NEWS - Bush May Announce Return To Moon At Kitty Hawk - Space Daily

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 16:50:54 -0600, in a place far, far away, Herb
Schaltegger made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
(Rusty B) wrote:

According to Space Lift Washington, President Bush may
announce at Kitty Hawk a return to manned lunar exploration but
without any specific massive new funding, forcing NASA to get serious
about what it wants to do with it considerable human spaceflight
assets and decades of experience.

Forgive me if I sound cynical but how ****ing stupid is that quote? ".
. . forcing NASA to get serious . . ." PLEASE!

In addition, just what "considerable human spaceflight assets" does
NASA have that are helpful for going to the moon? And the agency
doesn't have "decades of experience." Organizations don't have
experience--people do, and many of the veterans are dead or retired.

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Rand Simberg wrote:
Herb Schaltegger glowed:
Forgive me if I sound cynical but how ****ing stupid is that quote? ".
. . forcing NASA to get serious . . ." PLEASE!

In addition, just what "considerable human spaceflight assets" does
NASA have that are helpful for going to the moon? And the agency
doesn't have "decades of experience." Organizations don't have
experience--people do, and many of the veterans are dead or retired.

While technically true, it does miss a couple of points.

First, the veterans who died and/or have retired had to figure it
out the hard way the first time, and got it right, and left us
scads of documentation on both right and wrong things.
What we have lost in detail is really two things...
One, the institutional hands on knowledge of exactly how
to make the specific hardware that went (which is by now
irrellevant; we wouldn't want to go back to the Moon
by recreating a S-V and CSM/LM from the microfilm anyways).
Two, the successful rapid project project management
experience. Which still exists in corners, though not in
the manned spaceflight organization in NASA.

Second, 'forcing NASA' to get serious does have some validity.
Let us compare... oh, heck. NASA and the Department of Defense.

It is not widely recognized in the Space community,
because it hasn't really been used within NASA,
but fear is in fact a useful motivator for defeating
bureacracies on a temporary basis to get things done.

DOD regularly decides it's going to make some things run differently
and puts people on the spot to fix things. People's careers
get wrecked for failing to perform, aggressive schedules and
R&D goals get set and adhered to, etc. This is not the usual
behaviour over there, but it's done from time to time.
You can see people being tossed out windows on fire from
time to time if you pay attention to the pentagon press.
And programs.

O'Keefe came out of the DOD. He has been involved
in getting some projects incinerated and getting
some people ignited then defenestrated. Rumsfeld has
been reportedly involved in this policy stuff, and he's
got quite a bit more experience applying fear as a
motivator as well.

One hypothetical approach here would be to start a major
set of initiatives now, and set specific long term goals,
and then assuming Bush (43) gets re-elected, for there to
be a major bloodbath among the non-perfomers about oh say
6 months into his second term. Something like that...


-george william herbert

George William Herbert wrote:


One hypothetical approach here would be to start a major
set of initiatives now, and set specific long term goals,
and then assuming Bush (43) gets re-elected, for there to
be a major bloodbath among the non-perfomers about oh say
6 months into his second term. Something like that...




The thing that's missing from all this is a rational reason to return to
the Moon- it's lifeless, and we already know a fair amount about its
geology; we can't afford a permanent manned lunar base because of the
supply problem that such an endeavor would pose, and spending billions
of dollars to get some more rocks is a vast waste of money. At least
with Mars, we would get an inherently more interesting place to visit.

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


George William Herbert wrote:


One hypothetical approach here would be to start a major
set of initiatives now, and set specific long term goals,
and then assuming Bush (43) gets re-elected, for there to
be a major bloodbath among the non-perfomers about oh say
6 months into his second term. Something like that...




The thing that's missing from all this is a rational reason to return to
the Moon- it's lifeless, and we already know a fair amount about its
geology; we can't afford a permanent manned lunar base because of the
supply problem that such an endeavor would pose, and spending billions
of dollars to get some more rocks is a vast waste of money. At least
with Mars, we would get an inherently more interesting place to visit.

I'm not sure that supply is all that much of a problem, certainly for a
small outpost with crews rotated on, say, a 6 montly basis. A
Proton/Ariane5/etc... size launcher can soft land around 6,000kg of cargo on
the surface at a reasonable cost for supply purposes.

Dave O'Neill dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com wrote:
A Proton/Ariane5/etc... size launcher can soft land around 6,000kg
of cargo on the surface at a reasonable cost for supply purposes.

Six tons?

Could you document that and/or provide numbers?

I've been working on lunar missions for some time and get
payloads around three tons off a Proton, A5, D-IV etc.


-george william herbert

"George William Herbert" wrote in message
...
Dave O'Neill dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com wrote:
A Proton/Ariane5/etc... size launcher can soft land around 6,000kg
of cargo on the surface at a reasonable cost for supply purposes.

Six tons?

Could you document that and/or provide numbers?

I've been working on lunar missions for some time and get
payloads around three tons off a Proton, A5, D-IV etc.

Checking on The Encylopedia, the last sample return mission massed 5,800kg's
and was launched using the Proton. I didn't do the sums myself but a
collegue did them and was pretty sure you could manage things with a Proton.

I could see if I kept the numbers if you want. They were sketchy though, we
were looking at a proof of concept, and frankly, we couldn't make the
numbers add up even with 6 tonnes.

Dave

Dave O'Neill dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com wrote:
"George William Herbert" wrote:
Dave O'Neill dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com wrote:
A Proton/Ariane5/etc... size launcher can soft land around 6,000kg
of cargo on the surface at a reasonable cost for supply purposes.

Six tons?

Could you document that and/or provide numbers?

I've been working on lunar missions for some time and get
payloads around three tons off a Proton, A5, D-IV etc.

Checking on The Encylopedia, the last sample return mission massed 5,800kg's
and was launched using the Proton. I didn't do the sums myself but a
collegue did them and was pretty sure you could manage things with a Proton.

I could see if I kept the numbers if you want. They were sketchy though, we
were looking at a proof of concept, and frankly, we couldn't make the
numbers add up even with 6 tonnes.

Just off the top of my head... that is the right mass for the
Proton payload delivered to Lunar Transfer Orbit, not landed mass.

If that 5,800 kilos includes the lunar orbit insertion and landing
fuel then sure. But there are several km/s worth of delta-V required
to go from LTO to lunar surface.

There are a couple of general approaches for how to do a modern lander
with an existing launcher.

One is to fit it into the LTO payload of an existing LV and have the
'payload' include the lander stage and all, and any required ascent
stage.

What I was proposing with Lunar Millennium was to launch a fully
fueled centaur-like stage to LEO, and use that for TLI, LOI,
and most of landing delta-V, but then drop that at a low
altitude above the lunar surface and do the final landing with
a minimal descent stage for the final few hundred meters / km.
Among other things, that minimizes the payload's propulsion
requirements for a one way mission, and for a two way mission
can efficiently let the lander and return / ascent vehicle be
the same vehicle, without having to stage on liftoff.

When I worked the numbers, and I did it a bunch in the mid-90s,
I consistently got around 3 tons down either way, but a lot
less components and in particular a lot less *new development*
components the LM way.


-george william herbert

In article ,
Dave O'Neill dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com wrote:
A Proton/Ariane5/etc... size launcher can soft land around 6,000kg
of cargo on the surface at a reasonable cost for supply purposes.
Six tons?
Could you document that and/or provide numbers?

Checking on The Encylopedia, the last sample return mission massed 5,800kg's
and was launched using the Proton.

Almost certainly that is launch mass, not landed mass, let alone landed
*cargo* mass.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

Better to build a low cost to orbit manned launcher and then get us out of LEO,
no doubt less expensive than the alternatives too.

"Hallerb" wrote in message
...
no doubt less expensive than the alternatives too.

I'm certain a correct answer to my question won't cost you anything at all.

It's not going to go away. It's very clear that you had no basis whatsoever
for your whiny **** about NASA management at the time you whined. If you
did, you could easily answer my question. The CAIB report doesn't answer it
because you didn't have it at the time you made your disparaging remarks.
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