Wingo Op Ed: Establishing the VSE

[gospacex]

ChrisInAStrangeLand - 25/4/2008  4:48 AM

gospacex - 23/4/2008  11:21 PM
Stop for a second and realize that non-hydrogen fuels also exist, and for the Moon it can turn out that it's much easier to produce and use those instead.

I agree, the Apollo samples brought back were absolutely drenched in hydrazine and rp1.

No they were not.

I am talking about fuels which contain no hydrogen at all. For example, active metals (Al,K,Mg etc). Would you agree that those are abundant on the Moon?

[kraisee]

I thought Dr. Hinners comment in reply to Mr. Rohrabacher's was extremely valid though - essentially that there are architectures which start with a Mars mission profile and work backwards to Lunar.   They define a profile in which you really do get to test systems on the moon which will eventually take you further afield when the time & funding is right.

The legislation limits make this more efficient approach "tricky" though.

I believe there are benefits to not limiting the program to "pure" Lunar architectures alone - and instead creating a more "generic" approach which can eventually grow to take us anywhere.

While I can certainly see the validity of not spending money on Mars which doesn't have to be spent yet, I am equally glad that there are enough loopholes around current legislation which allow us not to get bogged down in exclusive Lunar-only development.


Dennis' article does a very good job of opening the debate up and focusing on the bigger picture rather than the minutae.   He's helping to make sure we don't exclude valuable options at this early stage, options which might really be useful in 10 or 20 years time.

It is all-too easy to lose sight of the fact that we aren't trying to just do a replica of the short 6-landing Apollo program - that the VSE is supposed to be the first steps in a sustainable long-haul program which starts us down the very long path towards ever-wider expansion into space.   Making the right/wrong choices now, will have critical repercussions in the long-term and we need to keep that in mind during these early phases.

My hat off to Dennis for trying to raise the subject to a higher profile for discussion before we get totally fixed into one set of decisions that may, or may not, be helpful beyond just returning to the moon.

Ross.

[A_M_Swallow]

kraisee - 26/4/2008  12:19 AM

While I can certainly see the validity of not spending money on Mars which doesn't have to be spent yet, I am equally glad that there are enough loopholes around current legislation which allow us not to get bogged down in exclusive Lunar-only development.

Time to talk about manned trips to the asteroid belt?

[A_M_Swallow]

gospacex - 25/4/2008  11:37 PM

ChrisInAStrangeLand - 25/4/2008  4:48 AM

gospacex - 23/4/2008  11:21 PM
Stop for a second and realize that non-hydrogen fuels also exist, and for the Moon it can turn out that it's much easier to produce and use those instead.

I agree, the Apollo samples brought back were absolutely drenched in hydrazine and rp1.

No they were not.

@gospacex, her sarcastic comment was agreeing with you.  She forgot to add a

I am talking about fuels which contain no hydrogen at all. For example, active metals (Al,K,Mg etc). Would you agree that those are abundant on the Moon?

Powdered solids will require new engines to be developed.  Current space pumps cannot handle solids.

On the Earth powders are sometimes pumped using fluids.  LOX is a fluid and expands when boiled.


On Mars reusable launch vehicles could use 2 CO + LOX = 2 CO₂
A reversible process.

[kraisee]

What studies have been done regarding making a solid propellant from lunar regolith materials?

I can imagine a number of mixtures, but the 'rubberized' bonding agent seems to be the unknown factor.   If a suitable bonding agent can be made, I could imagine a company like ATK one day getting a contract to build disposable or reusable SRB's which can have their mixtures processed and poured on the lunar surface.

I don't see it being at an industrial scale for quite a long time, but I see it happening on the distant horizon unless a really good nuclear option comes in and just blanket-replaces all in-space propulsion methods outright (go EMC2!).

Ross.

[kraisee]

A_M_Swallow - 25/4/2008  9:13 PM

kraisee - 26/4/2008  12:19 AM

While I can certainly see the validity of not spending money on Mars which doesn't have to be spent yet, I am equally glad that there are enough loopholes around current legislation which allow us not to get bogged down in exclusive Lunar-only development.

Time to talk about manned trips to the asteroid belt?

*Precisely*

Nothing to do with Mars at all

Ross.

[wingod]

kraisee - 25/4/2008  10:10 PM

What studies have been done regarding making a solid propellant from lunar regolith materials?

I can imagine a number of mixtures, but the 'rubberized' bonding agent seems to be the unknown factor.   If a suitable bonding agent can be made, I could imagine a company like ATK one day getting a contract to build disposable or reusable SRB's which can have their mixtures processed and poured on the lunar surface.

I don't see it being at an industrial scale for quite a long time, but I see it happening on the distant horizon unless a really good nuclear option comes in and just blanket-replaces all in-space propulsion methods outright (go EMC2!).

Ross.

More like a hybrid with an aluminium solid and LOX as the oxidizer.  Isp of about 250-300 if memory serves. Bova talks about it in his book welcome to moonbase and references some work done in the 80's on the subject.

[wingod]

kraisee - 25/4/2008  10:10 PM

What studies have been done regarding making a solid propellant from lunar regolith materials?

I can imagine a number of mixtures, but the 'rubberized' bonding agent seems to be the unknown factor.   If a suitable bonding agent can be made, I could imagine a company like ATK one day getting a contract to build disposable or reusable SRB's which can have their mixtures processed and poured on the lunar surface.

I don't see it being at an industrial scale for quite a long time, but I see it happening on the distant horizon unless a really good nuclear option comes in and just blanket-replaces all in-space propulsion methods outright (go EMC2!).

Ross.

I continue to be amazed at long time spacers who do not understand that ISRU is far closer than anyone thinks, based upon a lot of work in the mining industry here on the Earth that wins metals out of poorer and poorer quality ores.

There are many processes that win metals and oxygen from regolith that can be put on an Atlas or Delta vehicle and sent to the Moon directly.  3600 kg from a Delta IV Heavy is a pretty darn good payload.

This is why we must bring in a wider community than is currently the case with aerospace engineers in the return to the Moon.

[A_M_Swallow]

wingod - 26/4/2008  5:22 AM
More like a hybrid with an aluminium solid and LOX as the oxidizer.  Isp of about 250-300 if memory serves. Bova talks about it in his book welcome to moonbase and references some work done in the 80's on the subject.

An experiments with powdered aluminium and LOX is mentioned on this website.
http://www.space-rockets.com/lsp.html

See AIAA 94-2842, AIAA 92-3450 and AIAA 86-1763 by J.H. Wickman for further details.

[A_M_Swallow]

wingod - 26/4/2008  5:25 AM
I continue to be amazed at long time spacers who do not understand that ISRU is far closer than anyone thinks, based upon a lot of work in the mining industry here on the Earth that wins metals out of poorer and poorer quality ores.

There are many processes that win metals and oxygen from regolith that can be put on an Atlas or Delta vehicle and sent to the Moon directly.  3600 kg from a Delta IV Heavy is a pretty darn good payload.

This is why we must bring in a wider community than is currently the case with aerospace engineers in the return to the Moon.

Has anyone written and costed a plan for producing lunar ISRU materials within say 5 years?

[wingod]

A_M_Swallow - 26/4/2008  5:31 PM

wingod - 26/4/2008  5:25 AM
I continue to be amazed at long time spacers who do not understand that ISRU is far closer than anyone thinks, based upon a lot of work in the mining industry here on the Earth that wins metals out of poorer and poorer quality ores.

There are many processes that win metals and oxygen from regolith that can be put on an Atlas or Delta vehicle and sent to the Moon directly.  3600 kg from a Delta IV Heavy is a pretty darn good payload.

This is why we must bring in a wider community than is currently the case with aerospace engineers in the return to the Moon.

Has anyone written and costed a plan for producing lunar ISRU materials within say 5 years?

Mike Duke has.  I have his recent charts.  There is a lot of stuff that is going on well outside of the aerospace community such as the cast basalt used for water pipes in Germany, acid leach methods for copper, gold, and platinum mining in Africa.  There was also  work by Rockwell that was never published using magma electrolysis and flourine methods to get metals and oxygen out of regolith.  There has been some recent work on the Carbonyl process that has been published.  Just google nickel carbonyl for more info.  Mark Sonter from Australia did his masters thesis on metals processing on asteroids that also pertains to lunar resources of these metals.

There was a good paper at the LPSC this year (2045.pdf) that basically validates my hypothesis regarding the surviviability of low velocity impactors.


I am pretty well plugged into what is going on.