JF Mezei wrote on Mon, 20 May 2019
17:59:01 -0400:

On 2019-05-20 16:50, Fred J. McCall wrote:

This 'plan' is DOA. Hell, I'm about as 'pro-space' as you can be and
*I* am against it. Take money from college grants, increase NASA's
budget by over 30%, give them unprecedented authority to 'reprogram'
money, and rely on a booster (SLS Block 1B) that has essentially had a
'stop work' put on it)? That's just not a realistic plan.

Likly designed to burden Trump's succesor with either a big boondoggle
or the unpopular "we are cancelling the project to get back to the moon".


Don't look now but your Trump Derangement Syndrome is showing. Take
your lithium and don't post until morning.


Looking at NASA web site:

They have a page announcing pork to 11 companies to generate reports.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/n...lunar-landers/


You're funny. You start with squealing about how NASA must start
working to develop a lander. When you find they have, you whine about
'pork'.


"transfer element for the journey from the lunar Gateway to low-lunar
orbit, a descent element to carry them to the surface, and an ascent
element to return to them to the Gateway"


I am curious about the "transfer element". Wouldn't the descent element
get crew from "Gateway" to the lunar ground like the LEM did? Why need
2 components to get from orbit to ground ?


You understand that the Gateway isn't in an orbit around the Moon,
right? It's in a LaGrange halo orbit. You need a piece to get you
from CPA to the Moon in that orbit to a low orbit that goes over
someplace you want to land. Everything I see talks as if 'direct
ascent' back to the Gateway will be used by the Ascent Element and
that the Transfer Element will return separately, but I don't see why
that should necessarily be the case. It might make more sense to use
the Transfer Element to get from LLO back to Gateway. Which one makes
the most sense might change on a case by case basis.

All that said, I'm not a big fan of NASA's architecture for lunar and
deep space exploration. There's a payload penalty for going to the
Gateway first and then down to the Moon and back. It leads to a whole
bunch of complication for no gain. It's not permanently manned and
needs Orion docked to it to support crew. That means crew duration is
pretty much limited to Orion duration. It does allow reuse of the
Descent and Transfer Elements, but it seems like all the fuel for them
will have to be lifted from Earth in the near term.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw