How Hard Would It Be To Hit the Moon With a Shuttle ET?

tuckerfan · May 29, 2005

I'm not talking about a pinpoint landing on a specific spot of the Moon, I'm talking about just flinging one at the Moon and having it impact somewhere on the Moon, with no concern about the shape of the tank after it hits. Of course, the shuttle can't get it there (though it could get the tank to Earth orbit), so some kind of auxillary rocket would need to be strapped on to the tank. Could it use the remaining dregs of fuel in the tank to push the tank towards the Moon, or would it need an additional fuel supply to get the tank there?

vogon13 · May 29, 2005

Need to accelerate ET another 7-8000 MPH. Huge maneuver, residual fuel grossly insufficient. Guidance a problem too, as there is no appropriate instrumentation on the ET. Will need a mid course correction to hit moon, its' 2000 miles across and 250000 miles away, you should putt so well. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

vogon13 · May 29, 2005

Just had a thought: How about carrying the ET on up to the ISS for an extremely detailed inspection ? Grab the tank with the remote arm, and rotate it and photograph extensively from one end to the other. Would give me tremendous confidence in all the fixes if this were done. I realize the shuttle will photograph ET at seperation, but the level of detail available at the ISS would be superlative. And if something hinky discovered, astro or cosmonaut could space walk and get samples of insulation. Am I the first to think of this ? There must be a good reason why they are not planning to do this but I'll be danged if I can think of a reason beyond institutional inertia. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

najab · May 29, 2005

>Grab the tank with the remote arm...And there the plan falls down. Exactly where does the SSRMS grapple onto the tank?

vogon13 · May 29, 2005

Bolt a grapple fixture to the intertank before launch. Grapple fixtures already on several satellites. I'd put it 180 degrees away from shuttle in case it falls off during launch. And I did think of reason why they probably don't want to do this: What do you do with the darn thing after inspection? Does the ISS need a gymnasium? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

henryhallam · May 29, 2005

Pure speculation, but there might well be clearance issues with other parts of the ISS. Stationkeeping so the tank can be grabbed by the ISS arm would have to be very accurate but that is probably doable. Also greater OMS prop. requirement for rendezvous with that extra 27 tonnes, though I don't think that would be prohibitive. The mods necessary for the grapple fixtures would probably be nearly as great as those for the bipod heaters and other foam-loss-prevention measures in the first place. And you have to prevent ice formation on the grapple fixture too!

spacester · May 29, 2005

In all the discussions over the years about using the ET on-orbit, the primary engineering difficulty folks have identified was probably the deterioration of the foam insulation. The expectation is that atomic oxygen and the vacuum of space would generate a nasty orange cloud around the tank that would cause a lot of grief for anything that got close to it. The best proposed solution I've heard (mine <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /> ) is to "wrap that rascal". The world's largest condom to the rescue! What is interesting to me is that those discussions took place while Columbia was still with us. A lot of folks have spent a lot of time looking at that foam the last two years, and I gotta wonder if the analysis might have changed somewhat. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

Astrosag · May 30, 2005

I think people are oversimplfying this. Is the ET even structurally capable of being equppied with a structure so that the ISS can attach to it? Of course, I could be and probably am wrong..maybe it is easier than I think. Whats the idea behind this anyways?

Astrosag · May 30, 2005

Does the tank have enough velocity or energy to reach the ISS and how difficult of a orbital problem would this be...trying to hit the ISS without an orbital maneuvering system or engines? Maybe the good reason is that its impossible?

smradoch · May 30, 2005

Hitting Moon by ET at 2500m/s would make nice small crater on the Moon. The ejecta would have higher contents of pure Aluminium. But you would need approx 25t earth departure stage at LEO, full of propelants. Manouvering of ET to ISS has no sence. What would you do with that? Construction work at orbit is pretty expensive and ET is not designed for anything like this. It would be easier and probable cheaper to launch similar low cost structure by Proton.

vogon13 · May 30, 2005

___________________ You should putt so well. ___________________ ___________________________ Does the ISS need a gymnasium ? ___________________________ Just thought I would point out that I wasn't taking the topic real seriously, sorry for the subtlety, was not trying to 'stir the pot'. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

farmerman · May 30, 2005

It could probably be done, but that will delay any launch attempt for another 2 years while they figure out how to do it.

tuckerfan · May 30, 2005

I was just hinking about sending an ET to the Moon since folks like Space Island Group had been talking about using them as an orbital hotel, and it seemed to me that if we ever got an operation going on the Moon, it'd be awfully handy to have materials on the Moon which didn't need a lot of refining before they could be used, like Lunar ore would need.

spacester · May 30, 2005

I think it's an excellent idea. With abundant solar energy, that LI / Al alloy could be re-processed into castings and extrusions. Again, though, that darn foam insulation would have to be dealt with. I can see polluting the surface with metals since we intend to clean it up and use it as a resource, but that foam might spread across the entire globe. Very un-cool. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

smradoch · May 31, 2005

Why to hit Moon by ET? Wouldn't be better to utilise tanks from one-way lunar cargos and tankers? But I thing that those nice tanks will be very much needed for insitu propelant production. Maybe you can recover EDSs of these tankers which can hit the Moon. Or you can find some iron meteorites.

CalliArcale · May 31, 2005

I think it's meant mostly as an intellectual exercise. We've all heard arguments about *why* it's not worth doing it. But how *would* it be acheived, if you decided to say "to heck with it, let's do it anyway"? Regarding moving ET to ISS -- in terms of delta-vee, it believe it can be done. I can't see adding an OMS system to it, so I'd plan on bringing it mated to the Shuttle. Dock the Shuttle to the ISS as normal, grapple the ET with the SSRMS, perform a spacewalk to somehow demate the Orbiter from the ET (a very non-trivial operation; I have no idea how you'd actually acheive this and I doubt there's really enough clearance between the two to fit a spacewalker without risking damage to the tiles), pull the ET clear, and there you have it. Alternately, you could develop new attachments to replace the explosive bolts with something that can separate remotely without putting too much strain on the SSRMS. That gives me a question: can the SSRMS handle the load at all? I just looked it up, and the manufacturer cites a limit of 100,000 kg. The ET has a dry weight of 29,000 pounds, which is about 13,150 kg. So that's not going to be a problem. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "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." -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

quasar2 · May 31, 2005

i`ve suggested Moon bombardment several times on here. & this concept will be applied to Mars endeavors as well. has everyone seen the film "Red Planet"? & we have this perfect opportunity to build salvage skills w/ whatever is found on The Lunar Surface. & i`d say try to hit an area between two or more old sites. of course there will be preserved sites as well. then there`s GEO salvage material. i think if there`s ever another Space Treaty or a revision this should be one of the priorites. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

scottb50 · May 31, 2005

I brought that up a long time and SG shot it down. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

tuckerfan · May 31, 2005

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr />Why to hit Moon by ET? Wouldn't be better to utilise tanks from one-way lunar cargos and tankers? But I thing that those nice tanks will be very much needed for insitu propelant production. Maybe you can recover EDSs of these tankers which can hit the Moon. Or you can find some iron meteorites.<hr /></blockquote>And those are scheduled to launch, when, exactly? I was just thinking that instead of throwing the ET away, we could get a head start on supplying a future Moon base.

CalliArcale · Jun 1, 2005

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr />The NASA Technical description states that the RMS was designed to handle 65,000 pounds, ( a LOT more than I thought,) ...and it was improved begining in 1998 to raise it to 586,000 pounds. Typo on the last number? <hr /></blockquote> I looked up the SSRMS (station's "big arm"), not the Shuttle's smaller RMS. I got the number from the Canadian manufacturer's website. <blockquote>In reply to:<hr />The same source list the empty weight of the Lightweight Tank as 66,800 pounds, and the Super Lightweight Tank at about 65,000. Could your tank figure have been in kilograms Calli? Converting 29,000 to pounds seems to come close. <hr /></blockquote> The ET number was specifically listed in pounds, and I got it from the Space Shuttle News Reference Manual at KSC's website. I saw it on many other sites as the same value, but they probably got it from the reference manual too; it's the standard source for media. EDIT: D'oh, I just figured out what I did wrong. Boneheaded mistake, really. I was in a hurry, because I've got a ton going on at work. I just got the figure for the *hydrogen* tank. <img src="/images/icons/blush.gif" /> Oops. The reference manual gives an approximate value of 66,000 pounds, noting that future tanks may vary slightly. So your numbers are probably correct. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "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." -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

smradoch · Jun 2, 2005

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr />Why to hit Moon by ET? Wouldn't be better to utilise tanks from one-way lunar cargos and tankers? But I thing that those nice tanks will be very much needed for insitu propelant production. Maybe you can recover EDSs of these tankers which can hit the Moon. Or you can find some iron meteorites. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And those are scheduled to launch, when, exactly? I was just thinking that instead of throwing the ET away, we could get a head start on supplying a future Moon base. <hr /></blockquote> This tankers and cargos must be developed before or very soon after the CEV landing on the Moon. There is no way you can build Moon base without them.

quasar2 · Jun 2, 2005

on other threads the question has been raised about how to get from nearside to Poles. or why we`d want to in the first place. this provides opportunity. there are a number of uses for salvage material. on Lunar Surface. & i`d say even that MoonReturn`s priority in a landing site should be geared toward this. after all wouldn`t one priority of MoonReturn be inspecting the old sites? several times someone has found a map of all the old sites. can someone please find that again? perhaps just for fun a route could be plotted between the sites & a Pole. perhaps someone could create a game based on this. & of course this only if decision were to land nearside, then go icepecting. how many artifacts in the past have we had opportunity to do this? even the contents of a Progress could be useful to Lunar Colony. what if ironically Apollo`s dirty diapers were help in composting regolith? we had a pretty good on Mars society forum,"Clunking to Mars". <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

henryhallam · Jun 2, 2005

Regarding reuse of Apollo landing sites: Several problems with this. There isn't very much there anyway - LM descent stage dry mass was a little under 3 tonnes for the J missions. What is there, is probably not all that useful. Some metals sure, but what little volatiles there were will all have boiled away by now. There wouldn't really be any hope of REUSING any equipment, you would instead have to recycle the materials, and by the time that there is enough infrastructure on the moon to do that, a couple of tonnes won't make much difference to the base. The state of everything there is a big fat unknown, and the expense of getting to the old sites is not inconsiderable, whether it be from orbit or from a surface base elsewhere. I doubt whether the marginal possible benefits would justify the propellant / energy expenditure. Finally I think there is some historical value in the sites and it would be a pity to just cut the descent stages up and melt them down for scrap. I do think that a visit to one or two of the old sites is worthwhile once a base is up and running, but for historical and public relations reasons, or perhaps geological (see what has happened to the surface over 50 years) rather than an attempt to reclaim resources.

quasar2 · Jun 2, 2005

what about the Russian sites? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

drwayne · Jun 2, 2005

"I do think that a visit to one or two of the old sites is worthwhile once a base is up and running, but for historical and public relations reasons" And to prove we actually went there...oops, by the time we have the infrastucture to do such a thing, we could easily haved aged and planted fake equipment. BIG <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> Wayne <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "1) Give no quarter; 2) Take no prisoners; 3) Sink everything." Admiral Jackie Fisher </div>

How Hard Would It Be To Hit the Moon With a Shuttle ET?

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