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#11
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
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#12
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
"Jorge R. Frank" wrote in message ...
(Abdul Ahad) wrote in om: 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)... Wrong. It's not 80% there, in terms of costs. just to be abandoned in the end, sounds a bit wasteful. I'll repeat my point, in stronger terms: it will be cheaper to custom-build an inflatable lunar habitat, with the same habitable volume and capability as ISS, than it would be to send ISS to the moon. It would be wasteful to send ISS to the moon, and lose the capabilities of ISS in LEO, rather than put an inflatable on the moon and leave ISS where it is. How about calling an on-orbit auction for ISS parts when it nears end of useful life? I'm sure the Chinese could save themselves a fortune if they could *buy* on orbit components. They would probably have more imagination and foresight to fulfill my ambitions by conquering the Moon with a makeshift base of some kind using ISS spare parts! The ISS is still only partly complete and if the ENGINEERS behind the program had an ounce of imagination, its still not too late to send up remaining pieces with a *future* lunar goal of some kind in mind. One question: What exactly do you mean by an inflatable habitat? Is this another one of those millions of hypothetical concepts that's floating around in people's heads? I read so much 'intellectual masturbation' (IM) on these groups, its incredible. I am a realist. The ISS is a real bank of orbiting hardware already functioning as an effective on-orbit 'moon base'. The idea of dismantling, adapating, then launching to the Moon from a higher platform in LEO is a realistic, lower cost concept than to start all over again from the ground. You hold your views and I'll hold mine. A win-win situation. cheers. Abdul Ahad http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent "The AA Institute of Space Science & Technology is a strong proponent of Moon bases and manned Mars missions." |
#13
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
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#14
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
Why not take the gazillion dollars this would require and fully fund ISS to do what it was intended to do, Please tell me just WHAT was that? |
#15
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
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#16
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
Dale wrote:
We could boost the Queen Mary into LEO- that doesn't mean it's then "80%" on its way to becoming a useful Moon base. But when you combine the ambience of Sir Winston's with all the ghost stories, the Lunar tourists are sure going to be well taken care of! (Actually, I don't really know what the ambience of Sir Winston's is...my budget only ran to the Promenade Deck restaurant) Who would the City of Long Beach pick to run the concessions? Would the current operator get a preferred bid, or would it be wide open again? /dps |
#17
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
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#18
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
"Jorge R. Frank" wrote in message ...
(Abdul Ahad) wrote in om: You have a car, and you want a boat. You think that just because you already own the car, and because cars and boats are both forms of transportation, that it would be a good idea to modify your car into a boat. While I agree that this is not impossible, I think you should just go out and buy a boat. I think this is a very crude example. You know full well, you can't simply *buy* off the shelf Moon bases like that! While the TransHab idea sounds good in theory, you would be looking at long timelines for development and testing, at least a decade long program with mega financial, political and engineering hurdles, launch delays and possible disasters (Columbia), etc. along the way. Also, I don't see the full support structure for this Transhab idea. Where will the power come from and how will the thermal balance be achieved? Where are the solar panels and radiators? I take it these would be separate non-inflatable items of much heavier weight which will still require multiple missions for launch from the ground, Earth-Moon transfer, soft landing and re-assembly at the other end. There would also be need for a major interim stage where the Transhab and all of its auxilliary components will need extensive testing & evaluation in LEO, prior to firing to the Moon. Add all of this up and weigh against my original idea (I know this will have to be an 'IM' exercise as we don't have all the facts) and then come back and tell me what the score is. The ISS is a ready functioning unit in space... alive today, here and now, with decades of engineering refinements already factored into it. Far simpler job of dismantling, adapting (shileding critical components for Van Allen radiation), propulsion attachement and firing on un-manned transfers to the Moon. For Earth-Moon propulsion, hi-thrust unmanned transfer boosters could be taken up (poss. several at a time on the Shuttle?) each equipped with its own guidance systems and descent rockets perhaps similar to the ones used in the 1960's US Surveyor program. (The Surveyor landers did not go into lunar orbit, they came straight in from the E-M transfer and fired retro rockets for easy soft landing, all tried and tested stuff.) Once all the pieces are on the Moon's surface, then, perhaps a few years later, the human crews arrive at the soon to be Lunar base and start the re-assembly process. I am not proposing the initial 'ISS Moon Base' will be in any way a perfect 'habitat', but it will give us that all important FIRST foothold on the Moon for onward expansion of the infrastructure. Thereafter, several Transhabs could be incrementally added on top of the ISS Base as part of the progressive development. Abdul Ahad http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent "The AA Institute of Space Science & Technology is a strong proponent of Moon bases and manned Mars missions." |
#20
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Moon base or ISS? I say take your pick
(Abdul Ahad) wrote in
om: "Jorge R. Frank" wrote in message ... (Abdul Ahad) wrote in om: You have a car, and you want a boat. You think that just because you already own the car, and because cars and boats are both forms of transportation, that it would be a good idea to modify your car into a boat. While I agree that this is not impossible, I think you should just go out and buy a boat. I think this is a very crude example. You know full well, you can't simply *buy* off the shelf Moon bases like that! The point stands. The boat is designed to be a boat; the car is not. It will be easier and cheaper to build a boat from scratch than to modify a car into a boat. While the TransHab idea sounds good in theory, you would be looking at long timelines for development and testing, at least a decade long program with mega financial, political and engineering hurdles, launch delays and possible disasters (Columbia), etc. along the way. You'll need all that to take ISS to the moon. The TLI stage will need to be a spacecraft in its own right, and probably considerably more elaborate than the one needed for Transhab. You'll need to build a lot more of them, too - have you actually *counted* how many modules there are on ISS? Have you considered that *no* existing launcher is powerful enough to launch a TLI stage *and* a lunar descent stage for an ISS module in a single launch? In short, your plan will require a *lot* more launches than a Transhab plan. Also, I don't see the full support structure for this Transhab idea. Where will the power come from and how will the thermal balance be achieved? Where are the solar panels and radiators? I take it these would be separate non-inflatable items of much heavier weight which will still require multiple missions for launch from the ground, Earth-Moon transfer, soft landing and re-assembly at the other end. It doesn't need them while in transit. It's folded up and inert. It will need them on the moon, of course, but it's better to custom build them than to use ISS components. The ISS solar arrays and radiators are extremely flimsy, and won't hold up under 1/6 g. The radiators also really don't work that well unless you can point them *away* from the sun, which is impossible on the lunar surface. There would also be need for a major interim stage where the Transhab and all of its auxilliary components will need extensive testing & evaluation in LEO, prior to firing to the Moon. There's no need for that - you could assemble and integrate them on the ground, and that would be a better test than testing in LEO. Add all of this up and weigh against my original idea (I know this will have to be an 'IM' exercise as we don't have all the facts) and then come back and tell me what the score is. ISS-to-the-moon still comes out a big loser. -- 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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