NASA studies new booster (UPI)

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Scott Lowther wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:

That original paragraph is a bit misleading, by itself. Read the rest
of the original (4 May) post and you will see that I propose using the
orbiter stage of a (two-stage) VTOL RLV to do the TMI burn, after being
refueled in LEO.

Well, there goes the whole "affordable" thing....

Non-sequitur. I'd like to see your reasons for believing that a mostly
expendable HLLV would be cheaper.

The Mars-bound payload, incidentally, would be
integrated with the orbiter on the ground, so there would be no on-orbit
assembly required.

A Shuttle-class paylosd is all that you want for a manned Mars mission?

We can do quite a bit with 80,000 lb.

[deleted]

For example, the orbiter
stage of a ballistic RLV would, necessarily, have landing gear, so it
could land on the Moon.

And would it have this useless-on-Eath landing gear on regular launch
flights? Or would it have a completely separate landing gear? And would
it have a deletable TPS system for lunar flights? or would it carry that
weight all the way to the moon and back?

The Earth landing gear would work just fine on the Moon. And unless you
plan on a one-way trip, you *have* to carry the heat shield all the way
to the Moon and back. Lunar LOX will make the additional penalty of
carrying it down to the surface and back quite affordable. Doing that
will be cheaper for quite a while than developing a new system, without
TPS, that could be based on the Moon. It would *have* to based on the
Moon since, lacking a TPS we would not be able to bring it back to
Earth. Bringing it back to LEO for servicing would require propulsive
braking, which would require about twice the delta-v capability that it
would need just to go between the lunar surface and LLO. Having two
separate vehicles would also require transferring payloads in zero-g.

In short... a do-everything stage is a neat idea, but impractical with
conventional chemical propellants.

Developing separate vehicles for each application is impractical with
any propellants. Propellants are cheap, so spending a lot of money
developing special purpose hardware that is highly optimized for minimum
mass just to save a modest amount of propellants does not pay. But
having a common, reusable launch system for many different applications
could save 10's of billions of dollars.

[deleted]

Dick Morris wrote:

I'd like to see your reasons for believing that a mostly
expendable HLLV would be cheaper.

I have not proposed such a thing, so I see no reason to provide a
rationale for it.


--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
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On Thu, 06 May 2004 11:58:58 -0400, in a place far, far away, Michael
Gallagher made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

On Wed, 05 May 2004 02:28:00 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

The kind we had in this country--many people exploring many regions,
for their own purposes.


Right now, a better analogy might be to the very early days of
European exploration of the globe -- round trip travel times in years
to places we have only begun to get familiar with. What you call
"serious" exploration did not happen until later. If one were to argue
that we should defer all exploration until we could do what you would
consider "serious," I would call that an effort to stonewall President
Bush' initiative out of existence. Not interested.

We are doing lots of exploration--we just aren't sending men. But I'm
not proposing to defer it. I'm proposing to do it sensibly, by
developing the infrastructure that makes it affordable.

Michael Gallagher wrote in message . ..

We have maps of the Moon
and Mars at resolutions Lewis and Clark never dreamed of. I don't
see
why you keep denying the obvious.

I am not denying anything; I am saying that even with all that, we
have barely scratched the surface.

Then by your logic, Lewis and Clark "barely scratched the surface."

Did that mean we needed a hundred Lewis and Clark expeditions before
anyone could settle the American West?

.... Settlement means establishing permanent homes, villages,
towns, and cities --not conducting "extended" campouts.

Then what President Bush is talking about, particularly WRT the Moon,
is more akin to modern military bases -- a "presence" on foriegn soil
that people are rotated in and out of.

US military bases are established to protect the United States, not to
provide entertainment. There are no Moonmen threatening the United
States, so why do we need to establish military bases there?

No one is talking about an *infinite* series of anything, and these
expiditions would be from Bases on the Moon or Mars to other parts of
those bodies.

Did I say they wouldn't be from the Moon or Mars? That doesn't explain
why we need military bases on the Moon or Mars or why you think the
rest of us must stay home.

The real Lewis and Clark conducted only one expedition, and it had
one
specific goal -- to enable the immediate opening of the American
West
to settlement and commercial exploitation.

And you are saying we don't need to do anymore of that, we can just go
ahead to colonization and hang learning the lay of the land first.

We already know the lay of the land, down to a few centimeters. Why do
you keep on denying that -- and then denying that you denied it?

I disagree. Yes, we have maps and data Lewis and Clark couldn't have
dreamed of, and even then, we have barely scratched the surface.

How much subsurface data do you think Lewis and Clark collected? Did
they even have a seismograph?

I doubt you will find a reputable planetary scientist anywhere who will
disagree with that.

I'm sure planetary scientists are well aware of how much data they
have compared to what Lewis and Clark had. Besides, where is it
written that no one is allowed to live in a place until the scientists
are through studying it?

Michael Gallagher wrote in message . ..
On 4 May 2004 16:03:00 -0700, (Edward Wright)
wrote:
..... You're still talking about an infinite series of
"Lewis and Clark expeditions" for no discernable purpose except to
enable more "Lewis and Clark expeditions."


No one is talking about an *infinite* series of anything, and these
expiditions would be from Bases on the Moon or Mars to other parts of
those bodies.

The Corps of Discovery had ample experience in exploring
wilderness, living outdoors, etc. For them the new bit in
their exploration was the territory. Trekking through
Oregon is not all too different from trekking through
Virginia, except you don't know where anything is ahead of
time. For the Moon it's switched around. We know a fair
amount about the territory, but we have very little
experience in doing anything there. Walking around the
Moon is quite a lot different than walking around Nevada.

Scott Lowther wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:

I'd like to see your reasons for believing that a mostly
expendable HLLV would be cheaper.

I have not proposed such a thing, so I see no reason to provide a
rationale for it.

OK, how about a link to the design you *are* proposing.

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Scott Lowther wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:

I'd like to see your reasons for believing that a mostly
expendable HLLV would be cheaper.

I have not proposed such a thing, so I see no reason to provide a
rationale for it.

OK, show your reasons for believing that what you are proposing would be
cheaper.

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Dick Morris wrote:

Scott Lowther wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:

I'd like to see your reasons for believing that a mostly
expendable HLLV would be cheaper.

I have not proposed such a thing, so I see no reason to provide a
rationale for it.

OK, how about a link to the design you *are* proposing.

I have already suggested an Ares-type vehicle. Boosters reusable,
rpopulsion module reusable, ET used on-orbit. Consequently, "mostly
expendable" is not a relevant description.

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

On 6 May 2004 16:35:53 -0700, (Edward Wright)
wrote:

A roundtrip to the Moon does not take years ....

A round trip to Mars does.

..... and we have far more data
on the Moon than European explorers had on the New World.


And there's still more to be collected.

We want to put more people on the Moon and start
sooner than the timid "initiative" that you consider holy writ.


If that's possible, great. If it can be coordinated with Bush's
initiative, even better. But if it doesn't look like that's going to
happen, then axiong Bush's "timid initiative" results in no one going
anywhere.

Why should we defer all those things just because you are "not
interested" in any significant human space activity?

I never said I wasn't interested in that. See above.



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On 6 May 2004 17:24:44 -0700, (Edward Wright)
wrote:

Michael Gallagher wrote in message . ..

No one is calling for an "endless" series of missions,

Really -- you called for an end to "Lewis and Clark" missions?....

No, I didn't say that, either.

I am saying it may be premature to declare the "Lewis and Clark" phase
over.

..... *Why* would sending three or four astronauts be a better way to
find it than sending hundreds of scientists, engineers, and other
specialists?

These days, "astronaut" includes scientists, engineers, and other
specialists under the headings of mission and payload specialists.
They've been a regular part of Shuttle crews for about twenty years
now, and I see no reason why NASA would abandon that model in building
a Moon base.

Furthermore, a base could have hundreds of specialists rotate through
it during the years of its operation. And the base could grow over
time, until it has hundreds of people on it. The CATS architectures
you and Rand are talking about could provide the infrastructure to
expand the base and rotate crews and materials through it. So
everybody wins.



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