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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
With NASA budgets for manned space flight not looking too rosy these
days, since the Columbia disaster, and any future direction on whether to continue the ailing Shuttle program for decades more or to invest in a whole new ball game for future orbital transfers - all looking somewhat patchy, I have a few simple (but fanciful) thoughts that I would like to share with you all! Considering that the ISS in its final guise post-completion will be substantially below what I would have liked to see with a 21st century orbital facility, I reckon we should (or NASA should) make a future aim towards the Moon. I was always under the impression that the ISS would be an advanced facility for testing such things as artificail gravity with rotating modules, new and innovative interplanetary propulsion technologies, it would act as an orbital foot hold for building manned Mars rockets, provide a half way house for future journeys to the Moon, etc. Clearly these things are not going to happen and with the ISS mass vs its orbital altitude of just 400-km, there is no further room to expand the Station within dynamical constraints. Even as it stands, the ISS orbit is prone to rapid decay and without periodic re-boosts from the Soyuz and Shuttle, there is risk of re-entry! Back to the Moon idea. Suppose we could dis-assemble the ISS piece by piece and fire each bit of hardware on low cost, fuel efficient, transfers to a fixed location on the near side of the Moon ready for future re-assembly into a Moon base? The Earth-Moon transfer can be low cost, as much of the hard work of lifting massive solar panels, radiators, truss segments, service modules, etc into LEO has already been done and they are expensive and vital components. A delta-V increment impulse from an ISS orbital velocity of 7.7 km/s to an Earth-Moon transfer escape of circa 11 km/s should be easy. Assuming we can manage this first phase, it should then be a new motivation for the international participants in the ISS program to aim for a lunar base. Funding support from countries like Japan, India and even China (up and coming space nations) may be more forthcoming with this idea once they know we have a fixed location in mind. I reckon this idea will gain psychological acceptance also. Everyone looks up at the night sky and dreams of going to the Moon, its the nearest object of any size to resemble a *world* as opposed to near Earth *space*. So if you're American (I'm not) then lobby the US government to send up all Shuttle missions from this day forth with this idea in mind! If we're lucky, then by 2010 we could have the first Saturn 5s and Proton's launching men to the Moon once again, this time to build a Moon base for all eternity. Then we will have made REAL progress in space! Abdul Ahad http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent/ |
#2
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
What we REALLY need is a low cost way to orbit! Get that and everything else becomes more mangeable |
#3
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
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#4
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
There are too many problems for your idea ot be realistic in a
decade's time frame. How do you explauin to russia, japa, europe and other partners that their property/terretorila borders are being stuffed around? Why do you want to send a spacestation from where it is reachable to where it might be reachable by only one rightful owner? It is cheaper to do microgravity research closer to home. Perhaps you dont want to do that, but many modules and partners joined precisly to do microgravity research. Why do you want to move a station that is thermaaly, in terms of power, and for radiation purposes designed to be close to earth to something it not is designed for? Does it disturb your nightsky? (just kidding). You see there are problems with this approach. I once had a similar thought. Feel free to check out: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...ogle.com#link1 Sincerly Bjørn Ove |
#6
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
(Abdul Ahad) wrote in
om: (B. Isaksen) wrote in message om... ...Perhaps you dont want to do that, but many modules and partners joined precisly to do microgravity research... We've been doing 'microgravity' research since the days of Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, Salyut, Shuttle, Mir and now the ISS itself with no less than 8 Expedition crews to date. Total microgravity research for 30 years. Do we need any more? Yes. We still don't have effective countermeasures for a crew to travel to Mars, for example, and be able to function effectively in Martian gravity immediately. ...move a station that is thermaaly, in terms of power, and for radiation purposes designed to be close to earth to something it not is designed for?... The Lunar surface will be an even better environment for durability of the ISS components, with more gravity, a stable solid floor underneath, and not to mention 50% to 75% radiation shielding by the Moon itself. That's fine once you've got them there, but the modules definitely aren't designed to survive the journey. Even in LEO, the station gets into thermal trouble if it's away from its design attitudes for more than a few hours. You'd need some pretty elaborate thermal control for the modules to survive a several-days' trip to the moon. The modules will also need a minimum "keep-alive" level of electrical power. The bottom line is that you can't just lob the modules at the moon; you will need to attach a rather elaborate and expensive support structure to them once you've detached them from the ISS solar arrays and radiators. Landing the modules will also be non-trivial. Compare an Apollo LM ascent stage to a typical ISS module, and that will give you an idea of the size descent stage you'll need to soft-land them on the moon. Actually, you'll need more than that, since the Apollo LM descent stage was designed to land from lunar orbit. So you'll either need an additional LOI stage, like the Apollo SM, or a larger descent stage that can do a direct descent from a translunar trajectory without having to enter lunar orbit first. Bottom line is, this idea isn't impossible, but it isn't terribly smart, either. It would be much cheaper to custom-build an inflatable Transhab- like lunar habitat and send that to the moon, rather than go to the trouble of adapting ISS modules to do something they weren't designed to do. -- JRF Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail, check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and think one step ahead of IBM. |
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
"Jorge R. Frank" wrote in message ...
(Abdul Ahad) wrote in om: (B. Isaksen) wrote in message om... ...Perhaps you dont want to do that, but many modules and partners joined precisly to do microgravity research... We've been doing 'microgravity' research since the days of Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, Salyut, Shuttle, Mir and now the ISS itself with no less than 8 Expedition crews to date. Total microgravity research for 30 years. Do we need any more? Yes. We still don't have effective countermeasures for a crew to travel to Mars, for example, and be able to function effectively in Martian gravity immediately. ...move a station that is thermaaly, in terms of power, and for radiation purposes designed to be close to earth to something it not is designed for?... The Lunar surface will be an even better environment for durability of the ISS components, with more gravity, a stable solid floor underneath, and not to mention 50% to 75% radiation shielding by the Moon itself. Bottom line is, this idea isn't impossible, but it isn't terribly smart, either. It would be much cheaper to custom-build an inflatable Transhab- like lunar habitat and send that to the moon, rather than go to the trouble of adapting ISS modules to do something they weren't designed to do. I guess the ultimate question is if you're faced with the decision of either abandoning the Station completely and de-orbiting it to a safe destruction on re-entry (like the Russian Mir back in 2001) or adapting the modules for future use in a Moon base...which of the two options would be "smarter"? With the current review and debate on the future direction for manned Spaceflight being undertaken by the Bush administration, the above question must be ultimately addressed. In any decisions about whether to continue the Shuttle program or a new orbital space plane (OSP) concept for the next 20-30 years (just to support Earth orbit-confined 'microgravity' research via the ISS) or set more distant and bigger goals for achieveing permanent human presence on the Moon or Mars, the ISS's future will play an integral part in such decisions. Funding of long range projects like permanent Moon bases and crewed Mars missions will call for cut backs in funding ISS operations. Adapting the ISS modules for use in a future Moon base on the other hand seems logically a sounder option, in my view. |
#8
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
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#9
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
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#10
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
Dale wrote in message . ..
On 12 Nov 2003 01:57:22 -0800, (Abdul Ahad) wrote: Funding of long range projects like permanent Moon bases and crewed Mars missions will call for cut backs in funding ISS operations. Why do you assume that? In the near-term, the major money needed to fund a Moon base or a Mars mission is unlikely to arrive. By the time it does, if ever, ISS will probably be near the end of its useful life anyway. Adapting the ISS modules for use in a future Moon base on the other hand seems logically a sounder option, in my view. But they weren't designed to be a moon base. Why divert/waste money on doing that, rather than just using them for what they were intended for, then developing an actual moon base from the start, should the funding ever become available? If ISS is a bad thing now, why throw good money after bad trying to turn it into something it was never meant to be, and would probably fail miserably at? Dale I did say the idea was rather 'fanciful'... so its interesting to hear some counter views. But ultimately, if I had the choice of binning the ISS or blasting it to the Moonm I know exactly which one I would choose. 450 metric tonnes of good qaulity hardware, already ferried somewhere in the order of 80% of the way from Earth surface to the Moon (measured in terms of launch effort and costs)... just to be abandoned in the end, sounds a bit wasteful. |
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