Anyone else feels its redundant for Apollo on steriods?

[nyarlathotep]

Enumerate costs Jon. We can do 99% of that geology with robots. We have stereoscopic cameras now that have better resolution than the human eye, so we can leave the eyeballs at home and dump the need for hundreds of kilograms of life support. Infact, we can do that for a long duration mars mission too. Put an ISS sized station in orbit and just land the remote sensing gear.<br /><br />Now, I'm not against manned spaceflight. There are things we can't do with robots. Complex on orbit assembly and repairs, tending some microgravity experiments and moving robotically tended scientific payloads in and out of free flyers for example. For this, a cheap capsule makes sense.<br /><br /> />"Your comment regarding a "lander large enough to deliver a mass driver fitting on an Areas V" makes me wonder just what understanding of space travel you have."<br /><br />Don't take that tone with me. Exactly what experience with large scale orbital logistics do you have?<br /><br />A large enough mass driver to boost useful (I define useful as 5 tonnes or more to LLO) bulk materials payloads from the lunar surface would likely weigh thousands of tonnes including power storage equipment. If you think you could move this with 100 launches and inside a 8m diameter payload shroud, you're bloody kidding yourself.

 

[earth_bound_misfit]

"A quick look at my book shelf turns up the following material"<br /><br />Think I better pop over and take a look myself. I'm always on the lookout for reading material. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p><p>----------------------------------------------------------------- </p><p>Wanna see this site looking like the old SDC uplink?</p><p>Go here to see how: <strong>SDC Eye saver </strong>  </p> </div>

 

[scipt]

I don't really like the way you are calling me spoiled just because you don't understand what i'm saying. <br /><br />I'm not saying 'just apollo' as if apollo was no big deal - then. But it's like sending a ship across the atlantic to America now and sayin... oh wow, amazing! We can do short hops to the moon. Unless there is a comitment to stay there and test technologies, it will do more to hinder space exploration.<br /><br />God, do people have low ambition today of what? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[nyarlathotep]

>"God, do people have low ambition today of what?"<br /><br />Tell me about it. Back in the early Apollo days they had the audacity to want to strap four 6.5m diameter liquid boosters onto a Saturn V stack (Saturn V-24(L)) to make a half kiloton booster. Now that would have been an amazing machine. Launch the ISS in one shot. <br /><br />And yet now, 40 years later they call this Ares V bottle rocket "Apollo on Steroids". It needs a stupidly massive army to launch it, is too large for commercial payloads and is way too small for exploration outside of cislunar space. I just don't care for it.<br /><br />If you're going to spend $25B on a rocket, build a freaking Sea Dragon. Sure the rocket might have a marginal cost slightly higher than that of an ARES V, but it boosts useful sized payloads and would have almost a tenth the ground support requirements.

 

[JonClarke]

Feel free! <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>

 

[j05h]

> If you're going to spend $25B on a rocket, build a freaking Sea Dragon. Sure the rocket might have a marginal cost slightly higher than that of an ARES V, but it boosts useful sized payloads and would have almost a tenth the ground support requirements.<br /><br />I don't want to drag this into Sea Dragon-Vs-Whatever but would like to point something out. Bob Truax figured out in the 1960s that the development costs of any rocket were roughly similiar. 1-ton or 500-ton payload, it doesn't matter, about the same amount of design and engineering goes into each. Operational costs vary, of course - as does cost-per-pound, witness the $25M Pegasus.<br /><br />I'm ready for a mega-booster. I'd like to see something built in a shipyard ala SeaDragon, but modern design. Sea launched and landing, 100% reusable, 500+tons to orbit. A commercially available vehicle like that instantly opens the frontier.<br /><br />Yes, I feel a underwhelmed with the VSE.<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[halman]

Nyarlathotep,<br /><br />Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that all the mass driver equipmant would not fit on 1 (one) Ares V rocket.<br /><br />If we are still relying on the Ares V 50 years from now, then there is not much hope for manned space exploration.<br /><br />But what is critical is that we figure out how to build most of the mass driver components out of lunar materials on the Moon. U am excluding a fusion power plant, and the computers needed to operate a lunatron. This is what the new frontier is all about, learning how to use what is up there, not draging everything up from Earth. It might take 200 years, but I think that we could do it a lot faster than that. But it will take people living and working in space, and on the Moon, so that they can learn to think in terms of the those environments, rather than as inhabitants of a 1 gravity world with an atmosphere. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[vulture2]

Apollo was not funded because of any enthusiasm for space exploration. Sputnik was an extraordinary shock, and the nonaligned nations were looking to Russia as a model for technological progress. Kennedy was looking for a symbolic goal that would demonstrate our system was better. The original LM specs didn't even include returning samples. <br /><br />Given the opportunity, NASA did an admirable job of getting some science out of it. But we had better all remember that as soon as the first landing was in the bag both congressional and public support plummeted, and three lunar missions that were already in the pipeline were canned. <br /><br />The next president, whether McCain or Clinton, will face severe buget deficits. The VSE is already encountering cost growth; the estimates made in the architecture studies were not realistic. If the NASA buget rises significantly congressional enthusiasm for sending people to the moon will evaporate faster than an oxydizer spill in August.

 

[josh_simonson]

>A large enough mass driver to boost useful (I define useful as 5 tonnes or more to LLO) bulk materials payloads from the lunar surface would likely weigh thousands of tonnes including power storage equipment. If you think you could move this with 100 launches and inside a 8m diameter payload shroud, you're bloody the kidding yourself.<br /><br />OTOH, a lunar space elevator with those capabilities could be flown in 2-3 such launches... (1 would give ~2000kg payload tether with existing materials)<br /><br />Mars missions will be at least an order of magnitude more expensive than lunar ones, so if one were to redefine 'flags and footprints' as 'unstustainable' to make it more accurate, Mars missions have a much higher risk of becoming 'flags and footprints' than lunar ones. <br /><br />ESAS missions will cost less than 1/3 what apollo missions cost, in real dollars, dispite greater capability. Apollo's problem was not what they were doing, but how much it costed. This time around we're in better shape on the cost front - and only once lunar missions have been shown to be sustainable can we hope that it would be the case for Mars missions, considering Mars missions will cost mor than the unsustainable Apollo program. Where did the vikings settle first, Iceland or North America? Where are they still?<br /><br />My own point of view is that Mars is too far away to have any quality of life payoff to folks here on earth - but lunar resources could spawn an industrial bonanza in near earth space that will improve everyone's lives.

 

[JonClarke]

The lack of official interest in space travel in the US in the late 40's and early 50's was quite remarkable. This had changed by the late 50's and IGY, however, although level of interest was still less than in the 60's. This is well known. What is your point about this?<br /><br />And what is your point about LM specs not including returning samples? The design for which Grumman was awarded the contract to build the LM was from the start large enough to include significant sample return. <br /><br />The last three Apollo's were not cancelled as soon as the first landing was in the bag. They were cancelled progressively, Apollo 20 in January 1970 and 18 and 19 in September 1970.<br /><br />Jon <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>

 

[halman]

kadetken,<br /><br />Thank you for the links! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[frodo1008]

I too, thought that a tethered elevator would work far better on the moon that on the Earth. After all there is only 0.16 g, and no atmpsphere to create heating problems. However, someone else pointed out to me that the moon's rotation of some 28 days is far too slow to permit such a system.<br /><br />However, for the same reasons Nyorlathotep is also incorrect. As a mass launcher only has to get up enough velocity to overcome the moon's weak gravity, and has no atmosphere to counter it, a mass luncher could be built on the moon of relatively light materials. Instead of the thousands of tons, such a launcher could be built for quite probably less than 100 tons. Then when you add the possibility of actually manufacturing from the materials on the moon itself, such launchers could even become mass produced in quantity.<br /><br />Yes, the initial costs of getting to the moon and building permanent bases there are not going to be cheap. What endeaver in space isn't expensive? Even just launching satellites into GEO costs upwards of hundreds of millions (only about 20% of that cost is the launch system itself, most of the cost is in the very high tech of the satellites themselves), then going to the moon to land is not going to be cheap under any circumstances. But it WILL be the key to opening up the necessary infrastructure to go on out into the solar system! And eventually those countries that sponcer such manufacturing on both the moon and nearby space itself are going to become very, very wealthy!

 

[josh_simonson]

A lunar space elevator would reach past LL1. That way the counterweight doesn't have to be in a geosynchronous lunar orbit, and instead is stretched between the gravity wells of the moon and earth. It's less than twice as far as GEO to earth, but the lower gravity (and earth pulling against it) makes it much easier to build.

 

[frodo1008]

Let me see if I understand this now. The elevator would stay at the same place on the moon facing the Earth. And the counterweight would always point the tether at the same place on the Earth as it would actually be in the Earth's gravity well?<br /><br />How much does the actual face (and therefore a single spot on the face) of the moon move in relation to a single spot on the Earth? I understand that it would not stay above the same spot on the Earth, not would it have to as the Earth's gravity is constant at any altitude on the Earth's gravity well. But if the moon had any appreciable movement relative to the Earth’s gravity well itself, would that set up possible oscillations!<br /><br />I am NOT being critical of this idea! I think it is terrific personally, but I am trying to make sure that it really is practical. <br /><br />In the meantime we are going back to the moon with a far more capable exploration team, that will eventually result in permanent bases, and that is the correct thing to do at this time!<br /><br />The longest journey is started by a single step. And while we took that single first step back in the Apollo era, we then subsequently fell on our face (due to war and an incredibly obtuse congress and administration, NOT NASA). So now we must even take the first step all over again, but if we don't then entire suture generations will be sacrificed, and I am NOT willing to see that happen again!!<br /><br />

 

[josh_simonson]

Here's a good link on the subject:<br />http://www.star-tech-inc.com/papers/lse_iaf/LSE_IAF_04_Paper_Final.pdf

 

[nyarlathotep]

Post deleted by Nyarlathotep

 

[JonClarke]

And that is what has been done.<br /><br />Jon <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>

 

[frodo1008]

WOW! Thanks a lot Josh that is quite an article! I am certain that if G. K. O'neill had known of this idea back at the time of his own proposals for using the materials of the moon he would have gone for this rather than mass launchers and catchers from the moon.<br /><br />It would seem to me that this is then the key idea to eventually creating a true space faring civilization for the entire solar system! And all this without even considering the possibility of the helium3 fusion power mining from the moon!<br /><br />I would even suggest that this kind of cis-lunar development be done before we try going on to Mars! IF this were done first, then large enough expeditions could then be mounted using these materials to ensure the safe return of the explorers, and the successful completion of their missions. Just trying to reach such distances as Mars with a minimum crew of some half dozen people seems to me to be a ticket for a suicide mission! Even back in the 1960's Wherner Von Braun knew this to be true. This system would allow for enough people and ships to be going to Mars to allow for the absolutely essential redundancy needed for such a jump into deep space!<br /><br />This would also allow for the inexpensive eventual development of space hotels and large rotating space station technology, as well as solar power stations with enough capability to even broadcast power back to Earth. Making it possible to have enough power to bring about a true electric civilization here on the Earth without using up the precious resources of our petrochemicals to do it! To say nothing of not polluting the Earth's atmosphere to such an extent as to preclude all air breathing life on this planet!<br /><br />This would even eventually lead to Earth space elevators, and the near colonization of cis-lunar space by O'Neill's space colonies! <br /><br />THIS is why it is so very vital to be going back to the moon at this time! The NASA VSE lunar program is only a start, but it IS a

 

[vulture2]

First Jon, let me say that I have the greatest respect for your opinions and knowledge. I am not a nihilist and would be happy to change my position where I've made errors. I simply feel we need to ensure we are on a path that won't end in another expensive cancellation.<br /><br /> />>>The lack of official interest in space travel in the US in the late 40's and early 50's was quite remarkable. This had changed by the late 50's and IGY, however, although level of interest was still less than in the 60's. This is well known. What is your point about this?<br /><br />I was referring to human flight to the moon. Von Braun's memo to Kennedy advocated sending a man to the moon because only such an ambitious goal would give us time to catch up with the Russians. Kennedy's speech to Congress in May 1961 did not mention research as a justification for manned lunar flight: "Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take."<br /><br /> />>> last three Apollo's were not cancelled as soon as the first landing was in the bag. They were cancelled progressively, Apollo 20 in January 1970 and 18 and 19 in September 1970.<br /><br />You are correct, I was clearly wrong. However the cancellations were made inevitable by reductions in the NASA budget even before Apollo 11; these cuts were made even though the later missions, if they had flown, would have done progressively more science. I was a freshman in aerospace engineering at the time and the collapse in public support was both dramatic and discouraging; NASA had proposed a wide spectrum of manned scientific missions of which only Skylab and ASTP, neither beyond LEO, survived. <br /><br />And what is your point

 

[halman]

vulture2,<br /><br />You have made some excellent points regarding the role of research in space exploration, and you obviously have been deeply interested in program considering your major in college. I think that you are correct in saying that research cannot be the sole justification for the Vision for Space Exploration, because it is far too expensive.<br /><br />However, as we see core industries in the United States, such as the automobile industry, foundering due to international competition, we must make a choice whether our nation will play a part in the future or not. At the current rate of debt accumulation, several Wall Street analysts have stated that the U.S. Treasury Bond will slip to a 'junk' rating in 20 years or less. Unless this nation finds something which it can do better than anyone else, which other nations desire to use or buy, the future of the United States looks very grim.<br /><br />It has become established that the United States is not producing new scientists and engineers to replace those that are retiring. The demand for such specialties has fallen drastically, and the private sector is unlikely to alter its research and development programs simply to increase demand for expensive specialists. Unless the government leads the way into new fields, new areas of development, which offer the oppurtunity to create new products.<br /><br />If things don't change, there is a fairly good possibility that the funding for processing the data returned by deep space probes already launched will not be available. Continuing to treat space as a research only project will lead to the research being abandoned, in lieu of trying to keep the lights on. <br /><br />It is the responsibility of the government to open up new frontiers, to create the oppurtunities for the private sector to capitolize upon. Returning to the Moon to stay, building a permanent base there, surveying for resources, these activities are the proper domain of the government, and inve <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[vulture2]

>>>as we see core industries in the United States, such as the automobile industry, foundering due to international competition, we must make a choice whether our nation will play a part in the future or not... Unless the government leads the way into new fields, new areas of development, which offer the opportunity to create new products. <br /><br />I couldn't agree more. NASA's original mission from its founding (as NACA) in 1915 until the Moon Race was to provide just such support to the US aerospace industry. In describing NACA, Hansen states "almost every investigation done there, whether 'fundamental' or 'developmental', aimed at a useful aircraft application." http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4305/contents.htm<br />

 

[nyarlathotep]

The problem with your theory is that NASA's socialist manned spaceflight program takes tens of thousands of the most talented engineers and scientists out of other areas of the US labour market. If you're wasting that talent on pointless political make-work projects you are destroying Americas national competitiveness in other industries for zero gain.

 

[docm]

You would turn them loose in a marketplace where postdocs can't get a job for 5 years? Hmm.....one way to lower research salaries I guess. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[frodo1008]

So you would sacrifice the future for immediate commercial gain? A commercial gain that this country has already lost? <br /><br />The ONLY area where the US still holds a relatively undisputed lead over other countries is in aerospace. And even there that lead has shrunk to a relatively small one. Aerospace is also the ONLY area where the US still holds a positive balance of payments! <br /><br />We no longer manufacture and sell automobiles faster than we import automobiles. We certainly don't sell more high tech home appliances than we import, or computers, or just about anything else anymore. Cutting NASA to spread the wealth of our scientific and engineering expertise will NOT stop this situation!<br /><br />Admittedly, the effort put into manned space will not show large profits for quite sometime into the future. But in the long run those countries and private industry companies that have the vision to push in this area are going to be the economic leaders of the world into the next century. If nothing else the resources of this planet are limited, and the resources of this solar system are relatively unlimited. That factor alone will ensure that those that have the will and ability to go after those resources will be the economic engines of progress when the resources of this planet start to decline heavily. <br /><br />Just as the US government has in the past been the leader in developing the infrastructure of this country so that the private industry of this country could benefit to such a degree that it made this country far and away the richest in the last century, and even into the beginning of this century, it must be the government that will take the high risk steps in also opening up this new frontier also! Private industry itself is profit driven to such an extent that they will not take the necessary risks involved, just as they were before! So this leaves ONLY the government and NASA to do the job!<br /><br />Hopefully, this is not beyond your

 

[JonClarke]

Hi vulture, I don't disagree with you at all on this. You made some excellent points. I would just like add that I am sure that over a life that will probably reach 20 years the ISS will more than repay the investment that has been made.<br /><br />Jon <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>