On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 12:59:31 -0800, "Bill Bonde ( ''The chamber was in
confusion, all the voices shouting loud'' )"
stderr@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnop qrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com
wrote:



BlackWater wrote:

(cnn.com)
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japan's space agency is drawing up plans
that could include manned space flights and a manned research base on
the moon, a newspaper said on Monday.


"However, I believe there is no change in our stance on manned space
flight," he added.

. . . . .

What, are they KIDDING ???

Despite the spacefaring success in their cartoons and
their overall mechotechnological prowness , Japan has
hardly been able to get a rocket off the ground without
the thing exploding. It's downright embarassing to watch.

I seem to recall something similar with American space launchers and
Euro ones too, their newest heavy lifters. Learning how to build and fly
rockets includes explosions. It's part of the game.

Well yes and no. It's not as if nobody has BUILT big
rockets before. There's a huge engineering and theoretical
database on the subject. You'd think the Japanese didn't
even bother to read it - and started entirely from scratch.

I dunno WHAT their problem is, but frankly I'd be more
inclined to ride on a ricketty old NASA shuttle or even
a Chinese missile than anything Japan is likely to build
in the near future.

Japan could decide to buy or borrow technology from the Russian Soyuz.
This could get them seriously into manned LEO in less than a decade for
not that much money. What does a Soyuz cost now, about six euros or
something?

Something like that ... :-)

Of course Soyuz has serious LIMITATIONS. Perhaps simply
"getting someone up there" isn't enough for Japan ? A
larger disposable or semi-disposable rocket for people
and significant cargo might be more what they're looking
for.

Face it, the moon is gonna belong to CHINA, not Japan,
not the USA, not Russia. Only China has the resources
to turn an eclectic collection of space tech into a
moon base. They've got the money (unlike western
nations OR Japan), they've got the manpower, they've
got the WILL and they've got the work of the US/Russian
programs to build upon.

I don't think that it would be that difficult to build a manned moon
base. To do it on the cheap would require thinking in ways that are
fundamentally different from Apollo though. It'd put out bids to
everyone one the planet with heavy lift capability and buy from all of
them. I'd have some standard moon lander that could be used to take
whatever amounts of cargo that particular launcher could lift.

Trips could take weeks, months or even a year as I harvested the energy
in the gravitational eddies between where pure rocket power could get us
to where we wanted to go, the Moon's surface. I'd investigate landing
cargo on parts of the Moon which are flat and not very rocky so that
some of the velocity could be used up bouncing perhaps for hundreds of
miles.

People would arrive one at a time after much of the base was configured
by automation. They would literally arrive with nothing but a spacesuit
and a rocket pack on their back. Errors in landing location would be
corrected by sending automated vehicles on the surface out to help. The
rocket needed to do that for one human to the Moon one way is much
smaller than Apollo. In fact, it might even be currently in production.

I agree that any moon (and especially Mars) base should
be largely constructed by automation - with an eye towards
using indigenous materials. On the moon, telepresence would
be viable since the action/reaction/confirmation loop is
only a few seconds. Mars would require largely autonomous
robots or swarmbots, where just occasional updates would
do the trick. Electronic intelligence isn't quite up to
that yet ... but then we're planning to start with the
moon anyway and we CAN build telepresence machines with
enough rudimentary IQ to simplify & smooth out performance.

Sintered moon dust should make a decent construction
material. The base can be built of modular, mostly
circular, sections. We'd have to ship gasketing material
up there, to seal each module as it was added, but
that would be relatively cheap. Solar sintering furnaces
and molds for the basic structural shapes would also
need to be sent. The 'furnace' would be mostly ultralight
reflectors - no biggie - reusable refractory molds and
such would weigh a ton however.

Your notion that cargo doesn't HAVE to arrive three days
after launch is a good one. Much fuel can be saved, or
more cargo sent, by taking longer routes.

Dunno about the solo-seat moon shuttle however. ANY kind
of launch is expensive, and the up-front cost of the rocket
and fuel probably isn't but a fraction of that expense.
We're mostly talking EXPERTS and their valuable time and
energy plus the peripherial infrastructure. As such, it
may actually be CHEAPER to send ten people than just one.

Some kinds of STANDARD spacecraft are a must, for a variety
of reasons both technical and economic. We want to be able
to part-out the work to any capable manufacturer in the
world and have all the parts fit properly at assembly-time.
Also, it's MUCH easier to build facilities here and on the
moon - and get calculations right every time - if there
are just a few standard vehicles with standard dimensions,
standard fittings and standard weights. If you've launched
a hundred "type one" rockets, a computer hiccup giving you
weird numbers stands out clearly.

Just off the top of my head, I'd suggest four standard
craft :

1) A 'light lifter', disposable, for maybe two people and
a ton of cargo. Should be ultra-simple and rely heavily
on SRBs so they can be configured and launched on short
notice. Standard re-entry technology.

2) A 'heavy lifter' aimed mostly at major cargo loads but
potentially configurable to taxi ten or fifteen people.
This could be 100% disposable too. NO re-entry - in
fact the big cargo/people pod should always be left in
space or landed/crashed on the moon for raw materials.

3) A reusable 'shuttle' type vehicle - using the same
boosters as the heavy lifter - for bringing people
and some cargo up AND back.

4) A standard, re-usable, moon lander for transferring
people from lunar orbit to the surface and vice-versa.
Magnetic-assisted launch from the surface would save
on valuable hydrogen & oxygen.

I'm sure we could think of a few more, but keeping the
number small and using the same parts as much as possible
amongst the fleet is important to the overall economy
and safety. The engines and SRBs used in ship #1 should
be used in #2 as well ... just more of them. The liquid
engine for #1 should be used on the lander too. The
more standard the parts, the easier and cheaper it is
to make them - and make them RIGHT.