I suspect we'll hear little more of this plan because it makes it clear that a HLV is not essential. The architecture would work essentially the same with 2-3 MLV launches per lunar landing, without an HLV's several billion dollars of fixed costs.Probably a still-born plan.
Quote from: Jason1701 on 12/03/2011 05:38 amI suspect we'll hear little more of this plan because it makes it clear that a HLV is not essential. The architecture would work essentially the same with 2-3 MLV launches per lunar landing, without an HLV's several billion dollars of fixed costs.Probably a still-born plan.You are not kidding there....
So you're looking at about 4 x D-IVH per sortie.
So no HLV is not essential, just very sensible. Therefore not still-born at all.
Not terribly sensible at all. The good things about this are some slight advantages in not needing EOR (which is a drawback in the larger scheme of things), using reusable spacecraft and creating a market for propellant at L1/L2 without needing LOX/LH2 depots in LEO just yet. We can do much better than that.
Also, too bad that there's no money for this if you base it around an HLV.
Quote from: kkattula on 12/03/2011 01:00 pmSo you're looking at about 4 x D-IVH per sortie.Which is still a low flight rate.
And more sensible than doing the exact same mission with 4 x D-IVH.
Evidence?
Not when you need to do all 4 in the space of a few weeks.
Quote from: kkattula on 12/03/2011 01:41 pmAnd more sensible than doing the exact same mission with 4 x D-IVH.No, much less sensible. We need high flight rates if we want to reduce commercial launch prices. And without a drastic reduction in commercial launch prices we can't have commercial development of space.
Your problem has always been that you think that NASA needs to be forced to try radical things straight off.