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Old October 1st 17, 05:12 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
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Default NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.

Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...
More like they're trying to find a use for SLS/Orion that doesn't
require them to go back to Congress and ask for tens of billions more in
funding for each year. Since Asteroid Retrieval Mission was shot down
(because it was stupid to bring the asteroid to high earth orbit where
Orion could reach it), NASA has been looking for something, anything, to
replace it with.

In my opinion, the Deep Space Gateway, as currently envisioned (likely a
high lunar orbit or something similar), is "weak sauce" without a lunar
lander.


Not only that, but if Musk actually gets BFR flying in the next five
years it's rather pointless. With an orbital refueling, BFR could land
dozens of people on the Moon and bring them all home. For $128
million BFR would put more people on the Moon in one shot than the
entire Apollo program (and by a lot). Bring home a ton of samples
(literally).


Agreed. This could be the vehicle that finally gets NASA manned
spaceflight beyond LEO in a truly meaningful way. With its crazy
capacity and delta-V capability, it could land all the science
experiments on the moon that NASA could dream up (at least in the next
5-10 years). The BFR upper stage is very close to the hypothetical in
orbit refuelable SSTO discussed in the sci.space about three decades
ago.


The BFR spaceship can pretty much replace everything that NASA has
ever pictured doing with manned space. I need to go back and look at
the various Mars Reference Missions and see just how it compares to
the boosters called out in those. Interestingly, BFR is intended to
fly fast to Mars, making a 3 month trip of it. NASA with a thermal
nuclear rocket wasn't going that fast and were talking 6 months or so
in transit.

Note that Musk figures that in the next few years SpaceX will capture
half of the entire satellite launch business. In the face of that and
BFR, NASA's 'lunar orbiting space station' makes even less sense (and
it made very little in the first place - what's it for, exactly?).


Possibly. But Blue Origin isn't sitting still either, so SpaceX could
have some competition. Real competition is a good thing.


True, but New Glenn appears to me to be on a slower track than Falcon
Heavy, which is its direct competition. I don't think Blue Origin has
anything like BFR in their pipeline.


There will no doubt be a portion of launches by governments that will
choose to use their own vehicles, at least for some time. It would be a
bit embarrassing, for example, for Ariane 6 to only fly a few times due
to high costs and complete lack of customers.


Europe will probably, as usual, favor their own launchers regardless
of competition.


I loved the illustration Musk showed of a BFR spaceship docked to ISS.
Given that the BFR spacecraft can carry 100 people in cabins with
supplies for 3-6 months, what the hell would you need ISS for once
it's flying?


Routine, inexpensive, access to LEO via BFR might turn out to be a
viable replacement for much of the activities done on ISS today. Why
rotate a crew on ISS every six months when you can just launch another
BFR with crew and experiments?

But, IMHO, you still need long term (years rather than months) in space
laboratories, habitats, power generation, and etc. to perform longer
term experiments. So ISS may still have a purpose for some time to
come. But, time will tell.


Yeah, but you could still do that with the ship off BFR. It has a
standard docking port. You could always resupply the one on orbit
rather than rotate the vehicles. Put 25 people on it and you could
resupply it once a year and keep it up there indefinitely.


Truly cheap access to space (CATS) is something the sci.space newsgroup
has been discussing since I started reading it back in 1988 or so. It's
taken decades to get where we are now (proving once and for all that the
all expendable old space "emperor has no clothes"). It may take another
10 or more years for the vision of a truly inexpensive BFR to become
reality. But I truly hope that SpaceX's time-line for BFR is fairly
realistic and that it is as successful as they hope.


I'm sure Musk would like it to be flying to Mars in five years. He'd
no doubt like to achieve that dream while he's still young enough to
enjoy it.


Worst case, we've still got Blue Origin slowly plodding along. Bezos
seems quite content to keep funding it at its current pace. That's the
advantage of being a multi-billionaire. You don't have to rely
completely on outside funding for truly long term investments in new
tech.


Bezos has essentially said he can and will put a billion dollars a
year of his own money into New Glenn until it's done.


It's kind of sad really. US corporations are sitting on so much cash
these days that could be funding truly long term tech development.
Apple, for example, has an obscene amount of cash, but all they seem to
be producing is incremental updates to the iPhone that truly don't
impress me. I'll be sticking with my 64GB iPhone 6 hand-me-down (was my
oldest daughter's) until it dies completely.


I'm still using a Samsung Note 3. Most companies are looking at 90
days as 'long term'. You've got to have a CEO with money AND the
dream before things start becoming realities. Hell, I still remember
when Boeing fired most of their development engineers because they had
tens of billions of dollars in orders for airplanes they already knew
how to build (that's the way it was phrased). That's why ULA will
become increasingly irrelevant. It's run by accountants.


--
"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