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Old September 30th 17, 10:38 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Jeff Findley[_6_]
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Posts: 2,307
Default NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.

In article . com,
says...

On 2017-09-29 12:42,
wrote:
Op-ed: The Deep Space Gateway would shackle
human exploration, not enable it:



And on Friday, Elon Musk unveiled its "versatile" BFR that can, with a
single rocket, fly people New York to Sydney, bring people/cargo to ISS,
land on Moon and land on mars and return.


That part of the presentation is quite "far fetched" since it's not
likely "average citizens" would ever utilize it. It is, however, quite
possible the USAF would be interested, since this sort of thing has been
proposed since the 1960s.

No talk of moon orbiting station. But rather moon base Alpha. (although
didn't quite look like the real moon base Alpha).


This is surely to attract the attention of NASA and other international
partners since NASA's proposed "deep space gateway" does not include a
lander (too expensive and time consuming to develop using the same
approach as SLS/Orion).

More importantly, Musk aims to have in-orbit automated refueling, not at
a station.


That's always been part of the plan for BFR. Otherwise, it can't go
much of anywhere once it's in LEO.

First flight to Mars 2022 or 2024.


Maybe, but not likely. Surely this will slip to the right by a few
years.

Basically, once he has enough stockpiles of Falcon 9s and Falcon 9 heavy
that are re-usable, they can focus manufacturing on BFR.


This is true, and should happen within the next few years. They'll
still have to build a few Falcon parts, like the upper stage and
fairings (since they've not yet been successfully recovered).

**IF** this were to happen, it would blindside NASA into oblivion.


It would in all likelihood be an SLS killer. BFR could be used to
launch pretty much anything that SLS could. This would surely include
Orion as well (launch it in the payload bay, then transfer the crew to
it once it's in LEO).

**IF** there is ay realism to this project, I can understand NASA
scrambling to find some project to remain relevant.


There is as much "realism" to it as there was to Falcon 9 launching
manned Dragons to ISS 5 to 10 years ago. Today, that looks imminent.

There is a lot of risk here, but the "holy grail" of cheap access to
space has always been a fully reusable launch vehicle. BFR, even if
unmanned, would be hugely useful.

Jeff
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