In article , Jon S. Berndt says...

Don't know if this has been discussed before, but I noticed some time ago
that the LSAM will be discarded after it performs its duties. What are some
thoughts on a less wasteful approach:

1) An LSAM that travels between lunar orbit and lunar surface in one piece
(reusable),
2) A CEV that goes from ground-to-earth-orbit-and-back ONLY (crew taxi),
3) An Earth/Moon transfer vehicle that ONLY goes between earth orbit and
lunar orbit (reusable; stationed at ISS),
4) A fuel/cargo/resupply transfer vehicle that takes stuff anywhere.


5) A CEV that also serves as an LSAM. Vertical rocket landing is somewhat
more complex than parachute landing, but it can be made to work and it
works as well on the Moon as it does on Earth.

Extra fuel would of course be required; a CEV that can do the full round
trip on internal tankage would be prohibitively heavy. But if you have
to discard hardware, let it be drop tanks or semi-dumb tankers. Or we
can think about reusing the tankers.

Plus, if the CEV is designed for on-orbit refuelling, it can be launched
with near-empty tanks on an EELV-Medium, maybe even one without solids.


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