Launching the Space Shuttle from the Moon

[phaze]

<br /><br />Presumably we could then fly a much larger craft from our neck of the woods to places like Mars and Jupiter AND at a much quicker pace... or is it not so "easy"?<br /><br />I'm ignoring the small details of building and fueling the Shuttle on the Moon.

 

[weeman]

I believe we almost have the technology today to build stations on the Moon. The only thing I would see as a threat is meteors slamming into the surface and Moon bases. The Moon could indeed serve as a launch point for missions, as well as construction of additional vehicles.<br /><br />The problem I see is the cost and man power to make this happen. It takes time to get the money, considering this would cost a TON! Also, to train people to be capable of building structures in such a different environment, would take months and months. <br /><br />So, it might very well happen in the future. Will it be in this century? It's possible, I suppose in another 70 or 80+ years we could be looking at the Moon being colonized for the benefits of science and space exploration.<br /><br />What if we built large observatories on the surface of the Moon? Could you imagine the amount of stars you would see if you were on the dark side!? <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><strong><font color="#ff0000">Techies: We do it in the dark. </font></strong></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>"Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.</strong><strong>" -Albert Einstein </strong></font></p> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

These of course are not trivial problems. How many people are involved in building and maintaining the shuttle?<br />10,000? 20,000? 30,000?<br /><br />To build and fuel a shuttle would require that many people at least. How long (and how many bazillions of dollars) would it take to transport and support such a work force?<br /><br />Welcome to SDC, but reality can be cruel sometimes <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[SpeedFreek]

The shuttle was designed the way it was to allow it to be boosted from the Earth's surface, deploy it's payload in orbit and then re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and glide down to a controlled landing on a conventional (although very long!) runway.<br /><br />Surely a lot of the shuttle's design would be made redundant if it was launched from (and presumably returned to) the moon? Would it need wings with airelons? Would it need a large payload bay? What jobs would it do in its new role?<br /><br />I would imagine it would be cheaper and more efficient to design and build a new vehicle for this role. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000">_______________________________________________<br /></font><font size="2"><em>SpeedFreek</em></font> </p> </div>

 

[phaze]

I meant "Space Shuttle" metaphorically.<br /><br />I'm trying to understand the magnitude of any speed of travel advantages we would achieve by launching future missions from the Moon.<br /><br />If we had the ability to launch similarly propulsed crafts from the Moon, now... are we talking about saving months/years off of travel time in our solar system or much less?

 

[qso1]

If we had a vehicle with shuttle like capabilities going from the moon, the advantages would be significant. In fact, since such a vehicle would never need wings and rudder, theres a chunk of mass that can be converted to payload.<br /><br />However, I don't know if there would be a great speed advantage due to the fact that conventional, even nuclear propulsion to some extent is going to depend on the laws of physics (Hohmann transfer orbits) to keep the propellant mass minimal.<br /><br />The gain in payload mass alone is enough to justify launching from the moon IMO. <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>

 

[SpeedFreek]

The speed of the Earth around the Sun is around 30 times the speed of the Moon around the Earth. So we would only be gaining a relatively small advantage by launching from the moon, in terms of shortening journey times.<br /><br />But the escape velocity of the Earth is 11.2 km/s and the escape velocity of the moon is 2.4 km/s so it takes a lot less thrust to get into space from the Moon than from Earth. And if you were pointed in the right direction when you launched would would have the small extra velocity that the moon gave you, relative to the Sun or other planets.<br /><br />Interestingly, it takes less overall thrust (and therefore fuel) to get into Low Earth Orbit from the Moon than it does from Earth! Launching from the Moon you need a total of 6.1 km/s (2.2 to get into lunar orbit and 4.1 to transfer into LEO) versus 8.6 km/s when launching from Earth. From LEO you need only 2.5 km/s to get back to the moon again. <br /><br />So for interplanetary travel you may gain only a little extra velocity (or delta v) by launching from the Moon, but you will either save fuel (enough to accelerate you by 8.8 km/s!) or gain payload. How much more thrust you need after that depends on where you are going, how fast you want to get there and how much you need to slow down when you arrive! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000">_______________________________________________<br /></font><font size="2"><em>SpeedFreek</em></font> </p> </div>

 

[vandivx]

"I'm trying to understand the magnitude of any speed of travel advantages we would achieve by launching future missions from the Moon."<br /><br />I believe such gains would be minuscule and not warranting (in themselves) any launch base on the Moon, personally I regard any space launches from the Moon as pipe dreams given the current and currently forseeable technology<br /><br />biggest obstacles to travel speed these days is not technology but people, more precisely 'green people' for whom nuclear energy is dirty word and who wouldn't allow you to despoil lunar surface in the name of future generations anyway LOL<br />only reason that is not an issue as yet is because we are nowhere near of launching from the Moon<br /><br />vanDivX <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[bushuser]

Doesn't the value of lunar launch also depend on the Cargo? If you first have to boost your cargo from Earth to the moon, then load it onto a new spacecraft and boost it to a transfer orbit...little advantage over directly boosting from earth to transfer orbit.<br /><br />Lunar launch makes sense if a large part of the cargo/propellant originates from the Moon.

 

[mithridates]

Not a direct response to you, but nobody has mentioned the third advantage to the Moon (besides lower escape velocity and ability to take off wings and rudders when designing a craft) which is the ability to use a type of mass driver system (or something similar) to give a craft extra velocity before it starts to take off on its own. Or it could also be used to send extra fuel up into orbit that the ship picks up before making the engine burn to leave orbit and go somewhere else. Mass at takeoff could be minimal if extra fuel were available up there. Reminds me a bit of the ship in Star Wars Episode III that leaves the planet as something really small, attaches itself to a device in orbit, then using that blasts off into hyperspace. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>----- </p><p>http://mithridates.blogspot.com</p> </div>

 

[vandivx]

yes you have to take into account the larger picture of it all and that means that before the launch from the Moon, the rocket and everything else (launchpad etc) has to get there somehow<br /><br />at this point in time we might look forward to making the bulk of the rocket fuel from the resources available on the Moon but that also means delivery onto the Moon of all the manufacturing facilities...<br /><br />that might be worth it only if there were trully big benefits to be had from launching from there, however from my layman's insight the travel speed to planets/stars is gained mainly once you have left your home planet, be it the Moon or the Earth, that is not during launch, launch speeds have very little to do with subsequent travel speeds IMO because the speeds up that happen after the initial launch dwarf any speed gained during the initial boost into space<br /><br />also there is hardly much of any atmosphere on the Moon which mitigates somewhat the gains due to lower gravitation that has to be overcome and which may be a factor to consider for large rocket (as opposed to those Moon landing modules of the Apollo missions) <br />again in my laymen's insight into rocket propulsion, the rocket motors have best effectivity when they work against launchpad intially and then utilize the push against atmosphere also (the denser the better) which would be lacking when launching from the Moon - atmosphere on the other hand retards the rocket when it is making its way through it and it is a toss up<br />I think it is all a matter for rocket specialists to decide, I may be quite wrong in what I said here<br /><br />vanDivX <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>