Back to the Moon (in what?)

What's on the drawing board for a return to the moon?
A similar command and service module to the Apollo program? Or a
shuttle size vehicle?
Also, will they roll out the old Saturn V launch vehicles or what?

Ian

"Ian" wrote in message
om...
What's on the drawing board for a return to the moon?
A similar command and service module to the Apollo program? Or a
shuttle size vehicle?
Also, will they roll out the old Saturn V launch vehicles or what?

Nothing is on the drawing board at this point because until a couple of
weeks ago, there was no plan to return to the moon anytime soon.

"Ian" wrote in message
om...
What's on the drawing board for a return to the moon?
A similar command and service module to the Apollo program? Or a
shuttle size vehicle?
Also, will they roll out the old Saturn V launch vehicles or what?

Ian

I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me that there isn't any real purpose or
scientific knowledge to be gained by committing to an expensive project to
re-visit the Moon.
I'd favour the robotic exploration of Europa next.

F. Bedford.

If Bushes moon base talk is for real we are going to need somthing a lot
bigger than a sat 5 or a "mk2" shuttle any ideas

Rocky wrote:

If Bushes moon base talk is for real we are going to need somthing a lot
bigger than a sat 5 or a "mk2" shuttle

Why not?

any ideas


--

You know what to remove, to reply....

"Rocky" writes:

If Bushes moon base talk is for real we are going to need somthing
a lot bigger than a sat 5 ...

Not at all.

There is no point in doing Apollo style one-shot missions. It
would be far better to build an infrastructure which supports
continued access to the moon and deep space.

I think vehicle assembly and/or refueling in LEO will be an
indispensable component of such missions. In particular, I speculate
that a reusable earth-moon transfer vehicle will be built, and there
may or may not be a separate Moon descent/ascent vehicle.

Components and fuel for the transfer vehicles could be launched on
existing, 20t to LEO launchers. This would require a significant
number of launches, so we should see an economy of scale kick in.
Aircraft-style assembly lines could be established to churn out a few
launch vehicles per month. Such an approach ought to be much more
economical than going for a small number of very heavy lift launches
using a non-existent vehicle.

--
Manfred Bartz
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing
it and then misapplying the wrong remedies. -- Groucho Marx

"Ian" wrote in message
om...
What's on the drawing board for a return to the moon?
A similar command and service module to the Apollo program? Or a
shuttle size vehicle?
Also, will they roll out the old Saturn V launch vehicles or what?

A better question might be, "For what?"

If it's for the sake of knowledge and exploration, or just because it's
there - fine. Let's go. We don't need to build a base or infrastructure for
that, though. And we haven't exactly been beating down the door to further
explore the moon with unmanned probes in the last thirty years.

If it's because we need a lunar base as a prerequisite for manned missions
to Mars - that's a lie. Even if significant, easy-to-get-to water is found
on the lunar poles, it just doesn't pay to crawl down into the moon's
gravity well (with no atmosphere to help with braking) and back up with
anything but unobtainium. It would be cheaper to go to Mars straight from
LEO.

Said unobtainium is perhaps the best answer - lunar He3. However, costs
would be very significant and the payoff far into the future. There aren't
any production fusion reactors now and we have all the deuterium we could
want.

Let's face it, folks - the moon is lacking most of what a spacefaring human
civilization will need. Almost no volatiles, particularly hydrogen; no
carbon. Metals bound up in tough oxides. A nasty 28-day light/dark cycle.
Just enough gravity to be annoying.

The lunar nearside at night must have an awesome view, though.

Jonathan Wilson

"Alan Bedford" wrote:
I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me that there isn't any real purpose or
scientific knowledge to be gained by committing to an expensive project to
re-visit the Moon.

Well, that's part of the debate, but evidently GWB thinks that a case
can be made for it.

Certainly there is a lot more scientific knowledge to be gained from
further exploration of the moon, although whether that's the best bang
for the buck depends on what you think you will find and what your
competitor (for project money) expects to find.

There's a lot of engineering reasons why going to Selene (er, the
moon) before Mars would be valuable; long term exposure data,
reliability testing of equipment (especially stuff to be used in the
Deep Space Traversal part of the mission), evaluation of semi-gravity
health issues, et cetera.

I'd favour the robotic exploration of Europa next.

I don't think that we're quite ready to do that yet, unless you mean
another orbiter (mini-Galileo/Cassini, perhaps). Even for a surface
rover, I think we'd need at least 1 more order of magnitude
improvement in autonomous control, and the ice probe technology
definitely isn't ready (is 2005 still the year it gets tried in
Antartica?).

/dps

External Tanks, shuttle ET's, converted to habs with propulsion and control
modules. These ET's would not thrust to Luna but would cycle on a trans
lunar orbit. In other words, a min of fuel requiered and fuel costs are what
would kill the lunar operation.
There will be a Lunar lander and we should develop an OSP for accessing LEO.
^
//^\\
~~~ near space elevator ~~~~
~~~members.aol.com/beanstalkr/~~~

I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me that there isn't any real purpose
or
scientific knowledge to be gained by committing to an expensive project to
re-visit the Moon.
Well, where on earth do we go which we haven't first explored?
The real purpose of exploring is just to enable travel there, same as we
can now go to Antartica, Tamanrassett in the middle of the Sahara, Tahiti,
Denver and simply everywhere. Unless you are saying the moon is a really kinky
place where mankind should not go for some reason?
In other words, it's really strange to claim we shouldn't go to a huge
worldwide-visible beacon in the night sky because it costs a lot at first ;-]
^
//^\\
~~~ near space elevator ~~~~
~~~members.aol.com/beanstalkr/~~~