What makes an ideal Moon base?

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
For almost any purpose except Earth observation or tourism -- neither of
which was a priority for ISS -- the right place for a LEO space station is
an equatorial orbit. The scenery is kind of boring, but the launchers are
at their best, the launch windows are wider and more frequent, and the
radiation environment is rather more benign (because an equatorial orbit
does not pass through the South Atlantic Anomaly).

With the caveat that the launchers are at their best only if they are based
on the equator or am I missing something?

What would be the ideal altitude? Is there an obvious sweet spot or is it
just a matter of making trade-offs between drag and altitude?

David Pugh wrote:
"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
For almost any purpose except Earth observation or tourism --
neither of
which was a priority for ISS -- the right place for a LEO space
station is
an equatorial orbit. The scenery is kind of boring, but the
launchers are
at their best, the launch windows are wider and more frequent, and
the
radiation environment is rather more benign (because an equatorial
orbit
does not pass through the South Atlantic Anomaly).

With the caveat that the launchers are at their best only if they are
based
on the equator or am I missing something?

What would be the ideal altitude? Is there an obvious sweet spot or
is it
just a matter of making trade-offs between drag and altitude?

The killer app' for a space station is zero-g research, so we only need
it to be high enough to avoid drag. The shuttle has a pretty limited
altitude. But if we were to return to ferrying crews with small, cheap
disposable(or partially disposable) ships, an ideal altitude could be
had by a future station. That way, when there are long gaps in funding,
we don't have to worry about it dropping out of orbit. Above that would
be an unnecesary loss of payload capacity to the component deliveries
and the ferries.

-Mark Martin

In article ,
David Pugh wrote:
For almost any purpose except Earth observation or tourism -- neither of
which was a priority for ISS -- the right place for a LEO space station is
an equatorial orbit. The scenery is kind of boring, but the launchers are
at their best...

With the caveat that the launchers are at their best only if they are based
on the equator or am I missing something?

Correct. To reach an equatorial LEO at any reasonable cost, the launch
sites must be on or quite near the equator.

What would be the ideal altitude? Is there an obvious sweet spot or is it
just a matter of making trade-offs between drag and altitude?

There's no obvious winning altitude. The lower you go, the more fuel you
spend fighting air drag, and (other things being equal) the more often you
need drag-makeup burns. Going higher reduces launcher payload and also
slightly increases radiation dose.

In practice, it would depend somewhat on what your station is doing. An
orbital assembly base for deep-space missions might opt to fly a bit lower
for the greater launcher payloads. A microgravity physical-sciences lab
would want to go higher, for longer periods of cleaner microgravity. A
free-fall biology lab would probably stay low to minimize radiation, since
it's not fussy about the quality of the microgravity.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

wrote:

The killer app' for a space station is zero-g research,

No it isn't. There's little real demand for zero-g research.

Paul

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 19:16:26 -0600, "Paul F. Dietz"
wrote:

There's little real demand for zero-g research.

....Partially because it's expensive to get to and set up the
experiments. Were it cheaper, the lab rats would be beating a path to
the cages.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Paul F. Dietz wrote:
wrote:

The killer app' for a space station is zero-g research,

No it isn't. There's little real demand for zero-g research.

I agree. Or at least, I agree that there's little need for high cost
free-fall experiments. What I meant was, in principle, zero-g is the
one thing that a space station can provide in abundance.

-Mark Martin

wrote:

:Paul F. Dietz wrote:
: wrote:
:
: The killer app' for a space station is zero-g research,
:
: No it isn't. There's little real demand for zero-g research.
:
:I agree. Or at least, I agree that there's little need for high cost
:free-fall experiments. What I meant was, in principle, zero-g is the
ne thing that a space station can provide in abundance.

Actually, I gather that it turns out that a manned station is not such
a great environment for this. All those folks moving about and
bumping into things, you know.

If you have to keep it on a separate platform, why not just have that
platform instead and dispense with the space station entirely?

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
:I agree. Or at least, I agree that there's little need for high cost
:free-fall experiments. What I meant was, in principle, zero-g is the
ne thing that a space station can provide in abundance.

Actually, I gather that it turns out that a manned station is not such
a great environment for this. All those folks moving about and
bumping into things, you know.

Also fixing things and tweaking the experiments until they work. (The
percentage of microgravity experiments that work as planned the first time
they are flown, without human intervention, is dismally low.) There is
much to be said for putting initial debugging and experimentation on a
manned station, although *later* runs may well need to be on a separate
platform.

If you have to keep it on a separate platform, why not just have that
platform instead and dispense with the space station entirely?

Because to work well, that platform needs to be visited fairly frequently
to fix things, make adjustments, and change out experiments. Much of
microgravity research is still in the exploratory basic-science stage,
trying to sort out what works and what doesn't and what's important and
what's not. In that stage of things, *turnaround time*, from idea or
design revision to results, is vastly more important than highly optimized
experimental environments.

Fast turnaround time ideally does involve stuff going up from Earth and
coming back down. But that's an impossible dream with current launch
systems. Having stuff going back and forth between an unmanned platform
and maintenance/modification facilities on a manned station is not as
good, but would be a lot better than the current situation.

One reason why interest in microgravity science seems so modest is that
many would-be experimenters have given up on it because of the impossibly
long lead times. You just can't do realistic research projects when the
turnaround time exceeds the duration of the typical research grant or the
nominal length of a PhD program. There *are* pharmaceutical companies
seriously interested in doing crystal growing in space, but they can't
live with the turnaround times of ISS.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...

One reason why interest in microgravity science seems so modest is that
many would-be experimenters have given up on it because of the impossibly
long lead times. You just can't do realistic research projects when the
turnaround time exceeds the duration of the typical research grant or the
nominal length of a PhD program. There *are* pharmaceutical companies
seriously interested in doing crystal growing in space, but they can't
live with the turnaround times of ISS.

If this is true, then someone may yet make a buck off of 0-G processing,
provided they can provide a space station/platform with a shorter turnaround
time. I'll have to admit I'd pretty much given up any hope in this area.
Was I premature?

But then I guess you're talking more about science than profitable
activities. Can anyone say at this point how much prospect there is for the
former leading into the latter?

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make
much sense, but we do like pizza.

In article ,
Mike Combs wrote:
If this is true, then someone may yet make a buck off of 0-G processing,
provided they can provide a space station/platform with a shorter turnaround
time. I'll have to admit I'd pretty much given up any hope in this area.
Was I premature?

I think so... with the caveat that we don't have a good idea *how big*
that buck is.

But then I guess you're talking more about science than profitable
activities. Can anyone say at this point how much prospect there is for the
former leading into the latter?

The two don't have to be inconsistent; there are many profitable
businesses selling equipment and services to researchers(*). No question,
though, that it's better all around if the people you're serving are also
making money and spawning businesses. Research support is a modest market
with limited growth potential -- useful but not immensely lucrative. If
you want cash in buckets, you want to be supporting something that's
making investors buckets of cash.

(Yes, I did say "supporting". You want to sell bluejeans to the miners,
not stake a mining claim of your own. Don't forget the "NO CREDIT" sign
in the window! A lot of the miners are going to bet the farm on dry holes
and go bankrupt. But if you're selling something they want meanwhile, and
getting paid in cash, their bankruptcy rate is not *your* problem.)

As for the chances that somebody will strike gold in microgravity...
basically, they're totally unknown. As I mentioned, microgravity
processing is still in the early exploratory stages, and nobody has any
clear idea of whether there's anything valuable there to be found, or
where it might be hiding. The one thing that's almost certain is that
it will be a surprise, not something that people have been predicting
all along. Columbus did not expect to find potatoes.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |