can we move the ISS to the moon?(or build one there)

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R1

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can a propuplsion module move the space station to lunar orbit?<br /><br />I know, you need fuel, but I don't mean it has to get there overnight either, just take <br />your time and enjoy the trip, and would One ISS fuel module be enough? (thats one <br />shuttle payload worth of fuel, or would you need 2 or 3?)<br />the ISS is already a space base, but it needs a propulsion module, then a lunar module<br />shuttles the people to the moon and back to the station. we need to be inventing modules<br />for the ISS left and right. that was its primary design: MODULES MODULES and more MODULES.<br />I know it costs money, but a moon base in my opinion costs more, so you probably need to wait a couple decades longer for a moon base, if pricing in the future will allow. Its got to be cheaper to design award winning modules than to build entirely new living quarters that haven't been proved and tested yet, <br />and we already have the living qusrters, why not make the most of what we got?<br />Basically move the ISS to <font color="yellow">lunar orbit</font>nd you immediately have a self proven reliable, and mobile lunar base. We would then equip the next modules with lunar projects.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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grooble

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I think others would say that the acceleration would break up the station. <br /><br />But it's a real piece of crap if its that unstable.<br /><br />
 
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R1

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Is it that fragile even at low accelerations?<br /><br />we're not trying to break a speed record <br /><br />even if the trip takes 12 months it's worth it,<br /><br />so couldn't we tow or push it 'slowly' to the moon ? no jerk no shove, not any more<br />than the shuttles routine dockings, etc<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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R1

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shuttle guy, that's exactly what we need: 'slow'<br /><br />we need to do it ever so slowly, even if a trip takes 6 to 12 months, <br /><br /><br /><br /> take the ISS apart, line up the modules in a straight line and<br />reatach them all in line, then add your propulsion modules on the back, and a lunar module or two in the front, <br /> <br />then move slow<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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vogon13

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ISS has no 'bunker' to protect crew during solar flare events. Once you've cleared Van Allen belt radiation events can be a real problem. Also, passage thru VAB will degrade solar arrays. Progress supply ships cannot reach lunar altitude. Neither can shuttle.<br /><br />Saturn 3rd stage accelerated Apollo hardware to moon, what is ratio of mass of ISS to Apollo hardware? Big hulking booster to do manuever, I'm not sure a fully fueled ET would have enough DV to do this job. Ion engine (like DS1) would take centuries to move ISS. Imagine size of booster to loft ISS from earths' surface in one launch. Now imagine that booster upgraded to loft ISS and an upper stage big enough to raise orbit from 200 miles to 240,000 miles. Big, big job.<br /><br />Sorry <img src="/images/icons/frown.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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CalliArcale

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<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>I think others would say that the acceleration would break up the station.<br /><br />But it's a real piece of crap if its that unstable. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Yes, the acceleration would have to be gentle. Remember, it's been put into a working configuration, which means things are no longer strapped in the way they were for launch and you've got bits holding things together which were never meant to endure launch accelerations in that configuration.<br /><br />But does that make it a piece of crap? Of course not. You design a vehicle to tolerate a certain set of conditions (thermal, vibration, radiation, acceleration, torque, etc), and then design it a little past that set. You want to exceed your requirements. But it doesn't make sense to exceed them by a lot. That just adds money, mass, and quite possibly risk as well.<br /><br />Think of it this way. If you put your stereo out in the driveway and accidentally back your car out over it, the stereo will be ruined. Does that mean the stereo was a piece of crap? Of course not. It could be a hugely expensive fancy-schmancy audiophile setup built by Bose. But it was never designed to tolerate somebody backing a car over it. It wouldn't have made sense to make it able to tolerate that. It would've made it heavy, ugly, difficult to stick in your living room, and probably seriously impaired its performance. After all, most stereos are designed with accoustics in mind, not armor.<br /><br />The same principle applies here. The ISS components were designed to be launched aboard a variety of heavily lift vehicles (Shuttle being the gentlest) and then deployed into an operational configuration in an environment with very little physical strain. The biggest worries on orbit are attitude control, docking, radiation induced electrical faults, and thermoregulation. It was never planned to be able to endure hard acceleration after assembly, and so it wasn <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>
 
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R1

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thanks for all the valuable info. (I changed the title, now I think we need more space stations)<br />I understand now basically those modules are meant to stay there.<br />The idea of haaving a lunar orbiting station was from the point of view that<br />we already have the technology to have it there probably within 5 years, but instead<br />we are having to sort of re-invent the wheel, I mean EVEN one CEV model looks like<br />another shuttle again! then there will be delays like when todays shuttle was built,<br />and problems and decades to go through again, they will probably fail a lot weight tests or<br />stumble on the weight of the budget limits, time windows, etc, maybe 10 years just to be<br />satisfied the way it rides on top of a 747, or decades before first launch, after having flown <br />on top of an airplane.<br />All the effort and money at work right now at this very moment could be building more space<br />station shuttle bay modules, except Now the modules should be next generation design,<br />before the shuttle allegedly retires, these extraterrestrial/lunar capable next generation<br />modules could be placed near earth, then a separate propulsion module (rather small one,<br />like the one we're inventing either way) could take them to the moon and assemble the <br />lunar space station well before 2010, in the next 60 months, well before 2014 + x number<br />of years(or decades of CEV tests), anyway.<br /> From the lunar space station it is much easier to build a ground station for the <br />permanent lunar city or whatever the slower longer term plan for the moon surface might be.<br />Lunar work and exploration can be pursued intensely and a variety of moonspots can be<br />explored simultaneously, rather than having to change the location of the first moon bases.<br />The station modules can even be built to be able to be dissassembled and easily moved,<br />maybe even to Mars, or between here and mars. <br /><br />It just doesn't seem like we made the <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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soccerguy789

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I have actually thaught a lot about this, because in case of a disaster on earth, a large lunar base may be the place to start over from, and it has been speculated that cutting edge microchips could be produced in 0g so i figured that moving a space station that can produce microchips to the lunar orbit would be advantagous to a growing colony. one thing I figured would be vital to a lunar colony would be an Solar electric propulsion reusable stage that would ferry landers to and from lunar orbit. SEP's are very slow to accelerate, and could probably do the trick. I also doubt that the station would fall apart because of this kind of acceleration because it held together just fine from the atmospheric drag it suffered while the shuttle was gone. that drag was cause it to decelerate at the same rate we would probably want to accelerate. as long as you keep accelerating, it doesnt matter how fast you accelerate, you will reach your destination at a reasonable time.
 
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tomnackid

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"I have actually thaught a lot about this, because in case of a disaster on earth, a large lunar base may be the place to start over from,"<br />-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />I know its a common idea in science fiction, but I have a hard time conceiving of any kind of disaster that makes the surface of the Earth LESS habitable than the moon. <br /><br />A really, really big nuclear war could leave the earth radioactive, but the moon already gets more ionizing radiation than any war could produce, plus it lacks water and air!<br /><br />I don't think anyone is going to go to the moon for any practical reason. They are going to go just for the hell of it, or to get away from Earth in a big way and find something useful to do after they have been there a while.
 
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lunatio_gordin

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No, not like "colonize the Moon with people, and leave the Earth empty."<br />I think they mean Have people on the Moon ready to start the human race over on Earth should something Catastrohpic (IE Asteroid impact) happen.
 
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nexium

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Likely we will soon have an engine that can produce one hundred pounds of thrust contineously for years. Attached to the ISS with a few braces, breakage is unlikely, and the orbital radius can be increased to 240,000 miles in a year or so. There may, however, be no practical way to change this Earth orbit to a moon orbit without some big rockets, and big rockets will likely break something on ISS even with lots of braces. A patched up ISS can likely be put in luner orbit with technology likely soon, but it is more practical to optimise a new station to be moved from LEO to moon orbit. We can likely start cutting metal as soon as we have analyzed the details. Neil
 
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mrmorris

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<font color="yellow">"Likely we will soon have an engine that can produce one hundred pounds of thrust contineously for years. "</font><br /><br />No -- actually that's pretty <b>unlikely</b>. I present as an example NASA's 17KW Hall thruster. It produces about .67 pounds of thrust for 17KW of input. It's reasonably efficient, so power will scale up fairly linearly with the thrust required. So a Hall thruster capable of supplying 100 pounds of thrust would require a continuous power of ~2.5 megawatts. You'd best have one <b>heck</b> of a nuclear reactor on that spaceship.
 
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R1

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well it seems we have the technolology to move it slowly. The specialization of the station would come with the specialized modules. The entire station, in fact, would not need to go.<br /><br />It's better to make the main lunar station an orbiting one. The portabitlity of it is worth it.<br /><br />It doesn't mean at all that experiments can't run on the moon surface, <br /><br /> it actually makes it easier to work on multiple lunar surface locatations simultaneoulsy, and with the bonus of<br />it's main portability<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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gunsandrockets

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"I present as an example NASA's 17KW Hall thruster. It produces about .67 pounds of thrust for 17KW of input."<br /><br />That much? I thought Hall effect plasma thrusters only produced half as much thrust/power. Hmmm...I'll have to look around. Please post I link if you have one. <br /><br />One thing I found...<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect_thruster<br /><br />"A Hall thruster typically operates at around 50–60% thrust efficiency and provides specific impulse from 1,200 to 1,800 seconds (12 to 18 kN·s/kg), and thrust-to-power ratios of 50–70 mN/kW."<br /><br />At the high end of that thrust range 17 kW of power would equal 0.2675 pounds of thrust.<br /><br /><br />
 
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R1

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well I do know the ISS or maybe the Hubble (or both) have had their orbits re-elevated.<br /><br />what did we use to raise their orbits back up? was it the shuttle itself? a propulsion module?<br />was it with with these Hall effect ion thrusters? <br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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Boris_Badenov

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<font color="yellow"> what did we use to raise their orbits back up? </font><br /><br /> They use a Progress spacecraft <br /><br /> You really want to read this article;<br /><br /> BIGELOW SHOOTS FOR THE MOON <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div>
 
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docm

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<b><font color="yellow">You really want to read this article;<br /><br />BIGELOW SHOOTS FOR THE MOON </font></b><br /><br />NO KIDDING!! <br /><br />That's one of the best manned space related interviews of the year to date. That and the interview with Benson last week about the Dream Chaser. <br /><br />I'm counting the minutes to April 10th. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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qso1

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On the original question, what would be the purpose of moving ISS to the moon?<br /><br />It would be less expensive to develop a whole new and more compact system similar to what Bigelow is proposing. For one thing, ISS is already half the age of the Mir station when critics complained the Mir was an aging death trap.<br /><br />I don't buy that ISS would be an aging death trap any more than the Mir was but by the time we are ready to go to the moon, an aging ISS might be an issue. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>
 
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R1

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you have good points too, I think the main thing is to use time and dollars more<br />cost effectively and keeping in mind too than even a brand new design will be just like an aged Mir or ISS<br />after a while. We need to design module factories for modules that will become reliable and tried and tested,<br />and modules need to be able to be easily adapted for different applications, and that way you don't need<br />to rebuild a whole factory program every time you get a brand new design.<br /><br />If the ISS is becoming too aged then its time to abandon it, and use the dollars you were going to spend on it towards the lunar stations instead.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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R1

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good article, thanks docm. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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qso1

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John1R:<br />If the ISS is becoming too aged then its time to abandon it, and use the dollars you were going to spend on it towards the lunar stations instead.<br /><br />Me:<br />Appears as though were headed in that direction with the upcoming lunar efforts. ISS will be operated to the extent we get as much out of it as possible and IMO, ISS has quite a few good years left, at least 10 to 15 years. The Mir termination was as much politics as it was aging. Stuff breaks down in Mir, its an aging jalopy...there are breakdowns on ISS too. You find and fix the problem then move on. The first Mir element went into orbit in 1987 and the completed station was de-orbited just 12 years later in 1999. The first ISS element went into orbit in 1998 so its time will be up if we go by Mir standard, in 2010 and ISS will barely be completed in 2010.<br /><br />Private industry will hopefully follow the points you made about reliable tested modules, starting with the Bigelow inflatables. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>
 
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R1

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rather than completing the ISS, couldn't the dollars (and labor hours) scheduled to go to the ISS between tomorrow and 2010<br />be of better use in a lunar orbiting station program?<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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R1

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Actually we need to start working on building some kind of a real spaceship. Initially this would<br />ideally be built as a lunar orbiting station, because that happens to be what we need first.<br /><br />We need an orbiting lunar station and it needs to be built in modules capable of spacetravel. Period.<br /><br />So in the beginning we would end up with an orbiting ISS at the moon, but because of planning ahead<br />it could then be moved to earth orbit for practice and then to mars orbit and back as needed. <br /><br />We keep failing<br />to plan ahead, or else the ISS would be space travel ready now and ready to orbit the moon and Mars!<br />Now, instead of correcting that mistake, what's the current plan? To build a land based moon station first?<br />That's can waste up to 50 years of the long term space travel program, we need to prevent the limited-budget problems we keep hearing of every so many years.<br /><br />If we don't do this and build a land based staion on the moon instead,<br />I'm afraid it's going to keep the public distracted for ages,<br />tying up budgets and not really accomplishing space-travel capable modules.<br />The people would either not realize the spacetravel long term project is more important, or if they do,<br />they won't have half the budget, because the land based moon project is sucking it all away.<br /><br />By focusing on building the station with travel-ready modules from the beginning, you end up <br />litterally building the long term project which could be of great use locally (earth-moon) from<br />the beginning.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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qso1

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IMO, probably not. The purpose of ISS was ill defined from the start. The biggest problem with ISS is that it was mostly sold as an international project of huge scope as though being a large international project was all the justification it needed to exist.<br /><br />I think we'd have done better money wise with a smaller station or maybe a few special purpose stations built around common core modules. This could then have been developed into whatever lunar hardware might have been required by now including a lunar orbital station.<br /><br />ISS does have its upside too, we have maintained a permanent human presence in space since 2000 IIRC.<br /><br />At this point, deferring completion of ISS just to redirect the funds to a lunar orbit station without some really good selling point would end up being a disaster IMO.<br /><br />Assuming the VSE plays out as planned, we may eventually see a lunar orbital facility or private industry may eventually do so but there will also have to be a pretty solid reason for having a lunar orbital station and that can come as a result of having an infrastructure on the moon itself. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>
 
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qso1

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John1R:<br />Actually we need to start working on building some kind of a real spaceship. Initially this would <br />ideally be built as a lunar orbiting station, because that happens to be what we need first. <br /><br />Me:<br />Can you specify why we need a lunar orbital station?<br /><br />IMO, we have to get the cost of getting to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) down before we can do much of anything else in space. Get economical access to LEO, the rest will follow.<br /><br />John1R:<br />We need an orbiting lunar station and it needs to be built in modules capable of spacetravel. Period.<br /><br />Me:<br />By their very nature, stations are designed mainly to orbit close to whatever celestial body one may wish to put them at. Instead of station modules that are ready made to shuttle between earth, moon, and mars...utilize specially designed transport craft for that. An example of why...ISS currently is outfitted for research in LEO. Just to jaunt to Mars for example, ISS would have to be completely restocked with enough food, water, etc...stuff it is currently supplied with every six months by Progress vehicles. We already touched upon the propulsion issues and Calli gave and excellent description of the capabilities and limitations inherent in designing with current technology.<br /><br />Back in 1969, fresh and flushed from success with the Apollo 11 mission, Werhner Von Braun and his team made a presentation to NASA on the kind of infrastructure to have in place to conduct operations on the moon...a fifty man base by 1989 was part of the plan as was a first landing on mars in 1982 or 84. Nuclear shuttles to ferry crews and supplies to and fro.<br /><br />The essence of this system is still required to operate both on the moon and mars, and it would probably include small orbital stations around them.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the only part of that plan to survive was space shuttle, and space station. Even in 1969, the first problem Von Brauns team realized needed addressing was the l <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>
 
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