SpaceX Dragon spacecraft for low cost trips to the Moon.

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exoscientist

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Both Russia and China are planning lander missions to the Moon as early as 2012 to test the presence of volatiles in the lunar polar regions, such as with the Luna-Glob mission. Even more important may be their in situ investigation of valuable minerals suggested by the LCROSS mission. It would be quite ironic if the U.S. LCROSS mission first demonstated the presence of these minerals but Russia and China were first to exploit them.
There have been some arguments that it is important for the U.S. to investigate the retrieval of valuable rare earth elements from the Moon because of their strategic importance, while China maintains the overwhelmingly largest supply of them:

Is Mining Rare Minerals on the Moon Vital to National Security?
By Leonard David
SPACE.com's Space Insider Columnist
posted: 04 October 2010 08:10 am ET
""Resource knowledge is one aspect of lunar exploration that certainly drives the non-US space-faring nations. It is disappointing that planners in our [U.S.] space program have not invested in that scope or time scale," Pieters added. "Other than the flurry over looking for water in lunar polar shadows, no serious effort has been taken to document and evaluate the mineral resources that occur on Earth's nearest neighbor. Frustrating!""
http://www.space.com/news/moon-mining-r ... 01004.html

See also the associated links in this article.

The U.S. not sending its own lander probes and in the near term may allow Russia and China to have abundant supplies of these minerals with the U.S. dependent on them for its own supplies.
As with the plans for mining copper and gold from the sea floor, the importance of the REE's and their rising prices have led to suggestions sea floor mining should be undertaken for them as well:

With Limited Deposits of Rare Earth Metals on the Surface, Eyes Turn to the Seafloor.
By Clay Dillow Posted 11.12.2010 at 10:58 am
http://www.popsci.com/technology/articl ... loor?page=

That they could be financially profitable to be mined from the sea floor despite the expense raises the possibility lunar mining for them could be financially profitable if they are in the high concentrations expected.
As I mentioned simple lander missions could be mounted for a few tens of millions of dollars if, for example, launched on the Russian Dnepr rocket. NASA might be disinclined to make use of this method of launching quick, low cost precursor missions. However, the U.S. could encourage business concerns to undertake such missions by offering tax breaks on the minerals returned from lunar mining. This if successful would have strategic benefits as well as making possible large scale interplanetary missions, including manned ones, from the use of the lunar propellant that would naturally become available during the lunar mining for minerals.


Bob Clark
 
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spacetrologymaster

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exoscientist":28cuje4p said:
vattas":28cuje4p said:
exoscientist":28cuje4p said:
The idea for this use would be for it to act as a reusable shuttle only between LEO and the lunar surface.
I don't see any reason for the capsule, designed for transferring cargo/crew from Earth surface to the orbit and back, to be used as LEO-Moon transfer craft. It's not designed for long duration flight or Moon landing...

It doesn't have to be long duration. Just a few days there and back.

Bob Clark
 
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exoscientist

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exoscientist":3lt3e45c said:
Both Russia and China are planning lander missions to the Moon as early as 2012 to test the presence of volatiles in the lunar polar regions, such as with the Luna-Glob mission. Even more important may be their in situ investigation of valuable minerals suggested by the LCROSS mission. It would be quite ironic if the U.S. LCROSS mission first demonstated the presence of these minerals but Russia and China were first to exploit them.
There have been some arguments that it is important for the U.S. to investigate the retrieval of valuable rare earth elements from the Moon because of their strategic importance, while China maintains the overwhelmingly largest supply of them:

Is Mining Rare Minerals on the Moon Vital to National Security?
By Leonard David
SPACE.com's Space Insider Columnist
posted: 04 October 2010 08:10 am ET
""Resource knowledge is one aspect of lunar exploration that certainly drives the non-US space-faring nations. It is disappointing that planners in our [U.S.] space program have not invested in that scope or time scale," Pieters added. "Other than the flurry over looking for water in lunar polar shadows, no serious effort has been taken to document and evaluate the mineral resources that occur on Earth's nearest neighbor. Frustrating!""
http://www.space.com/news/moon-mining-r ... 01004.html

See also the associated links in this article.

The U.S. not sending its own lander probes and in the near term may allow Russia and China to have abundant supplies of these minerals with the U.S. dependent on them for its own supplies...

EarthlingX posted this link on the "Missions and Launches" forum in the "2013 Russian-Indian lunar lander and rover" thread:

Lunny Poligon.
schematic_1.jpg

Above: Key elements of the Lunny Poligon concept. Credit: NPO Lavochkin
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/lunny_poligon.html

The Russians are already planning a robotic base on the Moon that will include mining elements to take place after their exploratory lunar resources mission.
It's time for the U.S. to get on the ball.


Bob Clark
 
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believer_since_1956

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Gravity_Ray":16ktqrv2 said:
I think there is a case to be made for tourism to the Moon without landing.

The pluses are that without landing the trip becomes much safer. There is already a case made for rich people that are willing to pay 30-50 million to hop to LEO. For just a bit more you can go on a weeklong trip to orbit the Moon and come back.


You can fly the tourists up to LEO in the Dragon, attach it to a Bigelow style module and push it to the Moon and get there in only a few days. Orbit the Moon for a day or two with some windows on the Bigelow module for sightseeing and then bring the thing back to LEO and land people back with the Dragon leaving the Bigelow style module up there for the next trip.

You can probably get 2-3 trips from the Bigelow module before you de-orbit it and send up another one. If you can get 3-5 tourists to go each time not only will you have a low cost trip, but you will also have a profitable trip.

Would you be able to resupply the Bigelow and carry 3-5 people? Dragon seems a bit to "frail" for operation beyond Earth Orbit. Maybe something similar to it but using in orbit refueling since it would have to more massive due to increased life support demands and additional redundancy in it's systems.
 
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believer_since_1956

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exoscientist":pqil4plv said:
exoscientist":pqil4plv said:
An even lower cost possibility for the capsule and lander might be one proposed by the University of Maryland aerospace engineering department:

Phoenix: A Low-Cost Commercial Approach to the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
http://www.nianet.org/rascal/forum2006/ ... _paper.pdf

As with the Orion CEV, this Phoenix spacecraft was intended to be used in conjunction with a separate lander for lunar missions. However, by using it both for the trip from LEO and as the lander you get great savings in cost.
On page 3 of the report is given a breakdown of the weights of the various subsystems. By removing the propulsion system as I suggested for the Dragon for this purpose, the mass with crew would be about half that of the Dragon, at about 2,000 kg.
Then assuming again 10 to 1 mass ratios for two Centaur style stages for propulsion, we would need about half the propellant load as for the Dragon, about 20,000 kg, which could be lofted by a single launch of the current largest launchers.
Then the cost of lofting this propellant load to LEO would be about $100 million. And if a new heavy lift launcher could get a $2,400 per kg launch price, it would only be in the range of $50 million.
This would increase even further the market for such low cost lunar missions.

Especially innovative about this design is the "parashield" thermal
protection. Not only is this lightweight but another advantage is that
it has a higher protective area so that you can use a larger volume
cylindrical structure rather than the usual conical structure for the
capsule.
From the report "Phoenix: A Low-Cost Commercial Approach to
the Crew Exploration":
"Figure 5.9-1: Phoenix ParaShield in stowed and deployed
configurations."
14e9vd4.jpg



Bob Clark

A very interesting concept. Marry that with a Bigelow inflatable module and it gets even more interesting.
 
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