FWD: Lockheed Martin Lunar Landers concepts revealed

Alex Terrell wrote:



Concept 1 looks pretty neat.

- Leaves most of the mass behind as something usable
- Crew near to the ground
- Wheels handy for base manouvering



This concept looks like it was inspired by two past moonship designs-
the Apollo direct ascent version that landed on its belly rather than
vertically, and the Soviet LK lander that used a "crasher stage" to get
it out of lunar orbit and do most of the braking of its horizontal
velocity so that it just had to pretty much descend vertically under its
motors and could carry far less fuel than a LM.
There's also some of this in it:
http://www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/SpaceExp/l_phnx1.jpg
That's from he http://www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/Station/Slides/sld051p.htm
It's an interesting idea, but if built I doubt it's going to have
multiple 3' diameter windows on the front from a weight standpoint alone.

Pat

Alex Terrell wrote:


- Do walls and bulkheads impede the flow of fuel?
- Can you make useful objects survive cryogenic temperatures? (broken
O-ring on the toilet coupling etc)?
- are there poisonous residues?
- Can an airlock be easily built in?


I'd just let the thing land, and then unbolt hatches or cut holes in the
tanks to attach airlocks to- they could then be pressurized, and you
could stick whatever you wanted in them- the whole thing would owe a lot
to the wet Skylab design.
Since all they would have in them is LOX and LH2, a couple of weeks in
the lunar sun should safely boil off any residual propellants, although
I think it would be smart to salvage at least as much of the O2 as
possible for use at the base.
In fact if you salvage both propellants, you can run fuel cells with them.

Quite a few of these question have been asked of shuttle external
tanks.



With good reason- it's a waste to simply let those things burn up in the
atmosphere.

Pat

Reed wrote:

Not to mention finally determining that the X-33 would have succeeded if
only they'd thought to build the conformal fuel tanks out of SheetRock(R)
instead of composites.



Lockheed got really sneaky about how they pitched their proposal for
that, hinting that they could make it work because they had worked on
something classified that used the same technology...so everyone jumped
to the conclusion they meant the Aurora, and knew how to build composite
LH2 tanks.
What they probably really meant was the 60's Star Clipper design with
its classified linear plug-nozzle engines...but Lockheed wasn't about to
tell anyone that.
The debacle that followed became one of the major nails in Dan Goldin's
coffin.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
Alex Terrell wrote:
I'd just let the thing land, and then unbolt hatches or cut holes in the
tanks to attach airlocks to- they could then be pressurized, and you
could stick whatever you wanted in them- the whole thing would owe a lot
to the wet Skylab design.

It seems like a simple hatch into each tank, installed before flight,
makes the most sense. Astronauts would bring various hatches with them
for refits. The LM design #1 uses it's service stage as a powerplant on
the surface and is intended to be towed into position. As a base grows,
some units would stay power plants, but there will be strong pressure
for more pressurized volume.

Since all they would have in them is LOX and LH2, a couple of weeks in
the lunar sun should safely boil off any residual propellants, although
I think it would be smart to salvage at least as much of the O2 as
possible for use at the base.
In fact if you salvage both propellants, you can run fuel cells with them.

Quite a few of these question have been asked of shuttle external
tanks.
With good reason- it's a waste to simply let those things burn up in the
atmosphere.

Agreed. Wrecking the descent stage, the LM design #2 wastes
significant, useful materiel. They are pitching it as an excursion
rover/lander or for crew exchange. I think it more useful for dedicated
cargo delivery to base. Whatever use, the drop stage seems wasteful.

And on the landing of a "3 story building". LM's #3 is a fully reusable
Lunar Orbit-Surface crew exchange vehicle. It's exactly what many of us
have been calling for for years.

These designs seem to take a lot of the past mistakes and improvements.
This is a system that seems achievable and would seem to be geared
toward creating a transport system instead of series of one-shot
missions.

Josh

Send a Note to the Cosmos!
www.PostcardsToSpace.com

Josh wrote:

And on the landing of a "3 story building". LM's #3 is a fully reusable
Lunar Orbit-Surface crew exchange vehicle. It's exactly what many of us
have been calling for for years.



Given the Moon's low gravity and no need to drag a heat shield along,
that should be a very doable concept.
The problem is propellant supply; to operate these you've either got to
find lunar ice and disassociate it into oxygen and hydrogen, or bring it
all the way from Earth to lunar orbit- and that would be very expensive.
If that's the case you might be wiser to use a fairly simple descent
stage that can be used as some sort of structure after landing and a
lower mass ascent stage that gets new fully-fueled descent stages sent
out for attachment to it from Earth as needed.

Pat

Brian Thorn wrote:
On Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:44:21 -0500, OM
wrote:

...And now we have Dick Tracy's Space Coupe:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=4810+

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/for...chmentid=12679

...I mean, seriously? Did Lockmart hire Diet Smith to design this
thing? It even has wheels!

Holy mother of...


I wonder what this thing will be named? If the program is called
"Constellation" and the command ship is "Orion", I nominate "Aquila"
(The Eagle, honoring Apollo 11).

Too bad they named the launchers Ares instead of Aries. NASA is
ramming the thing down taxpayers' throats afterall... :-)


Good lord that concept looks like the Moon Mobiles from Gerry
Anderson's UFO!

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/other/md_moonmobile.htm

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPrevie....cfm/ID/178750

Talk about life imitating art, even if unintentionally...
-Mike

wrote:


Good lord that concept looks like the Moon Mobiles from Gerry
Anderson's UFO!

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/other/md_moonmobile.htm

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPrevie....cfm/ID/178750



Wow! The Eagle's granddad! :-)

Pat

On Tue, 19 Sep 2006 17:32:27 -0500, Pat Flannery wrote
(in article ):



wrote:


Good lord that concept looks like the Moon Mobiles from Gerry
Anderson's UFO!

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/other/md_moonmobile.htm

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPrevie....cfm/ID/178750



Wow! The Eagle's granddad! :-)

Pat

I had that same thought!

--
Herb Schaltegger
"You can run on for a long time . . . sooner or later, God'll cut you
down." - Johnny Cash
http://www.angryherb.net

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Josh wrote:

And on the landing of a "3 story building". LM's #3 is a fully reusable
Lunar Orbit-Surface crew exchange vehicle. It's exactly what many of us
have been calling for for years.


Given the Moon's low gravity and no need to drag a heat shield along, that
should be a very doable concept.
The problem is propellant supply; to operate these you've either got to
find lunar ice and disassociate it into oxygen and hydrogen, or bring it
all the way from Earth to lunar orbit- and that would be very expensive.

It should still be cheaper than throwing away the lander after every
mission. The problem is that a reusable lander would have higher
development costs than an expendable lander.

If that's the case you might be wiser to use a fairly simple descent stage
that can be used as some sort of structure after landing and a lower mass
ascent stage that gets new fully-fueled descent stages sent out for
attachment to it from Earth as needed.

Partial reusability may not be a terrible way to go, but I'd guess it would
be harder in the long run since you'd likely be stuck with an expendable
lower stage for the duration of the program, even if reusing the upper stage
turns out to be completely successful.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

I just realised that concept 1 is probably less than 5 - 5.5 m in
diameter and less than 20m long. That means it could be launched in an
EELV or a Falcon 9.

That could mean NASA still has a moon program if they realise soon that
Ares doesn't work.