Lunar Transport System Components

Let's talk simple and robust.
The earth-to-moon ship should be a cycling orbit hotel ship with a cargo
hold included. That way the ship can make some big revenue with lunar tourists
who may not even want to descend to Luna.
The ship will be in orbit and thus will save on fuel and can be made from a
few ET's.
Then two "pickup trucks" will be required; one to shuttle to the hotel when
it's near earth and another shuttle to and from the moon.
Simple and robust and fairly cheap.
^
//^\\
~~~ near space elevator ~~~~
~~~members.aol.com/beanstalkr/~~~

(ed kyle) wrote in message . com...

The Air Force is mostly paying to keep the rocket factories and
launch sites operational. The total cost isn't going to vary
much with the number of launches, at least for the existing
low flight rate, because the same number of people will be
employed regardless. The contractors will break out the
man-hours and materials for each rocket, of course, and bill
more for the bigger rockets.

Which means that if NASA aggressively put out a 2-3 year launch
schedule to tender, forcing Boeing and LM to bid on a marginal cost
basis, they could get a really good deal - probably about $100 million
for Delta IV heavy.

To do this though, NASA would have to upset the cosy duopoly and open
out the bidding - at least to Arianne and perhaps also to the
Russians.

Not much chance of that, because NASA's role is not to promote America
in Space, but to support large American companies with jobs in
politically sensitive areas.

Okay, what are they, and why?

Mike