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marcel_leonard
Guest
I’ve been giving this quite a bit of thought and I’m of the opinion that we can go both to the Moon/Mars by using the combined resources of both the space shuttle, and the International Space Station. Instead of building a brand new vehicle to travel from the earth to the moon as was done on the late 1960s and early 1970s we could use the already existing shuttle to bus us to the ISS we could then build a lunar module at the space station designed to launch from the ISS platform and land successfully on the moons surface. As for a long term lunar base I propose we initially use the concept of a lunar mobile home. A self propelled vehicle that can double as a lunar rover and housing facility and laboratory.<br /><br />This will allow us the feasibility of a construction site trailer to later on design/build a more permanent underground lunar base. We can use this same approach to venture eventually to Mars were we could use this exact same off-world experience to build a long term Martian base of operation. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to resurrect the X-33/Venture Star program since the Aero-spike engines showed quite a bit of promise when they we at 75% design/build completion at their final testing at Huntsville AL. In an ideal world we would have already develop a low cost reusable launch vehicle (RLV) with the world community to make space delivery systems more cost effective not only of space exploration, but also for affordability of SatCom system design life cycles (SDLC). <br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "A mind is a terrible thing to waste..." </div>