NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture

tomcat;
As far as radiation goes, new materials can stop radiation without the
weight of lead. If astronauts get irradiated it will be because
someone didn't use what is available. There are 'plastics' that can
stop radiation as well as new light weight metals. Remember:
Beryllium steel reflects neutrons. That is why it is used in atomic
bomb casings. Beryllium steel is light compared to iron/steel and thin
sheets of it can work wonders. Lead foil might be used around crew
quarters. Gold foil is fairly dense as well.
Why is you mind still in the gutter as to any need of protecting
whatever TBI and DOA astronauts from radiation?

I was asking about those spendy CNTs, about their taking a radiation
overdosage and surviving. What the hell is wrong with the three brain
cells you've got left to work with?

BTW; it's snookered damn fools like yourself that suggest other
materials that are launchable can turn the tide against the TBI factors
of human space travel. It takes roughly 0.7" of lead to cut hard-X-ray
dosage in half. For God's sake, do the math. If volume is not a factor,
then the less density of whatever substance the better because of such
creating fewer secondary/recoil photons, thus indeed the CNTs as piled
high to perhaps 100 meters worth of depth might become better off than
a given layer of lead. I believe that besides the usual barrier of
aluminum, a substantial layer of circulated water is what's doing 90%
of the attenuation job as well as essential cooling for ISS.

A good spaceplane capable of SSTP (Single Stage To the Planets) should
pierce the Van Allen belt at about 100,000 mph. So, length of that
radiation should be minimal. Remember, however, that in most of my
posts I am referring to a SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit), not a SSTP.
Whether the advantage of ultralight nanotube hulls will allow for SSTP
is questionable. Along with the new 'atomic hydrogen' with 5X thrust,
then an SSTP cargo hauler should be immediately possible.
The Van Allen zone or rather expanse of death is worth 70,000 km, a bit
more if your spaceplane is being near the moon where there's a SAA sort
of significant lunar dip that reaches a bit further, and at times even
a bit past the moon. So, you'd best multiply your 44.7 km/s by at least
2 fold, whereas at an average of 89.4 km/s is going to require 782
seconds, better than 13 minutes worth of going through the Van Allen
badlands if you're not headed anywhere towards the moon, especially if
it's on the backside of mother Earth. Of course going fast is only half
the energy equation, whereas slowing yourself down get a wee bit testy
unless you're taking advantage of near-miss aerobreaking notions, of
which the lunar atmosphere of radon and argon is going to require that
your spaceplane drag one hell of a parachute as it passes multiple
times at less than 10 km off the lunar deck (actually 1 km off the deck
would do some serious aerobreaking as well as kicking up some moon-dust
on each exciting pass).

Now you know why I am upset with NASA announcing 12 years to the Moon
in capsules. 3 years and 3 billion dollars and a sub-orbital can be
built. 5 years and 5 billion dollars and an SSTO can be built. 8
years and 8 billion dollars and a SSTP can be built. Why is NASA
taking 12 years to send an old fashioned rocket with an ancient capsule
on it to the Moon?
Good grief and holy Christ on a stick "tomcat", hopefully you'll soon
realize as to "why I am upset" with the sorts of snookered damn fools
like yourself, as individuals being so easily dumbfounded that they
think for a minute we actually had such viable fly-by-rocket landers
and having those EVA/moonsuit butts that actually walked upon a nearly
dust-free moon that upon average offered a clumping albedo of extremely
thin soil of 0.55 or brighter. Please impress me by way of showing us
village idiots exactly where the hell there's any zone average of 0.55+
albedo upon the moon.

Obviously our perpetrated cold-war NASA rusemasters have to first R&D
from scratch an actual fly-by-rocket lander that'll likely have to end
up at roughly 30 tonnes worth, if not a whole lot more. Adding payloads
of technology, crew and lots of spare fuel that'll safely de-orbit and
down-range with energy to spare is going to take a little time, spendy
R&D prototypes plus lots of real world pilotted flying with
appropriately scaled units as flown right here in River City. Of
course, getting the likes of a 30+ tonne craft and of it's 20+ tonne
CM/return craft on their way to/from merely orbiting the moon will be
rather a nifty accomplishment that should only pollute mother Earth
with yet another 50,000 tonnes worth of nasty pollution that no one
seems to want to talk about that issue or of the 500+ billions it's
take without any respect for the global environment of Earth.

Would you like to help build a spread-sheet as to the true cost and
pollution tally?

Meanwhile, at perhaps 0.1% the cost and not 10% the timeline, all sorts
of robotics could have been accomplishing and thus extracting
absolutely terrific sorts of hard-science about our moon and of
Earth-science related factors, thus not hardly contributing even 1% as
to pollution to boot. So, what part of this is still over your easily
snookered and even easier dumbfounded head?

Manned space flights anywhere external to the Van Allen expanse are not
only going to remain as horrifically spendy but also somewhat DNA and
quite possibly even CNT testy.

BTW wizard "tomcat"; how the heck is your CNT spaceplane going to
manage to detect the sorts of cm3 or smaller sorts of incoming or
passing through debris, some of which will be having a greater than
closing velocity of 100 km/s?

If such small items were somehow detected at a reasonably good radar
range of 1e6 km, and if you're making that 44.7 km/s or better
velocity, thus easily having to deal with a closing velocity of 100
km/s = 10 seconds before impact (- whatever radar signal delay time),
how is it even remotely possible to safely avoid coming in contact with
such lethal debris?

Even at a 1 degree off dead-center encounter, as a glancing blow,
what's the KE worth of even a 4 g/cm3 items going to represent to the
structural integrity of your spendy CNT spacecraft?

Are we talking about a shield depth penetration of a crater or gouge
being 0.1 m or perhaps even worth a full meter?

I believe some of space debris is rather metallic, and thereby worth
8+g/cm3, and not always of less than a cm3 in size. And, what's to say
from which direction is most important?

Don't you ever think for a moment that since viable detections of such
debris is going to remain somewhat unlikely, and that having sufficient
warnings of any sort are not going to give your passengers and crew any
real-world options, other than to sit tight, whereas such it might
become a damn good idea if your CNT spaceplane had perhaps a 10+meter
depth of a basalt composite surround as your physical and radiation
shield?
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree; War is war, thus "in war there are
no rules" - In fact, war has been the very reason of having to deal
with the likes of others that haven't been playing by whatever rules,
such as GW Bush.

"Len" wrote:

The initial launches might be for experimental quantities to
address questions such as what type of payload is most
appropriate: water for electrolysis, LOX/LH2, LOX/kerosene?

That question cannot be answered by the launching company, nor by
users today. It's best to stick to what we know, today, to be useful
forever - water and LOX. Orbital angle and altitude should be
selected on the same basis - not what's most reachable, but what's
most likely to be desireable in the future.

The goal here is to provide supplies, at a reasonable cost, for the
future. Any other effect is secondary of necessity. Otherwise, we
might as well hold a lottery.

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

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

OK, I admit I'm rather late to this topic, but as an admitted "NASA
fanboy," - and who, having personally witnessed the launches of both
Apollo 16 and 17 couldn't help but be one? - here's my take:

This plan and NASA, given it's manned spaceflight track record over the
past two decades, deserve all the scrutiny and skepticism they are
getting. That said, it seems to me to be a reasonable, and reasonably
cost effective, architecture to use in returning to the moon and as a
basis for missions to Mars.

Mr. Simberg, I've read many, many of your articles, dating back to your
New Republic (?) pieces circa 1980 questioning the safety of the
Shuttle. I can see why you might be skeptical of both the NASA and its
plans. But here's my question: What am I missing? Why is *this* plan so
misguided? I don't get it. Further, if you were in charge, what sort of
arhcitechture *would* you endorse for missions like these?

Or if it's the mission themselves that are the trouble, and you were in
control of - let's say - policy, funding, and technology, what would
you have NASA do? I'm a free market guy, so if we are to relegate NASA
to more fundamental science and unmanned research, leaving the rest to
the market, how and when *do* we get back to the Moon and on to Mars?
Only when entrepreneurs get the capital together?

I'm not saying that's wrong, I'm just curious. You seem so down on the
program, that in all seriousness, I'm interested in hearing what you
think *would* be the correct way to go?

Thanks in advance for taking time to answer.

frank

tomcat,
This CNT report actually isn't half bad, only 500~1000 fold under the
mark of what the Liftport/ESE tether might eventually require.
Meanwhile, plain old basalt fibers of 4.84 GPa have been right off the
lunar shelf, of continuous fibers none the less, plus only of somewhat
better GPa if having been produced upon the moon, though considerably
more massive/cm3 than CNT, thus offering your spaceplane a way better
external anti-meteor density shield as sort of a moon-dirt cheap
alternative to the nearly aerogel worth of all that extremely spendy
CNT.

http://nanotechweb.org/articles/news/4/8/13/1#Zhang1
The nanotube sheet produced was an electronically conducting,
anisotropic aerogel with a density of 0.0015 g/cm3.

"A densified stack of 18 nanotube sheets that were orthogonally
oriented to their neighbours had a strength of 175 MPa/(g/cm3). This
compares well to the Mylar and Kapton films used for ultralight air
vehicles, which have a strength of about 160 MPa/(g/cm3), and
ultra-high-strength steel at about 125 MPa/(g/cm3)."

Impressive, but far from the required target of 100+GPa as suggested
for terrestrial space elevator tethers, though certainly terrific as is
for your spaceplane.
-

BTW; instead of a nearly 100% CNT do-everything and all-in-one
spaceplane that take a licking and keep on ticking, I'm thinking these
considerably massive basalt composite items as your external shield
would most certainly be left in orbit, thus your multi-hundred billion
dollar CNT spaceplane could come and go from a given atmospheric
supported planet or moon without involving all the added mass. Once
having returned back into orbit and before entirely leaving town for
any other planet or moon, these basalt composite items that were
specifically made to form-fit entirely about your spaceplane would
simply be reutilized for whatever interplanetary trek.
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree; War is war, thus "in war there are
no rules" - In fact, war has been the very reason of having to deal
with the likes of others that haven't been playing by whatever rules,
such as GW Bush.

Derek Lyons wrote:
"Len" wrote:

The initial launches might be for experimental quantities to
address questions such as what type of payload is most
appropriate: water for electrolysis, LOX/LH2, LOX/kerosene?

That question cannot be answered by the launching company, nor by
users today. It's best to stick to what we know, today, to be useful
forever - water and LOX. Orbital angle and altitude should be
selected on the same basis - not what's most reachable, but what's
most likely to be desireable in the future.

The goal here is to provide supplies, at a reasonable cost, for the
future. Any other effect is secondary of necessity. Otherwise, we
might as well hold a lottery.

D.

Yes, agreed, the eventual goal is to do something useful
for a reasonable cost. We apparently agree on the eventual
goal, but disagree on how to get there.

Unfortunately, other factors complicate things. You
obviously think central planning works well--even for
U.S. space program, which, IMO, has been served very
poorly by central planning. We chose the unproven,
poorly designed, conceptual SSME over the at-least
partially tested XLR-129 for purely political reasons.
One also has to wonder whether or not Fletcher's being
from Utah had anything to do with insisting upon SRMs
for the basic Shuttle concept. If the central planning
is bad enough, it may be better to leave things to chance.
IMO, it is always better to leave things to real competition.

Under these circumstances, I have come up with a specific,
if somewhat arbitrary, orbit to improve chances that the
water/propellants in orbit will actually be useful.
Forced to make an immediate choice, I would choose a
40-degree, 450-km orbit so that water/propellant could
be transported to a single, potentially useful spot--
without the decision spins that might be inflicted by
a bureaucracy and various political and self-serving
motives. This particular orbital choice is, IMO, a
combination of what is both useful and practical (reachable).
I also think that it would provide enough launch flexibility
so as not to prejudice specific companies and specific launch
sites to any unreasonable degree.

With respect to what should be transported, I tend to
agree with you that water and LOX are practical and known
--and, as you say--useful forever. However, NASA's
love affair with liquid hydrogen may have considerable
merit. Moreover, it seems like a good idea to accommodate
NASA's basic plan as much as possible, while promoting a
basically independent market gaurantee program. Accordingly,
some experimentation with handling liquid hydrogen on orbit
might be justified. And, of course, water seems to imply
being able to conduct practical electrolysis operations
on orbit--as well as handling, storing, transferring,
liquifying (?) etc. the resulting hydrogen and oxygen. This
type of experimentation might be done in various orbits without
seriously detracting from the eventual goal of a "reservoir" in
a specific, usable orbit. Note also, that the main purpose of
the experiments would be to provide information for the basis
for decision-making. Deciding what should be the basis of an
experiment would not be precedent-setting decision.

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc.
(change x to len)
http://www.tour2space.com

Len wrote:
Derek Lyons wrote:

My apologies for consistently misspelling "guarantees."
Perhaps there should be a prize for spelling guarantees
correctly.

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc.
(change x to len)
http://www.tour2space.com

Previous problem with LH2 was density: It was too voluminous.
Then try thinking even inside the box: H2O2 (frozen solid if need be).

H2O2 is an all around do-everything product. Add a little C12H26 and
you get serious bang for your buck.
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree; War is war, thus "in war there are
no rules" - In fact, war has been the very reason of having to deal
with the likes of others that haven't been playing by whatever rules,
such as GW Bush.

Here is a URL on 'Atomic Hydrogen'. This is a definitive PDF complete
with pictures of 'atomic hydrogen' immersed in liquid helium. It is
very interesting reading.


http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/20...002-211915.pdf


tomcat

tomcat,
OK, alright already;
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/20...002-211915.pdf
27 pages worth of interesting old stuff that we should have
accomplished as of decades ago.

I agree that something nuclear/atomic is going to make a given
rocket-ship or whatever spaceplane go like a bat out of hell. I've
already offered my Radium(RA226) to Radon(Rn222) ion thrusting solution
that's good for a half life of 1600 years, that's relatively safe and
worth nearly 150,000 km/s. However, as I've said before about going
fast in space, eventually out of nowhere that's detectable it's going
to bite real fast and extremely hard. The good news is, it'll happen so
quickly and with such extensive vaporising of your physically
unshielded spaceplane, that no person onboard should have any
forewarning nor feel a damn thing.

Sorry that you can't grasp the need for extended space-travel requiring
a craft of not only being CNT tough but otherwise affording a
sufficiently dense shield and thus having a relatively thick outer
shell. It takes mass in order to appreciably attenuate the primary TBI
influx and still avoid most of the secondary/recoil worth of hard-X-ray
generated radiation and, it takes even more structured mass in order to
physically save your sorry butt from fast encounters of the lethal kind
that are simply too freaking small as to being detected until it's too
late. That plus the matter of having to slow down once you've arrived
at wherever without your having to drag enormous anchors across the
surface terrain of whatever planet or moon, either that or you're going
to need an H-bomb or two as your plan-B for your retrothrust emergency
break.

Thanks anyway for the interesting information. However, just for the
sport of it all, why not focus upon what's actually extremely nearby
and doable within our generation if not at least within a couple of
generations, and of what will not further pollute mother Earth to a
fairlywell nor bankrupt whatever's left of our piggy-bank that's
already somewhat LLPOF warlord depleted, having managed to get more
than half the world really ****ed off at us at the same time.
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree; War is war, thus "in war there are
no rules" - In fact, war has been the very reason of having to deal
with the likes of others that haven't been playing by whatever rules,
such as GW Bush.

tomcat,
CNT or not, at any decent velocity is where debris avoidance seems
essential, thus radar tracking of the 0.1 m3 and larger items needs to
be good for at least 1e7 km, whereas items of less than 0.1 m3 may have
to be armor deflected or perhaps laser cannon vaporised before
impacting your spaceplane. Having a GJ class of 0.05 milliradian laser
beam at your disposal should come in real handy, thus an onboard 300 MJ
worth of a continuous energy resource for charging up and at least
providing a 10% duty cycle as based upon a 33% efficiency factor seems
perfectly rational. I mean to say, what decent spaceplane is going
anywhere without a spare 300 MJ reactor onboard?

For the ultimate in personal spaceplane protection, think of it as a
massive composite condom for your CNT spaceplane, meters thick sections
of interlocking armor as made of mostly basalt and perhaps silica
composite fibers plus a serious bunch of JB-WELD epoxy or whatever
ceramic binders.

Therefore... instead of a nearly naked though otherwise 100% CNT
do-everything and all-in-one spaceplane that'll somehow have to take a
licking and keep on ticking, I'm still thinking about utilizing these
considerably massive basalt composite items of external armor as having
been fabricated on behalf of their form-fitting as your external
shield, as armor that would have been easily created from the lunar
basalt and thus effectively provided by way of the massive LSE-CM/ISS
facility and near zero gravity depot that roughly 64,000 km off the
lunar deck, as once having created these items would subsequently
remain in orbit, thereby your multi-hundred billion dollar CNT
spaceplane that hardly weighs anything could come and go from being in
orbit about a given atmospheric supported planet or moon without ever
involving all of the extra mass getting to/from the surface.

Once having returned back into orbit and before leaving town for any
other planet or moon, these basalt composite items that were
specifically made to form-fit entirely about your spaceplane would
simply be reutilized for whatever interplanetary trek that going to
take weeks if not months as best.

Even when Venus is within merely 100 fold the distance of our moon,
that's still going to represent more than 50e6 km worth of spaceplane
frequent flyer miles each way as based upon a 18 month stay-over. If
the average in going velocity of this spaceplane were to be 50 km/s =
1e6 seconds or 278 hours = 11.6 days worth of being wide open to what
ever's coming along or gets run into. However, instead of the round
trip taking 23.2 days it's more than likely going to take 58 days due
to the fact of leaving Venus for the trek back to Earth isn't going to
have any nifty moon available as a terrific velocity booster, nor is
the gravity pull of the sun going to take any days off while the same
spaceplane thrust energy that made the average incoming velocity into
50 km/s is going to be somewhat butt dragging along at perhaps
averaging all of 12.5 km/s getting away from Venus.
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree; War is war, thus "in war there are
no rules" - In fact, war has been the very reason of having to deal
with the likes of others that haven't been playing by whatever rules,
such as GW Bush.