Lunar Lander in a 5.2m faring?

"Rüdiger Klaehn" wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
:[snip]
: :The Russians have been transferring storable hypergolic fuel and oxidizer
: :from Progress tankers to their stations (including ISS) for years. No EVA
: r clumsy pressure fittings seem to be required for this to work.
:
: Now you might want to look at the thrust developed and burn durations.
: I don't see any of those vehicles going to the Moon, landing, and then
: taking back off.
:
:So let me get this straight:

This is almost a sure sign that someone is about to run down into the
ditch by making claims that aren't in evidence.

:scaling up from the several hundred kgs the russian progress routinely
:transfers to the ISS http://www.russianspaceweb.com/progress.html to
:the tens of tons required for a lunar mission is so complex that it
:can't be possibly be finished until 2018.

Not quite sure where I said that. I said it was not simple. If you
think just increasing the size of everything solves the problem you
are being QUITE simplistic in your analysis.

:But building a huge heavy lift vehicle out of shuttle components has
:negible technological risk?

Don't know where you think I said that, either. See what I mean about
running off into the ditch?

:Orbital propellant transfer of storable propellants and even mild
:cryogens such as liquid oxygen and liquid methane is not that hard.

For some rather large and variable value of 'that hard'.

:There are even materials which remain flexible at liquid oxygen
:temperatures, so you could use a simple bladder system. It is just that
:nobody has ever seriously tried to do it.

And usually if it's something nobody has ever tried that seems like an
'obvious' idea, there is a good reason they've never tried it.

--
"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