NASA studies new booster (UPI)

Scott Lowther wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:


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Scott Lowther wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:

LEO refueling would allow us to launch propulsion stages dry, so that
they could be filled on-orbit. Since propellants are by far the largest
component of the initial mass in LEO of a manned lunar or Mars ship, the
propellant depot allows us to launch the *same* payload to the Moon or
Mars using a vehicle with roughly 1/5 the LEO payload we would need if
we did it in a single launch.

Yes... but launching very large balloon tanks, larger than the launch
vehicle, leads to aerodynamic trickiness.

I'm talking all-liquid, VTOL, so the tanks would be internal and the
aerodynamics would resemble an ELV more than the Shuttle.

So... you want to put great big, empty Earth-to-Mars liquid hydrogen
tank payloads on the outside of a DC-Y or some such? I'd be interested
to see how well THAT would work...

Read the rest of the 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. The Mars-bound payload, incidentally, would be
integrated with the orbiter on the ground, so there would be no on-orbit
assembly required. The orbiter stage would do approx. a 6 km/sec burn
to inject itself and it's payload into orbit, arriving dry (with only
residuals in the main propellant tanks), where it would dock with the
propellant depot and be refueled for the TMI burn. The orbiter stage
would thus do two burns in succession, much as the S-IVB stage did
during Apollo.

[deleted]

It was essentially
the very high costs associated with the use of expendable hardware that
killed Apollo.

No. It was lack of political interest.

Once we beat the Russians to the Moon, the original political motive
ended, but lunar science *could* have sustained the program had it not
been so expensive to get there with the expendable Saturn V. Had it
been relatively cheap to get to the Moon, we would probably have been
able to generate enough political support to keep going back.

The only cheaper way to the moon in the 1960's was to mass produce
Saturn V's or, better, Novas.

There were no *cheap* ways of getting to the Moon by 1969, but there
certainly are *much* cheaper ways to get to the Moon now than throwing
away a Saturn V or a Nova on every flight. For example, the orbiter
stage of a ballistic RLV would, necessarily, have landing gear, so it
could land on the Moon. Once we have lunar LOX available, it could be
refueled on the Moon and return to LEO with aerobraking. A few tanker
flights of the RLV would be required to launch the propellants required
for TLI (plus the Earth-return LH2). Prior to the availability of lunar
LOX, we would have to augment the system by various means, usually
involving staging, but the LOX plant would be one of the first things we
land, so that would not be a long-term arrangement. Once we have
refueling capability in LEO and on the Moon, we will have a completely
reusable transportation system between the surface of the Earth and the
surface of the Moon. Lunar tourism would become a viable option.

[deleted]

If we have space tourist RLVs, with ocean-cruise costs... yer gonna need
all the desitinations you can muster. Space stations built from two
dozen ET's will be needed in some abundance. Lunar bases made from ET's
will also be highly prized... and they can serve as the basis for Big
Ass Trans Mars Vehicles once the orbital propellent scavengers and tank
farms are in place.

Tourist hotels in LEO is probably the best idea for using ET's in space,
and there may eventually be a market for hundreds of ET's, or the
equivalent, for that alone. But it will take a dramatic reduction in
launch costs just to get to the point where we will be able to keep a
couple of ET's occupied, full time. That would entail approximately
weekly flights of a 50 passenger vehicle, for example, and we are *not*
going to get to that traffic level as long as we are using expendable
hardware for Earth-to-orbit launch, and probably not for at least a
decade after a true RLV is in operation.

Stockpiling ET's in orbit is not all that simple. They would need to be
continally reboosted, unless they were put into an orbit well above the
ISS orbit. The insulation would probably degrade and flake off,
creating a debris problem, unless the tanks were enclosed in a large
bag, or maybe a spray-on coating. That's not impossible, of course, but
NASA is not likely to do it on it's own, and the private sector is not
likely to pay them to do it, absent the transportation systems which can
generate enough of a market to make it worthwhile - which is likely to
be well after the Shuttle is retired. Catch 22.

It may make some sense to stockpile a dozen or so ET's in orbit
toward the end of the Shuttle program, but I think it will take an RLV
to make effective use of them.

Yeah, so? An RLV of Shuttle-class payload simply won;t be able to
*launch* an ET. An Ares-class booster will launch one as a *byproduct*.

I wasn't suggesting that an RLV would *launch* ET's, though what I have
in mind might be able to do so. The Shuttle was originally designed to
launch a 65,000 lb. payload, which is approximately the weight of an ET,
and I am proposing a vehicle with a lift capacity of about 80,000 lb.,
including a fairing (as required) for unmanned payloads. That would be
considered "Shuttle-class", though the GLOW would be considerably less
than the Shuttle. If a ballistic RLV can launch an ET, or something
like it, then we wouldn't be saving all that much by stockpiling ET's in
orbit, which is why I said that it "may" make sense.

We've been launching expendable and partly reusable designs for 45 years
now, and we've made little progress toward sustainability since the 60's
- comsats are about the only commercially sustainable market we have. I
don't want to spend the next few decades with another go-around of the
partly-reusable paradigm. We're in a vicious cycle, and we need
something completely new to break out of it.

Indeed. Reuse the stuff we have, for starters.

The stuff we have is why we're in such a mess, and making silk purses
out of sows' ears generally doesn't work. We need a clean break with
the past, not an evolutionary approach, IMHO.
--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Scott Lowther wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:


Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Scott Lowther wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:

LEO refueling would allow us to launch propulsion stages dry, so that
they could be filled on-orbit. Since propellants are by far the largest
component of the initial mass in LEO of a manned lunar or Mars ship, the
propellant depot allows us to launch the *same* payload to the Moon or
Mars using a vehicle with roughly 1/5 the LEO payload we would need if
we did it in a single launch.

Yes... but launching very large balloon tanks, larger than the launch
vehicle, leads to aerodynamic trickiness.

I'm talking all-liquid, VTOL, so the tanks would be internal and the
aerodynamics would resemble an ELV more than the Shuttle.

So... you want to put great big, empty Earth-to-Mars liquid hydrogen
tank payloads on the outside of a DC-Y or some such? I'd be interested
to see how well THAT would work...

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. The Mars-bound payload, incidentally, would be
integrated with the orbiter on the ground, so there would be no on-orbit
assembly required. The orbiter stage would do approx. a 6 km/sec burn
to inject itself and it's payload into orbit, arriving dry (with only
residuals in the main propellant tanks), where it would dock with the
propellant depot and be refueled for the TMI burn. (Descent propellants
and seed LH2 for Earth return would be loaded at the same time.) The
orbiter stage would thus do two burns in succession, much as the S-IVB
stage did during Apollo.

[deleted]

It was essentially
the very high costs associated with the use of expendable hardware that
killed Apollo.

No. It was lack of political interest.

Once we beat the Russians to the Moon, the original political motive
ended, but lunar science *could* have sustained the program had it not
been so expensive to get there with the expendable Saturn V. Had it
been relatively cheap to get to the Moon, we would probably have been
able to generate enough political support to keep going back.

The only cheaper way to the moon in the 1960's was to mass produce
Saturn V's or, better, Novas.

There were no *cheap* ways of getting to the Moon by 1969, but there
certainly are *much* cheaper ways to get to the Moon now than throwing
away a Saturn V or a Nova on every flight. For example, the orbiter
stage of a ballistic RLV would, necessarily, have landing gear, so it
could land on the Moon. Once we have lunar LOX available, it could be
refueled on the Moon and return to LEO with aerobraking. A few tanker
flights of the RLV would be required to launch the propellants required
for TLI (plus the Earth-return LH2). Prior to the availability of lunar
LOX, we would have to augment the system by various means, usually
involving staging, but the LOX plant would be one of the first things we
land, so that would not be a long-term arrangement. Once we have
refueling capability in LEO and on the Moon, we will have a completely
reusable transportation system between the surface of the Earth and the
surface of the Moon. Lunar tourism would become a viable option.

[deleted]

If we have space tourist RLVs, with ocean-cruise costs... yer gonna need
all the desitinations you can muster. Space stations built from two
dozen ET's will be needed in some abundance. Lunar bases made from ET's
will also be highly prized... and they can serve as the basis for Big
Ass Trans Mars Vehicles once the orbital propellent scavengers and tank
farms are in place.

Tourist hotels in LEO is probably the best idea for using ET's in space,
and there may eventually be a market for hundreds of ET's, or the
equivalent, for that alone. But it will take a dramatic reduction in
launch costs just to get to the point where we will be able to keep a
couple of ET's occupied, full time. That would entail approximately
weekly flights of a 50 passenger vehicle, for example, and we are *not*
going to get to that traffic level as long as we are using expendable
hardware for Earth-to-orbit launch, and probably not for at least a
decade after a true RLV is in operation.

Stockpiling ET's in orbit is not all that simple. They would need to be
continally reboosted, unless they were put into an orbit well above the
ISS orbit. The insulation would probably degrade and flake off,
creating a debris problem, unless the tanks were enclosed in a large
bag, or maybe a spray-on coating. That's not impossible, of course, but
NASA is not likely to do it on it's own, and the private sector is not
likely to pay them to do it, absent the transportation systems which can
generate enough of a market to make it worthwhile - which is likely to
be well after the Shuttle is retired. Catch 22.

It may make some sense to stockpile a dozen or so ET's in orbit
toward the end of the Shuttle program, but I think it will take an RLV
to make effective use of them.

Yeah, so? An RLV of Shuttle-class payload simply won;t be able to
*launch* an ET. An Ares-class booster will launch one as a *byproduct*.

I wasn't suggesting that an RLV would *launch* ET's, though what I have
in mind might be able to do so. The Shuttle was originally designed to
launch a 65,000 lb. payload, which is approximately the weight of an ET,
and I am proposing a vehicle with a lift capacity of about 80,000 lb.,
including a fairing (as required) for unmanned payloads. That would be
considered "Shuttle-class", though the GLOW would be considerably less
than the Shuttle. If a ballistic RLV can launch an ET, or something
like it, then we wouldn't be saving all that much by stockpiling ET's in
orbit, which is why I said that it "may" make sense.

We've been launching expendable and partly reusable designs for 45 years
now, and we've made little progress toward sustainability since the 60's
- comsats are about the only commercially sustainable market we have. I
don't want to spend the next few decades with another go-around of the
partly-reusable paradigm. We're in a vicious cycle, and we need
something completely new to break out of it.

Indeed. Reuse the stuff we have, for starters.

The stuff we have is why we're in such a mess, and making silk purses
out of sows' ears generally doesn't work. We need a clean break with
the past, not an evolutionary approach, IMHO.
--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Scott Lowther wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:


Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Scott Lowther wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:

LEO refueling would allow us to launch propulsion stages dry, so that
they could be filled on-orbit. Since propellants are by far the largest
component of the initial mass in LEO of a manned lunar or Mars ship, the
propellant depot allows us to launch the *same* payload to the Moon or
Mars using a vehicle with roughly 1/5 the LEO payload we would need if
we did it in a single launch.

Yes... but launching very large balloon tanks, larger than the launch
vehicle, leads to aerodynamic trickiness.

I'm talking all-liquid, VTOL, so the tanks would be internal and the
aerodynamics would resemble an ELV more than the Shuttle.

So... you want to put great big, empty Earth-to-Mars liquid hydrogen
tank payloads on the outside of a DC-Y or some such? I'd be interested
to see how well THAT would work...

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. The Mars-bound payload, incidentally, would be
integrated with the orbiter on the ground, so there would be no on-orbit
assembly required. The orbiter stage would do approx. a 6 km/sec burn
to inject itself and it's payload into orbit, arriving dry (with only
residuals in the main propellant tanks), where it would dock with the
propellant depot and be refueled for the TMI burn. Descent propellants
and the seed LH2 for Earth-return would be loaded at the same time. The
orbiter stage would thus do two burns in succession, much as the S-IVB
stage did during Apollo.

[deleted]

It was essentially
the very high costs associated with the use of expendable hardware that
killed Apollo.

No. It was lack of political interest.

Once we beat the Russians to the Moon, the original political motive
ended, but lunar science *could* have sustained the program had it not
been so expensive to get there with the expendable Saturn V. Had it
been relatively cheap to get to the Moon, we would probably have been
able to generate enough political support to keep going back.

The only cheaper way to the moon in the 1960's was to mass produce
Saturn V's or, better, Novas.

There were no *cheap* ways of getting to the Moon by 1969, but there
certainly are *much* cheaper ways to get to the Moon now than throwing
away a Saturn V or a Nova on every flight. For example, the orbiter
stage of a ballistic RLV would, necessarily, have landing gear, so it
could land on the Moon. Once we have lunar LOX available, it could be
refueled on the Moon and return to LEO with aerobraking. A few tanker
flights of the RLV would be required to launch the propellants required
for TLI (plus the Earth-return LH2). Prior to the availability of lunar
LOX, we would have to augment the system by various means, usually
involving staging, but the LOX plant would be one of the first things we
land, so that would not be a long-term arrangement. Once we have
refueling capability in LEO and on the Moon, we will have a completely
reusable transportation system between the surface of the Earth and the
surface of the Moon. Lunar tourism would become a viable option.

[deleted]

If we have space tourist RLVs, with ocean-cruise costs... yer gonna need
all the desitinations you can muster. Space stations built from two
dozen ET's will be needed in some abundance. Lunar bases made from ET's
will also be highly prized... and they can serve as the basis for Big
Ass Trans Mars Vehicles once the orbital propellent scavengers and tank
farms are in place.

Tourist hotels in LEO is probably the best idea for using ET's in space,
and there may eventually be a market for hundreds of ET's, or the
equivalent, for that alone. But it will take a dramatic reduction in
launch costs just to get to the point where we will be able to keep a
couple of ET's occupied, full time. That would entail approximately
weekly flights of a 50 passenger vehicle, for example, and we are *not*
going to get to that traffic level as long as we are using expendable
hardware for Earth-to-orbit launch, and probably not for at least a
decade after a true RLV is in operation.

Stockpiling ET's in orbit is not all that simple. They would need to be
continally reboosted, unless they were put into an orbit well above the
ISS orbit. The insulation would probably degrade and flake off,
creating a debris problem, unless the tanks were enclosed in a large
bag, or maybe a spray-on coating. That's not impossible, of course, but
NASA is not likely to do it on it's own, and the private sector is not
likely to pay them to do it, absent the transportation systems which can
generate enough of a market to make it worthwhile - which is likely to
be well after the Shuttle is retired. Catch 22.

It may make some sense to stockpile a dozen or so ET's in orbit
toward the end of the Shuttle program, but I think it will take an RLV
to make effective use of them.

Yeah, so? An RLV of Shuttle-class payload simply won;t be able to
*launch* an ET. An Ares-class booster will launch one as a *byproduct*.

I wasn't suggesting that an RLV would *launch* ET's, though what I have
in mind might be able to do so. The Shuttle was originally designed to
launch a 65,000 lb. payload, which is approximately the weight of an ET,
and I am proposing a vehicle with a lift capacity of about 80,000 lb.,
including a fairing (as required) for unmanned payloads. That would be
considered "Shuttle-class", though the GLOW would be considerably less
than the Shuttle. If a ballistic RLV can launch an ET, or something
like it, then we wouldn't be saving all that much by stockpiling ET's in
orbit, which is why I said that it "may" make sense.

We've been launching expendable and partly reusable designs for 45 years
now, and we've made little progress toward sustainability since the 60's
- comsats are about the only commercially sustainable market we have. I
don't want to spend the next few decades with another go-around of the
partly-reusable paradigm. We're in a vicious cycle, and we need
something completely new to break out of it.

Indeed. Reuse the stuff we have, for starters.

The stuff we have is why we're in such a mess, and making silk purses
out of sows' ears generally doesn't work. We need a clean break with
the past, not an evolutionary approach, IMHO.
--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

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....


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?


The orbiter stage would do approx. a 6 km/sec burn
to inject itself and it's payload into orbit, arriving dry (with only
residuals in the main propellant tanks), where it would dock with the
propellant depot and be refueled for the TMI burn. Descent propellants
and the seed LH2 for Earth-return would be loaded at the same time. The
orbiter stage would thus do two burns in succession, much as the S-IVB
stage did during Apollo.

More than two, counting mid-course corrections and any Mars orbit
injection. Never mind the actual landing on Mars.


There were no *cheap* ways of getting to the Moon by 1969, but there
certainly are *much* cheaper ways to get to the Moon now than throwing
away a Saturn V or a Nova on every flight.

Nobody is suggesting any such thing. Look at the Nova/Post-Saturn
designs... they were largely reusable. The Saturn S-IC stage would ahve
been (relatively) easily retrofitted for reusability, albeit somewhat
clumsily.

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?

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


Tourist hotels in LEO is probably the best idea for using ET's in space,
and there may eventually be a market for hundreds of ET's, or the
equivalent, for that alone. But it will take a dramatic reduction in
launch costs just to get to the point where we will be able to keep a
couple of ET's occupied, full time.

So? Manhattan existed long before the Dutch showed up and made something
of it. A large cluster of ET's on orbit, awaiting sale, would have the
same potential.


Stockpiling ET's in orbit is not all that simple. They would need to be
continally reboosted, unless they were put into an orbit well above the
ISS orbit.

Sounds good to me. There's nothing sacred about ISS orbit.



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

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.





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On Tue, 4 May 2004 18:40:52 GMT, Dick Morris
wrote:



.... We've been proposing expendable
HLLV's for going to Mars, or back to the Moon, for about 35 years with
exactly zero success. I see no particular reason to believe we will
have any more luck the next time.


That depends on how well President Bush' Moon/Mars initiative fares in
the next year or two, IMO. If it's not axed outright, a "new" HLLV
stands a chance.






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On 3 May 2004 17:07:04 -0700, (Edward Wright)
wrote:

This has nothing to do with the notion that we need an endless series
of Lewis and Clark expeditions before anyone else can go .....

Well, as you are the only one who has that notion, it's not a problem.
No one is calling for an "endless" series of missions, just saying we
need to know the territory better before jumping into full blown
colonization.

.... The people
who love the Lewis and Clark analogy overlook the fact that there was
only one Lewis and Clark expedition -- and when it was over, the
government disbanded the agency.


Well, if there is one Mars mission or one Moon flight, then that
proves all the ciritics calling a stunt right. The goal here is to
make both a going concern -- a permanent presence on the Moon, and the
missions to Mars will require bases.




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On 4 May 2004 16:03:00 -0700, (Edward Wright)
wrote:

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.

.... 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.


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




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Michael Gallagher wrote in message . ..

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.

A roundtrip to the Moon does not take years, and we have far more data
on the Moon than European explorers had on the New World.

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.

You are the only person in this discussion who wants to defer
anything, Michael. We want to put more people on the Moon and start
sooner than the timid "initiative" that you consider holy writ.

We could begin serious exploration of the Moon *sooner* than the 2016
date given in the Bush plan. We could do more exploration, more
efficiently, more cheaply, and sooner.

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

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? I must
have missed that. When do you think they should end? 20 years from
now? 50? 100? How long will before you think it's okay it be before
you think it's okay to stop doing "Lewis and Clark missions" and start
doing something useful in space?

just saying we need to know the territory better before jumping into full blown
colonization.

Yes, we *know* you're saying that, over and over again, but you
haven't given us any evidence or reason to believe it's true. *What*
do you think we need to know about the territory that we don't know
now? *Why* would sending three or four astronauts be a better way to
find it than sending hundreds of scientists, engineers, and other
specialists?