"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
...
Brian Thorn wrote:

:On 23 Oct 2005 03:56:21 -0700, "Alex Terrell"
:wrote:
:
:But how can you get a descent lunar lander, capable of landing ~10 tons
:on the lunar surface, into the 5.2m dimater faring offered by SpaceX
:(or Boeing, LM, or the Stick)?
:
:Can this be done without orbital assembley?
:
:Maybe, but the simplest solution would be to launch the lander without
:any fuel tanks first, and then attach fuel tanks (launched seperately
r uninstalled on the same launcher.) in orbit. That would take some
:ISS-like assembly, though.

And you're back to talking about assembly of pressure fittings in
space. This is almost always a bad idea, particularly for relatively
high pressure fittings like fuel feed lines.

Space assembly is HARD, people. It's difficult and clumsy work.

Why do the feed lines have to be high pressure? Why not have a single set
of high pressure tanks on the "core" of your stage, and attach lower
pressure fuel and oxidizer tanks to that? This means you'd have to do a
series of burns to get where you're trying to go, but it might make the task
easier by eliminating those high pressure connections.

The Russians have been transferring storable hypergolic fuel and oxidizer
from Progress tankers to their stations (including ISS) for years. No EVA
or clumsy pressure fittings seem to be required for this to work.

Jeff
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