I seem to recall that there is some controversy about the LCROSS results. They may not be valid or widely applicable so caution is suggested.Quote from: DougSpace on 07/13/2018 11:33 amHop is right about the 5.5 factor correction. But I understand that it doesn’t apply to the water but to the other species. I would really like to get a definitive list of the corrected percentages.
Hop is right about the 5.5 factor correction. But I understand that it doesn’t apply to the water but to the other species. I would really like to get a definitive list of the corrected percentages.
Good luck getting $400M to do a robotic lunar mission.
I have no objections to it being cheaper. It is however preparation for the manned landings.
Quote from: A_M_Swallow on 07/23/2018 12:06 amI have no objections to it being cheaper. It is however preparation for the manned landings.There's no budget for robotic precursor missions. It's a miracle LRO/LCROSS got there.If we see a COTS-like effort for commercial rovers, there might be a chance... but so far that looks pretty unlikely. While the rest of us (including the GAO, shockingly) agree that the lesson of COTS was that vast cost savings and (some) funding stability due to that are available if this model is adapted, the lesson NASA learnt is that giving weak requirements to commercial contractors and letting them figure out the details encourages the general public (and Congress) to question why NASA needs to have engineers and facilities and deep fiefdoms of "oversight". If, as Elon Musk has said, if a contractor who "had no idea what [they] were doing" can deliver the mail, then what *is* all that oversight for? If you're really truly willing to cancel a contract if the contractor doesn't deliver (shock!) then the contractor has a motivation to deliver. Crazy isn't it? Whereas if the contractor knows that virtually nothing will get their contract cancelled, they can drag their feet and they'll never say no if NASA changes the requirements half way through development./rant
Honestly, I don't see humans going back to the Moon to do anything other than flags and footprints... and if they do it'll be ISS on the Moon with expeditions to do "science". Industrial processing of the Moon - that's some Silicon Valley "disruption".
Hence why I started this thread, we KNOW you can get Methalox from other places in the solar system, its just whether or not there is a source closer energetically than Earth and closer practically than Mars. If not, Hydrolox will probably dominate and SpaceX will have to develop a Hydrolox engine in the future if they want to move beyond Earth-Mars trips (granted, that would potentially be almost half a century out before they would need to so that's no indictment of their plan)
I am not sure if it was Elon Musk or Tom Mueller who said this. Going outward from Mars a hydrolox engine may be more efficient.
Jeff Bezos is on record that he will go there with or without external support.
Quote from: jpo234 on 08/07/2018 12:17 pmJeff Bezos is on record that he will go there with or without external support.Ohhhh! The guy who hasn't even been to *orbit* yet says he's going to the Moon! Well, then...
Quote from: QuantumG on 08/07/2018 10:44 pmQuote from: jpo234 on 08/07/2018 12:17 pmJeff Bezos is on record that he will go there with or without external support.Ohhhh! The guy who hasn't even been to *orbit* yet says he's going to the Moon! Well, then...To be fair, his backup plan of stacking dollar bills till he reaches the moon is going pretty well.
So slightly off topic, but what work has been done on making fuel on the Moon? A lot of people talk about Hydrolox and Aluminium/Oxygen hybrid rockets, is there anything else that's been given some serious thought?
Quote from: Lar on 07/02/2018 07:10 pmI seem to recall that there is some controversy about the LCROSS results. They may not be valid or widely applicable so caution is suggested.Quote from: DougSpace on 07/13/2018 11:33 amHop is right about the 5.5 factor correction. But I understand that it doesn’t apply to the water but to the other species. I would really like to get a definitive list of the corrected percentages.That jibes with what Paul Spudis was telling me when I asked about it. Basically they had data from two sources, one was an IR spectrometer and another was a Lyman Alpha Spectrometer. The IR one had been used many times before and was relatively easy to calibrate, while the Lyman Alpha one was trickier to calibrate and had less flight experience. The erroneous data for the CO and other non-water species were made using the LAS, while the water reading was picked up by both. Or something to that effect--the conversation was from a few years back.~Jon