Discussion Construct a Moon lander within one term

[richfororbit]

There won't be until the short term nature of people chage who are I guess important, those who can make it happen, in power, but you know ultimately ordinary folk like us here.

The station isn't far, in comparison to settling on the Moon or Mars.

 

[Urwumpe]

There won't be until the short term nature of people chage who are I guess important, those who can make it happen, in power, but you know ultimately ordinary folk like us here.

That is not my view there. Let the people really participate and they will support it. If one stupid says "we should stop all spaceflight and focus on the problems here" and the guy next to him simply says "Are you nuts? My company is making most of its profit building three-way water valves for spacecraft". That is my idea of the future. Nobody here would complain about building stupid sport cars for stupid millionaires. We are happy that somebody is paying so much money for our work.

It is the same with the EU. Not all like the political mess that was created there. But many here in Germany work directly with European customers and too often have customers in the whole world. They know how much money the EU is worth of their income. Would politics just be equally less exclusive...

 

[Hlynkacg]

Can we move the shuttle safety circle-jerk to another thread please.

Lets just accept that "build something safer than the shuttle" is a pretty low bar and go back to discussing lunar landers.

 

[Lmoy]

Now the price question - where will be the next outpost?

Venus, of course. Close to Earth gravity, and it's nice and warm.

Can we move the shuttle safety circle-jerk to another thread please.

Lets just accept that "build something safer than the shuttle" is a pretty low bar and go back to discussing lunar landers.

All discussions on crewed spaceflight inevitably turn to discussing shuttle safety. It's like the Godwin's law of aerospace engineering.

 

[RGClark]

My opinion, a lunar lander could be constructed for one thousandth the cost NASA's estimates for a lunar lander:

The Morpheus lunar lander as a manned lander for the Moon.
http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-morpheus-lunar-lander-as-manned.html

Bob Clark

 

[richfororbit]

That is not my view there. Let the people really participate and they will support it. If one stupid says "we should stop all spaceflight and focus on the problems here" and the guy next to him simply says "Are you nuts? My company is making most of its profit building three-way water valves for spacecraft". That is my idea of the future. Nobody here would complain about building stupid sport cars for stupid millionaires. We are happy that somebody is paying so much money for our work.

It is the same with the EU. Not all like the political mess that was created there. But many here in Germany work directly with European customers and too often have customers in the whole world. They know how much money the EU is worth of their income. Would politics just be equally less exclusive...

After having watched the clip from last year with Mr Aldrin and Mr Cruz, interesting, but it is just a repeat of how this endeavour brings creativity, and business.

A mission to the moon is just like the animations of the return to the moon, I really believe it must be done this way, a lander prep and ready to go within one term and beginning in the next of an existing government, or new that one mission will take place. Let the results speak for itself, and reaction.

 

[kamaz]

The problem was that Crater tended to overestimate the actual the damage caused by the impact as well as the thermal damage caused by entry temperatures.

No. Crater provided just the kind of inconclusive result certain managers needed to justify doing nothing in face of a looming accident. This is why they actively moved to block requests for DOD imagery (which never made it to DOD, but it's another matter).

Jon Harpold was the Director of Mission Operations, my supreme boss as a Flight Director. He had spent his early career in shuttle entry analysis. He knew more about shuttle entry than anybody; the guidance, the navigation, the flight control, the thermal environments and how to control them. After one of the MMTs when possible damage to the orbiter was discussed, he gave me his opinion: “You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the TPS. If it has been damaged it’s probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. Don’t you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran out?”

https://waynehale.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/after-ten-years-working-on-the-wrong-problem/

Later investigation showed that the options for repair or rescue could be at least attempted; there's no guaranteee that they would succeed, but then, people in such situations are capable of great feats. Sadly, they were not even allowed to try. And, even if one believes that the crew could not be saved, there is another reason why "head in the sand" was literally the worst option possible:

Passing the time, I told the small assembled group in the Firing Room that LeRoy would never give a GO for deorbit burn; he would probably wave off one orbit when the forecaster said the low clouds would be gone. But LeRoy surprised me and gave a GO for deorbit burn on time.

Much later, while the debris recovery effort was going on in East Texas, the trajectory analysts put together an estimated plot of where the Columbia pieces would have come down for a 1 rev late deorbit. The toe of the ellipse – where the heaviest pieces would come down – cut across the southwestern suburbs of Houston. My home – my wife – would have been in the target zone where the 2 ton steel main engine combustion chambers would have hit the ground at supersonic speeds. JSC would have been at ground zero for the debris; the MCC would likely have been struck. That is a scenario that is just too implausible for words.

https://waynehale.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/after-ten-years-the-moment-of-truth/

Only after digesting the above statement and understanding that a much larger disaster involving random people was avoided by dumb luck, one begins to understand the scale of leadership crisis in NASA.

Because once you acknowledge that the spacecraft may disintegrate on reentry you immediately realize that, even if you assume that the crew is lost, you must replan reentry to avoid casulties on the ground. And that paradoxically expands your options, because you can give thought to flying a different profile to minimize heating. And of course it means that these DOD images must be obtained to decide if there is any chance of saving the crew, or should you just ditch them in the middle of the ocean to be safe. You must also tell the crew that they will fly a different profile and why, which basically forces the repair option, because at minimum you need to give the crew something to do while the trajectory specialists are doing their job. As people with naval experience pointed out, if you have 7 people, 2 EVA suits, a whole spacecraft to cannibalize and 2 weeks time -- you can do a lot better than say that nothing could be done.

Instead, NASA managers decided that it's better to pretend that the problem does not exist.

Shuttle's problem was always attitude, not hardware.

 

[richfororbit]

http://www.space.com/images/i/000/003/442/original/080527-lunar-base-02.jpg?interpolation=lanczos-none&fit=inside|1600:1400

So this is the actual lander design, or near final compared to the 4throck addon or Mr Drake's. That is a real outpost concept, just like the first generation of explorers.

With lunar geography, I'm not knowledgeable about the interesting locations. I guess another near side landing or something more ambitious?

Far side, Tycho crater?

I believe there are ideas already thought out for sending a probe to some of the Lunar below surface caverns in the future.

http://www.space.com/images/i/000/040/803/original/lunar-pit-mare-tranquillitatis.jpg?1405976065?interpolation=lanczos-none&downsize=*:1400

I don't know if winching Astronauts down to a cavern is the best way to go about about a sortie mission of four days on the surface. I think that'll making a mission fairly interesting.

The agency must focus on this goal of a sortie mission, it is realistic. A future government must take the helm on this.

That was the only realistic plan in Constellation. 'moon direct' sortie mission to the moon.

The Manager of the module program was James Connolly, the report he displayed in a presentation back end of the decade just before Augustine's report changed the agenda.

The actual flight would of taken place by 2018, not a landing.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/396763main_mf18_connolly.pdf

I just found this a petition on the whitehouse site from a couple of years ago. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/declare-international-lunar-decade-explore-moon-its-resources-and-develop-capabilities

I had a bit of fun.

I used pieces of the Vision for Exploration speech.

'Moon Direct’ a first lunar landing mission in the twenty first century to conduct science and expand our knowledge, to inspire the young of today to pursue Maths and Science.

Today I set a new goal for NASA. America is proud of our space program. It has always reflected the finest values of our country -- daring, discipline, ingenuity, and unity in the pursuit past missions.
The risk takers and visionaries of this agency have expanded human knowledge, have revolutionized our understanding of the solar system.
Inspired by all that has come before, and guided by clear objectives, today a new objective must be set to expand our knowledge of our closest celestial body the moon.

Yet the human desire for knowledge ultimately cannot be satisfied by images and video only human beings are capable of adapting to the inevitable uncertainties posed by space travel.
By the end of my first term a personnel mission will be under development to land on the lunar surface to conduct science and collect lunar samples.

This mission will be a first in more than half a century, it is about time we returned with excitement that will inspire our young to pursue Maths and Science and innovate industry. We will begin this effort quickly, using existing programs and personnel.
A landing site will be chosen from past data gathered from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission over a decade ago.
This goal will require an increased funding of which I expect the congress to fund throughout this term and into the next regardless of the incumbent in the Whitehouse.

This will be a great and unifying mission for NASA, and we know that you can achieve it. I have directed the NASA Administrator to focus the agency towards goal I have outlined.

Eugene Cernan the last man to set foot on the lunar surface -- said this as he left: "We leave as we came, and God willing as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."

We begin this venture knowing that space travel brings great risks. Since the beginning of our space program, America has lost 23 astronauts, and one astronaut from an allied nation -- men and women who believed in their mission and accepted the dangers. As one family member said, "The legacy of Columbia must carry on -- for the benefit of our children and yours." The Columbia's crew did not turn away from the challenge, and neither will we.

Thank you.

 

[richfororbit]

Users here do support this concept?

Or just sending a probe to land and return with samples will be a safer a cheaper option. Strange, no mission has been planned for a task?

 

[Hlynkacg]

I'm skeptical, Apollo 2 electric boogooloo, this time it's bigger! just doesn't hold all that much appeal to me. I would much rather see a revival of the lunar side of the AAP, but even that would represent a rather dramatic departure from the classic NASA mission architecture.

As far as "Constructing Moon lander within one term" I'm fairly certain that for a fraction of what has been spent on Orion we could have duplicated and improved on the original Apollo LM fairly easily but the question is "to what purpose?"

 

[richfororbit]

Simply because having a personnel presence on the Moon isn't realistic in our time, as Commander Scott believed, of the Falcon spacecraft, he didn't think Astronauts would return to the moon for another couple of centuries.

Or as the Lunar Module Pilot of the Intrepid spacecraft to the Ocean of Storms, Alan Bean expressed in the 'Men of Apollo film, centuries from now, a disney land will be on the Moon so families will travel there instead of going to disney land on the Earth.

Harrison Schmitt's book 'Return to the moon' which is available on Amazon, it is quite expensive even preowned. I don't own a copy.

The book is ten years old now, and while it advocates a private enterprise return just like Aldrin does for it too. It is decades away from being anything practical, like the use of helium 3.

Just that Aldrin is more focused on Mars, other countries can focus on the Moon, while having to dodge's Lunar Embassy's real estate purchases.

It costs a million dollars to keep an Astronaut alive on the surface for minutes.

As for the Module design, there isn't anything wrong with the proposed version. The new one included an airlock to try and keep as less lunar dust as with the first version, it was everywhere, they were living in it.

 

[Urwumpe]

As far as "Constructing Moon lander within one term" I'm fairly certain that for a fraction of what has been spent on Orion we could have duplicated and improved on the original Apollo LM fairly easily but the question is "to what purpose?"

I doubt it... not just because only a few geeks are still able to read the blueprints of that time.

But also because some COTS components of the LM are no longer available and have to be replaced, while other components, that previously needed special manufacture (like tanks) are today COTS and could be procured much cheaper.

 

[Hlynkacg]

Why?

Most of the big-ticket items from back in the day, Sensors, Avionics, Engines, and Tankage would all be "off the shelf" this time around. Seems to me that the only stuff that would really need to be designed from scratch are the life support equipment and the physical structure of the spacecraft itself. I'm pretty sure we could knock that out for less than a couple billion (maybe even a couple hundred million) if we really wanted too.


ETA:
Granted, building a Saturn V + Command Module (or functional equivalent) to actually get our LM to the moon is a separate issue, but that wasn't the question posed by the OP.

 

[Urwumpe]

Why?

Most of the big-ticket items from back in the day, Sensors, Avionics, Engines, and Tankage would all be "off the shelf" this time around. Seems to me that the only stuff that would really need to be designed from scratch are the life support equipment and the physical structure of the spacecraft itself. I'm pretty sure we could knock that out for less than a couple billion (maybe even a couple hundred million) if we really wanted too.

Well, practically, you would not develop a LM 2.0, but something new. Everything would have new masses, new electrical and thermal properties, even the aluminium alloys could no longer be available today. And then a lot of the electromechanical systems of the LM would today be solved by software. You can't just take a signal conditioner from the Apollo drawing and replace it by a modern one - because such a primitive system with so a high mass and power consumption is no longer on the market.

So, regardless how you turn it and how close you try to stay at the original, you would always end up with something expensive because you would always need a full test campaign - even if you can skip feasibility phase. And the test phases and the definition of the test specifications are the expensive things in space flight. You could build a space suit for about $1500, I would estimate, if you are just not expecting it to keep you alive at all, or maybe just gives you a lucky chance to stay alive for some minutes.

 

[Hlynkacg]

I think you are being overly pessimistic if you don't think those problems can be solved in less than a few years or for less than a couple billion. After all, Grumman developed the original LM in just under 7 years for approx. 400 million (around 3 billion in today's dollars) and that was starting completely from scratch without the benefits of modern computing.

ETA:
Heck, it's a lot cheaper/easier to add weight and heat to a vehicle than it is to get rid of it. Having your components be lighter, cooler, and more capable than the original design called for is the sort of problem engineers DREAM of having.

 

[richfororbit]

So far none of the candidates who want to live in the whitehouse for a term, have yet to endorse a return to the moon.

I guess. If the Mars venture doesn't work out, a Moon mission in the 2030's. By the end of that decade.

I suppose three non personnel missions to the Moon to land at different locations instead of one personnel mission would be better for the rock collection.

 

[kamaz]

Users here do support this concept?

Or just sending a probe to land and return with samples will be a safer a cheaper option. Strange, no mission has been planned for a task?

Funnily enough, the South Pole-Aitken Basin (SPA) sample return is the most requested mission by the planetary geology community, yet, one which repeatedly cannot get the funding.

SPA mission presents a paradox: it's understood that analysing SPA geology is critical to understanding the history of the solar system (and may very well turn our understanding of it upside down). And so, a sample return would help here. But then: if the SPA terrain is a 3.5B years old huge impact crater with new formations on top of it, then how do you know that the regolith you grabbed indeed is 3.5B years old, and not the newer stuff which was sampled by Apollo? So a single regolith grab will not help; to really figure out SPA, you would actually have to drill cores. Many of them. That requires a manned mission. Oh, and did I mention that the region is on the far side so you need a comm relay in orbit? But it's also reasonably close to the Shackleton / Malapert region which is the optimal outpost site. So if you guys are going to fly to Shackleton then could you please take a rover so you could drive over to the southern tip of SPA and pick up some rocks? (Don't laught, that's literally what was proposed in the Constellation program.)

So the robotic SPA mission is caught between being requested, rendered moot by proposition of a manned program, which then gets cancelled, and the SPA lander is proposed again...

 

[richfororbit]

Could a drill mission not be worked out, to replace the need for a few Astronauts?

I know on the past missions they drilled a little into the surface. But it'd need to be several meters down.

 

[Urwumpe]

I think you are being overly pessimistic if you don't think those problems can be solved in less than a few years for less than a couple billion

Of course, I am calculating towards the pessimistic there. I rather consider it realistic. Its easy to assume that everything will work perfectly at the first try. But in reality even a genius won't achieve this too often. Or many of those.

So: It takes years to develop a car. A car is now nothing too special, we have build millions before, and we are developing cars already for 100 years. A new car model family is already a multi-billion investment (The MQB/MPB system of Volkswagen for example, which not only modularized the car development for a large number of models, but also standardized the car production tools for multiple factories and brands).

A LM 2.0, regardless that we have already build one before, will be a technologically more challenging project than a new car. Instead of just pleasing government regulations :dry: or increasing customer standards, we have to make it spaceflight capable and please increasing customer/investor/politician standards.

Soo, where could you cut development costs? We maybe can simulate more today, but we also know more about space and moon today to consider in the planning. Even if it won't cost 3 billion for just doing the same as the LM with the same number of spacecraft - you won't get it for 500 million. About 1.5 - 2.0 billion USD sounds like a good ballpark figure for me for 6+1 two person spacecraft. One billion would be possible with some optimistic assumptions - for example being able to not require (too) special tooling to build the spacecraft. Just building one spacecraft would not work, you would need at least two, a flight article and a (flight) prototype.

And then, the pure construction costs for just one such spacecraft would sure not be 1 million. If you can build it as large aerospace company between other projects (so most of the fixed costs could be avoided and labour force would be no big problem to allocate), about 30-50 million sounds reasonable. If you are a small specialist company (like Grumman), the fixed costs would inflate this and such costs exceed the pure costs for materials and COTS components by far. You won't be able to build such a spacecraft with a small team - you need quite a number of specialists there and a good number of less-specialized hands.

Soo - could you imagine pushing the costs even below 800 million? 800 million would still be a major project for a government and would result in major political fighting - even in the ruling party. And finding investors for 800 million USD with some high chance of failing to stay in this budget would even be hard for Elon Musk.

 

[Hlynkacg]

Seeing as how we're already looking at 1.0 - 5.0 billion per individual Orion launch, a run of 6 + 1 lunar modules for less than 2 billion sounds like quite the bargain.