Lagrange Points

[SpaceXFanMobius57]

What could be the possible near term(present to 2050) uses of the earth-moon, earth-sun lagrange points? Perhaps as midway stations, fuel dumps or research stations. Plant a large structure in one and you won't have to bother with it except with some stationkeeping at some points. I know sun-earth L1 is being used as placement for several solar obeservatories right now.

In fact, instead of burning the ISS up when its service life ends, just strap a large booster to boost it to a lagrange point and let it sit there. I realize this is probably not probable due to political and tech(cost) reasons but its a nice though than destruction.

 

[EarthlingX]

Wikipedia can give you some ideas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_points

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_p ... lonization

 

[CalliArcale]

Additionally, Sun-Earth L2 is the home of the WMAP satellite. ;-)

EDIT: There is another way-cool near term use of Lagrange points. You can use them as gateways to the rest of the solar system. The Saturn IV-B upper stage from the Apollo 12 mission lacked the velocity to get into heliocentric orbit, unlike its predecessors, and instead went into a highly elliptical geocentric orbit. But then, sometime after 1970, it disappeared. When it reappeared in 2002 and was briefly misidentified as a captured asteroid, orbital calculations revealed that it had passed out of the Earth's influence in 1971 by going through one of the Lagrange points. It came back into Earth orbit by passing through that point again, and a few years later, left again by the same route. The process is predicted to repeat itself in 2032, IIRC. (I don't recall which Lagrange point it was; I'll have to see if I can find the article again.)

The guy who designed the amazingly cool and efficient trajectory for the Genesis probe wrote a scholarly article about how you could use various Lagrange points and some other points as sort of an interplanetary superhighway, allowing a probe to traverse the solar system for surprisingly little expenditure of propellant. They greatly reduce the delta vee (change in velocity) required. Drawback is that this sort of travel is generally quite slow, and very inflexible as far as launch windows. But I expect we'll see it used in the next few decades.

 

[tanstaafl76]

Sounds like a game of cosmic roller derby :mrgreen:

 

[EarthlingX]

Additionally, Sun-Earth L2 is the home of the WMAP satellite. ;-)

EDIT: There is another way-cool near term use of Lagrange points. You can use them as gateways to the rest of the solar system. The Saturn IV-B upper stage from the Apollo 12 mission lacked the velocity to get into heliocentric orbit, unlike its predecessors, and instead went into a highly elliptical geocentric orbit. But then, sometime after 1970, it disappeared. When it reappeared in 2002 and was briefly misidentified as a captured asteroid, orbital calculations revealed that it had passed out of the Earth's influence in 1971 by going through one of the Lagrange points. It came back into Earth orbit by passing through that point again, and a few years later, left again by the same route. The process is predicted to repeat itself in 2032, IIRC. (I don't recall which Lagrange point it was; I'll have to see if I can find the article again.)

The guy who designed the amazingly cool and efficient trajectory for the Genesis probe wrote a scholarly article about how you could use various Lagrange points and some other points as sort of an interplanetary superhighway, allowing a probe to traverse the solar system for surprisingly little expenditure of propellant. They greatly reduce the delta vee (change in velocity) required. Drawback is that this sort of travel is generally quite slow, and very inflexible as far as launch windows. But I expect we'll see it used in the next few decades.

I think you are talking about Interplanetary Transport Network.
This concept makes Ls gateways to the Solar system.

 

[Booban]

Sounds like the old 'Trade winds' we used to use.