Lunar lander ideas over the decades

On Jun/21/2020 at 12:09, Jeff Findley wrote :
In article , says...

On 2020-06-19 7:46 PM, Alain Fournier wrote:
Wow, you actually saw the moon missions live. You must be an old man.

Not to mention witnessing, in person, the launch of Columbia on STS-1.

I'm 51, so don't remember Apollo at all. But I do remember STS-1 and
beyond. STS-1 was ground breaking for its time. Unfortunately, the
press never picked up on the many things that went wrong with STS-1
besides perhaps the obvious missing silica tiles that fall off. Even
NASA still isn't terribly forthcoming about all of the issues. Cite:

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/...lls_sts-1.html

No mention of the body flap (that was almost a very bad day) or the
flight control system issues. Here is a cite for the body flap issue:

First Time Lucky: The Space Shuttle?s Dicey Inaugural Mission
BY TERRY DUNN ON JAN. 16, 2018 AT 8 A.M.
The story of STS-1.
https://tinyurl.com/ybvsthrh

Cite for the flight control system issue (Mary Shafer used to be a
regular poster here):

Extraction of stability and control derivatives from orbiter flight data
Author and Affiliation:
Iliff, Kenneth W. (NASA Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Facility,
Edwards, CA, United States)
Shafer, Mary F. (NASA Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Facility,
Edwards, CA, United States)
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19940006252
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/c...9940006252.pdf

Stability of an aircraft/spacecraft at high mach numbers is a bigger
problem than most believe. I had a friend who did computer fluid
dynamics for the European Hermes spacecraft programme in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. He was supposed to confirm the stability of the
spacecraft design. He told his bosses that his computations were not
conclusive and that the vehicle, as designed, was probably stable enough
but it wasn't a sure thing. He recommended tweaking the design to make
it more stable. That, together with other modifications asked by other
people working on the project, added delays and additional costs. The
programme was scrapped before my friend had a design he could guarantee
was stable.

When NASA designed the space shuttle, they had nowhere near the
computing power my friend had for Hermes. (We were jealous of the
computers he was using with several GB of RAM, most people at the time
had computers with a few MB of RAM, I was working on a computer that
most people thought was amazing with 600 MB of RAM, that computer I was
working on had cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.) NASA had done a
lot of wind tunnel testing for the Shuttle, but that doesn't allow for
as much iterations as computational fluid dynamics. All worked out well
for the Shuttle. That's what my friend was saying would happen with
Hermes, he was saying it was probably stable but he wasn't sure. So if
Hermes had flown as it was first designed, the outcome would probably
have been as for the Shuttle: it works, now that we have flown it, we
know it.

Note that capsules are much easier in this respect.


Alain Fournier

Hi all,

On Friday, June 19, 2020 at 5:09:15 PM UTC+2, Alain Fournier wrote:

467.1 MB

Thanks. That's going to have to wait a while then. Way too big to fit down the 2G pipeline I'm currently using to connect to the Internet.

Now if the local telecomm provider (read: government enforced monopoly) would just do their jobs and fix our landline....


Alain Fournier


Regards
Frank

In article , says...

On 6/21/2020 12:09 PM, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , says...

On 2020-06-19 7:46 PM, Alain Fournier wrote:
Wow, you actually saw the moon missions live. You must be an old man.

Not to mention witnessing, in person, the launch of Columbia on STS-1.

I'm 51, so don't remember Apollo at all. But I do remember STS-1 and
beyond. STS-1 was ground breaking for its time.

When I was in high school our family went to Orlando / Disney World /
Kennedy Space Center for a Christmas holiday one year. It was after
Apollo 17 but before Skylab. There was a bit of a lull at the Cape and
during that time, visitors to KSC got a tour inside the VAB. Something
they stopped doing once shuttle got going because of stacking SRB
segments inside. So that was amazing. The vertical height of the
building and the Florida humidity would combine to cause misting and
even a very light drizzle INSIDE the VAB I remember being told as cooler
air inside condensed water in the warmer air brought in from the
outside. An amazing experience.

I would have loved to have toured the inside of the VAB.

One thing I have done with my kids, that you can't do anymore, is tour
the restoration facilities at the USAF Museum. We got to see, among
other things, the Memphis Belle being restored and the Titan IV in
storage (waiting for the new building to be built). The tours were by
appointment only (sign up online) and there were other restrictions as
well but I can't remember the exact details. Since it was on the base
proper, I think you might have had to have been a US citizen, but I'm
not sure. I'd say the tour group size was not much more than a dozen
people, so it felt exclusive. Even though no pictures were allowed on
the base, they did let you take pictures inside the restoration
facilities, which was awesome.

They don't do those behind the scenes tours anymore, likely due to
security reasons.

Thanks,
Jeff


--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

On Jun/22/2020 at 02:58, wrote :
Hi all,

On Friday, June 19, 2020 at 5:09:15 PM UTC+2, Alain Fournier wrote:

467.1 MB

Thanks. That's going to have to wait a while then. Way too big to fit down the 2G pipeline I'm currently using to connect to the Internet.

Now if the local telecomm provider (read: government enforced monopoly) would just do their jobs and fix our landline....

???

I'm curious here. Where are you hailing from? Which country imposes such
horrible hardship on its citizens?


Alain Fournier

On 2020-06-22 2:00 PM, Alain Fournier wrote:
On Jun/22/2020 at 02:58, wrote :
Hi all,

On Friday, June 19, 2020 at 5:09:15 PM UTC+2, Alain Fournier wrote:

467.1 MB

Thanks. That's going to have to wait a while then. Way too big to fit
down the 2G pipeline I'm currently using to connect to the Internet.

Now if the local telecomm provider (read: government enforced
monopoly) would just do their jobs and fix our landline....

???

I'm curious here. Where are you hailing from? Which country imposes such
horrible hardship on its citizens?


Alain Fournier

FWIW Verizon is *planning* on shutting down 2G/CDMA service in December*!

2G has evolved over time a from whopping 9.6 to 236.8 kbps on the
download side! Can you run wget on your phone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G

*Note to Self: There goes the ol' Samsung flip-phone!

Dave

"David Spain" wrote in message ...

On 2020-06-22 2:00 PM, Alain Fournier wrote:
On Jun/22/2020 at 02:58, wrote :
Hi all,

On Friday, June 19, 2020 at 5:09:15 PM UTC+2, Alain Fournier wrote:

467.1 MB

Thanks. That's going to have to wait a while then. Way too big to fit
down the 2G pipeline I'm currently using to connect to the Internet.

Now if the local telecomm provider (read: government enforced monopoly)
would just do their jobs and fix our landline....

???

I'm curious here. Where are you hailing from? Which country imposes such
horrible hardship on its citizens?


Alain Fournier

FWIW Verizon is *planning* on shutting down 2G/CDMA service in December*!

2G has evolved over time a from whopping 9.6 to 236.8 kbps on the download
side! Can you run wget on your phone?

Oh you meant 2G as in phone tech... not as in 2GB! No wonder I was confused.

The 2000s want their flip-phone back!


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G

*Note to Self: There goes the ol' Samsung flip-phone!

Dave

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net
IT Disaster Response -
https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Resp...dp/1484221834/

"David Spain" wrote in message ...

On 2020-06-19 7:46 PM, Alain Fournier wrote:
Wow, you actually saw the moon missions live. You must be an old man.

Not to mention witnessing, in person, the launch of Columbia on STS-1.

Dave
STS-3 for me. From the Cocoa Beach causeway, even at that distance, DAMN was
it loud when the SRBs kicked in.


--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net
IT Disaster Response -
https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Resp...dp/1484221834/

"David Spain" wrote in message ...

On 6/17/2020 9:03 PM, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/c...0190031985.pdf
I ended up skimming it after awhile, but a LOT of details.

My only regret is I wish they had more details on some of the Apollo LM
derivatives such as the LM Truck and other ideas for post-Apollo.

I just finished binge watching the 1998 HBO Series "From the Earth To The
Moon" and besides being amused over seeing a very young Tom Hanks, I
enjoyed most of it. Not that impressed with the story angle taken for the
episode about Apollo 13, focusing on the media rather than the mission
itself. But hey, Hanks had done the movie already (1995). The rest were
good. I esp. enjoyed the episode dealing with Apollo 15.

Honestly, I think the Apollo 13 episode is grossly underrated. Yes, in some
ways it's "boring" and not very geeky, but I think it really illustrates a
point of view most aren't familiar with.

That said Apollo 15 is definitely in my top 3 probably.
I think the hardest to enjoy, but I still do is Apollo 17, it's simply so
different. But, still enjoyable.


In any case in the episode devoted to the Lunar Module (LM, aka Lunar
Excursion Module - LEM) goes through in some detail all the design
decisions made that evolved the Apollo lander. It was very interesting to
watch. As always I'm sure there are better books out there too.

Yeah, Spider is often rated the best episode, for many reasons, also in my
top 3.


I like how it was shed, shed, shed. From circular base for the Decent
Module to the adapted octagonal design, from the removal of the seats which
changed the view ports (or vice versa), removal of the forward docking
adapter, meaning the LM crew could no longer directly observe or mate for
docking with the Command Module (CM). To the thinning of the walls of the
LM to make it as light as possible.

Also, a great example of "show/don't tell" that I think they did well.


Then to have the rover available in later missions. Etc. I had forgotten
that when the TV camera moved from stationary to the rover, it took longer
to get video from the moon, but man when it came in, it was awesome! We had
a relatively new color TV and it was just incredible to see those live
pictures on the moon! I know most people had tuned out but as a kid I was a
space nut. I just couldn't believe at the time people were not watch this!
At least CBS was carrying most of it, the other networks not so much!
Remember, no NASA TV in those days! Got to watch Apollo 17 taking off from
the moon as well! An incredible act of remote camera operation given the
delays involved. The series made that clear enough!

Any thoughts on if you believe any of these follow-on LM ideas will come to
fruition under Artemis?


The ones from that book, no, I don't think so.

I've just finished downloading the doc. Haven't looked at it yet.

Dave

There's a lot. I actually got sort of bored flipping through it. I should go
back to it.


--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net
IT Disaster Response -
https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Resp...dp/1484221834/

On Monday, June 22, 2020 at 8:00:22 PM UTC+2, Alain Fournier wrote:
On Jun/22/2020 at 02:58, wrote :

Now if the local telecomm provider (read: government enforced monopoly) would just do their jobs and fix our landline....

???

I'm curious here. Where are you hailing from? Which country imposes such
horrible hardship on its citizens?

South Africa, a semi-government owned company called TELKOM has the monopoly on all cable based telecomms. There was another company whose name escapes me right now but they went belly up when ESKOM's problems started a decade ago. In 1996 the new(ish) government promised to dismantle this legacy of apartheid ASAP and usher in a new era of prosperity. I guess they figured out that seeing as the Cabinet gets to (indirectly) appoint the leadership of state-owned companies that keeping TELKOM was a good way to keep friends and supports gainfully employed.

We have a similar situation with ESKOM, the electricity provider monopoly, who has major problems keeping the lights on. Their cabinet appointed leadership can't figure out why 40-year old power stations keep breaking down, or why coal suppliers refuse to supply coal when they haven't been paid in three months, and whose leadership gets hysterical when they can't figure out WHY the company has a 25% decline in income during a period when the parts of the country that actually pay for their electricity were being turned off for 25% of the time. Oh and the new power station (was supposed to be the biggest, most efficient, least polluting coal burning power station in the Southern Hemisphere) is 10 X over budget, 10 years later, and all work done so far has been found to be defective, or sub-standard. Estimates are that it will be 20 X over budget and won't be fully operation before 2040.

We also had a government owned iron and steel monopoly, ISKOR, which except for some minor low volume specialist metallurgy has gone the way of the dinosaurs. The state-owned national airline SAA hasn't paid its staff in 3 months, and before that they weren't on full pay anyway. It has just received another billion dollar rescue package. We have a government owned monopoly on rail transport, and they can't even get the trains to run on time, or prevent the passenger trains from being torched in arson attacks. Our ports are run another monopoly which makes getting your good through customs an exercise in frustration.

And yes, 2G is scheduled to go away here soon too. The rights to those wave lengths of that transmission space have already been sold. The wireless operators don't really mind, because that means they get to sell everyone who wants to stay connected a 4G or LTE device.



Alain Fournier


Sorry for the long winded reply. An update on my landline connection. The connection is restored but I still can't use it because the modem's software can't reset the password used by the last device. I got this far by waiting patiently on the phone for just over 75 minutes yesterday.

Be grateful for what you have over in the real world.

Regards
Frank

On 2020-06-25 3:41 AM, wrote:

Sorry for the long winded reply. An update on my landline connection. The connection is restored but I still can't use it because the modem's software can't reset the password used by the last device. I got this far by waiting patiently on the phone for just over 75 minutes yesterday.

Be grateful for what you have over in the real world.

Regards
Frank


Hang in there, Starlink will be up and operational soon. Hopefully by
next year. Of course if it requires a government "license" to operate
your end's pizza box antenna/transceiver, well, who knows how long that
could take? And also, as far as I know, I won't work without electricity
either.

Dave