Why not use Shuttles to fly to the moon?

[Brent]

School me, why can't they use the current fleet of Shuttles to go to the moon?

If not indefinitely, then how about a last ditch effort for them, put the required moon vehicles and whatnot in them, and LAND the shuttles on the moon with no plans for sending them back. They could be used to chain together the first moon base or something.

 

[JustAFriend]

Been discussed here before.

The Shuttles were never built to fly to the moon.
They do not have the capability and can barely get into low Earth orbit.
The amount of supplies they can carry is limited.
They are only built to glide to a landing in the atmosphere and there is none on the moon.
You'd be carrying a lot of dead weight not designed for the job of going to the moon.
...and no rocket ever built could give it the thrust to get to the moon.

It's kinda like throwing an aircraft carrier off a cliff and trying to make it fly like an airliner.... just ain't gonna happen....

 

[Dayton3]

It would be possible and was proposed before.

But way too expensive to be worth the effort.

Basically you would have to use at least three shuttles at once.

One launched into orbit with a lunar lander of some kind in its cargo bay along with supplies.

Two others launched into orbit with additional fuel for the smaller shuttle engines (the ones on either side of the three mains) to enable the shuttle to break orbit and head to the moon and manuever into orbit once it got there.

Considering the expense, NASA has never even had two shuttles in space at once, much less three, it isn't worth it.

 

[Kemaiku]

@OP. You mean instead of retiring them in two years time, send them up with particular payloads and ditch them on the Moon? I really don't see the point and it would be incredibly expensive to do. They would have to be launched within days of each other, I'm not sure that can even be done, the planning would require them to devote all their attention to it and forget about the ISS.

Even auto-pilot to the Moon in the hopes of someday sending a followup vehicle so the payloads from the Shuttles is present to kick start a base would be highly likely to fail and far too expensive.

 

[Mr. B]

I can only imagine what it would take to convert a spacecraft designed to land on 5 miles of the most pristine runway on the planet to park on the lunar surface.

 

[Verteron]

School me, why can't they use the current fleet of Shuttles to go to the moon?

If not indefinitely, then how about a last ditch effort for them, put the required moon vehicles and whatnot in them, and LAND the shuttles on the moon with no plans for sending them back. They could be used to chain together the first moon base or something.

Escape velocity from Earth is >27k mph. The Shuttles barely break 18k mph, in low Earth orbit. They simply don't have the delta-v (booster power) to truely break Earth's gravitational pull and get all the way to the moon, and aren't designed for any fancy maneuvers like gravitational slingshots. There's no real way they could ever reach trans-lunar injection orbit.

If you consider the size of the Saturn V (huge!) that went to the Moonand the size of the command module (tiny!) versus the size of the Shuttle's tank and rocketry (medium sized) and the Shuttle itself and its payload (medium sized) you begin to get a sense of the problem.

The highest Earth orbit ever reached by the Shuttle is less than 400 miles.

To put this in to perspective, a geostationary satellite used to beam TV to peoples' homes orbits in the Clarke belt at an approximate height above Earth of 22,000 miles (although they don't typically reach this altitude directly, they do so via geostationary transfer orbit).

The Moon is 240,000 miles away. Ouch.

This is just a guess also, but I'm not sure the shuttles have sufficient radiational shielding to ensure the safety of the occupants where the Earth's magnetosphere is much weaker.

One hypothetical scenario that would be more feasible would involve refuelling a larger Moon-bound craft in Earth orbit, but setting up the infrastructure for space refuelling alone would cost billions of dollars more than NASA has for the remains of the shuttle programme.

 

[MANT!]

There was a proposal to send a shuttle on a lunar mission with a lander in the cargo bay,it needed a fully fueled booster rocket that would be attached to the shuttle in LEO.This was proposed in the early 1990s, yet was shot down by NASA management and was later used by Homer Hickam in the book "Back to the Moon".
http://www.homerhickam.com/books/moon.shtml

 

[shipfisher]

Something more like the Shuttle C cargo can proposal from a few years back would better fit the bill, and even that would be pretty unworkable. I'm waiting for Ares/Orion to take us all back to 1969.

The remaining shuttles should make great museum displays, hopefully meeting more dignified fates than that poor old Buran orbiter rusting in some russian park.

 

[USS KG5]

The remaining shuttles should make great museum displays, hopefully meeting more dignified fates than that poor old Buran orbiter rusting in some russian park.

I imagine they will be in massive demand as museum pieces.

Sadly the odds of one making it over to Europe are pretty slim.

 

[Squiggy]

Considering the expense, NASA has never even had two shuttles in space at once, much less three, it isn't worth it.

Since it takes so long to prep and move a shuttle to the pad and there have only ever been two shuttle launch pads...no...it's not possible to have three shuttles up at the same time.

 

[USS KG5]

Logically, NASA already had a very successful way of getting to the moon in Apollo and the Saturn V rocket. The sensible thing is to take that design, incorporate new technology as relevant and use a similar design.

I believe this is similar to what NASA intends to do.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

Considering the expense, NASA has never even had two shuttles in space at once, much less three, it isn't worth it.

Since it takes so long to prep and move a shuttle to the pad and there have only ever been two shuttle launch pads...no...it's not possible to have three shuttles up at the same time.

I thought 39C was a bit north of Lake Buena Vista. I seem to recall some kind of launch activity there as a kid, but maybe that was some kind of Mickey Mouse operation...

 

[JustAFriend]

Remember that it took a Saturn5 to send 40,000lbs to the moon during Apollo.
Every ounce was critical (so much so the LEM's skin was tinfoil-thick.)

The Shuttle weighs 230,000lbs ...and can carry more payload than an entire Apollo mission weighed.

Even if you could inject a Shuttle into a trans-lunar trajectory, its engines are NOT designed to brake it or land it on the moon. The tons of wings, heat sheilding and landing gear are DEAD WEIGHT and useless to the mission.

The Shuttles are antiques and already slated to become museum pieces....

 

[Crewman47]

Can't Shuttle parts be constructed on Earth and sent up to the ISS or whatever as payload and then assembled in orbit, then from there send the newly constructed Shuttle from Earth orbit to the Moon?

 

[Squiggy]

Logically, NASA already had a very successful way of getting to the moon in Apollo and the Saturn V rocket. The sensible thing is to take that design, incorporate new technology as relevant and use a similar design.

I believe this is similar to what NASA intends to do.

That is exactly what NASA intends to do.

 

[Verteron]

That is exactly what NASA intends to do.

Indeed.

And although Ares/Orion look quite 'primitive' compared to the Shuttle, they have been designed from scratch using principles and experience gained on the Shuttle programme and the Apollo programme.

So it's not like we're throwing away 40 years of space flight and going back to Apollo, even though some of the elements of the design are slightly more similar to Apollo/Saturn than they are to the shuttle...

 

[Squiggy]

The only similar thing is the shape. Your cell phone has more computing power than the Apollo command module.

 

[Verteron]

The only similar thing is the shape. Your cell phone has more computing power than the Apollo command module.

Yeah I know you know that

Besides I think that's giving the Apollo module credit... I reckon my Washing Machine probably has a more powerful microcontroller in it than the guidance computer! The ARM chip in my mobile phone runs at 600MHz! Amazing really how much they were able to achieve with so little...

Was just trying to anticipate peoples' reactions to the new NASA programmes. A lot of people I've spoken with think they're throwing the shuttle away and returning to "the old days". It's just not true at all.

 

[hyzmarca]

What NASA needs to do is partner with Virgin and Disney to build a theme park on the moon. That would capture the world's imagination much better than anything they've done since Apollo.

It would also necessitate the creation of economical and reliably earth-moon tourist shuttles.

 

[Squiggy]

"We're whalers on the moon! We carry a harpoon!..."