there's nothing there...now the Red China...our biggest trading partner what's to go to the moon so we are forced to compete.

I warn you all this is nothing more than a ruse a improper response to a power play strategy move in the pursuit of 'defeat by detail'...it's the same way we brought down the Soviets. Now the Chinese will out spend and school us in the fine art of bankrupting a nation.

If we throw money at this...nothing good will ever come from it. We'll all be looking to Red China to act in the worlds best intrest. Put a fork in us...we're done!

nothing there? there's a lot of stufff to mine for on the moon.

 

[TheMasterOfOrion]

Outpost4 said:
Your point on bypassing the Moon and going straight to Mars was well and exhaustingly made within the last 60 days in another thread.

I fully agree with bypassing the Moon and moving on directly to Mars, ok NASA has things on its plate it has a few obligations to meet first, international ones like the I.S.S and local ones like retiring the Shuttle and launching the unmanned Kepler and Dawn projects.

The Ares launcher really isn't anything new, it basically brings back the old heavy rockets like the Apollo Saturn-V and the Russian Energia (both of which could have launched substantial payloads to Mars). Ares is only going to be slightly better than the Apollo launcher and because NASA ignored Rutan and Boeing, while ATK & Lockheed got a huge paycheck it may cost over-run. It's based on Shuttle STS parts so expect it to be expensive.

Buzz Aldrin, John Young, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Robert Zubrin, Joseph Gavin, John Glenn are just some of the many critics of using the Moon as a launch pad to Mars. Basically a lot of these well respected people think NASA is going to waste either too much time or too much money on another Lunar flag planting mission and not have enough cash to ever put astronauts on Mars. If NASA makes another mistake or blows its budget other nations are going to catch up fast. Meanwhile China has a growing economy is building some robotic space missions, while Europe and Russia have formed a space alliance launching Soyuz flights from French Guiana 2008. Perhaps the first colonists on Mars will be speaking Chinese...or even worse FRENCH !!

 

[Outpost4]

FemurBone said:
^The United States has the money to do it. and I wouldn't mind them building a moon base...after they land astronauts on Mars. Not before.

Outpost4 said:
Thinking about this overnight, the Ares V also makes re-supplying the Moon base possible. If you can send it 40-50 tons of stuff at a time, you only have to do that every so often.

But you have to remember that most of that 50 tons was fuel for the orbital insertion burn and fuel for the actual landing on the moon. Not to mention the weight of the actual spacecraft itself.

While on the moon, the astronauts lived in the ascent stage of the lunar module which weighted about 5 tons empty. So that's 5 tons worth of living space/cargo space.

That doesn't include the weight of the cargo which wasn't all that much. Just the astronauts, their consumables, some light weight equipment, the lunar rover and fuel for the ascent stage.

I was unfocused this morning. That's what I get for trying to write without coffee. No good. I did account for the fuel but not the vehicle.

For an unmanned resupply vehicle, the Ares V can put roughly 70 tons into lunar insertion. I guessed that half that mass would be fuel used up in achieving lunar orbit and landing. That would put 35 tons on the Moon. Your calculations came up with 2-3 Apollo LMs on the moon, which would be a range of 35 to 57 tons. With my love for rounding everything, this became the 40-50 tons figure I quoted that an unmanned supply vehicle could put onto the lunar surface. My mistake this morning is that some of this would have to be rockets, landing gear, a stabilization/navigation system and whatever the cargo box looked like. The last is the easiest. It wouldn't be much. I imagine a basic tube. For the rest, I envision a railroad box car with rockets and legs instead of trucks. I think no matter how you shake it, my totally ignorant calculations say that an unmanned supply vehicle could get a minimum of 25 tons and maybe much more on the lunar surface.

But then, hell, what do I know about landing cargo vehicles on the Moon? Now Mars, that I know...

 

[Lindley]

All this stuff would be so much easier if we could control that pesky "gravity" thing.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

TheMasterOfOrion said:
I fully agree with bypassing the Moon and moving on directly to Mars, ok NASA has things on its plate it has a few obligations to meet first, international ones like the I.S.S and local ones like retiring the Shuttle and launching the unmanned Kepler and Dawn projects.

If I may be forgiven for recycling and concatenating two posts I made earlier in the year on this subject, fuck the ISS, Mars and the crippled donkey they rode in on. As was demonstrated by the late, great Krafft Ehricke over two decades ago, a "Humanized" Luna could quite easily become the economic, scientific, technological and cultural hub of the Solar System for centuries to come. Even if the thermonuclear fusion technology of Ehricke's paper never becomes cost effective, David Criswell's Lunar Solar Power System, capable of supplying a larger torrent of clean energy than Terran Civilization could ever conceivably utilize (at least as far as the thermodynamic capacity of the biosphere to radiate waste heat into space is concerned), would more than justify large-scale Lunar colonization and industrialization. Further speculations employing the most recent selenological data can be found in the upcoming Second Edition of The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Settlement by David Schrunk et al.

In regard to further space exploration and colonization, even a relatively immature Selenite Civilization would be able to launch comparatively gargantuan manned space vehicles and landers to any object in the Solar System including -*yawn*- Mars on high-energy (i.e., fast) trajectories directly from the Lunar surface without expending a single gram of reaction mass by employing electromagnetic mass-drivers. The return stage would land on the Moon via Harenodynamic Braking, again saving reaction mass. Such a Lunar-based space transportation system infrastructure would permit far more complex and capable interplanetary missions to be executed than could ever be conceived of if launched from Earth itself, and all for a fraction of the price too.

TGT

 

[FemurBone]

^Lunar based space transportation infrastructure is unbuildable with current technology and funding. And its not even nessessary. All the equipment and infrastructure for launching manned space flights is on Earth, not the moon. Earth is the launching point to the solar system. That's the way its going to be for at least another hundred years.