Author Topic: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander  (Read 49593 times)

Offline plutogno

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South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« on: 11/14/2013 04:30 pm »
a short article and an animation on this subject. Launch apparently planned for the early-2020s
http://www.nature.com/news/south-korea-reveals-moon-lander-plans-1.14159

Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #1 on: 11/15/2013 05:23 am »
Cool! The lander looks similar to the cancelled European Lunar Lander project, but with a small rover. With China attempting to land next month and India and Russia developing Lunar landing missions, this could be the renaissance of Lunar surface exploration, with hopefully crewed Lunar missions to follow.
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #2 on: 11/15/2013 06:13 am »
I guess these missions are skirting the poles because of the lack of direct line of sight for communication, and the limitations of solar power?

It would be nice if either of these problems could be solved once by one group and shared, eg a long lasting solution for communication and perhaps some general purpose nuclear batteries. Are those scary tech to distribute or no more so than your average X-ray machine?

Offline Star One

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #3 on: 11/15/2013 06:28 am »
Sounds good. Seems we have a moon race on our hands. Pretty ambitious timeframe to get it done in just six/seven years.

Offline plutogno

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #4 on: 11/15/2013 07:09 am »
Actually, they have been developing the mission for quite some time now (at least 5 years).
And of course, not unexpectedly North Korea has also announced a lunar mission. Hopefully South Korea will prefer to develop the mission taking all the time it needs, without getting involved in a senseless "race"

Offline Prober

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #5 on: 11/15/2013 02:21 pm »
Actually, they have been developing the mission for quite some time now (at least 5 years).
And of course, not unexpectedly North Korea has also announced a lunar mission. Hopefully South Korea will prefer to develop the mission taking all the time it needs, without getting involved in a senseless "race"

SK needs to first test out the launcher then build from there.   But they are getting the funding so that might help move the project forward.
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Offline Star One

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #6 on: 11/16/2013 10:15 am »

Actually, they have been developing the mission for quite some time now (at least 5 years).
And of course, not unexpectedly North Korea has also announced a lunar mission. Hopefully South Korea will prefer to develop the mission taking all the time it needs, without getting involved in a senseless "race"

SK needs to first test out the launcher then build from there.   But they are getting the funding so that might help move the project forward.

Are there any payloads definitely down for launch with this launcher?

Offline Danderman

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #7 on: 11/16/2013 04:23 pm »
Here is the money quote from the article:

"KARI has spent 10 billion Korean won (US$ 9.3 million) on lunar research since 2010
"


Offline Fuji

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #8 on: 11/27/2013 01:30 am »
Korean new rocket family images.
http://japanese.joins.com/article/758/178758.html  (Japanese article)

They may change the Octaweb engine arrangement   ;D

Offline Lars_J

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #9 on: 11/27/2013 04:45 am »
Wow... :D imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess.

Offline yoichi

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #10 on: 11/27/2013 01:32 pm »
http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2981096
Gov’t boosts its goals for space

Korea plans to launch an exploratory lunar probe aboard its own launch vehicle by June 2020 and later embark on missions to Mars and asteroids by 2040, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning announced yesterday.

Offline Danderman

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #11 on: 11/27/2013 02:46 pm »
If those payload numbers are correct, the new engine that S Korea is developing is significantly smaller than even the first generation Merlin.
« Last Edit: 11/27/2013 07:14 pm by Danderman »

Offline M129K

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #12 on: 11/27/2013 02:59 pm »
Wow... :D imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess.
Let's just call it inspiration  ;D

Offline Prober

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #13 on: 11/27/2013 07:10 pm »
If those payload numbers are correct, the new engine that S Korea is developing are significantly smaller than even the first generation Merlin.

Homegrown design = to the naro engine
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Offline Danderman

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #14 on: 11/27/2013 07:14 pm »
If those payload numbers are correct, the new engine that S Korea is developing are significantly smaller than even the first generation Merlin.

Homegrown design = to the naro engine

The Naro 1 engine was/is significantly larger than the Merlin engine.

Offline Prober

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #15 on: 11/27/2013 11:11 pm »
If those payload numbers are correct, the new engine that S Korea is developing are significantly smaller than even the first generation Merlin.

Homegrown design = to the naro engine

The Naro 1 engine was/is significantly larger than the Merlin engine.
Korea's space program enters next phase KSLV-2
http://www.arirang.co.kr/News/News_View.asp?code=Ne5&nseq=146155
 
"We did obtain invaluable knowledge from them, and worked our way up to emulating their technologies. In fact, we've also developed an engine identical to the ones used in Naro on our own as we prepare to develop the next engine for the KSLV-2."
Kinda confusing only from what I've seen SK is very serious about space and plans to catch up to the rest of the world.
« Last Edit: 11/27/2013 11:16 pm by Prober »
2017 - Everything Old is New Again.
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Offline Danderman

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #16 on: 11/27/2013 11:24 pm »

"We did obtain invaluable knowledge from them, and worked our way up to emulating their technologies. In fact, we've also developed an engine identical to the ones used in Naro on our own as we prepare to develop the next engine for the KSLV-2."


The "Naro engine" was/is the RD-151, which has a thrust of 170 tons. The Merlin engine is about half that.

So, a 27 engine rocket with an engine "identical" to the RD-151 is going to be a monster, ie Saturn V class. Yet, the diagrams state that this 27 engine monster can only orbit  15- 20 tons, not the 75 tons+ that would be expected from all that liftoff thrust.

I was thinking that maybe the upper stages are small, but the same chart gives very respective GTO masses, given the LEO masses, so the upper stages are OK, its the first stages that are underpowered.

So, some of the information sources here are wrong.

« Last Edit: 11/27/2013 11:26 pm by Danderman »

Offline Fuji

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #17 on: 11/27/2013 11:25 pm »
If those payload numbers are correct, the new engine that S Korea is developing are significantly smaller than even the first generation Merlin.

Homegrown design = to the naro engine

The Naro 1 engine was/is significantly larger than the Merlin engine.


Naro 1 engine thrust is a 170 ton (metric ton).
New S Korea engine thrust is a 75 ton (about 735kN). 4 engine cluster =300 ton per that article.
Merlin 1C engine thrust is a 350-400kN.
My understand is right?

Offline Danderman

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #18 on: 11/27/2013 11:28 pm »

New S Korea engine thrust is a 75 ton (about 735kN). 4 engine cluster =300 ton per that article.


What is the source of that 75 ton thrust figure?

Offline hop

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Re: South Korean lunar orbiter and lander
« Reply #19 on: 11/28/2013 12:57 am »
What is the source of that 75 ton thrust figure?
It appears in the arirang report linked above by Prober (note that story is from April, so it pre-dates the current moon rumor)
Quote
The KSLV-2 will use four, 75-ton engines whereas the Naro had just one engine that weighed 30-tons.
Regardless of whether they really meant mass or thrust for the 30 tons, I don't see how you get 30 tons out of any of the Naro 1 specs...

I thought for a second they might have been talking about scaling up the second stage engine, but in that case 30 tons would be far too high.

Given the above and the vagaries of translation "identical" could also mean a lot of different things other than an exact copy: Same propellants, same combustion cycle, equal ISP...

edit:
The 75 ton figure appears here http://www.kslv.or.kr/kslv2/kslv_biz.asp?mn=1

google translate will get you .... something ;)
« Last Edit: 11/28/2013 01:05 am by hop »

 

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