NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture

"Ray" wrote:

We humans are explorers. This is normal for us.

As a race? Not really. The bulk of the race is very solidly
stay-at-home, take-no-risk, eat-only-what-grandpa-ate.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

dasun wrote:
Ever hear of exploration geologists? Mining companies set up camp in
the middle of somewhere - like Timbuktu - and the geologists move in to
map the local geology.

No ****, dasun. The point, which whizzed completely over your
head, is that in some situations geologists are *not* sent
in, because it would be far too expensive to do so. Even
on Earth they use remote techniques when it's sufficiently
cheaper.

They use remote techniques because it's more reasonable to do so -
digging a shaft wide enough for a geologist yet deep enough to reach
oil is virtually an impossibility, and remote methods return enough
data to be useful.

OTOH - anywhere it is reasonable to put a set of eyes and hands in
situ, they do so. (Even where it's only semi reasonable - something
like half of Alvin's dives have been geologic in nature.)

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Michael Rhino" wrote:

They'd each need a "departure stage" if it were done that way.

Is there a problem with two departure stages? If they join together, they
are twice as heavy, so you need twice the fuel to get them there.

For a given weight at TLI, you'll need essentially the same amount of
fuel for the same weight - it doesn't matter if the weight is in two
packages (each having half the payload and half the TLI fuel) or a
single stack. Thus splitting the TLI stage in two doesn't save fuel
(which is cheap anyhow), and increases costs and failure modes.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Joe Strout wrote:

(Ironic that Russia now has a
far more capitalist -- and cost-effective -- space program than we do.)

A while back I posted a question about the costs -- as distinct from
the prices -- of Russian/Ukrainian launchers, and got no substantive
responses.

In the interim I've posed the same question to John Logsdon, Roger
Launius, Henry Hertzberg, et al., and got variations on one response:
that the prices are all there *is* -- we have no idea of the costs,
and quite possibly the Russians themselves couldn't give a meaningful
answer for full rather than marginal costs.

So I'll go along with "more capitalist," but it's not clear that "more
cost-effective" means anything in this context.

"S. Wand" wrote:

I'm sure it's too much money for NASA to
have another vehicle - but hopefully they'd consider private industry at
some point for the LEO market.

"At some point"... say, when private industry has actually
demonstrated the ability to reach LEO?

I know -- that's SO unfair...

dasun wrote:

that people add significant value to the exploration
processes, which is why on Earth exploration geology is performed in
conjunction with remote sensing.

They are used on Earth because on Earth people are *really cheap*.

Mining companies would never solely
rely on remote sensing to decide to mine an area.

If there's an area of land on Earth were geologists
can't economically be sent to the surface, then mining companies
will not employ just remote sensing because the area won't
be economical to mine at all.

This application of this observation to the moon should be obvious.
Or are you going to tell me about all the mining companies just
raring to go to open lunar mines?

Paul

Derek Lyons wrote:

They use remote techniques because it's more reasonable to do so -
digging a shaft wide enough for a geologist yet deep enough to reach
oil is virtually an impossibility, and remote methods return enough
data to be useful.

Reasonable == economical.

Paul

"S. Wand" wrote in message
...
I think I read that CEV would be 5.5m across the base of the heat shield,
compared to 3.9m for Apollo. I haven't seen any figures on internal
volume
yet. I'd guess it'd be a bit smaller per person than the shuttle.

I think a large CEV is fine for the lunar missions - but for ISS rendevous
a
Soyuz-class vehicle is sufficient. I'm sure it's too much money for NASA
to
have another vehicle - but hopefully they'd consider private industry at
some point for the LEO market. Wishful thinking...

The capsule appears to be about 18-20 m3 and mass about 9,000 kg.

With appropriate amounts of fuel about 18 mt to ISS, 15mt without escape
system (unmanned).

A little heavy but not as bad as I feared.

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Ray" wrote:

We humans are explorers. This is normal for us.

As a race? Not really. The bulk of the race is very solidly
stay-at-home, take-no-risk, eat-only-what-grandpa-ate.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Not true. If that were true, our primitive predecessors would not
have gotten out of Africa. We humans might have become that way over that
last 200 years, but we are explorers by heart, and we need to be inspired
and shown the way.
I think its pathetic how people are against human space exploration. Too
much of this attitude and we will become extinct someday. Another problem
is that people are cheap with tax money. They don't want it wasted, so give
it back in a tax break and watch how they spend it important things like
alcohol, tobacco, drugs and gambling.

Ray

Ray wrote:

Not true. If that were true, our primitive predecessors would not
have gotten out of Africa. We humans might have become that way over that
last 200 years, but we are explorers by heart, and we need to be inspired
and shown the way.

This is just bull****. The vast majority of humans are not explorers.
They have been born, lived, and died in small geographical areas -- that's
why human racial diversity still exists, after all.

Long distance exploration has been a desperate, dangerous, last-resort
behavior, undertaken by fringe elements or individuals who would otherwise
have been failures. And these elements typically haven't needed megafunding
from megagovernment to do this exploration, so the application to the
current situation in space is tenuous at best.

I think its pathetic how people are against human space exploration.

I think the transparently foolish arguments used to justify space
exploration are what is truly pathetic.

Paul