If we choose to stay with the status quo, even I would vote to discontinue human spaceflight. As it is, it's a waste of money.
Garbage in, Garbage out, vehicles in space are not even rented, that's just silly.
I have no reason to believe any of your cost numbers other then $1000 kg to LEO which is the only figure I did not raise issue with from the last post.
I can tell you ball park what kind of fraction of marginal IMLEO cargo can be offloaded at EML1/2 after the vehicles are in place, ~75%. That compares very favorably with boosting their chemically which would deliver less then 25%.
Quote from: Impaler on 05/19/2015 02:57 amGarbage in, Garbage out, vehicles in space are not even rented, that's just silly.Someone's silly and full of garbage here. But it's not Gbalkie.Of course we don't rent single-use expendable vehicles. But we're talking about reusable vehicles.Reusable vehicles are routinely rented. And as Gbalkie notes, time is money.Quote from: Impaler on 05/19/2015 02:57 amI have no reason to believe any of your cost numbers other then $1000 kg to LEO which is the only figure I did not raise issue with from the last post.That's the part I find questionable. $1000 per kilogram to LEO would pay for the cost of a throw away upper stage. Then we have to add to that the maintenance, transportation and refurbishment costs of a re-usable booster (if we manage to successfully reuse boosters).Quote from: Impaler on 05/19/2015 02:57 amI can tell you ball park what kind of fraction of marginal IMLEO cargo can be offloaded at EML1/2 after the vehicles are in place, ~75%. That compares very favorably with boosting their chemically which would deliver less then 25%.How do you refill your ion ferry after it runs out of xenon? With a throw-away upper stage?If that's the case, a chemical lunar ferry beats your ion ferry from LEO after only 3 trips. And chemical's a hell of a lot faster.And if the propellent source is an asteroid in an LDRO, your case is blown completely out the water.From LDRO to EML2 by a fast route is about .4 km/s. e.4/3.6 - 1= .12. For every 100 tonnes of cargo and dry mass you need 12 tonnes of propellent.If we had a power source alpha of kg/250 watts, I'll make a WAG that an ion ship could cut off its engines at around 150,000 km altitude and do a ballistic slide into EML1. So I'll call the delta V about 5 km/s. I believe exhaust velocity of Hall thrusters is around 30 km/s. e5/30 - 1= .18. So for each 100 tonnes of cargo we'd need 18 tonnes of xenon.And then there's the trip back. Also .4 km/s vs 5 km/s with the same exhaust velocities.
One of Spudis/Lavois' assumptions was $5000/kg to LEO. I believe it is around $4,000 now. If the industry manages to economically reuse boosters, that could go down to $2,000.
The first ISRU will be low info, high mass products. Water, methane, hydrogen and oxygen. With accumulating infrastructure we would be able to do more.
Regolith for radiation shielding. Make bricks from regolith.
At the moment we're getting no return on investment for the money we spend on human spaceflight. If we're going to invest any money it should go towards building infrastructure that expands our options.
The attach spreadsheet was a redo of Spudis's Lunar architecture but using commercial entities and development cost sharing between the commercial entities and NASA....
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/19/2015 04:50 pmThe attach spreadsheet was a redo of Spudis's Lunar architecture but using commercial entities and development cost sharing between the commercial entities and NASA....The spreadsheet is GREAT!One suggestion though. The first tab of the spreadsheet should list who created it (screen name is OK) and any notes you wanted to provide. I would also add the URL for the original post you posted it on. That way if people start forwarding it around they can always find the original.I've done a similar spreadsheet for an EML station, so I can appreciate the work that goes into it. A great starting point, especially since it can be easily updated with new pricing information.
How do you refill your ion ferry after it runs out of xenon? With a throw-away upper stage?If that's the case, a chemical lunar ferry beats your ion ferry from LEO after only 3 trips. And chemical's a hell of a lot faster.
And if the propellent source is an asteroid in an LDRO, your case is blown completely out the water.From LDRO to EML2 by a fast route is about .4 km/s. e.4/3.6 - 1= .12. For every 100 tonnes of cargo and dry mass you need 12 tonnes of propellent.If we had a power source alpha of kg/250 watts, I'll make a WAG that an ion ship could cut off its engines at around 150,000 km altitude and do a ballistic slide into EML1. So I'll call the delta V about 5 km/s. I believe exhaust velocity of Hall thrusters is around 30 km/s. e5/30 - 1= .18. So for each 100 tonnes of cargo we'd need 18 tonnes of xenon.And then there's the trip back. Also .4 km/s vs 5 km/s with the same exhaust velocities.
As far as my little table it was to show that transport costs are the major problem in doing material pricing. It multiplies the price significantly on every leg of the journey. Basicly a factor of 2 because of how much prop is used to go somewhere. Actually reusable vehicles are assumed in the pricing because their fractional cost per round trip makes the cost of prop the most significant item. A $300M reusable Lander reused 50 times costs $6M per round trip, whereas the prop costs (100mt of prop, 85mt used for delivery of 100mt of cargo and 15mt used to return the Lander to the source of the prop. It does not mater which direction the cargo is traveling the number are the same. This excludes development costs of probably $1.5B, but including development costs into the round trip costs used over a total of 10 vehicles ups the cost per round trip for the vehicle costs to $9M per round trip.The attach spreadsheet was a redo of Spudis's Lunar architecture but using commercial entities and development cost sharing between the commercial entities and NASA. The interesting item here is that spending does not really represent a NASA budget but all spending by everyone. A special note here is that some of this spending is back and forth between commercial entities and results in an offset of the some of the spending so that NASA spending is about half of the total spending per year, or max NASA budget of around $2B per year over the first 12 years.
My idea would be NASA establishes LOX depot in LEO, first.And perhaps depot evolve to be H2 and LOX depot.The LOX depot is used for robotic lunar mission and later used for Manned lunar missions.NASA explores both poles could evolve a focus one one of the Poles.
The robotic missions could explore say around 6 to 8 different sites with at least a couple beingin different dark craters. So going in large craters and going to the rims of craters ["peaks of ethereal light/earth relay points] and shadowed polar regions [which would have smaller craters- or similar to the Apollo sites]. It's possible one mission could go to deep crater, and rim, and a place nearby- or two more different mission going to one particular location.
And with this information it help assess whether the Moon can be commercially mined.
And in terms of Mars program somewhere less than 1 billion dollar of rocket fuel and water per year might bought in LEO and/or high earth orbit. Shipped from Earth or possible lunar water mining could ship it to high earth orbit
Quote from: gbaikie on 05/20/2015 11:20 pmMy idea would be NASA establishes LOX depot in LEO, first.And perhaps depot evolve to be H2 and LOX depot.The LOX depot is used for robotic lunar mission and later used for Manned lunar missions.NASA explores both poles could evolve a focus one one of the Poles.Why does the U.S. Government have to do this? Does the U.S. Government have more experience than the private sector in resource extraction, resource refinement, and resource distribution?
If the U.S. Government wants to foot the bill for setting up a fuel depot system then they could just hold a competition for two or more service providers and guarantee a minimum amount of business. Anything above and beyond the minimum would be for the service providers to market. The quicker we get to a market-based system the better.
The U.S. Government has different motivations when they do things than when the private sector does, so if you want something to be done quickly and at the lowest practical cost the answer is to incentive the private sector to get involved, not to hope that a politically-influenced government organization can somehow figure out how to get the job done within some artificial budget.
The U.S. Government has no idea whether something is commercially viable. Only the private sector can do that.And what determines that? Well #1 there has to be a customer for whatever the product is, and #2 the price has to be in the range the customer is willing to pay.
Because keep in mind the Moon is not the only place to get water, and with launch costs dropping I have yet to see a compelling business case for mining water on the Moon when we have virtually free water here on Earth - all that needs to be paid for is shipping.
And how much are you spending in time and money to get to that point where you can support $1B in rocket fuel and water per year? And how much would it cost to just ship it from Earth?
What is needed in terms of mining lunar water is to export rocket fuel beyond the Moon, but also has it's own "protected" market at lunar surface.
the energetic advantage of some asteroids will be tiny compared to the operational advantages of the Moon (3 days away, all resources in one location instead of spread out over multiple orbits)
A small asteroid, yes it very well could alter it to somewhere you don't want it.
I for one, think that even if SpaceX fields MCT at the price point they are claiming, the most economically lucrative part of the Solar system will still be within cislunar orbit, not on the surface of Mars.
The third thing we clearly need is confidence in a DSH that can support humans for multiyear missions.
Put these together and we have a very moderate plan of a DSH in high lunar orbit, investigating ISRU with asteroid materials captured with a SEP tug, and likely serving as a base for near realtime teleoperation to a growing international robotic base at the lunar poles to investigate ISRU there.
It is very misleading to describe lunar ISRU as a way of getting to mars IMO.
I only value mars for it's potential ISRU anyway.
Sure, a manned lunar base could lead [to Mars], but firstly it would be a big project of its own, practically a town...
Mars may become an easy target from all this experience but solar system colonisation will already be underway with or without it.
So since the Moon is nearby [relative to speed of light] I am generally oppose to the requirement of a lunar base for the purpose of exploring the Moon.
if you scale up to O'Neill type multi-thousand ton architectures which may include mass drivers, the moon becomes more attractive
if most of the demand in cis-lunar space ends up being on the moon (for example, a bigelow hotel with a swimming pool on the moon), that does improve the prospects of lunar ISRU
Asteroid water has this same problem competing with Lunar water at the Lunar surface if both cost approximately the same to make then Asteroid water would not be competitive at the Lunar surface.Sale Price at Location $115 kg asteroid water at EML2 http://clowder.net/hop/TMI/FuelDepot.jpg etc
When we are moving outward from LEO electric propulsion is possible which will cut costs hugely, it is also very likely to be used for going to and from asteroids.
It would seem asteroid resources spiraled down to various locations on the lunar surface would be competitive with resources harvested from the lunar poles - especially if they had to be launched from the poles to various locations on the moon. Why do advocates of lunar resources so rarely discuss asteroid resources? If their intention is to justify humans returning to the moon - why not argue for that directly, rather than use the pretext of requiring humans to mine lunar resources - especially at a supposed profit in comparison to asteroids?? Thanks
Quote from: gbaikie on 05/17/2015 02:19 am What is needed in terms of mining lunar water is to export rocket fuel beyond the Moon, but also has it's own "protected" market at lunar surface.How protected is the lunar surface market if water requirements per person are actually quite minimal given recycling...it may make economic sense to just deliver water along with tourists and fresh food from Earth rather than establish and operate any lunar mining whatsoever. At 95% efficiency water contained in imported food replaces water lost from the system. So as far as needs for tourists and their servants, mining lunar ice makes little sense. Water on the lunar surface may be such a minimal market that other destinations could meet such needs incidentally, without lunar overhead.
It would seem asteroid resources spiraled down to various locations on the lunar surface would be competitive with resources harvested from the lunar poles - especially if they had to be launched from the poles to various locations on the moon.
Ok here is a more detailed costing/prices of water and prop produced at lunar surface.Note: the cost of equipment includes its development, manufacture, launch/delivery to destination and operations over total life of the equipment.Cost of equipment to produce water$2,000,000,000Total water produced over life of equipment 4,380,000Life time of equipment5$/kg to produce water$457 -----------Cost of equipment to produce prop$1,000,000,000Total prop produced over life of equipment 13,140,000Life time of equipment15$/kg to produce prop + water cost$533 -----------Sale price of Water (cost + 30% profit)$594Total profits per year on producing water$156,000,000Sale price of prop (cost + 20% profit)$639Total profits per year on producing prop$112,000,000 ----------Prop used per round trip with 40mt of down cargo(equipment/supplies/people)80,000no of trips per year based on produced prop11prop cost per round trip of lander$51,141,553cost of lander$1,000,000,000life of lander in trips33total cost for lander ops per round trip$81,444,583Price of Lander per round trip (costs + 20% profit)$97,733,499Sale price of water $/kg at EML2 delivered in 30mt lots$3,212Sale price of prop $/kg at EML2 delivered in 30mt lots$3,258Sale price of prop $/kg at EML2 manufactured from delivered water in 30mt lots$3,288A note is the interesting quirk of the eco model is that it costs less to manufacture the prop on the lunar surface than to produce it on orbit. But the difference is only 1% of sale price. This gives a feeling for the price that an asteroid produced water/prop must beat. Another note is that prop delivered from Earth at $2,000/kg is cheaper at EML2 (if the price only doubles) than this prop produced at Lunar surface. The exception to using Earth prop at EML2 for the Lander is the Lander purchases prop for its operations at the Lunar surface price and not at the EML2 price. $700/kg vs $2,000/kg.